Note: This is part 2 of a five part series on how we can discover truth. Here are the other parts: part 1, part 3, part 4, and part 5. The entire series makes up the third chapter of my book, The Triple Path, which can be downloaded for free here in PDF and eReader formats or purchased at all major book retailers (in print and eReader formats).

 

In this second part of the series on truth, we discuss different ways we can discover truth.

How Can We Discover Truth?

If we assume there is some kind of real truth, and that we can gain knowledge about it (both of which are reasonable assumptions, based on our perceptions of existence), the next step is to figure out how we may gain knowledge of it.

Some ways of gaining knowledge are more effective than others. Many complement each other. Some are better for discovering Newtonian truths and some are better for discovering moral truths. I have separated them into seven categories: sensory observation, experience and common sense, trial and error, authorities, empirical rationalism, emotions, and religion and tradition. These categories are artificial. In real life, there is no clear separation between them, and we often use multiple methods at the same time. But separating them is a useful way to think about the different ways we gain knowledge of the truth. Each category has an important place in our quest for truth. Let us discuss each of them in turn.

1) Sensory Observation

The most fundamental way to gain knowledge is through passive observation using our senses. Imperfect though they are, our senses seem to be the only way our internal selves receive information about the outside material world.

There are three problems with observation. First, as I discussed above, our senses are imperfect, limited, and not always reliable. Second, mere observation does not tell us anything about the root causes of things. Determining causes requires interpretation and reasoning, rather than just observation. Third, observation is backward-looking and limited: it only tells us about what has already happened in the past, and it limits us to only learning about what we can directly perceive.

2) Experience and Common Sense

Gaining knowledge through observation involves accumulating memories of previous sensory experiences. Using experience and common sense means interpreting the information we have gained to make conclusions and predictions. We notice cause and effect, and gain experience to make conclusions about future events. A child remembers the time he burned himself by touching the hot stove, and he thereafter avoids touching that stove until he has first checked whether it is hot.

We apply our innate and learned cognitive abilities to reason and extrapolate from previous experience to make inferences about things we have not yet observed or experienced, and to make predictions. We notice patterns and learn to generalize from them. The child extrapolates from his experience with a particular stove to conclude he should be careful about touching all other stoves and even things that are not stoves that he knows might be hot.

The problem with common sense is that our brains did not develop to be truth-seeking machines, but to be survival machines. At the most basic level, our brains’ purpose is to help us survive into adulthood and pass on our genes by having and raising children. We have all sorts of cognitive shortcuts and biases hardwired into us that increase our probability of survival but that may sometimes decrease our ability to find truth. We tend to be much more biased toward false positives than false negatives—we are much more likely to assume that something is there when it is not (a false positive) than to assume that something is not there when it really is (a false negative). The frequently used stylized example of this tendency is that the person who assumed that the rustling in the grass was caused by a predator and fled tended to survive. Even if most of the time the rustling was only caused by the wind, it would only take an occasional hidden lion to cull from the gene pool those not prone to the false positive bias.

Thus, while it confers survival advantages on the savanna, neolithic farms, and even in urban jungles, our innate basic intuitive reasoning can be wrong. We naturally commit all sorts of fallacies:

• we falsely attribute causation to unrelated events that happen close together (like the Aztecs believing their blood sacrifices caused the sun to rise or our tendency to feel aversion to a food we ate just before we felt sick to our stomach, even if the illness had nothing to do with the food);
• we misunderstand the true causes of events (such as the belief up until the 19th century that bloodletting help­ed cure disease or that bad air caused malaria);
• we trust too much in our senses without understanding their limitations—we believe that our senses give us a completely accurate understanding of world, but then make false conclusions based on them (like the belief in the ancient world that the world was flat);
• we falsely attribute personality and intentionality to inanimate objects (like people talking to their car).

Beyond our cognitive and sensory limitations, we are also temporally and spatially limited—we cannot be everywhere and everywhen at once. There is only so much one person can figure out using personal experience and common sense on his own. Relying on observation, experience, and common sense is enough to get us into adulthood and pass on our genes to the next generation, but there are other ways to get to more knowledge of the truth.

3) Trial and Error

Trial and error is a rudimentary form of experimentation. It involves observation and experience, but instead of just passively observing, we take action to test our ideas. Trial and error means testing different options until we come to one that works. Think of Thomas Edison inventing the light bulb by testing new materials over and over until he found something that would work as the filament.

Discovery through trial and error is often time-consuming. Relying on trial and error to discover new truth means that each of us is limited in what we can discover during our lifetime. Ima­gine if each of us had to invent the light bulb again on our own. We can only personally do so much. Moreover, trial and error will not always lead to the complete truth. If we discover something that seems to work, it does not necessarily mean it is optimal in all situations (for example, fluorescent and LED bulbs last longer and are more energy efficient than Edison’s light bulb).

Even if it leads us to the optimal solution, the bigger problem with trial and error is that, just like with observation, it does not usually lead to an understanding of the root causes of things. Just because we find a solution that works does not mean that we will understand why it works. The inventors of the light bulb, or fire or the wheel, did not understand why or how their inventions worked.

4) Authorities

Our time and our ability to observe, experience, and experiment are limited. Language is a powerful tool that allowed us to pass knowledge to others, first through oral traditions, and now through the written and recorded word. We do not have to start from scratch in our quest for knowledge. We are thus not limited to our own personal experience. The accumulated store of human-generated information is now so amazingly vast that it would be impossible for even the greatest genius to rediscover and recreate it all through observation, trial and error, and common sense. Because of this, we all rely on a body of gradually developed know­ledge and wisdom that we often call “culture” or “tradition” (more on these in a few pages). We also rely on experts: people who have gained knowledge in a particular subject area and who then share that knowledge with others.

As we briefly discussed in the first chapter, in spite of the importance of experts, it is a logical fallacy to rely on the truthfulness of a statement just because an expert said it. There is nothing wrong, however, with relying on a statement made by an expert because of the inherent merit of the statement itself. It is thus not a fallacy to argue that something said by an authority is true. The fallacy comes from believing that something is true because an authority said it. The status of the person making a statement does not magically make the statement true.

Every statement made by an authority should be subject to criticism. It is always a big warning sign when authority figures (whether as individuals, groups, corporations, associations, or governments) claim their statements to be above reproach and beyond criticism, and especially when they try to silence the speech of those whom they oppose. Whatever the justification given, anytime people try to stop you from subjecting their statements to critical examination, the real reason will almost always be because they are afraid you will discover their statements are false, or because they themselves are afraid their claims might be false, and they do not want to expose themselves to the cognitive dissonance of considering they might be wrong. If they had good evidence and justifications to back up their claims, why would they not want you to critically examine their pronouncements?

Another similar tactic to be wary of is when anyone tries to shout down, shame, harass, or publicly humiliate dissenting voices (often by using some pretextual excuse about the dissenter violating orthodoxies or being “offensive”). It would be wise to automatically discount any statements, and to disregard any claims to authority, made by such people. If an authority’s claims are true, why would he or she need to resort to such oppressive tactics to defend those claims? Legitimate authorities do not shrink from challenges to their ideas, because they know they have nothing to fear. It is the charlatans who try to suppress others’ voices, because they are scared of being disproved.

Almost as bad are those who create, spread, or promote propaganda, which are messages intended to convince or change opinions by misrepresenting facts, as if their feeble words have the power to change truth. Soviet propaganda trying to justify the superiority of communism did not change its inherent defects. The supermarket shelves were still always bare. Its 100 million victims were still dead. And it still collapsed.

This is why free speech is one of the foundational values of the West. We have progressed so far and so fast since we enshrined free speech during the Enlightenment because free speech is such a powerful tool for cutting down the lies and mistakes of the powerful and the charlatans among us, and thus bringing us closer to the truth.

The pronouncements of an authority are worthless unless they are backed up by good justifications, but, it is important to apply the proper methodology for the kind of claim being made, and across the right timescale.

In the next post, we discuss using empirical rationalism and the scientific method as a method for discovering truth.