by John Devera

Created on: January 01, 2009

When Pontius Pilate asked Jesus bar Joseph of Nazareth "What is truth?" he was voicing a question that he learned at the knee of his philosophy tutors. Truth is ephemeral and amorphous, for the philosopher. And it's crucial to understand what truth is, to be able to debate decisively. So what is truth, and how do we discover what is true?

Truth is reality. Quite simply, what is real is true, what is unreal is false. When I say that Keannu Reeves is a lamentable actor, that statement is real and depicts reality from my point of view. From another person's point of view, it is false. So, many statements can be true and false at the same time, depending on perception. But the definition of truth remains valid. The definition of truth, the need for the discovery of truth, is a crucial part of discovering what is reality.

Now, there are some statements which are completely true, from all perceptions. For instance, "Nothing unreal exists," is a complete truth because by definition, things that are real exist, things that are unreal do not exist. If words have meaning, then this statement is logically true. Here's another one. "Something unique cannot be duplicated." See? By definition, something unique is a singular thing. That means if you duplicate it, it stops being unique. How about this one, "If God exists, He is eternal." Now this is a conditional truth. That means that it is true if the first part is true. If the first part is not true, then the second part is also not true.

So, that's the first part of the question. What is truth? Truth is a declaration of reality. We now need to seek out the answer to our second question. How do we find the truth? Now, there are three ways of looking at this: logically, practically, and metaphysically. Logic is all about the mathematics of language, using symbols to depict reason. The practical discovery of truth has to do with leg work, physically going out and looking under leaves, so to speak. So let's look at the first way of looking for truth: logic.

LOGICAL TRUTH

Some statements are inherently true, demonstrable because of the definitions of the words. These statements we call axioms. To discover if something is an axiom, define the language, and see if there are no contradictions in the statement. For instance, if I say "Anything real exists," I can see from the definition of real and exist, that it is, by definition, true. That's an axiom.

A premise is a statement that presents evidence. For instance, "All banks are financial

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