Definition of truth. What is truth? Relative Truth Examples

Scientific knowledge, including the most reliable, accurate, is relative. The relativity of knowledge lies in their incompleteness and probabilistic nature. Truth is therefore relative, because it does not reflect the object completely, not entirely, not in an exhaustive way. And within certain limits, conditions, relationships that are constantly changing and developing. Relative truth is limitedly true knowledge about something.

It is paradoxical, but true: in science, every step forward is a discovery and new secret, and new horizons of ignorance. This is a process going to infinity. Mankind has always striven to get closer to the knowledge of absolute truth, trying to narrow the "sphere of influence" of the relative in the content of scientific knowledge as much as possible. However, even the constant expansion, deepening and refinement of our knowledge, in principle, cannot completely overcome their probability and relativity. But one should not go to extremes, as, for example, K. Popper, who argued that any scientific position is just a hypothesis. It turns out that scientific knowledge is just a chain of conjectures stretching from the depths of centuries, devoid of a stable support of reliability.

Speaking of the relative nature of truth, we should not forget that we mean truths in the field of scientific knowledge, but by no means the knowledge of absolutely certain facts, such as the fact that today there is no king of France. It is the presence of absolutely reliable and therefore absolutely true facts that is extremely important in the practical activities of people, especially in those areas of activity that are associated with the decision human destinies. So, the judge does not have the right to argue: "The defendant either committed a crime or not, but just in case, let's punish him." The court does not have the right to punish a person if there is no complete certainty that there is a corpus delicti. A doctor, before operating on a patient or applying a potent drug, must base his decision on absolutely reliable data about a person’s disease. Absolute truths include reliably established facts, dates of events, birth, death, etc.

Absolute truths, once expressed with complete clarity and certainty, no longer meet with evidentiary objections. In other words, absolute truth is the identity of the concept and the object in thinking - in the sense of completeness of coverage, coincidence and essence and all forms of its manifestation. Such, for example, are the provisions of science: “Nothing in the world is created from nothing, and nothing disappears without a trace”; “The earth revolves around the sun”, etc. Absolute truth is such a content of knowledge that is not refuted by the subsequent development of science, but is enriched and constantly confirmed by life.

By absolute truth in science they mean exhaustive, ultimate knowledge about an object, as it were, the achievement of those boundaries beyond which there is nothing more to know. The process of development of science can be represented as a series of successive approximations to the truth, each of which is more accurate than the previous one.

The term "absolute" is also applied to any relative truth: since it is objective, it contains something absolute as a moment. And in this sense, we can say that any truth is absolutely relative. In the total knowledge of mankind, the proportion of the absolute is constantly increasing. The development of any truth is the building up of moments of the absolute. For example, each subsequent scientific theory is, in comparison with the previous one, more complete and deeper knowledge. But new scientific truths do not at all throw their predecessors “down the slope of history”, but supplement, concretize or include them as moments of more general and deeper truths. The former theory is interpreted as part of the new one as its special case.

So, science has not only absolute truths, but to an even greater extent - relative truths, although the absolute is always partially realized in our actual knowledge. It is unreasonable to be carried away by the assertion of absolute truths. It is necessary to remember the immensity of the still unknown, the relativity of our knowledge.

Absolute and relative truth are important categories in the conceptual apparatus of the dialectical materialist doctrine.

They serve as a reflection of the dialectical nature of cognition, interpret the attainability

Surrounding man the world that opens in knowledge and is subject to transformation is distinguished by the properties of inexhaustibility and infinity.

The peculiarity of its structure is in extreme complexity.

His interactions, relationships and connections are limitless.

When trying to describe and cognize these properties and features, problems arise that have been around for many millennia.

They are connected with the fact that not a single researcher has been able to express all the richness of the world in any description since the beginning of time.

At the same time, in many vivid and deep testimonies one can find magnificent descriptions of the partially known side of the world.

Dialectics recognizes that truth is, without any doubt, objective. It is in this capacity that it (truth) is known.

However, on the path of cognition, a very specific question arises: "What is the ratio of the two subjects to cognition: the absolute and the relative?"

The answer should give an idea of ​​how exactly the truth is known: instantly and holistically, immediately and completely, or, on the contrary, located in time, in parts, gradually and progressively?

In providing such an answer, philosophy recalls that the human mind in different situations penetrates the understanding of reality to different depths. Knowledge corresponds to reality with varying degrees of accuracy.

Some reflect reality in a holistic way. Others do it only partly.

Each individual, as well as a single generation, is limited in knowledge. The limiting factors are historical conditions, a certain level of development of technology and technology in experiments, science and production at various stages of their development.

For these reasons, human knowledge, on any arbitrarily taken interval historical development appears in the form of relative truth.

Relative truth is knowledge that does not fully correspond to reality.

Such a truth is only a relatively true reflection of an object that does not depend on humanity.

Reflects reality very accurately. It is not just objective, but objective to the fullest extent.

Relative truth, in principle, cannot claim to reflect the world in its entirety.

Is it possible to demand from absolute truth such knowability, which relative truth is incapable of?

In order to answer this question correctly, we must remember that many propositions of materialist dialectics contain a contradiction.

On the one hand, absolute truth could be known as a whole and full appearance in all its manifestations and in full versatility. After all, things are fully knowable, and the capacity of human knowledge is unlimited.

But on the other hand, the very presence of relative truth complicates the possibility of knowing the absolute truth. After all, relative truth is ahead of absolute truth whenever knowledge is placed in certain, specific conditions.

However, in such a case, can the knowledge of absolute truth take place at all?

Simultaneously and comprehensively, completely and in all its versatility - no.

In the cognitive process, which is endless - no doubt, yes.

The development of more and more new sides, links, truth occurs in the approximation to it as scientific achievements.

Relativity of truth - driving force in history.

In the knowledge of relative truths, people come to know the absolute truth. This is the essence of progress.

ABSOLUTE AND RELATIVE TRUTH - categories of dialectical materialism that characterize the process of development of knowledge and reveal the relationship between: 1) what is already known and what will be known in the further process of the development of science; 2) by the fact that, as part of our knowledge, it can be changed, clarified, refuted in the course of further development science, and that which will remain irrefutable. The doctrine of Absolute and Relative Truth gives an answer to the question: “... can human ideas expressing objective truth express it at once, entirely, unconditionally, absolutely, or only approximately, relatively?” (Lenin V. I. T. 18. S. 123). In this regard, absolute truth is understood as complete, exhaustive knowledge about reality (1) and as that element of knowledge that cannot be refuted in the future (2). Our knowledge at each stage of development is conditioned by the achieved level of science, technology and production. With the further development of knowledge and practice, human ideas about nature are deepened, refined, and improved. Therefore, scientific truths are relative in the sense that they do not provide complete, exhaustive knowledge about the area of ​​subjects under study and contain elements that, in the process of development of knowledge, will change, be refined, deepened, replaced by new ones. At the same time, each relative truth signifies a step forward in the cognition of absolute truth; if it is scientific, it contains elements, grains of absolute truth. There is no insurmountable line between absolute and relative truth. From the sum of relative truths, absolute truth is added. The history of science and social practice confirms this dialectical character of the development of knowledge. In the process of development, science more and more fully reveals the properties of objects and the relationship between them, approaching the knowledge of absolute truth, which is confirmed by the successful application of theory in practice (in public life, in production, etc.). On the other hand, previously created theories are constantly refined and developed; some hypotheses are refuted (for example, the hypothesis of the existence of the ether), others are confirmed and become proven truths (for example, the hypothesis of the existence of atoms); some concepts are eliminated from science (for example, "caloric" and "phlogiston"), others are refined, generalized (cf. the concepts of simultaneity, inertia in classical mechanics and in the theory of relativity). The doctrine of absolute and relative truth overcomes the one-sidedness of metaphysical concepts that declare each truth to be eternal, unchanging ("absolute"), and the concepts of relativism, which assert that any truth is only relative (relative), that the development of science only testifies to a change in successive misconceptions. and that therefore there is not and cannot be absolute truth. In reality, according to Lenin, “any ideology is historical, but what is certain is that any scientific ideology (unlike, for example, religious) corresponds to objective truth, absolute nature” (T. 18, p. 138).

Philosophical Dictionary. Ed. I.T. Frolova. M., 1991, p. 5-6.

Absolute and Relative Truth

At each given historical moment, the knowledge obtained by science is distinguished by a certain incompleteness, incompleteness.

Progress in the cognition of the truth consists in the fact that this incompleteness, incompleteness of the truth is gradually eliminated, reduced, and the accuracy and completeness of the reflection of the phenomena and laws of nature are increasing more and more.

It is necessary to distinguish between conscious lies, which are very often resorted to by the enemies of scientific progress, and those errors and delusions that arise in the process of cognition due to

objective conditions: insufficiency general level knowledge in this area, imperfections of technical devices used in scientific research, etc. The dialectical inconsistency of knowledge is also manifested in the fact that truth often develops alongside error, and sometimes it happens that one-sided or even erroneous theories serve as a form of development of truth.

Throughout the 19th century, physics proceeded from the wave theory of light. At the beginning of the 20th century, it became clear that the wave theory of light is one-sided and insufficient, since light has both a wave and corpuscular nature at the same time. However, the one-sided wave theory made it possible to make a lot of important discoveries and explain many optical phenomena.

An example of the development of truth in the form erroneous theory can serve as the development of Hegel dialectical method on a false, idealistic basis.

Incompleteness, incompleteness of human knowledge and truths obtained by man is usually denoted as relativity(relativity) of knowledge. Relative truth is an incomplete, incomplete, incomplete truth.

But if we stopped at the assertion of the relativity of human knowledge and did not go further, to the question of absolute truth, we would fall into that mistake that many modern physicists very often make and which idealist philosophers cleverly use. They see in human cognition only relativity, weakness and imperfection and therefore come to the denial of objective truth, to relativism and agnosticism. From the point of view of such one-sided relativism, any sophistry, any fiction can be justified - after all, everything is relative, there is nothing absolute!

V. I. Lenin said that materialist dialectics recognizes the relativity of all our knowledge, but recognizes it “not in the sense of denying objective truth, but in the sense of the historical conventionality of the limits of our knowledge’s approach to this truth” 13 .

In our always relative knowledge there is such an objectively true content that is preserved in the process of cognition and serves as a support for the further development of knowledge. Such an enduring content in the relative truths of human knowledge is called absolutely true content, or more simply - absolute truth.

The recognition of absolute truth follows from the recognition of objective truth. Indeed, if our knowledge reflects objective reality, then, despite the inevitable inaccuracies and blunders, there must be something in it that has an unconditional, absolute significance. Lenin pointed out

that "to recognize objective truth, i.e., truth independent of man and mankind, means, in one way or another, to recognize absolute truth" 14 .

More materialist philosophers ancient greece they taught that life arose from inanimate matter, and man came from an animal. So, according to Anaximander (6th century BC), the first living beings were formed from sea mud, and man originated from fish. The development of science has shown that representations ancient Greek philosophers about how life arose and man appeared were very naive and wrong. And yet, in spite of this, there was something absolutely true in their teaching - the idea natural origin life and man, which science has confirmed and preserved.

The recognition of absolute truth immediately separates dialectical materialism from the views of agnostics and relativists who do not want to see the power of human knowledge, its all-conquering power, before which the secrets of nature cannot resist.

It is often said that there are not so many absolute truths in human knowledge and that they are reduced to trivial, i.e., well-known propositions. For example, such statements as “twice two make four” or “Volga flows into the Caspian Sea” are absolute, complete truths, but they supposedly are of no particular value.

It can be objected that in fact human knowledge contains many extremely important absolutely true propositions, which will not be changed by the further progress of science. Such, for example, is the assertion of philosophical materialism about the primacy of matter and the secondary nature of consciousness. It is absolutely true that society cannot exist and develop without producing wealth. absolute truth is the idea contained in Darwin's teachings of the development of organic species and the origin of man from animals.

At any time, a person tries to determine for himself what truth is. How many times a person has tried to determine the veracity, the truth of a judgment, statement, and the same number of times faced with the complexity of this issue. The problem of the truth of knowledge, the criteria of truth, has long interested outstanding minds. And even now, not a single field of knowledge can do without solving this problem for itself, regardless of whether it is based on the so-called axioms or on continuously changing and clarifying foundations.

The purpose of this work is to present the concepts of objective, absolute and relative truth, which most fully characterize the procedural nature of truth.

The very concept of "truth" is one of the most important categories of epistemology as a science of the relationship between subject and object. Indeed, one of the most simple definitions truth is its definition as the correspondence of subjective knowledge about the object to the object itself, that is, truth is adequate knowledge about the object. This conception of truth is called classical and is the most ancient and at the same time the simplest. For example, Plato also belongs next feature the concept of truth “... the one who speaks about things in accordance with what they are, speaks the truth, the same one who speaks about them differently, lies ...” .

Similarly characterizes the concept of truth and Aristotle in his work "Metaphysics": and to say that what is and what is not is is to say the truth.”

It is important to note that the supporters of the classical concept of truth are characterized by the conviction that its defined goal - the correspondence of thoughts to reality - can be achieved relatively simply, that is, there is some intuitively clear and undoubted criterion that allows you to establish whether thoughts correspond to reality or not. This belief is based on the belief in the possibility of bringing thoughts into a simple one-to-one correspondence with reality. However, it is not at all obvious that a person really has such an opportunity; on the contrary, it is rather an unattainable ideal of the cognitive process.

The concept of truth

The origins of the so-called classical philosophical conception of truth date back to antiquity. For example, Plato believed that "he who speaks of things in accordance with what they are, speaks the truth, the same who speaks of them differently, is lying." For a long time the classical concept of truth dominated the theory of knowledge. In the main, she proceeded from the position: what is affirmed by thought really takes place. And in this sense, the concept of the correspondence of thoughts to reality coincides with the concept of “adequacy”. In other words, truth is a property of the subject, consisting in the agreement of thinking with itself, with its a priori (pre-experimental) forms. So, in particular, believed I. Kant. Subsequently, the truth began to mean the property of the ideal objects themselves, irrespective of human knowledge, and special kind spiritual values. Augustine developed the doctrine of the innateness of true ideas. Not only philosophers, but also representatives of private sciences are faced with the question of what is meant by reality, how to perceive reality or the real world?

Materialists and idealists identify the concept of reality, reality with the concept of the objective world, that is, with that which exists outside and independently of man and mankind. However, the person himself is a part of the objective world. Therefore, without taking into account this circumstance, it is simply impossible to clarify the question of truth. Taking into account the directions in philosophy, taking into account the originality of individual statements expressing the subjective opinion of a particular scientist, truth can be defined as an adequate reflection of objective reality by the cognizing subject, in the course of which the cognized object is reproduced as it exists outside and independently of consciousness. Consequently, truth enters into the objective content of human knowledge.

But as soon as we are convinced that the process of cognition is not interrupted, then the question arises about the nature of truth. After all, if a person perceives the objective world in a sensual way and forms ideas about it in the process of individual cognition and his mental activity, then the question is natural - how can he make sure that his statements correspond to the objective world itself?

Thus, we are talking about the criterion of truth, the identification of which is one of the main tasks of philosophy. There is no consensus among philosophers on this issue. extreme point view is reduced to a complete denial of the criterion of truth, because, according to its supporters, truth is either absent altogether, or it is characteristic, in short, of everything and everything.

Idealists - supporters of rationalism - considered thinking itself as a criterion of truth, since it has the ability to clearly and distinctly present an object. Philosophers such as Descartes and Leibniz proceeded from the idea of ​​the self-evidence of the original truths comprehended with the help of intellectual intuition. Their arguments were based on the ability of mathematics to objectively and impartially display the variety in its formulas. real world. True, this raised another question: how, in turn, to be convinced of the reliability of their clarity and distinctness?

Logic, with its rigor of proof and its irrefutability, should have come to the rescue here. So, I. Kant allowed only a formal-logical criterion of truth, according to which knowledge must be consistent with the universal formal laws of reason and reason.

But the reliance on logic did not eliminate the difficulties in the search for a criterion of truth. It turned out to be not so easy to overcome the internal consistency of thinking itself, it turned out that sometimes it is impossible to achieve formal-logical consistency of judgments developed by science with initial or newly introduced statements (conventionalism). Even the rapid development of logic, its mathematization and division into many special areas, as well as attempts at a semantic (semantic) and semiotic (sign) explanation of the nature of truth, did not eliminate the contradictions in its criteria.

Subjective idealists - supporters of sensationalism - saw the criterion of truth in the direct evidence of the sensations themselves, in the consistency of scientific concepts with sensory data. Subsequently, the principle of verifiability was introduced, which got its name from the concept of verification of a statement (checking its truth). In accordance with this principle, any statement (scientific statement) is meaningful or meaningful only if it can be verified. The main emphasis is placed on the logical possibility of clarification, and not on the actual one. For example, due to the underdevelopment of science and technology, we cannot observe the physical processes taking place in the center of the Earth. But by means of assumptions based on the laws of logic, one can put forward a corresponding hypothesis. And if its provisions turn out to be logically consistent, then it should be recognized as true.

It is impossible not to take into account other attempts to identify the criterion of truth with the help of logic, which are characteristic in particular for the philosophical trend called logical positivism. Supporters of the leading role of human activity in cognition tried to overcome the limitations of logical methods in establishing the criterion of truth. The pragmatic concept of truth was substantiated, according to which the essence of truth should be seen not in accordance with reality, but in accordance with the so-called “final criterion”. Its purpose is to establish the usefulness of truth for practical actions and actions of a person. It is important to note that from the point of view of pragmatism, utility in itself is not a criterion of truth, understood as the correspondence of knowledge to reality. In other words, reality outside world inaccessible to a person, since a person directly deals with the results of his activity. That is why the only thing that he is able to establish is not the correspondence of knowledge to reality, but the effectiveness and practical usefulness of knowledge. It is the latter, acting as the main value human knowledge deserves to be called the truth.

And yet philosophy, overcoming extremes and avoiding absolutization, has approached a more or less correct understanding of the criterion of truth. It could not have been otherwise: should mankind face the need to question not only the consequences of the momentary activity of this or that person (in some, and not infrequent, cases, very far from the truth), but also to deny their own centuries of history, life could not be perceived otherwise than as an absurdity.

objective truth

Evaluation of what is comprehended is a necessary element of knowledge. Thanks to the assessment, a person selects the received knowledge in accordance with its truth or falsity, its applicability in practical activities. It determines the inclusion or non-inclusion of the acquired knowledge, determines its capabilities and impact on a person and the spiritual activity of a person. Therefore, not only epistemological, but also practical, ideological, and moral criteria serve as the basis for evaluation. Evaluation is included in the cognitive process. In their activities, scientists not only evaluate their own methods and scientific results, but also focus on a possible reaction from the scientific community, authorities, and the church. At its core, any knowledge is a search for truth. The problem of the truth of knowledge is important in any kind of cognitive activity. That's why fundamental basis evaluation of knowledge is its truth. Truth is an absolute cognitive value. Giordano Bruno, in his dialogue “The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast,” wrote: “Truth cannot be suppressed by violence, it does not rust behind the antiquity of years, does not diminish when hidden, is not lost when spreading, because reasoning does not confuse it, time does not sharpen it, does not hide the place, darkness does not absorb the night, does not obscure the twilight.