User:TimRJordan/sandbox/Approaches to Knowledge/2020-21/Seminar group 4/Truth

Truth in Cartography

Cartography is the 'discipline dealing with the art, science and technology of making and using maps'. Cartographers start by collecting data from the featured area so they can detect patterns to present. They try to depict this data accurately on a map which is then given to a map user to interpret. Users change the map accordingly and create a final projection. The cartographic process is a lengthy one and it involves many components from different disciplines. If we define truth as the state of being perfectly in line with reality, it is easy to come to the conclusion that no map is true. Whether it is because maps are an easy picture of a more complex truth or because they simplify complicated patterns, or even because they just are not precise enough. The goal of a map is therefore not to be true but rather to be the least false possible while keeping its clarity.

Persuasive Cartography

Persuasive cartography describes maps intended to influence opinions rather than display impartial geographic information. There are many factors which affect how a map is perceived, including text, colours, projections, shading, and images. As cartographers make decisions about these factors, few maps display a completely objective view of reality. They can have this influence on opinions and beliefs because most people assume maps are objective and true, made by professionals who would never purposely misinform.

A common example of distortion is the Mercator projection. While this projection is useful for navigation, it has often been criticised for misrepresenting sizes - specifically diminishing areas close to the equator and enlarging world powers. Canada and Russia, for instance, seem to make up about 25% of the Earth's landmass when actually they only hold 5%. Another discrepancy, brought to the world's attention by the computer-graphics designer Kai Krause, is 'The True Size of Africa'. The map aims to 'fight against rampant Immapancy' by showing several countries packed into Africa's outline. The term 'Mercator Effect' has since been coined, which refers to the alleged effect this projection has on our cognitive map of people. A more accurate depiction of landmasses, the Gall-Peters projection, is now increasingly being used.

This phenomenon also applies to political maps, namely the political map of India. Published in 2015 by the country's official survey office, the map includes the disputed regions of Jammu and Kashmir within its territory. While Pakistan does label this region as 'disputed territory' on their map, the colour-coding implies it is under singular control. Another instance of such a phenomenon is Western Sahara, a territory claimed and occupied by Morocco. On Moroccan maps, Western Sahara and Morocco account for one and only territory. However, on world maps in other countries, Western Sahara is not displayed as being Moroccan but rather showed as a different territory, with a line separating the two lands. Politically influenced maps can significantly affect the beliefs of one country’s citizens, especially as these maps are government endorsed.

Truth in Mathematics

The Platonic argument for mathematical truths

Platonism in the Philosophy of Mathematics is the view that mathematical objects exist independently of the human mind, and that therefore, mathematical truths are discovered, as opposed to invented. The name “Platonism” refers to the view’s origins in Plato’s theory of abstract and eternal Forms, but the views of Platonism are not necessarily related to those held by Plato himself.

The most notable argument for Mathematical Platonism was put forward by Gottlob Frege and is based on two premises. Firstly, that mathematical sentences serve to refer to mathematical objects, and secondly, that succeeding in doing so makes them mathematical theorems, and all mathematical theorems true.

Proof for mathematical truths

Not all Philosophers of Mathematics agree on the existence of mathematical truths, and not all of those who do agree on how to prove those truths. Frege and other logicists appeal to logic, claiming that because all of mathematics can be reduced to logic, mathematical theorems are necessary logical truths. Alternatively, mathematical truths have also been defended through appeals to empirical science. The most notable argument of such kind is known as the Indispensability argument and was made by Willard Quine and Hilary Putnam. The argument is based on the assertion that all entities indispensable to theories in empirical science must be accepted as true, and because mathematical theorems are indispensable, they must be true. A third alternative is mathematical naturalism, which questions altogether the expectation to prove the truth of mathematical statements according to non-mathematical standards such as logic or empirical science, when the disciplines of logic and science are allowed to set their own standards.

Arguments against mathematical truths

The existence of mathematical truths is a central debate to the Philosophy of Mathematics, and there is significant objection to Platonism. Paul Benacerraf’s epistemological argument is considered the most significant challenge to Platonism, asserting that for knowledge to be acquired about an object, there must be a causal relationship between the acquirer and the object. The inability to connect the perception of mathematical objects to our cognitive faculties, Benecerraf argues, therefore makes mathematical truths impossible.

The Question of Truth in Law

In 1966, the Supreme Court of the United States declared that “the basic purpose of a trial is the determination of truth.”. Law should serve the truth and be a tool to uncover it. But if trials were working perfectly, the existence of appeals would be baseless. Trials establish a ‘formal legal truth’ based on facts presented in the court. While it is expected this formal legal truth is the same as the substantive truth, it isn’t always the case.

R. Summers give two reasons for this divergence: the first is mostly cost considerations. One cannot defend himself as well as someone who can afford a very good lawyer. In these cases, the substantive truth might not be uncovered due to a lack of trial preparation for example. The second reason calls into question the trial court procedures. The facts are supposed to lead to the substantive truth; however they are constrained by the law and can’t all be accepted in court. For example, a coerced confession isn’t considered as valid and can’t be taken into account by a judge even if it leads to the substantive truth.

In addition, if it said that the purpose of a trial is to uncover the truth, both parties (defense and prosecution) do not always seek to inquire the truth but only to defend their cause. S. Haack qualifies the trial of a contest as to whether enough proof is given, and not a search for the truth.

Moreover, those who give the verdict and create the formal legal truth are men. They can be influenced and manipulated into believing something is true. Also, the verdict can be based on testimonies of witnesses who relate what they remember. But as shown in the section 'Construction of Truth in Memory', the truth in memory isn't always reliable and eyewitness testimonies are subject to various biases and distortions. For example, research has shown that 71% of eye-witnesses change their accounts to include false memories when given the opportunity to confer with other witnesses, a phenomenon called Co-witness contamination. Thus, if law as a discipline is to be trusted because it brings people together in a community where they obey the same rules, the truth it seeks to discover is constructed by men, which makes it questionable.

The question of Truth within Fine Arts

Starting from the ancient Greek art, the only aim of artists is to achieve the most perfect reproduction of reality. In consequence, Art appears to be an imitation of the artists’ environment: a mirror of reality. With this first definition of Art, the question of truth within the discipline of fine arts cannot be ignored.

On the one hand, fine arts are reduced to the status of imitation as expressed by Plato in Republic. He compares the artist to a man who would ‘walk around’ with a mirror, since according to him the artist is imitating the appearances in reality but certainly not the Truth. Artists are considered as copyists who produce illusions and deceive the public, such as Zeuxis who made extremely realistic paintings during the ancient Greek period.

On the other hand, philosophers as Hegel explain that art occurs between pure sensibility and pure thinking. Hegel notably developed the idea of a “spiritualized sensibility”, where the material aspect of an object of art is idealised. Thus, he placed Art as superior to nature and argued that this spiritualized appearance is truer than the appearance in the reality. Furthermore, the French philosopher Henri Bergson defines the function of art as being not an imitation but a revelation of the Truth. In his opinion, fine arts break all of the ‘conventions’ that blind us and drive us away from the Truth. The artist perceives the true reality whereas common mortals perceive it only superficially.

Therefore, the notion of Truth is still being challenged through the discipline of fine arts as artistic movements continue to emerge. The vision of works of art as evidence is clearly questioned.

Truth in photography

Photography used to be deemed as a method of objectively capturing reality. Its foundation in mechanics promoted the idea of unbiased and uncorrupted documentation. This concept follows the correspondence theory of truth; this presentation of reality through images would be a presentation of truth as it is a direct link to aspects of the real world. This idea is shown through the use of photographs as indisputable proof in situations such as the court of law.

However, in contrast to the early days of cameras, photography has evolved to place more significance on the photographer and their ability to push certain narratives through their manipulation of the imagery. Staging, framing, cropping and other methods of manipulation have caused a shift in the discipline which is more congruent to post-modernist and modernist theories alongside more constructivist approaches to truth in which truth is/ can be transient and temporary as well as a product of the values and assumptions of the photographer. Geoffrey Batchen claims that ‘photographers intervene in every photograph they make, whether by orchestrating or directly interfering in the scene being imaged’. In Oxford University and World Press’s research into the habits of photojournalists, 51.8% of the 1,556 photographers who were surveyed said they sometimes staged images and even though the subsequent surveys in 2016 and 2018 showed a growing consensus against the ethics of altering and staging photographs, the percentage of photographers doing it did not change dramatically. These results clearly show the prevalence of constructed truth in the sense that, consciously and subconsciously, photographs are a reflection of the people who took them, their interests and their motivations.

Additionally, with the rise of modern technology, digitalisation and retouching has unlocked even more ways to alter images. This has bypassed the idea of selective truth to the possibility of forgery and hoaxes in the sense that images can be entirely digitally manufactured, with no groundings of reality. An example of this is in the photographs circulated of Donald Trump's inauguration on the 20th of January 2017 in which a government photographer edited the official inauguration images to make the crowd look larger after Donald trump himself requested they be edited. Investigative reports from the Freedom of Information Act revealed the forgery after claims of the inauguration being the most populated yet . This introduces a core conflict in approaches to truth; this would be deemed utterly false under mirror theories yet constructivist thinking may argue that bias has always been present in photography as it is in all aspects of life and that altering of photographs is just a different vehicle for the construction of truth.

Pandemics wreaking Pandemonium: Seeking Truth in Social and Political Science

The 2020 pandemic is currently exposing the potential separation of truth between political and medical science subsequently reducing the competing harm between the impact on the economy, society’s physical health and society’s mental health. .The manipulation and rejection of the data published surrounding coronavirus has obfuscated “truth”. During times of immense stress and pressure, people can lack judgemental agility whilst craving the resolution of uncertainty – a dangerous combination.. Around the 1st of September, Nature website stated that over 30 countries had 600,000 more deaths than the yearly average predictions but only 413,041 of those deaths were officially caused by the virus itself. . The virus has caused correlated deaths due to the economy, mental health, distribution of resources. .

Society's desire for certainty is important in relation to both political stability and the human condition. .There is a psychological pleasure in recognising patterns and rhythms within our environment. The Scientific American Mind magazine went so far to say that humanity has an “information addiction”, the pleasure of knowing the truth and avoidance of feeling uncertain..However, the more disciplines through which one investigates the same topic, the more obscure the discourse surrounding truth becomes.

The whole concept of truth within disciplines is in question, some conspiracies state that the truth is being utilised and distorted as a malicious fear mongering tool. .Thus, there is a heated issue of factoids at present, pieces of information which are repeated so regularly that it becomes widely known as fact. Factoids originate from the illusory truth effect, a term often attributed to Joseph Goebbels, in relation to Nazi propaganda and Machiavellian control. Political leaders have undermined each other resulting in heightened confusion, frustration and melancholia. . The general public are vulnerable to conspiracy surrounding the pandemic because they may not have the specialised knowledge to decipher it themselves. They rely on specific, high-profile individuals to garner their information. However, whether subconsciously and consciously leaders can direct people towards a certain agenda. .

Kant’s 'Critique of Pure Reason' theories two types of truth ‘a priori’ and ‘a posteriori’. . Therefore, during a virus of such large scale, it is difficult for a person or a political leader to maintain updated knowledge at all times. Consequently, there will be fundamental issues with the distortion, emotional exploitation and personal evaluation of the truth.

Construction of Truth in Memory

Human recall is open to interpretation and highly susceptible to exogenous distortion. The study of this phenomenon has been situated mostly within philosophy, generating the theories of truth in memory, which are then explored, tested and evaluated within psychology, especially experimental psychology. It was first tested in psychological experiments in the 1970s, most notably by the works of Elizabeth Loftus, who, in an experiment, successfully planted many false memories into subjects’ minds.

Memory evolved as a reconstructive, rather than an accurate, process due to its purpose of survival – to find food, shelter and engage socially. The human species 'seems best adapted for accumulating knowledge – for inference, approximation, concept formation and classification – not for the literal retention of the individual exemplars.’

This finding that people's memory is malleable or reconstructive opens myriad questions about truth in memories – if they do present a truth, what it is produced by, and how it is determined. The fallibility of memory does not implicate that all that people think is true can be denied. Rather, it not only provides a new lens of critical thinking through which to view the past but also demands consideration of the unique capacity of humans to perceive and imagine the future. Research in this field also has significant implications for how memory is interpreted in social contexts such as courts (in the worth of testimonial evidence,) education and the media.

One way of thinking critically about truth in memory is to recognise that memory plays out a social function for groups and individuals. For example, in cases of interpersonal traumas, the risks of awareness are costly, for example, because a child’s survival is dependent on their attachment to the perpetrator. Thus, memory repression or reconstruction would adopt the social utility of protecting the subject from potential harm. In this way, ‘social motivations influence attention and information processing’ – therefore also the truth found in memories.

Memory has long been considered as one-dimensional and bivalent – either true or false. More recently, however, it has been found that the existence of false negative and false positives in memory are not mutually exclusive.

According to Locke, memory plays a primary role in the constitution of personal identity: 'as far as ... consciousness can be extended backwards to any past action or thought, so far reaches the identity of that person.' This philosophical theory has developed into psychological continuity theories (which claim that psychological continuity, maintained through memory connections, is a prerequisite for the existence of personal identity.) However, such theories tend to reduce memory to a simple, linear link between a present moment and a discrete, defined past experience. Memories’ relation to the past is ‘much more complicated that simple reproduction.’ Firstly, as well as remembering specific events, humans are able to summarise information about the past, and to varying degrees of detail. A single memory can be the outcome of several disconnected periods of time: key details of a series of real events are condensed into a single fictitious event/memory. There are also many memories not processed at all.

A further way in which truth is altered by memory is the act of rehearsing a memory. Rehearsal can alter the memory itself through the process of ‘retrieval-enhanced suggestibility.’ This process is amplified when rehearsed to an audience, as, due to social pressures, people tend to describe memories differently according to their environment and expectations.

In order for autobiographical memory to provide the individual with a reliable truth of their past and identity, they must reconstruct the vast amounts of information we receive into a coherent narrative depicting significant factors and long-term patterns. A study by Michael Ross suggests that biases in memory can be explained by the fact that individuals have theories of personal development, and their memory moulds and revises the past to become congruent with those expectations. In this way, self-conception is a strong determinant of the truth given by memory.

Moreover, a 1991 study by D. Poole and L. White showed that, given a set of incomplete information, individuals will most often use memories of our own experiences to construct the missing details. In this way, humans use memory to impose upon and imagine truth of other things.

Through the interaction between philosophical theory and psychological evaluation, it can be concluded that memory is constructive, rather than reproductive, of truth - it is distorted at every stage of its actuality, in the processes of perception, retention and retrieval. This can be through construction, summary, condensation or rehearsal, driven by forces of social utility, self-conception and the necessity of coherence. This holds important implications for how individuals understand their own personal identity, history, as well as how the future is imagined.

Truth in Climatology

Climatology is the scientific study of climate which investigates how the average weather and atmosphere "behave" over relatively long periods of time. Recently, the discipline gained a lot of attention as a result of the increasing interest in the subject of climate change that has revealed to be a global threat to political stability and human existence overall.

Due to the high social significance of the studies, its complexity, and political character, the discipline raised decade-lasting disputes which display a truth dissonance between the scientists and the public.

Approach of the Scientific Community

There is a strong scientific consensus among experts that the rapid increase in temperatures on the globe in recent decades is caused by human-related activities. To reach such a unanimous conclusion climatologists had to adapt the correspondence approach to the truth which is common in other positive sciences. They have developed an interdisciplinary methodology that focuses on creating physical models based on analysis of trends in meteorological data, use of numeric methods, stochastic processes, differential equations, etc.. Moreover, the discipline maintains systematic rigor by keeping the scientific dialogue within the frames of peer-reviewed journals. Thanks to that, the collaborative effort of the scientists made it possible to create internationally recognised reports published by IPCC, which provide guidelines for an appropriate response to the human-induced climate change.

Approach of the Public

While not many people dispute that humans are responsible for the increase of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, the warnings from the scientific community about the potentially catastrophic effects of climate change have proved to be more polarising. The emergence of a large climate change denialist movement may suggest that the knowledge and truth produced in climatological research somehow differ from scientific research produced in other positive sciences such as physics. The analysis of the social trends may however suggest otherwise. The dissonance is rather attributed to misinformation caused by vague and confusing media coverage as well as the misleading portrayal in popular culture. There is also some evidence of fossil-fuel companies and conservative think tanks purposefully manufacturing doubt about scientific data and results that provoked a more phenomenological approach to the truth which on the individual level does not always explain large-scale concepts accurately.

According to many non-governmental organisations such as Amnesty International, Greenpeace or Extinction Rebellion, this difference in approaches to the truth as well as disproportions of knowledge and power between public and experts which have caused fierce disputes, are substantially prolonging the implementation of the necessary measures of fighting climate change.

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Truth in Science

Some may argue that science is a discovery of truth, yet the very conception of truth in science varies from its humanistic counterparts. Therefore, scientists’ understanding of philosophy and history of science, plays a crucial role in the scientific process. In science, the truths found to date must be considered conditional. One can strive for truth but never quite discover it or reject the validity of the concept of truth in science in its entirety.

The truth in science is salient mainly for the technological and conceptual contribution it brings to society. The scientific method, rooted in empiricism and logic, may cause us to believe in the superiority of the scientific approach. The facts, however, cannot be perceived as absolute entities and must be handled as constant doubts, especially within the scientific fields themselves. It is the scientist that chooses a method (which in turn impacts the type of the result), discerns relationships between multiple observations from experimental tasks and tries to order them into a consistent system of knowledge. The quest for “truth” while dealing with the physical world requires the scientist to maintain self-consistency as well as consistency with empirical observations. The scientific diaspora is more concerned with validity rather than truth, and the results being self-consistent rather than truthful. These concepts usually serve as a basis for acceptance of a scientific concept. Additionally, it is interesting to mention that Michael Klapper suggested that theories of science find ready acceptance because of their aesthetic appeal.

More recently, Peter Schreiner has shown reasonable concern with the decision-makers’ deleterious approach to science and social media "marginalizing the detailed work and effort put into scientific discovery".

Truth in Economics

Truth in economics is a broad discipline. Whilst truth is often defined as the ‘state of being the case’, economics is about applying mathematics to sets of data and real-world facts in order to both better understand how economic systems function and to additionally develop theories that explain these facts.

The truth concept of a mirror, which means truth is true when it mirrors the fact, directly applies in economics. Furthermore, truth in economics is considered as positivism because it regards data brought up without anything nor anyone intervening as an intermediate.

Knowledge in Economy

According to Franck H. Knight, there are three discrete domains of knowledge in economics. These are the knowledge of the outer world, knowledge of mathematics and logical thought, and lastly knowledge of peoples behaviour. Whilst it is easy to agree on the knowledge of the outer world and on that of mathematics, analysing and predicting human behaviour is a more complex task. For instance, in certain Bayesian games, the dominant strategy (known as equilibrium) if players agree beforehand is opposite to that of when players do not get to meet beforehand.

Economic Theory and Facts

When it comes to facts in economics, there is often only one truth. This is particularly significant when numbers, graphs and tables are used as these can be difficult to dispute since they picture reality. There are, however, numerous theories behind facts in economics. These theories explain data in different ways, and as economists’ opinions deviate so do the explanations of economical phenomena and human behaviour.

The example of monetary theories

The facts and data around the functioning of the banking system and money creation are commonly admitted truths. However, to explain these truths, economists have been developing different theories. From the theory of fractional reserves which states that the central bank absolutely controls the amount of money available on the market, to the theory of ex nihilo monetary creation according to which deposit banks have a huge power of money creation, it is clear there is more than one truth.

Walking the line between Truth and Fiction – Sacha Baron-Cohen’s “Who is America?”

“Who is America?” is a seven-episode mini-series released in 2018 in which Sacha Baron-Cohen portrays six different fictional characters , each an exaggeration of a particular stereotype, and meets real people, mostly politicians and celebrities, without revealing his real identity. The series was written and produced as a response to Donald J. Trump’s election in 2016 and the rise of misinformation and xenophobia in the United States.

The most famous and controversial of the characters in “Who is America?” is Erran Morad, a terrorist fighting expert in the Israeli military. In episode 1, he meets gun rights advocates Philip Van Cleave and Larry Pratt, US Representative Matt Gaetz and US Senate majority leader Trent Lott to talk about gun rights. He convinces them (except for Matt Gaetz) and congressmen such as Dana Rohrabacher, Joe Wilson, and Joe Walsh to back his “Kinderguardians” project, which aims to put guns in the hands of children age 3 to 16 to avoid school shootings. With Van Cleave, he creates an instructional video for children on how to use guns, and then he makes a video to promote Kinderguardians to Congress. Larry Pratt reads from a script in the video, and says “Children under five also have elevated levels of the pheromone Blink-182, produced by the part of the liver known as the Rita Ora”, implying that it is scientific proof for the program’s effectiveness. Baron-Cohen uses obvious references to popular culture in this way to show how naïve politicians can be and how easy it is to spread misinformation. In episode 2, Erran Morad meets with US representative Jason Spencer to teach him how to fight against terrorists, and convinces him to remove his trousers and charge posterior-first to turn the “islamic terrorists” into homosexuals. For Sacha-Baron Cohen, this shows how far islamophobia can go, and what elected politicians allow themselves to do on camera since the Trump presidency started. Jason Spencer resigned shortly after the series aired.

A week before the premiere of the series, the “Kinderguardians” segment was revealed on YouTube. After this event, many of the politicians and personalities Baron-Cohen had “duped” revealed themselves and called the public to boycott his series, Dana Rohrbacher stating : "I love good satire, but good satire must reveal some basis in truth. This was fraud, a sick fraud at that, and its intention was to deceive the American people for political purposes." Others were equally critical of his methods, Joe Walsh calling them “disgusting”. The main issue interviewees, or rather “addressees” as Lewis MacLeod calls them, seemed to have with Baron-Cohen’s work was his dishonesty regarding the fictionality of his characters. But it is debatable whether that disqualifies the series in the eyes of “truth”.

The series can be seen as either representing a “perceiver” or “constructor” image of truth. While watching the series, one can laugh at Sacha baron-Cohen’s exaggerated acting and reflect upon the similarities of his encounters to real-world situations, taking the experience of watching the series as a form of truth in itself. One can also take his interviews as truth, setting the fictionality of his characters aside since his addressees are not playing roles, and taking them as a sample of American politicians to “construct” a certain truth. But Sacha Baron-Cohen’s satirical genre can also be completely disregarded, in an era of “post-truth” journalism, where satire almost doesn’t have a place and exaggerated depictions like the ones Baron-Cohen proposes are ever-more questioned.

Sacha Baron-Cohen does not offer a clear answer as to which “type” of truth we should assign to his work, or whether we should take it as truth at all. He does not even offer a concise answer to the question "Who is America?". It seems that it is up to the viewer to decide what the answer to those questions are and whether or not to give them the authority that comes with the word "truth".

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