by Claude Morales

Created on: April 01, 2010

Is the truth single or conditional? It is a major issue in a world where he who says something is supposed to have the knowledge and therefore be able to tell the truth, the whole truth through his statements and nothing else than the truth. It is him who saw, heard everything, analyzed the situation and is now able to explain to us the case. Really?

Here is then a key to the problem: when a judge asks a person to tell "the whole truth and nothing but the truth", he admits the hypothesis through the "nothing but the truth" that this person could possibly say something else that the mere facts, hence influencing the “real” truth deliberately.

To insist on the fact that he must tell the whole truth and nothing else is an indication that truth cannot be totally pure and unique thus the introduction of a doubt. There cannot be any absolute truth where there is doubt. And when there is one about, this so-called absolute truth becomes a condiitonal truth. Absolute truth contains no conditions nor any variables.

Could the truth be unique then? Only the real witness can tell the truth, that is to say he can give through his own words a real description of what he saw, in an accurate manner in which doubt would have no space, a detailed description that could not be questioned by anyone whatsoever. In this case, the truth is one and therefore unique. There would be nothing but the truth.

But are we so certain about it ?

Examples accumulated over the years and even in recent cases show that there would be many truths reported by witnesses of the same, immediate scene (practically “live”). Thus, in the case of an accident or a car hitting a pedestrian on a crosswalk, we will have different "truths" from eye-witnesses who saw the same situation but are making different comments about it. And how about these mysterious police and criminal cases ? Witnesses will all have their own "truth" about identical, personal facts.

I think truth is one of the major virtues invented by man: through his speech man is able to describe a variety of situation, of facts, telling us that such is the truth – he said. Man has the necessary capability to describe what he has seen because of his memory but he is also Machiavellian and always prepared to sharpen, distort, mutilate, reinforce “his” truth.

But all is not so simple: in some police investigations, many a witness got back over his first legal report to “clarify” it, putting

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