Beyond Feelings - Vincent Ruggiero.original_ [9]
2 Thomas R. Blakeslee, The Right Brain (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1980).
3 John Dewey, How We Think (Lexington, Mass.: D.C. Heath, 1933), p.4.
4 Ibid., pp.88-90.
5 R. W. Gerard, "The Biological Basis of Imagination," The Scientific Monthly, June 1946, p. 477.
6 Ibid., p.478.
7 "Teacher Uses Prayer," Binghamton (New York) press, November 16, 1982, p.1.
8 "Religious Group Aims TV Boycott at NBC," The (Oneonta) Star, March 5, 1982, p.1.
9 Binghamton (New York) Press, march 27, 1989, p.1A.
10 "When 'News' Is Almost a Crime," Time, March 21, 1983, p.84.
P1-C02-7
CHAPTER THREE
WHAT IS TRUTH?
For hundreds of years philosophers battled over whether "truth" exists. The argument usually concerned "Truth" with a capital T, a kind of complete record of whatever was, is, or will be, error-proof, beyond doubt and dispute, a final test of the rightness or wrongness of people's ideas and theories.
Those who accepted the existence of this Truth believed it was a spiritual reality, not a physical one. That is, it was not a celestial ledger or file-drawer – yet it was beyond time and space. It was considered an understanding among the gods, or an idea in the mind of God, or simply the sum total of Reality. Could human beings ever come to know Truth? Some said no, never. Others said yes, but only in the afterlife. Still others said that the wisest and best of humans could catch glimpses of it and that the rest of humanity could learn about it through these special ones.
Those who rejected this notion of an awesome, all-embracing Truth argued that it was an empty notion. How could all reality be summed up that way? More important, what possible evidence could be offered in support of its existence? Many who reasoned this way dismissed the idea of Truth as wishful thinking, a kind of philosophical security blanket. A few went further and denied even the existence of truths (no capital).
Our age has inherited the whole argument. The focus, however, has changed. It seldom concerns Truth anymore, most people seem to doubt its existence. And even if it does exist, they reason, it's of little help to us in our world and our lives because it is beyond human understanding. Even many people of strong and rather conservative religious views no longer consider the question of Truth important to the understanding or practice of their faith.
Still the problem of truth (no capital) remains, and the position we take toward this question does have an important bearing on how we conduct our thinking and acting. Unfortunately, there is a good deal of murkiness and confusion about the concept. The rest of this chapter will attempt to shed light on it.
What comes through our senses exerts a powerful influence on us. It presents itself as true, and we are inclined to believe it. In addition, what we see is shaped by our individual way of seeing. We focus on what interests us. We filter out of our perception what seems unimportant to us. So each of us perceives the word around him, and the events that fill this life, in a unique way. No two people see the same event precisely alike.
Now if we were to stop our analysis here and consider only the fact of our uniqueness, we might understandably conclude that truth is relative; that is, that it varies from person to person, that one person's truth is another's error, and that there is not higher claim to validity than individual viewpoint.
THE QUALITY OF PERCEPTION
But there is more to consider. First, we can be mistaken in what we perceive. The barroom brawler may be so uncertain of his own worth that he sees everything anyone does near him as mocking him. If two students walk by him sharing a joke, completely unaware he is there, he will interpret their laughter as directed at him and start a fight with them. He will have heard them laughing and be absolutely certain they are mocking him. And yet he will be wrong!
College students are often positive that their textbook contains a certain statement. So