TRUTH AND FALSEHOOD
Our knowledge of truths, unlike our knowledge of things, has an
opposite, namely _error_. So far as things are concerned, we may know
them or not know them, but there is no positive state of mind which
can be described as erroneous knowledge of things, so long, at any
rate, as we confine ourselves to knowledge by acquaintance. Whatever
we are acquainted with must be something; we may draw wrong inferences
from our acquaintance, but the acquaintance itself cannot be
deceptive. Thus there is no dualism as regards acquaintance. But as
regards knowledge of truths, there is a dualism. We may believe what
is false as well as what is true. We know that on very many subjects
different people hold different and incompatible opinions: hence some
beliefs must be erroneous. Since erroneous beliefs are often held
just as strongly as true beliefs, it becomes a difficult question how
they are to be distinguished from true beliefs. How are we to know,
in a given case, that our belief is not erroneous? This is a question
of the very greatest difficulty, to which no completely satisfactory
answer is possible. There is, however, a preliminary question which
is rather less difficult, and that is: What do we _mean_ by truth and
falsehood? It is this preliminary question which is to be considered
in this chapter. In this chapter we are not asking how we can know
whether a belief is true or false: we are asking what is meant by the
question whether a belief is true or false. It is to be hoped that a
clear answer to this question may help us to obtain an answer to the
question what beliefs are true, but for the present we ask only 'What
is truth?' and 'What is falsehood?' not 'What beliefs are true?' and
'What beliefs are false?' It is very important to keep these different
questions entirely separate, since any confusion between them is sure
to produce an answer which is not really applicable to either.
There are three points to observe in the attempt to discover the
nature of truth, three requisites which any theory must fulfil.
(1) Our theory of truth must be such as to admit of its opposite,
falsehood. A good many philosophers have failed adequately to
satisfy this condition: they have constructed theories according
to which all our thinking ought to have been true, and have then
had the greatest difficulty in finding a place for falsehood. In
this respect our theory of belief must differ from our theory of
acquaintance, since in the case of acquaintance it was not
necessary to take account of any opposite.
(2) It seems fairly evident that if there were no beliefs there could
be no falsehood, and no truth either, in the sense in which truth
is correlative to falsehood. If we imagine a world of mere
matter, there would be no room for falsehood in such a world, and
although it would contain what may be called 'facts', it would not
contain any truths, in the sense in which truths are things of the
same kind as falsehoods. In fact, truth and falsehood are
properties of beliefs and statements: hence a world of mere
matter, since it would contain no beliefs or statements, would
also contain no truth or falsehood.
(3) But, as against what we have just said, it is to be observed that
the truth or falsehood of a belief always depends upon something
which lies outside the belief itself. If I believe that Charles I
died on the scaffold, I believe truly, not because of any
intrinsic quality of my belief, which could be discovered by
merely examining the belief, but because of an historical event
which happened two and a half centuries ago. If I believe that
Charles I died in his bed, I believe falsely: no degree of
vividness in my belief, or of care in arriving at it, prevents it
from being false, again because of what happened long ago, and not
because of any intrinsic property of my belief. Hence, although
truth and falsehood are properties of beliefs, they are properties
dependent upon the relations of the beliefs to other things, not
upon any internal quality of the beliefs.
The third of the above requisites leads us to adopt the view--which
has on the whole been commonest among philosophers--that truth
consists in some form of correspondence between belief and fact. It
is, however, by no means an easy matter to discover a form of
correspondence to which there are no irrefutable objections. By this
partly--and partly by the feeling that, if truth consists in a
correspondence of thought with something outside thought, thought can
never know when truth has been attained--many philosophers have been
led to try to find some definition of truth which shall not consist in
relation to something wholly outside belief. The most important
attempt at a definition of this sort is the theory that truth consists
in _coherence_. It is said that the mark of falsehood is failure to
cohere in the body of our beliefs, and that it is the essence of a
truth to form part of the completely rounded system which is The
Truth.
There is, however, a great difficulty in this view, or rather two
great difficulties. The first is that there is no reason to suppose
that only _one_ coherent body of beliefs is possible. It may be that,
with sufficient imagination, a novelist might invent a past for the
world that would perfectly fit on to what we know, and yet be quite
different from the real past. In more scientific matters, it is
certain that there are often two or more hypotheses which account for
all the known facts on some subject, and although, in such cases, men
of science endeavour to find facts which will rule out all the
hypotheses except one, there is no reason why they should always
succeed.
In philosophy, again, it seems not uncommon for two rival hypotheses
to be both able to account for all the facts. Thus, for example, it
is possible that life is one long dream, and that the outer world has
only that degree of reality that the objects of dreams have; but
although such a view does not seem inconsistent with known facts,
there is no reason to prefer it to the common-sense view, according to
which other people and things do really exist. Thus coherence as the
definition of truth fails because there is no proof that there can be
only one coherent system.
The other objection to this definition of truth is that it assumes the
meaning of 'coherence' known, whereas, in fact, 'coherence'
presupposes the truth of the laws of logic. Two propositions are
coherent when both may be true, and are incoherent when one at least
must be false. Now in order to know whether two propositions can both
be true, we must know such truths as the law of contradiction. For
example, the two propositions, 'this tree is a beech' and 'this tree
is not a beech', are not coherent, because of the law of
contradiction. But if the law of contradiction itself were subjected
to the test of coherence, we should find that, if we choose to suppose
it false, nothing will any longer be incoherent with anything else.
Thus the laws of logic supply the skeleton or framework within which
the test of coherence applies, and they themselves cannot be
established by this test.
For the above two reasons, coherence cannot be accepted as giving the
_meaning_ of truth, though it is often a most important _test_ of
truth after a certain amount of truth has become known.
Hence we are driven back to _correspondence with fact_ as constituting
the nature of truth. It remains to define precisely what we mean by
'fact', and what is the nature of the correspondence which must
subsist between belief and fact, in order that belief may be true.
In accordance with our three requisites, we have to seek a theory of
truth which (1) allows truth to have an opposite, namely falsehood,
(2) makes truth a property of beliefs, but (3) makes it a property
wholly dependent upon the relation of the beliefs to outside things.
The necessity of allowing for falsehood makes it impossible to regard
belief as a relation of the mind to a single object, which could be
said to be what is believed. If belief were so regarded, we should
find that, like acquaintance, it would not admit of the opposition of
truth and falsehood, but would have to be always true. This may be
made clear by examples. Othello believes falsely that Desdemona loves
Cassio. We cannot say that this belief consists in a relation to a
single object, 'Desdemona's love for Cassio', for if there were such
an object, the belief would be true. There is in fact no such object,
and therefore Othello cannot have any relation to such an object.
Hence his belief cannot possibly consist in a relation to this object.
It might be said that his belief is a relation to a different object,
namely 'that Desdemona loves Cassio'; but it is almost as difficult to
suppose that there is such an object as this, when Desdemona does not
love Cassio, as it was to suppose that there is 'Desdemona's love for
Cassio'. Hence it will be better to seek for a theory of belief which
does not make it consist in a relation of the mind to a single object.
It is common to think of relations as though they always held between
two terms, but in fact this is not always the case. Some relations
demand three terms, some four, and so on. Take, for instance, the
relation 'between'. So long as only two terms come in, the relation
'between' is impossible: three terms are the smallest number that
render it possible. York is between London and Edinburgh; but if
London and Edinburgh were the only places in the world, there could be
nothing which was between one place and another. Similarly _jealousy_
requires three people: there can be no such relation that does not
involve three at least. Such a proposition as 'A wishes B to promote
C's marriage with D' involves a relation of four terms; that is to
say, A and B and C and D all come in, and the relation involved cannot
be expressed otherwise than in a form involving all four. Instances
might be multiplied indefinitely, but enough has been said to show
that there are relations which require more than two terms before they
can occur.
The relation involved in _judging_ or _believing_ must, if falsehood
is to be duly allowed for, be taken to be a relation between several
terms, not between two. When Othello believes that Desdemona loves
Cassio, he must not have before his mind a single object, 'Desdemona's
love for Cassio', or 'that Desdemona loves Cassio ', for that would
require that there should be objective falsehoods, which subsist
independently of any minds; and this, though not logically refutable,
is a theory to be avoided if possible. Thus it is easier to account
for falsehood if we take judgement to be a relation in which the mind
and the various objects concerned all occur severally; that is to say,
Desdemona and loving and Cassio must all be terms in the relation
which subsists when Othello believes that Desdemona loves Cassio.
This relation, therefore, is a relation of four terms, since Othello
also is one of the terms of the relation. When we say that it is a
relation of four terms, we do not mean that Othello has a certain
relation to Desdemona, and has the same relation to loving and also to
Cassio. This may be true of some other relation than believing; but
believing, plainly, is not a relation which Othello has to _each_ of
the three terms concerned, but to _all_ of them together: there is
only one example of the relation of believing involved, but this one
example knits together four terms. Thus the actual occurrence, at the
moment when Othello is entertaining his belief, is that the relation
called 'believing' is knitting together into one complex whole the
four terms Othello, Desdemona, loving, and Cassio. What is called
belief or judgement is nothing but this relation of believing or
judging, which relates a mind to several things other than itself. An
_act_ of belief or of judgement is the occurrence between certain
terms at some particular time, of the relation of believing or
judging.
We are now in a position to understand what it is that distinguishes a
true judgement from a false one. For this purpose we will adopt
certain definitions. In every act of judgement there is a mind which
judges, and there are terms concerning which it judges. We will call
the mind the _subject_ in the judgement, and the remaining terms the
_objects_. Thus, when Othello judges that Desdemona loves Cassio,
Othello is the subject, while the objects are Desdemona and loving and
Cassio. The subject and the objects together are called the
_constituents_ of the judgement. It will be observed that the
relation of judging has what is called a 'sense' or 'direction'. We
may say, metaphorically, that it puts its objects in a certain
_order_, which we may indicate by means of the order of the words in
the sentence. (In an inflected language, the same thing will be
indicated by inflections, e.g. by the difference between nominative
and accusative.) Othello's judgement that Cassio loves Desdemona
differs from his judgement that Desdemona loves Cassio, in spite of
the fact that it consists of the same constituents, because the
relation of judging places the constituents in a different order in
the two cases. Similarly, if Cassio judges that Desdemona loves
Othello, the constituents of the judgement are still the same, but
their order is different. This property of having a 'sense' or
'direction' is one which the relation of judging shares with all other
relations. The 'sense' of relations is the ultimate source of order
and series and a host of mathematical concepts; but we need not
concern ourselves further with this aspect.
We spoke of the relation called 'judging' or 'believing' as knitting
together into one complex whole the subject and the objects. In this
respect, judging is exactly like every other relation. Whenever a
relation holds between two or more terms, it unites the terms into a
complex whole. If Othello loves Desdemona, there is such a complex
whole as 'Othello's love for Desdemona'. The terms united by the
relation may be themselves complex, or may be simple, but the whole
which results from their being united must be complex. Wherever there
is a relation which relates certain terms, there is a complex object
formed of the union of those terms; and conversely, wherever there is
a complex object, there is a relation which relates its constituents.
When an act of believing occurs, there is a complex, in which
'believing' is the uniting relation, and subject and objects are
arranged in a certain order by the 'sense' of the relation of
believing. Among the objects, as we saw in considering 'Othello
believes that Desdemona loves Cassio', one must be a relation--in this
instance, the relation 'loving'. But this relation, as it occurs in
the act of believing, is not the relation which creates the unity of
the complex whole consisting of the subject and the objects. The
relation 'loving', as it occurs in the act of believing, is one of the
objects--it is a brick in the structure, not the cement. The cement
is the relation 'believing'. When the belief is _true_, there is
another complex unity, in which the relation which was one of the
objects of the belief relates the other objects. Thus, e.g., if
Othello believes _truly_ that Desdemona loves Cassio, then there is a
complex unity, 'Desdemona's love for Cassio', which is composed
exclusively of the _objects_ of the belief, in the same order as they
had in the belief, with the relation which was one of the objects
occurring now as the cement that binds together the other objects of
the belief. On the other hand, when a belief is _false_, there is no
such complex unity composed only of the objects of the belief. If
Othello believes _falsely_ that Desdemona loves Cassio, then there is
no such complex unity as 'Desdemona's love for Cassio'.
Thus a belief is _true_ when it _corresponds_ to a certain associated
complex, and _false_ when it does not. Assuming, for the sake of
definiteness, that the objects of the belief are two terms and a
relation, the terms being put in a certain order by the 'sense' of the
believing, then if the two terms in that order are united by the
relation into a complex, the belief is true; if not, it is false.
This constitutes the definition of truth and falsehood that we were in
search of. Judging or believing is a certain complex unity of which a
mind is a constituent; if the remaining constituents, taken in the
order which they have in the belief, form a complex unity, then the
belief is true; if not, it is false.
Thus although truth and falsehood are properties of beliefs, yet they
are in a sense extrinsic properties, for the condition of the truth of
a belief is something not involving beliefs, or (in general) any mind
at all, but only the _objects_ of the belief. A mind, which believes,
believes truly when there is a _corresponding_ complex not involving
the mind, but only its objects. This correspondence ensures truth,
and its absence entails falsehood. Hence we account simultaneously
for the two facts that beliefs (a) depend on minds for their
_existence_, (b) do not depend on minds for their _truth_.
We may restate our theory as follows: If we take such a belief as
'Othello believes that Desdemona loves Cassio', we will call Desdemona
and Cassio the _object-terms_, and loving the _object-relation_. If
there is a complex unity 'Desdemona's love for Cassio', consisting of
the object-terms related by the object-relation in the same order as
they have in the belief, then this complex unity is called the _fact
corresponding to the belief_. Thus a belief is true when there is a
corresponding fact, and is false when there is no corresponding fact.
It will be seen that minds do not _create_ truth or falsehood. They
create beliefs, but when once the beliefs are created, the mind cannot
make them true or false, except in the special case where they concern
future things which are within the power of the person believing, such
as catching trains. What makes a belief true is a _fact_, and this
fact does not (except in exceptional cases) in any way involve the
mind of the person who has the belief.
Having now decided what we _mean_ by truth and falsehood, we have next
to consider what ways there are of knowing whether this or that belief
is true or false. This consideration will occupy the next chapter.
