Thoughts on truth.

I haven’t kept up with my idea of writing smaller and more regular post on here at all. I like doing it but I’m so busy with study that I never make the time.

Anyway here goes one off the top of my head whilst I’m thinking about it. It was celebrated Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa’s 100th birthday last week (or would have been if he hadn’t died in 1998). There were therefore quite a few articles circulating around about him. I knew of him due to ‘The Seven Samurai’ (which to my shame as a film fan I still haven’t seen) but I hadn’t heard of any of his other films directly. When reading an article about his work I was struck by the synopsis of a film called Rashomon. I sought it out and watched it last week.

I wasn’t entirely sure what to make of it in its entirety although many elements of it were certainly outstanding. I liked the concept of the film very much and enjoyed the story. The main issue for me was probably trying to appreciate a Japanese film from the early 1950s as if it was just being shown for the first time – which of course is impossible. Many of the innovative ideas used by Kurosawa would not seem so to me because cinema has moved on since his time – and what’s more, many of my favourite directors have been influenced by Kurosawa so it is natural to be familiar with some of his techniques. Having said that, it was clear that the cinematography and editing were exemplary and they have stood the test of time.

What is best about the film is the idea behind the story. Put simply, four eyewitnesses describe the event of a rape and murder and all of them describe events quite differently. We don’t know who is telling the truth, nor do we know if any of them are deliberately misleading us or if they are recalling events to the best of their ability. In my mind the films asks us to question the nature of truth. What is truth? Is truth absolute or is it subjective?

Certainly when it comes to eyewitness accounts then we can explain anomalies by the imperfect nature of human memory and also by the propensity of those telling a story to be influenced by their past experience and unique understanding of the world. Perhaps we all see things very differently (although we can certainly tell if someone has been killed and by whom if we are watching at the time). However, when we are speaking, the audience that we have, the pressure we are under and the situation we are in will greatly affect what we actually say – whether this is done consciously or at some subconscious level. To get a really good idea of this I suggest you watch “Capturing The Friedmans”. It is a quite brilliant documentary, and although the subject matter may be tough going it is a wonderful film which makes you think about these issues in real detail (see more here - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0342172/).

So where am I going in all this? Well, eyewitness accounts are perhaps more likely to get distorted than other kinds of ‘truths’. So the question can be posed more widely – is there such a thing as ultimate truth? For many people the basic tenets of their religion (whichever it may be) are the absolute truth. But again here we get into subjective truth again; if I speak to a devout Muslim he or she will give me one version of ‘ultimate truth’, but a devout Christian will tell me that this is false and will provide another ‘ultimate truth’. Both cannot be true, and as far as I can tell there is no independent arbiter of the veracity of these beliefs. We can extend this argument to contain hundreds of contradictory belief systems all of which are 100% ‘known’ to be true by its firm followers.

I cannot hold to any religious belief as ultimate truth - but I can take those religious teachings which inspire me and use them, I hope, to lead a better life and to draw strength from. So do I believe there is ultimate truth? Well I do think there are things that are as representative of the truth as it is possible to know as human beings. I have spoken in other blog posts about how the scientific method can help us to determine some things as true, and I hold to that strongly. Although, I would certainly not go as far as saying that science is ultimate truth. Those things I do know as true can be verified against observable evidence (or testable hypotheses). In this way we can have truth without certainty, any scientific fact has to be disprovable and thu is only 99.99999…% true. I have used this quote from Ashley Montagu previously but it sums up what I’m trying to say here:

“The scientist believes in proof without certainty, the bigot in certainty without proof”.

I want to remain as rational and logical about certain truths as possible, but please note that this doesn’t equate to being unemotional or uncreative. I try not to believe what I read in the papers, what I hear in the office, what I see on TV about the new ‘miracle health cure’, what I’m told by politicians or what is preached about in certain literature. I remain open to other people’s point of view and do not hold anybody’s beliefs against them, and I’m very happy to hear why people may disagree with me, but I am careful to evaluate the information I receive before readily adopting it into my worldview. I am training to become a scientist, but I am far from one yet so my understanding still needs much developing. I am willing to learn and to keep investigating my perception of ‘truth’ and I am sure I will continue to enjoy the journey.

I have no idea if any of this makes sense as I wrote it in one go without a planned structure. Anyway, I hope that if anybody does read this then you enjoy it. As always, I’m open to comments.

Thanks for reading – Dominic.