How Relative is Truth?

Café Philo is a way of meeting interesting, inquiring people who enjoy talking about life's big issues and conundrums in a convivial atmosphere, rather than a heavy-duty philosophy seminar. Read more about our approach here.

This month’s discussion will delve into how and why we come to believe what we believe?

We are increasingly sceptical of the media, politicians, statistics, doctors, religious leaders, academics, even scientists. Instead, many people now place more weight on social media and peer group opinion, despite their unreliability. Many of us live in bubbles which share “our” truth. Is “truth” either fundamentally relative, or at best unknowable? If so, is our best course to just pick whichever version takes our fancy?

What can we rely on? Is Wikipedia the fount of all knowledge? Does the non-specialist stand any chance of discerning truth without the help of "experts"? If not, which experts should we trust? Should we (or the media) give “scientific opinion” more weight? And if so, which “scientists” do we trust? How useful is the dumbed down “pragmatic truth” we tend to be fed by the media? (Things like “you need to eat 5 servings of fruit and veg per day”.)

In many interesting and important cases the true facts seem either unknown, or too complex to be neatly distilled into tasty sound bites which can be served up by the media. Real experts tend to surround their expertise with so many ifs, buts, and warnings not to extrapolate, that most of us have lost interest before they get to the point. Truth is often complicated and nuanced – anathema for mainstream media and public information services, aiming at consumers with minimal attention span.

In areas less amenable to experimental testing, such as history, economics and politics, “truth” is even more debatable. We are left in a sea of opinions and vested interests, some more plausible than others. Where should we turn for our information?

We will examine these issues in the context of three questions:

1. What do we mean by "truth" and how does it contrast with "reality", "facts", "knowledge" and "beliefs"?
2. How can non-specialists determine how likely something is to be "true" in daily life?
3. What things (if any) can we ever know to be true with confidence and correctness?

For those wanting to do some preparation, suggested reading/browsing:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth gives an overview of philosophical approaches.
https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/is-truth-relative/ an essay relevant to our discussion
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/truth/ a deeper dive into the philosophy of truth

Is it true that we can sort this out before last orders? I rather doubt it, but it will be interesting to try. Come and share your views in a friendly relaxed atmosphere.

NOTE: I've limited the discussion to 12 people to ensure we have a manageable group for a pub conversation. If you sign up for a place and later find you can't come, PLEASE change your RSVP to NO.