Greg and Amy point out that saying “my truth” really just means “my belief.” A belief may be sincerely held but still false if it does not match reality.
Transcript
Amy: This one comes from Phil. There’s a meme that I’ve seen posted that shows two people standing over the number six or the number nine, depending on which side you’re standing. And the essence of the meme is that your truth is not my truth. We can both be right. I’m sure there’s a logical fallacy there, but I’m not sure what it would be.
Greg: Well, sometimes I pause because—and I don’t mean to be condescending—but sometimes the challenges are so silly I’m trying to figure out a way to clarify or explain. A six is not a nine. Just because the six token—the numeral or whatever—can be flipped to represent something else doesn’t mean that contradictory notions are equally true. I don’t even know how people can be persuaded by that.
Here’s a six. Okay, let’s not use the numeral, which can be flipped. Let’s use six pennies there and nine pennies here. Okay. And so, now what we have is an actual representation of six objects versus nine objects. Why could we say that those are both basically the same? When you say there are six and I say there are nine, we can’t both be right regarding a particular group. If there’s nine there, and you say six, well, there’s not six. There’s nine. If there’s six there, and you say nine, there are not nine. There are six. Or maybe there’s five, and we’re both wrong. But it cannot be the case that contradictory notions are equally—watch the qualification here—objectively true.
If somebody says, “Well, this is my truth,” you’re right. Okay, fine. That’s what you believe. But is your belief accurate? And so, maybe this is the way to ask the question instead of even saying “Is your belief true?” because now you’re using the word “truth” equivocally in a different sense. First one, this is my truth—that’s subjective. But is it really true to reality? That’s objective. So, the equivocation can be confusing. You might just say, “Okay, that’s your truth, which means what? That means that’s your belief. Yes. Okay. And you want to call your belief a truth. But here’s my question. Is the belief that you call a truth actually accurate?” Well, now we’ve taken away the equivocation, and it becomes clear what we’re after. And if it’s not accurate, then, really, it’s not a truth. It’s a falsehood. Even if you call it a truth, it’s not a truth.
People talk this way because they don’t think that it’s possible to know the objective, accurate state of affairs regarding these circumstances, and all you can do is guess, or believe, or hope, or have your own fantasy—and one fantasy is as good as another—and that is epistemologically. It’s just a matter of personal fantasies. So, you know, how can you say I’m wrong in my fantasy? It’s just a fantasy. That’s really what it comes down to. And the only way to get around this is to ask the kind of questions that I’ve just been asking because people are profoundly confused on the issue of truth. Now, I went into quite a bit of detail—a number of things that I’ve written in the past—but most recently in Street Smarts, and I talk about this relativistic problem—the way people see things and the way the language twists them up—and I try to get to the heart of the matter so you can unpack this with people a little bit more effectively. But when people say, “Well, that’s my truth. You have your truth. I have my truth.” When you say “your truth,” what does that mean? “Well, this is what I believe.” Okay, got it. So, in other words, when you say it’s your truth, it’s your belief. “Yes.” Okay. I have another question about your belief. “What’s that?” Is it accurate? “Huh? That’s not even the right question to ask about my belief,” is probably what they’re thinking. And if that’s the case, then why is that not the right question to ask? This whole thing with the six and the nine, you flip them over—I mean, this is silly. This takes you nowhere.
Amy: Well, the thing is, you can have a different perspective on the same thing, and it can be a different perspective, but still they can both be accurate. So, let’s say I’m having a conversation with you, and Kyle’s standing across the room. So, Kyle’s perspective is he’s watching us talk, and my perspective is what we’re talking about. Both of those things are accurate, but if Kyle were to say something that was contradictory to what we were saying, then one of us is wrong. So, it’s possible to have two different perspectives on the same thing that notices different things if they fit together.
Greg: If they don’t contradict each other.
Amy: As soon as they’re contradictory, one or both of those perspectives is wrong. So, if truth is reality, then there’s only one reality. And you can both be right if you’re describing different aspects of that reality, but you can’t both be right if you’re describing contradictory aspects of reality.
Greg: Or describing that reality in contradictory ways. Kyle’s going to have his subjective awareness of what’s going on in here, but if what he thought was that I’m not talking to you, I’m talking to Katie, well, I’m not talking to Katie. I’m talking to you. And so that would be a perspective that contradicts the perspective that we have, and we both can’t be right on that.
Amy: So, maybe—I like everything you said, Greg, about asking, Is it accurate? Maybe another thing you could do is bring up something that they know is outside of the religious realm so that they think more clearly about it. So, for example, put a pencil on the desk and say, “All right. How many pencils are sitting there?” Oh, one. Okay, I say there are two. Can we both be right? So, maybe just a concrete example so that they’ll say, “No.” And then say, “Well, why can we both be right on religion, but we can’t both be right on this pencil on the table?”
Greg: And what they may want to do is do their little end-around. They’ll do their relativistic two-step, and they say, “Well, if you believe there are two there, that’s your truth. And I believe that there is one there, and that’s my truth.” I say, “Okay, I got that. But which belief is accurate, given what I just stipulated—that there’s one pencil on the table?” Well, obviously two pencils is not accurate. When you get to this point with people, they’re going to fudge. Most of the time they’re not going to give in, because I’ve been in conversations like this, and they just say silly things because they do not want to sacrifice the foolishness of their view where they relativize everything. But the minute they are not defending turf, they are going to revert back to a commonsense way of looking at things. So, when they get their check for their work that week, and they’re shorted fifty bucks, they’re going to complain. And it doesn’t matter whether their employer says, “Well, it’s my truth that you got what you deserved,” or, “You got what we agreed on,” you know, they’re not going to subjectivize or relativize that. They’re going to say, “Wait a minute. It’s fifty dollars short. You owe me fifty dollars. I earned that. You owe it to me. Pony up.”
Amy: That’s just your truth, Greg.
Greg: Yeah. There you go.