We begin with a small crop of propositions about truth from Michael P. Lynch directly and indirectly germane, in an abstract and philosophical sense, to both science and religion (we might think of these as basic presuppositions and assumptions). For what it’s worth, I believe, with Lynch, that it is important to acknowledge that truth is objective; that it is good to believe what is true; that truth is a goal worthy of human inquiry; and that truth is worth caring about for its own sake. That said, we might also concede the significance of the following and related propositions from Lynch’s analytically cogent philosophical examination of the nature of truth in several works on same (see ‘references and further reading’ below):
‘A theory of truth should make sense of the following metaphysical principle: Truth is One: There is a single property named by “truth” that all and only true propositions share.’ The theory should also be ‘able to make sense of the intuition that drives pluralism about truth, namely, Truth is Many: there is more than one way to be true.’
‘Minimally speaking, a proposition is true in the realist sense when things are as that proposition says they are. Some aspect of objective reality must simply be a certain way. If it is, then the proposition is true; if not, the proposition is false. The truth of the proposition hinges on the world alone, not on our thought about the world. In short, realism about truth minimally implies two commitments: (a) truth is an authentic property that some propositions have and others lack, and (b) the concept of truth is, in Putnam’s words, “radically non-epistemic;” that is, whether a proposition is true (in most cases) does not depend on what I or anyone else believes or knows. [….] According to correspondence accounts of truth, there are three metaphysical aspects to any true proposition: the proposition itself (the truth bearer), its correspondence (the truth relation), and the reality to which it corresponds (the truth marker). [….] In other words, propositions are true when they correspond to the facts.’
‘The content of an assertion is intrinsically related to a conceptual scheme. [….] In effect, propositions, true or false, are implicitly indexed to some conceptual scheme or schemes. [….] Facts are internal to conceptual schemes, or ways of dividing the world into objects, among which there can be equally acceptable alternatives. [….] [S]uch metaphysical pluralism is consistent with realism about truth.’
‘[T]here is no logical incoherence in supposing that facts and propositions are relative to conceptual schemes and that truth is the correspondence of (relative) propositions with (relative) facts.’
‘All truths are relative, yes, but our concept of truth needn’t be a relative concept.’
‘Thinking about why we should care about truth tells us two things about it: first, that truth is, in part, a deeply normative property—it is a value. And second, this is a fact that any adequate theory of truth must account for. In light of this fact, I suggest that truth, like other values, should be understood as depending on, but not reducible to, lower-level properties. Yet which properties truth depends on or supervenes on may change with the type of belief in question. This opens the door to a type of pluralism: truth in ethics may be realized differently than in physics.’
‘…[T]here is more than one property that make beliefs true. Truth…is immanent in those other properties of beliefs. In some domains, what makes a belief true is that it corresponds to reality; in others, beliefs are made true by a form of coherence. [….] [Traditional theories of truth] are not best conceived of as theories of truth itself. They are better seen as theories of the properties that make beliefs true—or manifest truth.’
‘[T]ruth is a single higher-level property whose instantiations across kinds of propositions are determined by a class of other, numerically distinct properties. [….] Truth is many because different properties may manifest truth in distinct domains of inquiry. In those domains they have the truish features [we find in those folk-truisms enumerated above]. Truth is one because there is a single property so manifested, and “truth” rigidly names that property.’
‘Truth is an immanent functional property that is variably manifested.’
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We continue with several philosophical comments from another philosopher, Hilary Putnam, by way of a proposed propaedeutic to any general comparative inquiry into science and religion:
‘…[The] “scientific” is not coextensive with “rational.” There are many perfectly rational beliefs that cannot be tested ‘scientifically.’ But more than that, …there are whole domains of fact with respect to which present-day science tells us nothing at all, not even that the facts in question exist. These domains are not new or strange. Three of them are (1) the domain of objective values; (2) the domain of freedom; (3) the domain of rationality itself.’
‘I think that the idealist “picture” calls our attention to vitally important features of our practice—and what is the point of having “pictures” if we are not interested in seeing how well they represent what we actually think and do? That we do not, in practice, actually construct a unique vision of the world, but only a vast number of versions (not all of them equivalent…) is something that “realism” hides from us.’
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We end our propaedeutic with a passage I’ve had occasion to cite several times over the years at this blog from my dear friend and former teacher, Nandini Iyer:
‘To affirm that there can be several different systems all giving us, at the same time, varying and yet legitimate “true” metaphysical descriptions of the world does not…necessarily entail that there are many realities, that nothing is absolutely real, or, put less dramatically, that there is no such thing as a single, context neutral description or account of the world, that is, as the world really is. It only means that no metaphysical description of it can be outside every possible conceptual framework, but Reality itself is. Nor does it follow that any assertions about this “real” or “true” world beyond all conceptual frameworks, are nonsense. [....] The conceptual frameworks we build in the realm of rational thought are not useless just because they cannot describe Ultimate Reality. Serious examination of, reflection on, these explanatory and interpretive schemes, their differences and overlaps, are crucial to expanding and deepening our understanding of reality, even if these conceptual frameworks (any or all possible combinations and collections of them) cannot bring us the Absolute Truth. If nothing else, they enable us to understand the relativity of conceptual truths and structures, and make us see what Pascal meant when he said that the highest function of reason is to show us the limitations of reason.’
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That said, we should be well-disposed to appreciate a review of two books on science and religion by Colin Dickey in The Los Angeles Review of Books: “Two-Way Monologue: How to Get Past Science vs. Religion.” Dickey looks at two recent books on “science and religion,” the first, by Jerry A. Coyne, a biologist: Faith vs. Fact: Why Science and Religion are Incompatible (Viking, 2015) (the tendentious title alone will put off many prospective readers); the other, The Territories of Science and Religion (University of Chicago Press, 2015), by an historian, Peter Harrison, who also edited the The Cambridge Companion to Science and Religion (2010). It’s an excellent review.
In the spirit of the review (and at the urging of Steve Shiffrin), here is a short list of titles on science and religion (I’ve yet to add the title from Harrison). Other compilations from yours truly related in some way to science (in alphabetical order): Biological Psychiatry, Sullied Psychology and Pharmaceutical Reason: A Basic Bibliography; Ethical Perspectives on the Sciences & Technology: A Basic Bibliography (this was largely derived from a much larger and older list on science and technology); and Sullied (Natural & Social) Sciences: A Basic Reading Guide. And of course I have bibliographies on religious worldviews as well at my Academia.edu site.
References & Further Reading:
- Cottingham, John. On the Meaning of Life. London: Routledge, 2003.
- Cottingham, John. The Spiritual Dimension: Religion, Philosophy and Human Value. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
- Dupré, John. Human Nature and the Limits of Science. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 2001.
- Goodman, Lenn E. In Defense of Truth: A Pluralistic Approach. Amherst, NY: Humanity Books/Prometheus Books, 2001.
- Iyer, Nandini. “It Ain’t Necessarily So,” in Knut A. Jacobsen, ed. Theory and Practice of Yoga: Essays in Honour of Gerald James Larson.Leiden: Brill, 2005: 99-127.
- Kupperman, Joel. Value…And What Follows. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1999.
- Lloyd, G.E.R. Cognitive Variations: Reflections on the Unity & Diversity of the Human Mind. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 2007.
- Lynch, Michael P. Truth in Context: An Essay on Pluralism and Objectivity. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998.
- Lynch, Michael P. True to Life: Why Truth Matters. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004.
- Lynch, Michael P. Truth as One and Many. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.
- Lynch, Michael P., ed. The Nature of Truth: Classic and Contemporary Perspectives. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
- Murdoch, Iris. The Sovereignty of Good. London: Routledge, 1991.
- Putnam, Hilary. Reason, Truth and History. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1981.
- Putnam, Hilary (James Conant, ed.). Realism with a Human Face. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990.
- Rescher, Nicholas. Pluralism: Against the Demand for Consensus. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1993.
- Rescher, Nicholas. Objectivity: The Obligations of Impersonal Reason. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997.
- Rescher, Nicholas. Nature and Understanding: The Metaphysics and Method of Science. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 2000.
- Rescher, Nicholas. Cognitive Pragmatism: The Theory of Knowledge in Pragmatic Perspective. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2001.
- Warner, Martin. Philosophical Finesse: Studies in the Art of Rational Persuasion. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 2009.
- Wedgwood, Ralph. The Nature of Normativity. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.
- Ziman, John. Real Science: What It Is, and What It Means. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
Image: Interior ceiling of the Blue Mosque in Istanbul.
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