HUMANS IN THE WORLD: INTRODUCTION TO RADICAL PERSPECTIVISM
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Alexander Makedon
Chicago State University
Copyright © 1992
It is not through a process of elimination of truths that we find the truth about the world, but through a process of inclusion of as many possible truths about the world, or even about worlds which we may not consider "real," as possible. It is for this reason that a radically perspectivistic theory of truth at once differs from, but also includes any one of the other theories: it is true precisely because it is none of the world's "truths," seen as a separate truth in isolation from all the others, but a revealing of their truth as "true" only in the context of even contradictory truths that at first may seem to be false. According to radical perspectivism, something is true if it can be shown how it fits within a more globalized whole that includes, whether by contrast, or as a result of a larger, more inclusive paradigm, other types of truth. For example, saying that something is true while knowing that it is not, or even when sincerely believing it to be true, when it is not, encapsulates a truth about the person who felt the need to lie, or to insist that something is true even in spite of evidence to the contrary.
Not only are truth claims dependent on background ideological and methodological paradigms regarding the meaning and discovery of truth, but also on their opposite "truths," or falsehoods, that allow something to reveal itself as "true."
There is truth everywhere in the universe, even where there are perceived falsehoods, fantasies, or illusions. Just as evil is "necessary" for something to arise as "good," so do untruths allow for truth to arise as such. Consequently, even untruths are "true" about the world, since they, too, tell us something about the world, or any of its parts. It is only in the context of such a world that something even untrue, is true enough to let us know something about a world part, say, a person that still believes in this untruth, and therefore inform us about something that is true about the world (such as, the true intentions of the person holding a certain untruth). Every which way one looks at it, there is truth the moment one begins to examine the world, even if, in retrospect, or in the view of others, his conclusions are "false." For one thing, the moment one begins to examine the world, he learns something true about himself, even if his conclusions are perceived as false, namely, that he is capable of examining the world, or, as many a philosopher ever since Socrates would love to argue, to live the examined life. This is true even if a person examining the world intends from the beginning to twist truth to serve his more immediate social, political, or economic ends. By his very decision to twist the truth, he inescapably reveals to us certain truths about the ability of humans to intend, lie, or twist the truth.
Unlike humans, the world does not discriminate among truths, otherwise it would be partial to this or that type of truth, and therefore less the world that it is supposed to be (meaning, less encompassing of all the things that the world is supposed to cover). It is for this reason that even perceived untruths are, from a world perspective, no less untrue, than the world is incapable of transcending them.
The more types of possible existence humans know about, the more free they become to imagine about them. Their knowing about all these possibilities, makes it also possible to evaluate the extent to which they are able to help the world become them. Some of the world's possibilities may seem so out of human reach, that humans re-evaluate their ability to help the world. For example, compared to the universal harmony of billions of stars, humans have very little ability to influence universal events, say, change the positions of the planets, let alone recreate the universe. Nevertheless, their knowing about all different types of truths, helps them learn more about all the truths that are possible in the context of a universe that allowed such truths to be imagined. In the process, humans learn that the universe allows such truths to co-exist at least in theory, if not in fact, and therefore must be itself more true as a result, than any one truth considered in isolation from all the rest. It follows that the more "truths" humans know, that is, beliefs which other humans consider true, or which humans can imagine other universal parts might hold, the closer they come to understanding the truth about world.
The nature of truth dictates our method for "finding" it. Since any single "truth" can't be true in isolation from all the other truths that give it context, and therefore also substance, to find it one must be inclusive in his approach, rather than exclusive. By this we mean that we can't find truth through a process of elimination, which would eliminate precisely that which we are looking for, but through a process of inclusion of all truths. It follows that in order to find truth we should include not only human-bound truths within our own culture or time, but also all those that are based on what we can imagine are "universal first assumptions," including those held by non-human universal parts. It is only as we make our set of truths "universal," in the sense of including even non-human-bound truths, that we come to realize the "truth" about any one of our theories. Although we don't consider any one of these truths "true," or one more "true" than another, we view all of them collectively as representative of the world's many truths, and therefore, ultimately, what is true about the world.
By enlisting the assistance of our imagination we are capable of breaking free from human-centered perspectives that keep us, humans, imprisoned within our own human-centered biases. As a result, our imaginative abilities allow us to understand reality, or, more broadly, the truth about the universe as a whole, or ourselves as world-dependent humans.
It is only as we begin to understand non-human perspectives of truth or reality that we begin to understand reality as a whole. This is so because such whole consists of all the non–human universal parts that have their own imaginable but non-human-like perspectives. Interestingly, even in spite of their apparent non-humanness, such parts collectively not only make human existence itself possible, since no human can exist in a vacuum; but also can be understood by humans through the ability humans have to imagine, and thus empathize with nonhuman perspectives. Such ability humans "evolved" through their interaction with other universal parts, which means that not only can humans understand such parts by imagining about their perspectives, but even their ability to imagine is at least partly the result of such parts "allowing" humans to rise as human, or, in other words, have the ability to imagine. Seen from that broader, ontological angle of what it means to be human, and how humans came to be, one could express in words the human-dependence on the world by arguing that humans were allowed to evolve their ability to imagine precisely so they could use it to imagine about the world; or said another way, non-human universal parts can imagine about themselves through the humans they helped create, and therefore in a sense include humans in their own "life cycle," as in an extended family of interconnected or interdependent universal parts.
The film and television industries today rely on people's need to believe in them. Like sex during the Victorian era, so has imagination become the "perverse" fountain of irrepressible truths that titillate, intrigue, even intimidate. The products of the human imagination remind people of their lives as "imaginables," that is, universal-parts capable of imagining, and therefore of representing non-human realities. In the past, in both east and west, humans believed more openly in non-scientific truths, as during the middle ages, or even today in some non-western cultures that still survive unaffected by the values of the scientific "revolution" (such as, the theocratic subculture of Tibet). Such cultures didn't fully realize then that there is more world in truth than just fantasy; while today we fail to realize there is more fantasy in truth, than just scientific analysis. Armed with the memory of such seemingly contradictory truths, post-modern humans in the twenty-first century have the opportunity to overcome their intellectual parochialism, be it fanciful or "factful," and include both fact and fantasy, religion and science, or, more broadly speaking, human and non-human perspectives in their view of truth. Such next step is a synthesis of imaginable and verifiable truths, a dialectic of the human representation of the world. It is more "dialectical" than Hegel's phenomenology because so universal, while Hegel's is human-centered, concerned mainly with the historical evolution of human communities (1).
As a primarily imaginary process that respects no historical boundaries, this new perspectivism has none of Hegel's historicism, since by definition it transcends human-time. Under this radically perspectivistic truth umbrella, all universal parts find their own truths represented inside non-traditional views of ethics, geography, and mathematics. While such universalization is well represented within the realm of philosophy and theology, especially eastern theosophies, scientists have only recently began to approximate it in their cosmologies. For example, in the field of mathematics alone, the spherical shape of the universe has played havoc with traditional Euclidean geometry, betraying, in the process, the ability of humans to reach at a similar conclusion regarding universal truths.
To understand truth, one can't rely on such parochial views as humans-only have, but must become capable of representing the world as a whole. The more first assumptions humans can embrace, and the more diverse they are, the closer they come to knowing the truth about the world. This in turn requires that humans become selfless. By "selfless" I mean being able to lend the world our voice, intelligence, and imagination to represent it even in spite of human self-interest.
We can't understand the world unless we learn how to overcome our passions, and become "one" with the universe. By that I mean leaning how to role-play non-human world parts, imagine their "perspective," or empathize with their "purpose." This way we reflect the world in our thoughts, than reshape it in our image.
As we selflessly search for truth, our selflessness mirrors the world. A selfish interpretation relies too much on self-centered needs, or experiences, to represent anything more than what such needs or experiences demand, or have predetermined, the world should be. For example, if our business needs require the building of parking lots, we may put our needs ahead of the needs of animals or trees for living space. If we are concerned with making money, we may sell our forests to the highest bidder willing to exploit them for wood, than preserve them to maintain our planet's bio-diversity.
To find truth, humans must overcome their prejudices (xenophobia, fear of the unknown, satanization of animals). This is so because truth is woven within our environment, or else it would make no sense to try to find it anywhere else but in ourselves. Yet if the numerous attempts by humans to explain natural phenomena are any indication of where we (humans) think truth at least partly resides, one is forced to conclude that so far most humans did not hold to strictly individualistic or solipsistic theories of truth. Instead, they sought to explain events by looking not only within themselves, but also outside to the world that sustains them. It follows that to understand the truth about our environment we must learn to see it for what it is, than change it, humanize it, or see it only as we would like it to be.
We must learn to see the world, to paraphrase Dilthey, with "empathy," with the world's own eyes. If we draw this method to its logical conclusion, we arrive at a radically perspectivistic approach to understanding the truth about ourselves or the universe that surrounds us. By "radically perspectivistic" here I mean learning how to see the world from the perspective of non-human world-parts. This in turn means being able to use our imagination to represent non-human perspectives, even if by doing so we extent the meaning of "perspective" to embrace perspectives held by non-humans. In the end, the process of finding truth is educational, as we must learn to find as much about the world, as about ourselves as possibly selfless.
As we search for truth in the world, we may come to find more about ourselves. This is so because as we reinterpret the world, we come to see ourselves as capable of thinking, interpreting, and philosophizing. We see ourselves as detached observers of the world, observing the world even as we become the object of our own observations. What is important here, in the long run, is not what we say is true, or the content of our thoughts, but how we say it, or the method we use to be able to think. Our truth-seeking "forces" us, by virtue of how we think, to rediscover some truths about ourselves, such as, what thinking is all about. In the process, we learn about truth, even if we conclude after a long search that we never found it, or that we found a "false" truth. The process of trying to find truth, which I describe, below, becomes the proverbial goal in a Cavafyan universe that knows no one Ithaca, other than the Homeric adventure of living truly: we experience truth in the process of trying to find it.
By representing the world in their truth-formulations, humans themselves stand for truth. By this I mean that humans become the instruments of truth-expression, just as everyday instruments are intended to serve humans (from simple tools, to sophisticated social and mechanical systems that function as instruments for human use). They become the "truth" the world intended them to be. As seekers of truth, humans fulfill their world-wide potential.
Seen existentially as the embodiment of universal functions, humans are true when they act as thinking-parts that represent, as opposed to repress, the world. When their truth-seeking is radically perspectivistic, meaning, embracing of radically different, even imaginary, perspectives, then humans become human-like even while they represent non-humans. This is so because as representational beings, humans need non-humans which they can represent. Their truth seeking becomes a reflection of the universe itself. This is so because through them, or, more precisely, when they are seeking universal truths, the world finds the truth about itself.
Humans are the looking glass of universal truths. This is what is meant when it is said that "man is made in the image of God:" logically, they just couldn't be any other way. There are numerous examples from everyday life that reflect universal realities: birth and death cycles, harmonious republics, destructive collisions, and the like. It is for this reason that if there is a truth about humans, it must be the same type of truth (although not the same truth) about the universe. For example, like the harmony of the stars, so are humans truly universal when they learn to live in harmony with other humans, and other universal parts. They can do this by allowing their humanity (which includes their imagination) to represent others, such as, through role-play; and by learning how, in some sort of peaceful application of Marxist, Confucian or Christian principles, to help others realize their cosmic possibilities. As universal truth-seekers, humans rediscover their own harmony in the universe, even while they reinforce the wildly diverse perspectives of others. Their universal truth becomes also their personal honesty by representing the world.
The term "universal truth" gains a new perspective when seen not as one indisputable truth that has historically eluded humans, but collectively as all human and non-human perspectives. There is no-one universal truth, but the truth of all world-truths being true. As the perennial Argonauts in search of the elusive Golden Fleece, humans have "known" truth all along, except they didn't really know it. They have "known" truth, even if unwillingly or involuntarily, because they have imagined about, hypothesized, and examined a whole variety of non-self-centered perspectives. Unaware of the truth in their religion, myths, and folk tales, they referred to them as lies or illusions, not realizing that in the end, no-thing as such, not even scientific reality, is really "real." For example, even within scientific circles it has become a well accepted fact that the universe is relativistic, and that not even matter as we know it is really "material" (but more like another form of energy).
As the product of the reality which they tried to understand, humans frequently failed to transcend it to see its "unreal," because non-self-centered, foundation. By relegating non-scientific truths to the ethereal realm of illusion, and therefore to non-truth, they have given up on the idea of using methods that they can imagine other humans, or non-humans may use in "living out" their universal possibilities. Within human-centered perspectives alone, such methods may include imagination, role-play, intuition, hypnosis, dreaming, or dancing our way to the truth. Within the non-human realm, one can imagine becoming a human tool that other universal parts can use to find truth, such as, finding the truth about "time" by pretending to live through the time-changes of non-human parts.
Astronomers have learned to represent universal time mathematically. By comparison to human-time, universal time seems almost infinitely larger. Yet even astronomers are still so tied to the scientific paradigm that they speak strictly as scientists might, using mathematical language in abstract or detached ways to describe the universe, as contrasted to speaking in familiar terms that honestly (but obviously painfully for some) reflects the relative insignificance of human-time. As we learn to adjust to our new sense of universal time, we may also adjust our expectations, if not lifestyle, to our properly representational role as man-world, meaning a world part that can think and imagine, as opposed to our historical one of master-of-the-universe.
Similar to the contextual approach in Einstein's theory of general relativity, humans can better understand universal time by "riding" inside another universal-part through role-play. For example, humans gain a better understanding of universal time-cycles by trying even for a while to allow a non-human reality to express "intelligently" its own view of time. Say, for instance, that one day you pretend to be a tree. You stand motionless, bend only when the wind blows, and communicate with other trees through such well known tree-Hermes-es (message carriers for trees) as pollinating insects, flying seeds, ants, birds, tree-climbing animals, leafs, roots, and worms. After a few hours of pretending to be tree-like, you begin to understand what it's like being a tree, although at any time you can shake-off your treeness, and become human again. In the process, you have not only given yourself the opportunity to learn more about trees by becoming one yourself, but also have come to appreciate more your own capabilities as an interpreter of a "voiceless" tree (or, more broadly, universe). At the beginning, you may feel silly doing this, since few adults that you know would approve of such behavior, but gradually you begin to realize that doing so has helped you "feel" what it's like to know more about the "other," and therefore to know it. You may even begin to build confidence in your extraordinary approach by finding sufficient evidence of other humans doing it even in spite of themselves, to support your view that humans inevitably do such things no matter how approved or not such behavior may be at the time, or even how dangerous.
The universe is represented in everything that humans do, and therefore, ultimately, humans are led to the same types of conclusions through a variety of methodologies, be they scientific, humanistic, literary, or even mystical or theological. Not unlike Martin Heidegger's understanding of Being as "self-understanding," or Dassein (2), so is the universe aware of itself even when humans disagree on the validity of their insights. Inevitably, since humans are the world's, they use the same types of abilities, methods, and intuitions to understand the world, as the world used to set them up as human. Humans arose as human in the context of a generative universe that allowed them to become, and therefore is itself human-like. This is why humans reflect universal truths even when their contemporaries disagree with certain methods of discovery, for all methods no matter how seemingly untrue, in the end reflect some universal truth (not least of which is the truth of human perception at the time).
Since humans cannot even exist without the world, in the sense of not being able to live apart from it, but in it as man-world, they are not outside looking in, but inside looking around. Their interpretations are those of the world in humans as played out by the human ability to interpret it. As a world that may have never even been, but could possibly become, humans have the responsibility to become "truthful," that is, to represent it.
Humans have been role-playing ever since they became "human." They did so even inside dictatorial regimes that strictly prohibited criticism against the political status quo. For example, within the Ottoman empire, well known for its strict edicts against criticism against the Sultan, there was the popular shadow theater, or "karagioz," whose cut-out characters made fun of the ruling elite. Likewise with theatrical performances both east and west that caricatured "serious" people who looked all the funnier, the more serious they tried to be. In fact, even today such simulations, role-plays, and make-believes have become such "big business" within the film industry, that it is no longer easy to dismiss it as socially insignificant. People have made bigger "stars" of movie stars, than of less colorful truth-seekers, such as, engineers (who seek truth through the design, or management, of materials and machines); or philosophers (who seek truth through philosophical reasoning). This, in spite of living in an age of science, where presumably the public has learned to pretend less, and practice, prod, or submit to experimental testing, more.
Perhaps it is precisely because of our "officially approved" science, that the public now has a larger thirst than ever before to flock to the movies, or watch television: sensing the ability of humans to imagine, in fact, to speak metaphorically, to give imagination itself the opportunity to rise through humans, they invest enormous sums of money, time, and effort in myth making, even while they say they are no longer "superstitious." Often enough, some people become so engrossed in this world of fantasy, that they must be reminded that it is "only" a movie, novel, or TV show, and must not be taken "seriously." Ironically, it is precisely when they thirst for more of that same type of imagination, as humans have thirsted in every culture ever since they became human, that one can argue there is "scientific evidence" that humans inevitably imagine.
If humans erred in their search for truth, it is because they looked at the world too seriously as having one role to play, and therefore only one truth. The world is more like a playful actor changing roles as we do, than either a director with an immortal script, or a puppet that we can control completely. We come closer to knowing the world as we test its acting skills, by submitting it to several potential performances, than through the discovery of some set of universal laws that govern the world. We constantly re-discover "truth" as we audition for different worlds. It is only after many such plays that we begin to come closer to knowing the world, and with it, ourselves as part of a world that allows us to imagine.
Each "truth" about the world represents another one of its possible roles. As interpreter and interpretable, both humans and world are involved in a cosmic inter-play where there is no one truth, other than how they (humans and world) play the game. Every time humans change the rules mid-game so they can win, as when they use their technology to "control" the world, they spoil their own victory by not letting the world participate as an equal partner. In the end, if they continue wishing to control the world by limiting its cosmic possibilities, the world has ways of destroying humans. In their place, there may "evolve" another type of "human" that may have some of the human attributes, such as, imagination or logic, but none of their propensity for world control or destruction (or else it may end up meeting with the same fate as humans). A victory against the world that costs humans their continued existence is "pyrrhic" not only because it may eliminate them, but also because even in the short run, it costs them an understanding of the world as-world, and therefore, to paraphrase Aristotle, the nonfulfillment of their intellectual potential for complete understanding (3).
There are truth-perspectives which humans can imagine non-humans may have which have none, very little, or very different forms of imagination, language, or logic. Some of these have been explored in science fiction, some forms of which have become popular television series. Others are those multitudes of perspectives of more familiar world-parts that surround humans, such as, parts of nature and animals, without which, incidentally, humans couldn't possibly exist, or exist for very long.
If by "truth" we mean something which we believe to be the case, or to exist, then to non-humans everything that they know exists is "true." First of all, almost nothing can be true from the perspective of a non-human world part about that part that excludes, misrepresents, or belittles that part's evolution, contribution, existence, or interaction with the rest of the world (other than the fact that it has so been misrepresented). Consequently, those theories of truth that discuss only humans, or do so at the expense of other world-parts, however influential they may have been in human affairs, are ipso facto so limited from a non-human perspective, as to be false almost by definition.
Secondly, theories of truth should include non-human methods of being and discovery, or else they may end up describing the truth only of human existence, even if verbally they include a discussion of non-humans. For example, a tree may be imagined to consider the existence of well nourished ground to be more true, than the construction of a parking lot that will make its continued growth impossible. If the tree is "incapable" of developing a full fledged "theory of truth" from a tree's perspective, it doesn't mean that no such theory could be developed, or that its design shouldn't be attempted. On the contrary, it may be argued that it is precisely because trees lack the capacity to develop "theories," that humans should use their theoretical abilities to represent trees, as trees can be imagined would like to be represented. Anything less than this self-less use of their intellectual abilities risks making humans so self-centered, perhaps even arrogant, that in the end they may act more "unintelligently" by eliminating the world that sustains them, and thus causing their own extinction, than if they had none of their higher order thinking skills. It is in that sense that one may admonish humans to become not only smart, but also wise.
Every world part has a particular way of interacting with its environment which may be seen as its way of communicating with the world, or more broadly, expressing its particular perspective. We may call this type of existing-in-the-world as a world part's "contextualized existence." By "contextualized existence" I refer to a universal part's particular interaction with its environment which altogether makes it what it is. As indicated earlier, to understand this we must let go of our human-centered interpretation of interaction as highly intellectualized, such as, linguistic, cultural, or social, and think more of a universal part's non-human type of existence as equally "interactive," except in non-human ways (i.e., not acting as an intellectualized human agent). Seen that way even objects, including artifacts, have their particular type of "interaction" on the basis, for example, of their gravitational fields that attract or repulse, and thus shape, and in turn are shaped by, their environment. Likewise with other types of non-human "interaction" that have an impact upon those involved, and therefore, if one is willing to allow other universal parts their "interactiveness," to also engage in a process of interaction with their environment.
Even humans shape, and are shaped by, non-intellectualized environmental processes, if not also within the "environment" in ourselves that often determines whether we are "ill" or "healthy." Witness, for instance, our dependence on gravity for the type of body we have evolved; or on white cells within our body to destroy any number of viral attacks.
10. Truth and Pan-Interactionism
I refer to this universal interdependence of world parts as the world's "pan-interactionism." To better understand this type of "pan-interactionism" taking place in the universe, one must adopt a radically perspectivistic view of the universe. As I mentioned earlier, adopting such view means using one's thinking and imaginative abilities "disinterestedly," meaning, "detachedly" or empathically, to give the universe a voice, or allow it to speak to us through us. We may see this as a process of the "universalization" of human thinking, meaning, instead of merely thinking about the world, we develop the habit of "worlding" our thinking. Humans -as-world have evolved in the context of a universe-as-humans that can do what they can do, such as, thinking and imagining; or, to put it bluntly, think or imagine about itself through human thinking and imagination.
Things with which we, humans, are familiar or can relate with, or can explain, are likely to catch our attention. Likewise, non-human universal parts are more likely to "notice," through their particular way of "noticing" (such as, through a chemical or other physical or non-physical reaction) those realities with which they are prepared to interact with, or, philosophically speaking, consider in their own way as "real" or "true." No matter, then, what type of "understanding," or, more broadly, "contextualized existence," a universal part may have had, we can surmise that they all have a common approach to visibility, namely, things become visible to the extent that they are understood, acknowledged or "known," and therefore perceived.
12. Universalizability versus Specificity of Human Thinking
Is thinking a human-specific phenomenon, or is it something which non-humans could also engage in? This is important because if truth is something that can only be thought about, then only those world parts that can think, can think about truth.
Given the fact that human truth conceptions are human-based, such truth is inescapably the result of human understanding. This is so because everything that humans conceive of is by definition based on their particular vocabulary and working principles of interpretation. If humans had a different physiology, had evolved or grown up with a totally different set of life experiences, or relied mainly on non-linguistic forms of communication, then perhaps their perception, expression, or understanding of "truth" may have been different. Witness, for instance, how different are the conceptions of truth held by humans in different cultures, or historical epochs. Humans growing up in a religious society may hold theocratic interpretations of reality, while humans raised in a mainly scientific culture may hold scientific ones. If conceptions of truth within the human species, or even within the same educated class, are diverse, then imagine how much more diverse such conceptions might be if humans were not just different culturally, but also physiologically, communicatively, intellectually, or experientially from how they are today. We might then have been literally like the aliens of science fiction who not only look often outlandishly different, but possess seemingly different conceptions of reality, or, more simply, of what constitutes "truth."
We may surmise that the more different the circumstances that gave rise to non-human universal parts are from those which gave rise to humans, the stranger their actual or imaginable conceptions of truth may seem to humans. For example, if humans had no legs, but instead used a different type of physiological make up for getting around (say, propulsion, magnetism, wheels, or weightlessness, depending on their "evolutionary circumstances"), then what might look like "chairs" to humans, might not be so to non-humans who never have a need to sit down. To such "aliens," chairs might be seen as representations of a mechanical or artistic device, or even something incomprehensible or not worth thinking about.
Let us assume the existence of aliens who can think. One may argue that no matter how different such hypothetical aliens might be, including their past individual or phylogenetic experiences or present physiology, their thinking must be fundamentally of the same type as human thinking, or else they would be incapable of interpretation. This is so because, it may be argued, thinking follows certain logical principles that are the same for all who can think irrespective of their evolutionary or individual circumstances, or how they look, that is, whether such thinking is done by humans or not.
If one could imagine a thinking alien with totally different life experiences than ours, it doesn't necessarily follow that the underlying "logic" of such alien is radically different from that of humans. For example, all who think can probably understand what a contradiction is, since something usually is or is not no matter what it is, and therefore applicable to anything real or imaginable. For example, regarding whether something is or is not, whatever such thing might be, it cannot both be and not be, or else it makes no sense that one should even attempt to define it. Thus no matter how a thinking universal-part interprets such thing, meaning, what such part thinks is "true" about it, in order for such part to "think," whether its thinking resembles human thinking or not, it must subscribe to certain universally held principles regarding thinking. Such principles, in turn, limit the extent to which one can interpret truth as one likes, since what one says about truth must also make "sense," meaning, subscribe to principles of interpretation that collectively make "thinking" itself possible.
Thus it seems that all thinking by definition is larger than just human-type thinking. It is not inconceivable that universal parts which evolved under non-human-like circumstances, could think just as logically, for example, regarding contradictions, as do humans. Such aliens may have certain logical and mathematical operations typical of elementary logic and basic arithmetic. Once such building blocks are commonly understood to be part of thinking, then likewise more complicated thought-processes may be built on such fundamental thinking building blocks, just as software programs today are built on the basis of elementary computational units. As a result, no matter how different their circumstances, it may be argued that if other universal parts can think, then their thinking must be similar to humans', and therefore so are their truth interpretations. As a result, the hypothetical aliens' view of reality, and therefore of truth (if by "truth" we mean interpretations of "reality," including of what counts as "real") cannot be radically different from humans'. By using common sense we could come to understand even realities that we never encountered, as in fact we do when we study historical events which we never witnessed, but are capable of understanding or empathizing with.
13. Non-universalizability of Thinking: Counter-argument
One way to examine something is to raise objections and counter-objections to original interpretations. This is so our examination is more thoroughly "tested," than if we never compared it to alternative interpretations. Apart from being the oldest known method of philosophical thinking, known also as the "dialectic," such method is, incidentally, another form of perspectival analysis, since it relies at least to a certain extent on examining something from a variety of perspectives. In any event, a counter-argument to the above argument regarding the "universalizability" of thinking might be that humans think as they do precisely because of how they "evolved," and therefore because of their human-like brain and body structures. In other words, their thinking is inextricably tied to their being human. As a result, the underlying logic of their thinking is also an "ontological extension" of their "humanness," meaning, it is what it is because they are human-like. For example, no matter how unreal might seem to be the things or events they can imagine (as are numerous fictional accounts about extraterrestrials, or past historical events), their imaginings are still limited by human-centered conceptions of corporeal reality, such as, gravity; or common conceptions of time and space, none of which may be applicable or make sense in incorporeal realities, or in realities that are not of the same physical reality, and therefore "unimaginable." It is therefore impossible for humans ever to really know "truth," since they are by virtue of their evolution and make-up "handicapped" to thinking only in human-like terms, and therefore only human-discoverable and human-interpretable "truths." In other words, if there is truth, humans are not equipped to discover it, but instead "condemned" never to know it.
As a corollary to the above argument regarding the "specificity" of human thinking, and therefore also of "truth," one might argue that we can never know whether anything can be true. It may further be argued that the kind of "truth" humans are capable of knowing, or think they know, is the "untruth" of their understanding, meaning, no matter how true something might seem to humans, it is not only not true from a universal perspective, but impossible for humans ever to really know why, other than perhaps realize that it is untrue.
14. Specificity of Human Thinking: Corollaries
Some additional corollaries of the idea that human thinking is ontologically "tied" to humans, and therefore untrue, might be that non-humans have altogether different types of thinking, including different "logics;" or, alternatively, that non-human types of "thinking" require a non-human type of existence, including different types of physical and intellectual make-up. Consequently there may be as many types of truth as there are non-human types of thinking, of which there may be numerous or none, as the case may be, but which seems at least plausible. The plausibility that such types of non-human thinking may exist becomes more likely in light of the billions of stars and galaxies in the universe, or even of parallel universes, which may collectively include any number of non-human evolutionary potential for the development of alien "intelligences" that think unlike humans, and therefore have radically different perceptions of truth.
15. Response regarding Non-universalizability of Thinking
In response to the above argument regarding the non-universalizability of human thinking, it might be said that, firstly, even the argument above is based on what makes sense to humans, thus showing at least our ability as humans to think of even non-humans thinking, or having some form of thinking. Secondly, if thinking were so non-generalizable (i.e., non-universalizable), then why is it that so many of human-perceived truths can be predictably demonstrated in experience, as is the case with numerous so-called "scientific discoveries?" Unless we redefine truth to exclude everything experimental, which of course we could not do without changing the common sense definition of truth (which includes what people think is true about the physical world), one must account for the fact that at the end of the day such "discoveries" are universally applicable, testable, and repeatable, and therefore arguably "true" even in spite of the allegedly "phylogenetic" relationship between thinking and humans. In other words, contrary to the objection that human thinking is no more than an extension of human experiences, science has shown that irrespective of such experiences there is a physical reality that exists, or at least seems to incorporate all of the non-human universal parts that make it be, and in that sense is "true," even if humans themselves never existed, let alone interpreted it.
The fact that humans can come to recognize such reality is evidence of their ability to perceive realities that are not necessarily tied to their experiences, and therefore of the universalizable nature of their thinking. It follows that no matter who engages in it, human thinking is not just "human," in the sense that it reveals only human-perceived realities or "truths," but a tool for understanding reality. Thus it behooves humans to use their thinking to represent, understand, or communicate the "truth" about non-human realities; or, as we argue in the chapter on ethics, even help expand the "possibilities" of non-human universal parts.
16. Counter-objection: Limited Understanding
A counter objection to the counter-objection, above, might be that such reality as humans are capable of perceiving is but one of many realities, many or most of which humans are incapable of understanding. This is so because what they perceive as a human-independent truth is actually of the same type as the conditions that allowed humans to evolve, including develop their thinking, such as, the physical world known to humans. As a result, it is essentially of the same type as humans, which is why it is human-perceivable. By contrast humans are incapable of understanding truths whose conditions for "existing" never "interacted" with humans. For example, conditions that allowed thinking non-humans to become may have nothing "in common" with human-generative ones. As a result, their thinking may be not only capable of perceiving their own evolutionary conditions (or by contrast incapable of perceiving human evolutionary conditions), but also radically different from human-type "thinking." Thus the world humans perceive through scientific investigation, which they commonly believe it to exist independently of human existence, is actually of the same caliber as humans themselves, in the broader sense of humans-as-children-of-their-circumstances (and therefore of such circumstances as intimately tied only to human existence or experiences).
17. Limits of Scientific Thinking
To amplify or further describe the above counter-objection, it may argued that when humans perceive the world through science they are actually looking in the mirror of themselves-as-the-larger-background-that-gave-them-birth, and therefore impossible to argue that such reality exists independently of humans (since even without humans in the present, humans always existed potentially in a human-generative context). Consequently, their thinking ends up being of the same type as the conditions that allowed them to evolve, and therefore essentially human-like or non-universalizable. This is so even if humans were altogether excluded from being, had not yet come to be, or for some reason were destroyed. In other words, the fact that this world can be shown to exist even without humans does not mean, as had been earlier argued, above, that our thinking about the world is therefore proof of the universalizability of our thinking: we are still incapable of perceiving anything more than what is essentially our primordial or potential selves in the form of a generative context that allowed us to become. Our scientific view of reality, then, and by extension truth, is not "true" about reality, but merely of our own generative or evolutionary conditions. To really understand reality, we would have to engage in diverse forms of thinking which humans are incapable of because, as argued earlier, of their particular biological make up and phylogenetic experiences. It may further be argued that even when humans use their imagination to generate fantastic realities that are only "true" in their imagination, such as, science fiction, their ideas are likely to be tainted by some type of human-centered understanding.
18. Counter argument: Imagination
As a counter-argument to this idea of the human-specificity of the type of thinking done by humans, one could analyze our ability to imagine as evidence of the human ability to conceive of non-human realities, or "truths," and therefore universalize our thinking. For example, we could imagine different truth-systems that are the result of diverse physiological, biological, and physical circumstances. This means that no matter how fictional or imaginative the circumstances, we could still understand such realities, however un-human-like such realities might be. After all, unless one were to find a totally unhuman-like reality which humans earlier were incapable of perceiving, it cannot be said that human thinking is actually incapable of perceiving such reality, or else they would not have "discovered" it. It follows that one cannot argue that human thinking is non-universalizable because of its incapacity to perceive non-human-like realities since no one knows whether such realities do exist, in the first place, for anyone to hold that they are "invisible" to humans. Finally, if such realities did exist and humans discovered them, it would mean that human thinking is indeed capable of perceiving, analyzing or understanding non-human like realities, and therefore is of a universalistic, as opposed to merely human-limited nature. Witness, for instance, the constant discovery of not only so far "unknown" realities regarding the universe, but also our ability to self-correct our thinking so that we minimize human bias in interpreting reality, as is the case, for example, in qualitative research. In other words, unlike linear and non-reflective types of thinking, we are also capable of thinking about thinking, as did Rene Descartes (4), and so many others before and after him, and attempt to eliminate human bias (as in fact I am trying to do here by writing this chapter about truth).
19. Conclusion regarding the universalizability of Human Thinking
We may conclude that human thinking may very well be universalizable, and that at least is not non-universalistic. We failed to find a convincing argument in favor of the non-universalizable nature of human thinking. Thus what humans think might be true is neither by definition human-biased, nor incapable of representing the universe-as-is, as opposed to how humans would-like-it-to-be. In fact, one may ask whether the human ability to think is not just "human," in the sense of being rightfully human-owned or defined, but more broadly universal, in the sense that humans can think, including thinking about truth, as a result of a universe "allowing" us to think, and therefore, as I mentioned earlier, the universe thinking about itself through humans.
This ability of humans to think "universally" doesn't mean that there can be no human-centered thinking which is biased or "blind," since, as I argue elsewhere, such thinking has been historically commonplace. What it means is that human thinking can be representative, or revealing of universal truths. Elsewhere I described the type of education that may lead humans to developing universalizable or world-representative thinking (see chapter on Education). We may thus conclude that humans are capable of revealing universal truths.
20. Truth and Thinking: Understanding Universal Perspectives
Humans have the ability to use their thinking to represent any number of perspectives, which in the end is how they find the truth about the universe. This is so because the universe is collectively all such perspectives combined, and therefore requires a flexibly perspectival approach to understand it. The universe is no more one of its parts than another, and therefore to learn the truth about the universe, or "reality," requires that we learn the truth about all of its constituent parts.
If by "truth" is meant whether something exists, then a truth may exist independently of whether humans know it, such as, as I mentioned earlier, several scientific "truths" which humans were unaware of prior to their "discovery." On the other hand, if by truth is meant only what humans can articulate as being true, as in a "truth statement," then we have re-defined truth to reflect only human-centered understandings, including truths "revealed" through human-based truth communication systems.
21. Truth and First Assumptions
We can't even begin to interpret truth-claims without some first assumptions with which to interpret them. As the range of our first assumptions expands, so does the range of possible interpetations. What was earlier not even seen or recognized, is suddenly "discovered" as a result of ever new interpretations. As a result, truth itself seems to grow larger with every new interpretation. Since truth is reinterpretable, what at first may seem to be the "same" truth, is in fact the many truths that collectively make it true. As universally reinterpretable, truth is the world's, while what is conventionally seen as "true," is no more. It is through this process of reversal of conventional truth, that we come closer to understanding the truth about the world. It is for this reason that if the world seems to become ever more familiar with every new interpretation, it also grows more mysterious: it is a non-conventional world whose truth expands or changes.
A theory of truth is no more true than its underlying first assumptions (see chapter on First Assumptions). We discover the truth about truth, as we re-discover not only its non-human possibilities, but also its possible untruths. As we explained earlier, we mean by "untruth" all those realities which humans presently do not consider to be true. The process of finding truth is a process of inclusion of universal untruths. These untruths become collectively true about the world. They are true because they supply humans with another piece of a seemingly endless universal puzzle whose outlines embrace everything known to humans, both truths and untruths. Methodologically, we can better understand any one theory of truth, including, say, Hegel's, by becoming aware of as many theories of truth as possible, even if from a Hegelian perspective they are "untrue," and then using them in hypothetical comparisons with Hegel's. Without knowing of other theories, we would lack the perspective in whose context a theory may be seen as a "theory of truth." It is for this reason that no one theory of truth is "true" apart from the rest that allow it to rise as such, even if by comparison some of the others, or the theory under consideration, may be judged, depending on one's perspective, as false. We need to know of as many theories of truth as possible, to come to see the truth in ours.
It is logically impossible to prove that one theory of truth is more true than another. If we did consider a theory more true than another, then we would need to explain why. To do so, we can't rely on the theory which we would like to prove is more true, or else we are moving in a circle by using that which we are trying to prove. If we use another theory of truth to show why, then our underlying theory becomes, ipso facto, also true. This is so because if the second theory weren't true, it couldn't be used to prove the truth of the first theory. Consequently, our second theory must be true, or at least as true, as the one we are trying to prove. But if that were the case, then the moment we prove that the first theory is more true than any other, we have also shown that it is not, since we used another theory which is at least as true. In short, it is impossible to show on logical grounds that any one theory of truth is more true than any other. Instead, we can show that all theories are equally true, in the sense that they express some truth about the world, and therefore, from a universal perspective, true.
On the other hand, if one must insist that some theories are true, and some not, then inevitably he falls into the same type of bottomless logical trap as described above. Ironically, even the irrational conclusion of one who insists that something must be more true than another, no matter what logic dictates, is also "true," since it says something about the world's ability to be irrational through humans. While the first approach betrays the world's ability to be logical through humans, the second shows the human ability to be irrational, and thus also the world's "irrational" possibilities.
23. Truth and Reinterpretability
If there is a way to describe "truth," it might be the world's "interpretability." By "interpretability" here we mean all the possible ways the world may be re-interpreted, in our imagination, whether or not we identify emotionally with any one, or more, of such interpretations. The world is reinterpretable on the basis of even non-human perspectives, in the sense of humans re-interpreting the world in their imagination from the perspective of other animate or inanimate parts of the universe. Since the world includes all of us, it is interpretable on the basis of all of our interpretations, and not just those that each one of us may individually consider to be the "right" one. The search for truth is a self-less enterprise, as it requires that we allow the world to be reinterpreted on the basis of diverse assumptions which emotionally we may even hate.
The perspectivist theory of truth may be applied in the analysis of another theory. For example, underlying the Hegelian theory of truth are certain first assumptions. Using a perspectivist approach, the Hegelian assumptions may be understood as such only when compared to other theories. In the Hegelian system, truth is seen as a process of progressive synthesis of opposites to a "higher" truth (5). Underlying this process are assumptions about progress, truth, and change that may not be "true" in the context of another theory of truth. For example, in another theory of truth, instead of the Hegelian dialectic between thesis and antithesis, there may be a multiplication of truths that result from reinterpreting any one thesis or antithesis, or a collapsing of a synthesis inside an earlier thesis. Where in the Hegelian system there is a metamorphosis of two opposites into a new synthesis, in other systems of truth there may be a metamorphosis of a thesis into a pro-thesis (an earlier thesis, as in regression); meta-thesis (a later thesis without going through a process of synthesis); multiple theses (division of a single thesis into multiple "copies," comparable to cell mitosis); or even become its own antithesis (as in what is known in psychoanalysis as reverse ego identification). Finally, instead of a linear path toward a higher truth, in other systems it may radiate from a single thesis into unpredictable paths (as in the emission of rays from radioactive substances); become spiral (as in Toynbee's theory of historical progress (6)); or follow any one of a number of other possible paths, many of which may be represented geometrically as non-linear, spherical, three dimensional, or even four dimensional (with time being the fourth dimension).
What counts as visible to humans, meaning, likely to be thought about, may be linked to our understanding of reality. Unfortunately, we can't possibly use only human-centered interpretations of "visibility" and hope to understand the universe. This is so because the universe is composed of numerous universal parts that may have different ways of acknowledging reality, which in turn requires that we use our imagination to empathize with their particular visibility perspectives. By "visibility" here I mean not only what can be seen with human eyes, but, more broadly, acknowledged through any number of interactive processes, not all or even most of which rely on having eyes to do so. Otherwise, as I indicated, above, we would have so predefined "visibility" as to limit it to humans by definition, since only humans have eyes of the type that we humans are familiar with, and therefore "blind" ourselves, literally, to the particular ways other universal parts are able to "see."
Non-humans may have other ways of acknowledging, becoming familiar with, or responding to a certain reality that does not depend on the same type of visual "aides" as those possessed by humans. Yet such acknowledgment of reality by non-seeing non-human universal parts can be just as revealing or "acknowledging," logically, as are the visual truths revealed to humans through their human-like sense of vision. For example, a large variety of animate or inanimate universal parts communicate, interact with, or respond to their environment chemically, biologically or electrically without necessarily relying on, or even possessing, a sense of "naked" human-like vision. Such interaction with the environment depends on the nature of the particular universal part's "reactive mechanism," and the responsiveness, or, more broadly, communication-readiness of its environment. It is in that sense that when universal part and environment so interact, universal parts express a view of reality that represents their own sense of what counts as true or real, or, for that matter, "visible," or even interesting. Just as humans are likely to pass by or ignore what they don't know, understand, or are uneducated or not forewarned about, and therefore consider "invisible;" so are non-human universal parts with comparable but different ways of interacting with the world consider "invisible" what they are not prepared or equipped to interact with.
25. Truth Systems: Epistemological Types
Historically, humans have held mainly five types of truth systems. By "truth system" here I mean principles for the interpretation of reality, or, in short, for what counts as true. The five types are religious, scientific, philosophical, cultural, and individualistic. Scientific are principles derived mainly from science and the scientific method of investigation. Religious are those derived from any number of past and present religious doctrines, such as, Christianity, Islam, paganism, and animism, and any number of theosophic theories that have gained the status of a religion (such as, Hinduism, Confucianism, Buddhism). Philosophical are those derived from philosophies that people subscribe to, or invent on their own, such as, idealism, Marxism and existentialism. Cultural are the result of cultural norms or values; finally, individualistic are those held by individuals as a result of a variety of personal, communal, ideological or other influences or experiences which collectively shape individual interpretations of truth.
Given that humans have historically held a variety of truth systems, their views of truth are perspective-specific, meaning, they depend on particular perspectives, such as, any number of possible perspectives within any of the five categories mentioned above.
26. Truth Categories: Ontological Types
In addition to the five epistemological types of truth mentioned above, "truth" may be "genetically" or ontologically divided into two types, one which is human-generated, as are those "truths" which humans are aware of, or think they know, and therefore may be said to be "human-generated;" and another which may be true even in spite of human ignorance of its "existence."
It may be argued that even though as a result of the scientific revolution people changed their view of certain truths, what they believed to be true in earlier times was true for them at the time. In other words, unlike scientific claims, which are empirically based, truth is relative, meaning, relative to the wider truth paradigms in a culture. If a culture uses, say, theological interpretations of truth, then many people raised in that culture may use theological interpretations. After all, as some philosophers of science have attempted to show, even within science, truth claims are relative to both wider beliefs regarding science within a culture at the time, and the scientific values that scientists are educated in while still learning their trade (as did, for instance, Thomas Kuhn in his book Structure of Scientific Revolutions). Yet even if we accept the argument that truth is relative (which may or may not be, but for the moment let us suppose that it is), as might be so-called "unscientific" truths of earlier times, such truths are nevertheless known by those holding them, or else they would not rise to the level of being perceived as "true." In other words, they are of the former type of truth, namely, human-generated truths, as opposed to the latter type, namely, truths that are completely unknown to humans. Thus any way one looks at it, once humans express a view of truth, such truth becomes a human-generated truth, as contrasted to a completely unknown or non-imagined one.
Although humans are more likely to be concerned with "truths" that affect them directly, that doesn't mean that there are no truths in the universe which nevertheless may not have a direct effect on humans, such as, the existence of far away galaxies or planets, about which humans may only know little or nothing. As a result, even in spite of their imagined theories of universal genesis, the relationship of humans to such "truths" is one of the "unknown passerby" who passes you by but does not know you are there. Until such "truths" are discussed or thought about, it makes no sense to discuss them, because if we assume that we can so discuss or think about them, then they are not really unknown, as we claim they are (or were), and therefore could not use them as examples of completely unknown "truths." All we know is that based on historical evidence, such as, the history of scientific discovery, there are probably numerous truths that we are presently unaware of, at least from the perspective of scientists who seemingly constantly "discover" new "truths" about the universe, including the microcosmic reality of ourselves as human organisms. Thus we may conclude that the only type of truth that makes sense discussing or analyzing is the type that humans have thought about or discussed, or what earlier we described as "human-generated truth."
Based on our discussion of the two types of truth, above, we may conclude that human-generated truths are by definition communicable or thought about, in the broad sense of ideas that humans have historically been capable of communicating to others, or thinking about in their minds. Given the impossibility of thinking about truths that humans are completely unaware of, one may argue that for all practical purposes all truths are human generated, if by truth we mean those value judgements that humans make about the world. For example, even if humans ascribe certain facts to God or natural causes, they do so as a result of what they think about God or nature, and therefore their views are inescapably tied to their thoughts. Seen from that angle, one could argue that truth lends itself to disagreement by other humans, unlike unknown truths which are impossible to disagree with (and therefore impossible to argue whether any one of them even exists).
Humans have the capacity to imagine not only what the understandings of other humans might be, as, for example, social scientists do, but also of other non-human "universal parts." By non-human universal parts I mean other animals, or even other inanimate universal parts (including any number of such parts that other cultures have anthropomorphized, such as, rivers, forests, planets, or mountains). As a result of this ability by humans to imagine, the same that was said about humans, may also be said about other universal parts which humans can imagine are capable of expressing similar truth-judgements about the world, and then translate such understandings in words that humans can understand. For example, one may argue that an ant's "understanding"of the world is demonstrated by what actions it takes in response to the world around it, and therefore its own view of what is "true" about the world (albeit without the human ability to describe or analyze such truth, or more abstractly, formulate a philosophy of what counts as true). Given the variety of human and imaginable understandings of the world, the world's "truth" is collectively all the human and non-human perspectives. None of these truths by themselves can tell us enough about the world to understand it, since they represent only how a certain human or group understands the world, and therefore the world-as-partially-understood by this or that part (as contrasted to universal world-understandings that collectively explain the world). Ideally, we need to know about all such perspectives, including the reasons for holding them, to fully understand the world. The more truths we know (in the sense of truth-as-understanding), including those which may be seen as untrue by certain people, or under certain circumstances, the more we know about the world.
As a changing entity, truth requires that we anticipate its possibilities, in order to understand it. As we discover these possibilities, we discover truth. Unlike the view of truth as something either strictly relative, or strictly absolute, truth is a matter of understanding it hypothetically (as it might be). This is so because the world is not just what it is now, or has been, but also what it could become, or wasn't always. Only one of the world's possibilities is the world as commonly thought to be now.
As part of the world which we try to interpret, we are inevitably part of every interpretation. Unfortunately, what we believe to be true in the present, is usually the result of us thinking for ourselves alone, than of the world. It is in this sense that humans may think themselves "master" of the world, as if they were not part of it, and therefore no more a master of the world's truth, than they know the truth about themselves.
Our biological or "physical" existence, from the time we are born, to the time we die, is relatively too short to have allowed us to live in the distant past, and therefore for each one of us to remember our primordial ties to our environment. Although we are born ahistorical, subconsciously we may have accumulated at least a predilection for certain things. Our bodies may be seen as the physical memory of our evolution. Balanced by the memory, to paraphrase Jung (7), of our "collective subconscious," and the historical biology of our stored reactions, each generation must rediscover certain world-truths anew for itself. Unfortunately, our struggle for survival has left little time for in-depth, or leisurely, study of our past, including the past of our world. Because of the historical context of our education, our view of truth may be limited to human-bound interpretations, as contrasted to time-less representations of the world. Finally, constrained by human-bound cultural assumptions, our interpretations are often too "true," to be true about the world.
We conclude that "truth" is more a matter of perspective or degree, than of absolute certainty. In fact, the more "uncertain" we become as a result of learning about different "truths," in the sense of reinterpreting the world from different angles, the more certain we can be that we know it better.
1. Georg Hegel, Phenomenology of the Mind. Return to text
2. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time. Return to text
3. Aristotle, Metaphysics. Return to text
4. Rene Descartes, Meditations. Return to text
5. Hegel, Phenomenology of the Mind. Return to text
6. Arnold Toynbee, A Study of History. Return to text
7. Carl Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections (ed. Aniela Jaffe). Return to text
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