This is my paper that I did for my philosophy class, Antiquities. This is the second draft and while it could use another draft still, I was graded on this one and don't really have the time to do it. Hope you enjoy and please, feel free to give me your opinion on it. The assignment was to write an argumentative paper about something from Plato's Five Dialogues.

The Problem With Truth

Lyndsi Marzolf

Lyndsi: Who are you?

Simplicio: My name is Simplicio.

L: What are you doing here?

S: I'm looking for truth and I was hoping you could help me.

L: Why me?

S: You are taking a philosophy class, are you not?

L: Well, yes, I am.

S: So, you'd think that after studying the same texts for a couple thousand years somebody would have gotten to the bottom of it by now.

L: All right, since you put it that way, I'll give it a shot. I suppose I've got as good a chance as the next person. I should warn you though, we have been studying Plato's Five Dialogues, so I will probably talk about it a lot. After all, it was Socrates who said, "There is no greater evil one can suffer than to hate reasonable discourse." But first I'd like to know why you are searching for truth.

S: Well, isn't that what you're supposed to do?

L: Please don't tell me that you are looking for truth only because you think you are supposed to.

S: No! I have another reason.

L: What is it then?

S: I want to know how life works and when you have the truth you know this.

L: Is that so? Why do you want to know how life works?

S: I guess because you need to know how life works in order to live the right way.

L: So, you don't think you are living the right way now?

S: If I was, then I wouldn't be looking for truth.

L: Why do you need to live the right way?

S: Living the right way or knowing truth, can make us prosperous. It gives us insight into the world to help us succeed. Also, knowing truth could help bring about justice and a better world. If we had truth, we could rid the world of deceit and without deceit most of the other vices wouldn't exist.

L: That is an admirable reason but what about truth just for the sake of truth? As soon as truth is used as a means to an end, I would say that it has lost its value because using truth for something is the same as manipulating it or sullying the purity of it which makes it, in a way, no longer truth.

S: I never thought of it that way.

L: Now that you've something to think about, let's move on. To begin with, what you think truth is?

S: I would say that truth is the thing that is reliable and that doesn't ever change.

L: It sounds like you agree with Plato's theory of Forms--that the Beautiful itself, or in your case the Truth itself, the thing that the beautiful, or true, here on earth participates in, cannot be changed in any way. In other words, what you are saying is that truth will always be the same as it is now. What was true at the beginning of time is still true today and will be true forever. It is upon this kind of truth that we may rely. Do you think that there can be more than one kind of truth? Is there any truth which changes from time to time?

S: No, truth cannot change. If it did it would no longer be true; it would be something else.

L: Would it be false or simply a statement that is neither true nor false but just is.

S: If it is not true then it must be false.

L: So you would say that my age, being 18 and some months at the moment, is false because it is always changing. From day to day I am not the same age as I was yesterday nor as I will be tomorrow. Does this make my age false? And what of time itself? From moment to moment it moves relentlessly on, never stopping, always changing. These things embody change, but it does not follow that they are false. By saying that truth never changes you have, in a way, boxed it in by time because things can change over time.

S: All right, my definition obviously didn't work, so now it's your turn.

L: My definition can pretty much be summed up by the word "absolute."

S: What in the world does that mean?

L: What I mean is that if something is absolute it is the ultimate, the foundation, unable to be divided or separated any more.

S: If truth is some kind of foundation, then what is it supporting?

L: Truth supports knowledge while at the same time knowledge reveals truth. Consider that scientists say that the atom, or whatever is the smallest known unit now, is what composes the physical part of our world. It makes up nature, the human body, and all of the other things we find tangible in creation, as well as a few intangible ones like gases and such. This does not hold true when it comes to the sound of music or the beauty of a sunset. Truth must then support things which are conceptual and that exist in the mind. Knowledge is what our minds hold. However, it takes knowledge to get to the truth.

S: I still don't get it.

L: Maybe some explanations and an example will clarify things. We can have knowledge of something that is made up of a number of facts. Facts are pieces of information that are valid. A bunch of these together constitute some knowledge. This knowledge can be misinterpreted or manipulated so that we perceive this knowledge wrongly. This leads to lies or falsehoods. Truth is reality, the way things really are regardless of how they are perceived. This reality cannot be changed in the sense that how we view it will not make it different then what it really is. In the Phaedo, Socrates describes truth as "all that is pure." In other words, it can't be affected by us. No matter how wrongly we perceive, the knowledge of what actually happened does not change and is not affected. Take a murder for instance. The fact that there is a dead body with a bullet hole in it, a gun lying on the floor, and blood all around would lead us to the conclusion or knowledge that the person was killed with a gun. Let's say that there is also the fact that Joe Schmoe will inherit a million dollars because of the murder. It may or may not mean that he committed the murder. For the sake of argument I will say that the truth is that he did not commit the murder and inheriting a million dollars has nothing to do with it. This can still be manipulated by someone to make him look guilty or it can be mistakenly misinterpreted, either one leading to a false belief or lie. However, the truth still is that he didn't do it and the inheritance doesn't matter. If the facts aren't manipulated we can use knowledge to get to the truth, so knowledge reveals truth. Truth supports knowledge in that knowledge itself is true and only through manipulation and misinterpretation is it false.

S: Yes, I suppose that does make more sense. It leaves room for truth to be right in every situation even if the next moment it is different. The problem is that there is one truth and the possibility of many falsehoods. That doesn't make the odds of finding the truth very good. If we are all searching for truth, then why would it be the hardest thing to find?

L: That also brings up the point of knowing truth when we see it. While having a conversation with Meno about the substance of virtue, Socrates describes something, he calls it true opinion, as a sort of knowledge that is unfounded but correct. It is as though it has been discovered by accident. If humanity possesses any kind of truth it is this true opinion which has been happened upon unintentionally. This only helps us when we have "guessed right" for as Meno wisely points out "the man who has knowledge will always succeed, whereas he who has true opinion will only succeed at times." The trouble being that we don't know when we have truth! True Opinion does not become knowledge until it has been justified. Often times we think we know something and then it is proved false. For example, people used to believe that the earth was the center of the solar system. Then along came a man named Galileo who discovered that the sun is the center of the solar system. Unfortunately he was forced to recant and to spend the rest of his life under house arrest, but that is beside the point. Our beliefs about the structure of an atom have changed over time as well. Also our knowledge of the inner workings of the human body have changed. Think of all the organs we used to believe were useless!! All these things we have at one point deemed knowledge that we knew to be true only to discover later that they were wrong. Can we really trust that we know anything for sure at all? Each of these ideas was ardently believed to be true but we now know (or think we know) it to be false. How many things do we hold as truth now that will one day be proved false? Maybe it is true that he is wisest who knows that he knows nothing.

S: Great, now I don't only not know what truth is but I also have to doubt everything!!

L: Wait, it gets better. Have you ever heard of the Liar's Paradox?

S: No. What is that?

L: Well, if you open the Bible to Titus chapter one and read the first part of verse twelve you will see that it says, "One of Crete's own prophets has said it: 'Cretans are always liars.'" Would you believe this statement?

S: Yes, I think he of all people would know what he was talking about.

L: That is just it! He just said that all Cretans are liars and yet he himself is a Cretan.

S: Then that would make him a liar.

L: This is where the paradox comes in. For if he is lying, then the opposite would be true, that all Cretans speak the truth. But, if he is lying, then all Cretans do not speak the truth. Yet, in saying that all Cretans lie he would be telling the truth. It just goes around and around.

S: That is extremely difficult to understand.

L: You should try explaining it sometime. Now, from what I have said, is the Cretan's statement true or false?

S: I have no idea.

L: Well, if the statement is true then he is a liar. If the statement is false then is not a liar. We don't really know which one he is, so is it possible that something is both true and false at the same time?

S: That can't be right!

L: Have you got a better answer? If Socrates was right when he said "the very good and the very wicked are both quite rare, and that most men are between those extremes," then maybe truth can have a little of the false in for we already know that falsehoods can possess a little truth.

S: Fine, if we can't know what truth is then what is the point of there being any? According to what you've said, we can know what it is but never recognize when it is in front of us. Why do we keep searching for it?

L: Now that is a question worth considering. First of all it is a bit presumptuous to think that we could understand what truth is and to recognize it when we have so seemingly little experience with it. That aside, it could be that we are born with the need or desire for it. Or truth could be something that we live off of, a kind of food. Maybe truth is the food that our souls need to survive. When speaking of the immortal soul, Socrates says that when investigating by itself the soul "passes into the realm of what is pure." We've already seen that he calls this purity truth and that he considers the purpose of the soul to be separating itself from the body. So, it may be more likely that the search for truth is something we require. Maybe it does something for us that we are not aware of but that we desperately need. For all we know, it could be the entire purpose of our existence.

S: This is getting just a little bit depressing.

L: Don't say that! Who knows? Perhaps finding out why we need truth is more important than actually getting the truth.