Semester 2 Project: Literature Review

What is Truth?

Emily Eidler

April 8th,2015
Mr. Lindow
British Literature

Many twentieth century philosophers grappled with the question: What is Truth?
The 1900s became a time when people people questioned what was true and what was
meant by the nature of truth. They struggled to realize how truth tied into their own lives.
As philosophers began to dive deeper into the nature of truth, the idea of truth began to

change. Gilbert Harman, Karl Popper, and C.S. Lewis are just a few of the philosophers
who decided to dig into the nature of truth. These men wrote their beliefs on truth and
whereas the differ from each other, they all have good points that can accounts to ones
personal belief of truth.
Gilbert Harman is one epistemologist who decided to figure out what truth meant
to him. Gilbert Harman is an American philosopher who began teaching at Princeton
University in 1963. He has published many works that fall into categories including
cognitive science, philosophy of language, ethics, philosophy of mind, moral
psychology, statistical learning theory, metaphysics and epistemology. He has been
credited with many prestigious awards and will continue to win many more. He has had
many well known accomplished students and his daughter, Elizabeth, has continued in
his footsteps by becoming a philosopher herself.
Harmans views on epistemology started in one of his early discussions of
inference to the best explanation and explained later that all reasoning should be
envisioned as rational change in view that would in result balance traditionalism and
integrity. One of Harmans works, Thought and Change in View, he argued that feelings
about knowledge are useful in thinking about inference. Harman has recently noted that
knowledge can rest on beliefs that are not themselves known. On the terms of
epistemology, Harman argues that the only knowledge we have of truth is what we are
taught growing up.
Another epistemologist is Karl Popper. Karl Popper was an Austrian-British
philosopher and professor and is generally regarded as one of the greatest
philosophers of science of the twentieth century. Popper had his fair share of jobs

ranging from street construction to becoming a lecturer. He lectured at universities in

New Zealand before being appoint professor of logic and scientific method at the
University of London in 1949. Popper received many outstanding honours and awards
in his field such as the Sonning Prize along with many more. In 1965, he was knighted
by Queen Elizabeth II and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1976. Along with
the multiple awards and recognizations he received in his lifetime, Popper is known for
symbolising the open spirit of the twentieth century and for his enormous contribution
to the field of philosophy.
Popper was very passionate about the nature of truth and described it as one of
the strongest motives for scientific discovery. In his 1972 work, Objective Knowledge,
he voiced his concerns about the notion of truth as correspondence which is the theory
that truth is determined by how it related to only the world and whether it can accurately
describe the world. Along with the correspondence theory of truth came the semantic
theory of truth which is the theory which holds that truth is a property of sentences. To
Popper, this theory seemed to support and regulate the idea of a search for truth.
According to the semantic theory of truth, for the entire sentence to be truth, all
the parts of the sentences need to be part of a metalanguage. For example, the
sentence Grass is green is true if and only if the grass is green. Many philosophers
believe this theory is one of deflation but Popper believes that the is true can be
replaced with corresponds to the facts. He bases this belief on two things; assertion
and the facts to which the sentences refer to. Popper went further with this theory and
turned it into verisimilitude or truthlikeness. The idea behind it is that scientific
hypotheses can now be measured based off of the amount of truth and falsity that they

possess. Although this method was not completely successful in the end, it inspired an
abundance of new attempts in the field.
Another person who took a stand on truth was C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis, whereas
not an epistemologist like the prior two men, was most widely known as a novelist.
Lewis began his academic career at Oxford University where he won many awards and
honours. C.S. Lewis was a brilliant novelist and wrote many works. He is best known for
his fictional work, especially The Space Trilogy, The Screwtape Letters, and The
Chronicles of Narnia. Lewiss worldwide works have been translated into multiple
languages and some have even been put up on the big screen and made into motion
picture films for the world to enjoy. C.S. Lewis was a well accomplished man.
C.S. Lewis was very devoted to the pursuit of truth. His knowledge of truth led to
his foundation of humility and openness to the world. Lewis made many statements
about truth and how his human imperfection led him on his pursuit of truth:
"I am not concerned at present with blame; I am trying to find out the truth.
And from that point of view the very idea of something being imperfect, of its not
being what it ought to be, has certain consequences." --C.S. Lewis
C.S. Lewis states that truth is just a characteristic of matching up meaning that
when an object of our belief is matched with an object in another case it is seen as truth.
He sees this mainly in children as they are growing up. They base their truths and
falsities on what they are taught about and what beliefs they start to develop over the
years. They find cases of truth and falsity and learn very quickly which is which. Once
these cases are set, then they can be compared to and the nature of truth will start to
become more evident. Some objects can be directly compared to a certain case but

others cannot because they share no similarities. C.S. Lewis finds this method as a
basis to figuring out truth. Lewis always makes sure that his point gets across that truth
is a real life thing and that the confusion about it isnt bad but good because it allows
more depth to come from the nature of truth.
These three philosophers, Gilbert Harman, Karl Popper and C.S. Lewis all have
different beliefs on truth but not all are wrong or necessarily right. Some viewpoints of
the nature of truth are taken from a scientific background and some are taken from a
religious background. No matter the background, truth can have many different
meanings depending on the person. The nature of truth is based off of individual
knowledge from what children are taught at a very young age and they have the
knowledge until something comes along and changes it. The nature of truth has many
different outlets which philosophers are continuously diving deeper and deeper into
every day.

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