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Is not the Truth the Truth?

As the (very) youthful founder of the (very) short-lived school Vocabulary Club in 1950ies Winnipeg, my dedication to words was beyond reproach in Grade 6. I would spend whole weekends memorizing words and their historical relevance from the Oxford English Dictionary which my English teacher mother kept handy for me on the coffee table in the living room.  I could have been out tobogganing, or engaging in retributive snowball fights with the kids across the lane, but I was in love with words -especially those with strange sounding parts to them; especially those which required me to take a quick breath before completing them. Antisesquipedalianism was one of my ironic favourites because (if anyone asked -which they seldom did) it meant a dislike of using unnecessarily long words.

With some of my quickly memorized words, however, I had forgotten their meanings and under the pressure of the braggadocial moment of unfolding them for a largely skeptical (dare I say uninterested) group of fellow classmates, I would misspeak them. Nobody knew, of course; more accurately, though, no one cared. I was just the loudmouthed short little kid with the heavy glasses that kept sliding down his nose as he pretended not to struggle with the pronunciations.

Still, on remembering those big-mouth days from what seems a parsec’s worth of years away, I realized that they had taught me something unexpected: the difference between truth, and truthfulness -the latter being that something is true only as far as you know; it is the difference between an error and a lie. Nowadays, it is all too easy to confuse them.

I wouldn’t have known it in those early halcyon days, I suppose, but to be trusted is often related to whether you were believed to be honestly trying to communicate what you thought was true. If you were later to revise your opinion when it became obvious to you that you had got it wrong, rolled eyes a friendly shrug and then forgiveness would hopefully be the reaction among friends.

But sometimes, unlike the communication between friends, political pronouncements have a sharper edge. They are heard by far more people, some of whom seem to have no wish to validate or dispute the claims other than by checking them on their social media feeds -algorithms and epistemic bubbles be damned (or more likely, be swept like unwanted dust under the carpet).

Again, the issue is not just being able to separate truth from rumour; it is more being able to decide who is trying to tell the truth, even if they sometimes make mistakes.

After I’d gorged on Philosophy and Philosophers, I decided to leave the university after completing a rather non-specific BSc degree without being sated (okay I left to enroll in Medicine in another city); but nevertheless it was with the hope that some of the abstruse knowledge I had garnered in my undergrad life had persisted.

For years after that, I would try to engage friends with my knowledge -well questions mainly- and then when I was again abandoned, tried it with strangers in the checkout lines in sundry supermarkets; never with my patients, though: they had too many questions of their own as a rule.

One of my favourites was to use Bertrand Russel’s famous (I thought) teacup analogy as a springboard. First I had to explain who he was, and why that was important; supermarket lineups were generally too quick to really delve into his history, so I often had to rush the explanation so I could have time to discuss the point of his thought experiment.

“What,” I usually started if they were still listening, “if I told you that I’d read that there was a tiny teapot orbiting the sun between Mars and the Earth. Should you believe me?” Because it’s obviously too small to see with the naked eye, or maybe even find with a powerful telescope, should they believe me simply because they cannot disprove it?

They would usually smile and look away at that point because the line was moving. They’d seldom turn their heads back with any kind of answer. In fact though, I was merely trying to suggest that  with unfalsifiable claims, the default position should be skepticism not belief. The corollary to that would question their belief in God; I never got around to that; I suppose that a lineup in a busy supermarket seldom offers willing debaters…

Only once was I surprised. I have always been very much attracted to Russell; both University and his easily understood views were a welcome breeze after coming from a United Church background which, no matter how seriously the existence of God was debated amongst its parishioners (well, the ones who also sat in the back pews with me), the consensus was heavily in favour of some form of benevolent deity overseeing us (but also listening to us I gathered).

Russell was a staunch atheist and humanist. I enjoyed his well-argued contention that religion was bad for us; and that there was no room for religious dogmas. However, I was blindsided by a friend of mine when we were arguing late one night in the university dorm near the end of term. They were all Philosophy majors and when I turned the conversation (read argument) to Russell, they rolled their eyes.

“You’re not convinced by Russell?” I asked, surprised at the universal shaking of heads. “Come on, eh? He was convinced that ‘ethical behavior can be based on secular, rational principles rather than religious ones’.” I’d remembered that from one of the required reading texts to which I’d been exposed (admittedly only in a first year philosophy course). And then, “He felt that arguments for God’s existence were logically unsound…”

It was well after midnight, and we were sitting in a darkened room finishing off our now-warm beers, when one of the guys (and yes, there were girls there as well, but generally better behaved; less argumentative) spoke up. “Russell was so very unconvinced of the absence of a god, that he recanted on his deathbed…. Did they tell you that in those freshman classes, G?”

That started a series of sniggers around the room. But the news devastated me. For the whole year I’d been so enamoured with Russell, that I’d even bought a teapot sweatshirt in one of the university nicknack stores.

I was wearing it a week or so later, still upset, when one of the girls that had been in attendance at what by then I had christened as the ‘Night of the Long Knives’ grabbed my hand. “You still seem upset, G. Was it Jason’s news of Russell’s recantation that’s bothering you?” She looked at me with a warm smile as she squeezed my hand.

I nodded, but tried to pretend that I’d just been surprised.

She shook her head slowly, her smile suddenly resembling the one my mother mounted when she was trying to cheer me up. “Did you not read your sweatshirt, G?”

“Huh?”

Her hand squeeze turned into a gentle hug as she whispered in my ear: “Russell advocated right to the end that the default position for unfalsifiable claims, was skepticism, not belief!”

You know, after all these years, I still look up to Philosophers -especially ones like her…

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