Time and Truth

Truth relates to time in an interesting way: once a fact obtains a corresponding proposition is instantaneously true. On the one hand is a fact, say the fact that it just started raining at a certain place, while on the other is a proposition (a belief or assertion), say that it is raining at said location, and the second thing acquires the property of being true at the very moment the fact begins to obtain. Generally, when an object acquires a property a propositional entity comes to possess the attribute of being true at exactly that time—there is no time lag—even though the two things may be far apart (even at the other end of the universe). It is customary to speak of facts as truth-makers, so we can say that facts make propositions true instantly. Facts and true propositions are not identical, yet facts can confer truth on propositions. The truth of the proposition is a consequence of the fact, though it is a consequence that takes no time (rather like logical consequence and unlike causal consequence). This can seem puzzling—like the “non-locality” spoken of in connection with quantum theory. How can the fact manage to reach across space and make a proposition true without any temporal delay? For it is not just that the fact obtains and the proposition is simultaneously true but that the proposition’s being true is a result of the fact obtaining. It would be different if the fact were simply identical to a true proposition, but that is evidently not the case, since facts are not true propositions and true propositions are not facts (they involve different ontologies). No, these are entities of different types, yet one can influence the other at arbitrarily large removes. (One might indeed see the puzzle as a motivation for regarding an identity theory of facts and truths with more favor.) In any case, it appears to be a fact that facts and truths are connected in this way—by a kind of instantaneous action at a distance. Notice that objects and singular terms are not likewise connected: objects don’t make terms refer to them—they are not “reference-makers”. We are more inclined to speak of terms as determining the object referred to, not of objects as determining the reference of terms. In the case of truth, by contrast, the entity in the world contrives to bestow the semantic property of truth on the extraneous propositional entity, which may be an utterance at some remote location (a different galaxy, say). The reason the proposition is true is simply that the fact obtains (an object has a certain property): that is the explanation of its truth.

            I won’t say anything more about how to resolve this puzzle, or even whether it really is a puzzle; I will simply take it for granted that truth has the property in question, viz. that truth is conferred at the exact time that the reported fact comes to obtain. My purpose is to use this property of truth to undermine certain ideas about the nature of truth. The property is thus not a trivial property consistent with any theory of truth but rather has polemical teeth. Suppose we try to identify truth with verification: then truth will turn out not to be simultaneous with the fact stated. For verification takes time and is generally subsequent to the time of statement. Suppose that at time t I say that there are five oak trees in my garden; and suppose it takes five minutes to verify that this is true: then the statement will not be true until five minutes after t, according to the thesis that truth is verification. There were five oak trees in my garden at t and so my statement was true at t, but the statement was not verified to be true until five minutes later, which would make it true then according to the theory that truth consists in verification. The only way to avoid this is to claim that there were no oak trees in my garden at the time of utterance and that there only came to be five oak trees at t + 5 minutes. But surely we want to allow that facts can be verified after the time at which they actually obtain (now the fact, later the verification of the fact). Truth arrives at the time of facts not at the time of the verification of facts, so we can’t tie truth to verification by identifying the two. This is why it makes sense to ask how long it will take to verify a proposition, but it makes no sense to ask how long it takes for a proposition to be true. Verification takes time, but it takes no time for a proposition to be made true. Verification is an activity spread out in time, but making-true is not similarly spread out in time—it happens instantly. We can say that a proposition can be verified as true, but we can’t say that a proposition can be true bybeing verified; the two concepts are logically quite different, as is shown in their relation to time. Similarly, we can say that a procedure of verification is time-consuming or that it was executed slowly, but we can’t say anything like this about truth (“It took so long for his assertion to be true”). We might choose to replace the concept of truth with the concept of verification, but we can’t claim to analyze the former by the latter. Simply put, verification is a temporal concept but truth is not. Such ideas as that truth is an “epistemic concept” fail because of this obvious point: evidence gathering is essentially temporal but truth is essential atemporal (in the sense intended here).

            The same goes for pragmatist theories of truth that seek to identify truth with something like “convergence of inquirers’ beliefs in the long run” or “what leads to human satisfaction”. These things also take time, sometimes a lot of time, but truth takes no time. Any theory that identifies truth with the effects of belief will fall foul of this point, since effects occur subsequently and are spread out in time.  Statements are true or false at the time you make them, depending on the facts, not at some later time. Intuitively, the facts immediately stamp propositions as true or false at the time they obtain no matter what the future holds; so any theory of truth that ties it to future facts will fail. Of course, our judgments of truth are enmeshed in time, being dependent on verification procedures, but truth itself is not—truth itself depends entirely on the prevailing facts (and suitable truth bearers). Truth comes straight from the world in the blink of an eye (so to speak). It is a peculiar property in this respect, and maybe a puzzling one, but any theory of truth needs to accommodate it.[1]

[1] We could add to Tarski’s famous formula the following truth about truth: “snow is white” is true at the moment that snow is white. It would be different if snow had to send a signal to the sentence to inform it that snow is white, since that would take time. No, truth is conferred on the sentence at the very second the fact obtains.

Perception As Internalization

We have become accustomed to thinking of perception as a type of causal relation, sharing its logical (metaphysical) features. As earthquakes cause buildings to collapse, so external objects cause experiences to occur. Cause and effect are external to each other; neither is contained in the other. But this picture fails to accommodate the fact that perception internalizes its object in roughly the sense in which the mind internalizes a surrounding language or culture or moral system.  When you see an object that object is external to you but it comes to play the role of an internal object in your mind: it comes to “live” in your mind, to be part of the mind’s landscape, to operate as a mental constituent. For example, your perception of your mother produces an inner object that has a particular significance for you, a particular potency. The external object becomes an intentional object, an object for you. Thus it is natural to speak of a process of internalization, as psychologists often do. In general when you sense an external object an act of internalization occurs, the upshot of which is that something is added to your mental resources. Perception, then, is not just a cause-effect relation, but something more intimate. The external object becomes part of the perceiver’s mental world, not merely the trigger of the experience it leads to. We should therefore not model the perceptual process on typical causal sequences; rather, there is an act of internalization that transcends the usual causal relation (this is not to deny that causation is part of the picture).

            In any process of internalization some sort of boundary must be crossed, as in the membrane of a cell through which nutrients may be absorbed. So the mind must have a boundary that is crossed when an object is internalized. Presumably it is not a spatial boundary, under any conception of space that we can understand. There is a point at which an object passes into the mind (though this passing is not a form of travelling through space). We have no clear idea of what such a boundary consists in (or of), but it must exist if it is correct to speak of perceptual internalization. At one time the object existed outside of the boundary; at a later time the object has become part of a mental landscape. The mind has the capacity to include things within its boundaries. Perception is the most basic way this happens. It doesn’t happen in the case of innate or pre-existing mental contents: here there is no transition from outer to inner, since there was no act of internalization. The word “perception” should be taken in a broad sense: the mind can perceive and internalize music, one’s own body (proprioception), moral codes, universals, and works of art, among other things. How this happens, and how the brain underpins it, is not easy to understand (it might even be a deep mystery), but it evidently occurs, and it is essential to the nature of perception. One might think of it as a process of de-alienation: the alien other becomes one’s own. This is a richer operation than any envisaged by a purely causal account of perception.

            Brentano had the idea, not merely that mental states have objects, but that these objects are internal to their identity (“intentional inexistence”). We can add to that insight the thought that perceptual intentionality arises by a process of internalization. The external object is internalized in perception thereby becoming an inner intentional object. What that external object is exactly is a matter for further decision: is it the material thing itself, much of which is imperceptible to the perceiver, or is it limited to aspects of the object that can be perceived (or are being perceived)? Perhaps the internalized object should be identified with certain of the properties of the external physical thing—aspects of objects not whole objects. When you are perceptually acquainted with a table, say, the internalized entity is really an aspect of the table, i.e. a subset of its properties. Strictly speaking, then, internalization acts on universals (or whatever you think is immediately presented when an object is perceived). In any case, we have this rather mystifying act of internalization that converts a non-mental entity into something native to the mind. Perceiving is thus more than merely an external object causing an experience; it essentially involves internalizing the object in experience.[1]

Col

[1] It is strange that the philosophy of perception, from the sense datum theory to the causal theory, has not recognized the centrality of the notion of internalization, given that it is such a natural intuitive way to think of perception. Isn’t it obvious that when you see something that thing comes to be an item in your inner world—part of your Dasein? It enters your memory and imagination, forming a constituent of your world-view. Such “object relations” (to use Melanie Klein’s phrase) are the stuff of psychology. Learning itself is really a matter of internalization (empiricism says that all knowledge arises by internalization).

Concepts and Philosophical Puzzlement

Michael Dummett has suggested that philosophical puzzlement is caused by our “imperfect mastery” of our concepts (he is by no means the only person to think this way).[1] He gives the example of the concepts past and future: we understand these concepts well enough to make judgments about the past and future of an ordinary kind, but if we ask ourselves why cannot affect the past as we can affect the future we find ourselves puzzled. The reason for this, he says, echoing Wittgenstein, is that we don’t “command a clear view” of the concepts past and future. That is, we have only an “imperfect mastery” of these concepts—a partial mastery, a tenuous grasp, a limited understanding. There is something about them we fail to grasp, and this failure generates perplexity. Such a view contrasts with the idea that we have a limited understanding of the world beyond concepts: we fail to grasp important aspects of reality not our conceptual representation of it; and this is what generates philosophical perplexity. Dummett gives the example of quantum theory: here we have an effective theory for making predictions but we have no satisfactory interpretation of the theory. Some may say this is because we lack knowledge of quantum reality itself; others may say we lack an adequate grasp of the concepts of quantum theory (analytical knowledge not empirical knowledge). Dummett is proposing that philosophical perplexity arises from a deficit in our knowledge of our own concepts not from a deficit in our knowledge of what these concepts are about (sense not reference, in effect).

            This thesis raises some interesting questions. Is the thesis true of all concepts or only some? Do we have perfect mastery of some of our concepts, so that no philosophical puzzlement is occasioned by them? Which are they? Are there degrees of imperfection in our mastery of concepts—are some very imperfectly grasped while others are only mildly so? Are there concepts we possess that we have no understanding of—concepts we can’t use at all? If that is impossible, what about concepts that are almost completely opaque to us? How deep can the imperfection in our mastery go? And why should this be so—why should our concepts lack in transparency? After all, they exist in our minds and we use them in our conscious thought, so why should our grasp of them be so imperfect? Why would nature (or God: Dummett was a Catholic) design us this way? Bear in mind that concepts constitute the meaning of words, so that Dummett’s thesis applies to them too—we have imperfect mastery of the meaning of our own words. We lack knowledge of these meanings; we are ignorant of what we mean by our own words. By contrast there is no paradox in the idea that we are ignorant of the world beyond our conceiving minds—time itself in the case Dummett cites. But it is surely strange to think that our own concepts and meanings are routinely closed off from our knowledge of them. If some philosophical problems are insoluble that would imply that we can never gain access to the content of our own concepts; maybe so, but the idea requires careful consideration. It seems to imply the existence of a vast conceptual unconscious—all the stuff that we fail to know consciously when we employ concepts. Why does this unconscious exist? How inaccessible is it? How is it connected to our conscious thought? Our concepts allow us to make intelligent judgments, both practical and theoretical, but they refuse to allow us to make philosophical judgments (or judgments that command general assent). This is curious to say the least.

            I don’t say the whole idea is preposterous; indeed I think it raises interesting questions about the nature of conscious thought and the concepts it invokes. But it is not an idea to be thrown out without due consideration. No one would think a comparable thesis holds for the case of other subjects: physics, chemistry, biology, psychology, geography, etc. Here the difficulties stem not from our imperfect mastery of the relevant concepts but from our ignorance of the extra-conceptual world.[2]

[1] My source for this is a lecture on philosophy of mathematics given by Dummett many years ago (and now available on YouTube).

[2] Once you make the linguistic turn you are bound to find the difficulty of philosophy to arise from the inscrutability of language, i.e. the elusiveness of our concepts.