What is truth? And why is it important? Truth is a primitive concept, so it's difficult to pin it down with a precise definition. For another example of a primitive concept, think of "sets": These objects and the consideration of what they do are the foundation of mathematics, but, for the most part, they're not actually well-defined; mathematicians just accept that they're "collections of objects", whatever that means.
We'll treat truth similarly. Loosely, think of a statement which is "true" as one which is "commensurate with reality": i.e., it describes a situation which is real. We're not going to get much more precise than this, so let's just accept that we can all agree that truth is truth, and move on.
The question of why truth is important is a bit hairier and is wrapped up in considerations of morality. Let's defer the discussion of various codes of ethics for a later column when I again can't think of commentary on any germane, timely political issues, and concentrate on why honesty is absolutely necessary to any sort of value judgment.
In, of course, an imprecise sense, any ethical judgment denotes "good" and "bad": what one ought to do in a given situation, and what one ought not to do.
The issue with disregarding truth in decision making, then, is that if one's decision is based on false information, one is not guaranteed the correctness of the decision. Sure, there are circumstances where the decision may have been the correct one, regardless. For instance, if a man killed a little girl, but was charged and convicted of murdering his wife, his execution may still be just; however, the fact that the decision might be correct is hardly grounds upon which to make an important decision. In deciding to walk out onto a frozen lake, you may believe that the ice is a mile thick; it clearly is not, but you still might not fall through and, trapped underwater, drown.
The beauty of honesty is that it guarantees, if your reasoning in a given circumstance is correct, your conclusions will be correct; dishonesty, on the other hand, guarantees nothing, and in fact makes it far more likely that your conclusions will be false. Take, as a case study, the neoconservative approach to solving the problem of terrorism: spread democracy around the Muslim world. One of the hidden premises of this solution is the assumption that democracy will work, which, in turn, requires that the people desire a tribeless, free society and, more importantly, abide by the results of elections until the next chance to turn over the government. Clearly, this is not the case. Iraq is a result of this argument, which is, in turn, based on an untrue premise: Just because the conclusion might be correct does not preclude it from causing grevious harm.
So, the issue becomes how to determine what reality is. In some cases - as in the above example of democracy and the Middle East - it suffices to simply casually observe. Arabic culture is extremely religious and tribal, with a tendency toward brutal, extralegal justice: Such a society will be generally unstable as a democracy, because it will be next to impossible to retain secular laws and the majority rule will be both brutal and rejected by the minority, as we see in Iraq daily.
The moral of the story is that adherence to truth is both good and necessary to any sort of decision-making process: Ignorance may be bliss, but it is hardly a guarantee of bliss in the future, as anyone who has fallen through rotten ice knows.
Write to Neal atnecoleman@bsu.edu.
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