Truth as faithfulness

pp. 241-248

in: Richard J. Campbell, The concept of truth, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011

Abstract

An issue still remains to be resolved. I have allowed that in formulating a statement about some matter one has to interpret the relevant phenomena and it is possible that no one interpretation is the "correct" one, with all others simply false. I have also maintained that realities are always appraised from some perspective, and that cultural differences often influence how phenomena are interpreted. We have seen how accepting those points, and at the same time restricting truth to the correctness of statements, generates a logical problem, to which selective relativism offers only a pseudosolution. If at least some phenomena lend themselves to being interpreted in more than one way, how could alternative descriptions of the one phenomenon each be true? Although I have argued that people are able to transcend the forms of thought inherited from their own cultures, and can shift their perspectives so that some degree of understanding is achieved, that is not sufficient to dispose of this issue.