The True Criterion
Evidence as the true and ultimate criterion of truth; the role of self-evident first principles and the conditions of valid evidence.
The ultimate criterion of truth — the means by which truth is manifested to the mind — is objective evidence: the splendour of truth as it presents itself to the attentive intellect. Evidence is 'objective' because it belongs to the object of knowledge, not to the knowing subject: it is the intelligibility of things as they open themselves to rational inquiry. Evidence may be immediate (truth is self-evident: the first principles of reason — one's own existence, the principle of non-contradiction, the validity of thought — are known in the very act of grasping their terms) or mediate (truth is reached through demonstration resolving it into self-evident elements). Evidence is not a mechanical device but the native light of objective truth, which shines when complexities are cleared away by attention, reasoning, and analysis.
Meaning of Criterion
Criterion is a Greek word that has been taken bodily into the English language. It means a standard or means of judging anything. Hence, a criterion of truth is a standard or means of judging truth, or, more accurately, it is a means whereby truth is manifested as such.
We are all familiar with various criteria, and we use them constantly. If I receive an unsigned letter”, I may be able to discover the identity of the writer by means of the handwriting or by the style of the composition. If so, I have an internal criterion, a criterion that belongs to the very make-up of the letter itself, by which I may judge or determine the writer. Unsigned works of art have often been ascribed to their true authors by force of internal criteria, and falsifications and forgeries have been detected by the same kind of criteria. There is also another kind of criterion; it is called external because it is not part and parcel of the thing judged (like handwriting, or style, or peculiar characteristics in an artist’s work), but is something outside the thing judged, something external to it. Thus, an employer takes “references” as external criteria of the honesty and ability of the person who seeks a position. Thus, the word of one who has seen our correspondent writing us the unsigned letter, is an external criterion by which we judge the identity of the writer.
A criterion may be regarded in various ways. We may define criterion as a means which manifests truth, and in this sense, (a) Our knowing-powers, our intellect and senses, are criteria, for they manifest truth to us. They are called subjective criteria because they belong to the knowing-subject, (b) Internal and external factors and qualities of the object known are criteria, for they manifest truth to us.
These are objective criteria because they do not pertain to the knowing-subject itself, but to the object.
Again, (c) the criterion here and now used to determine or manifest truth is called the proximate criterion, the near criterion, and if this proximate criterion is known to have value by reason of a further criterion, the latter is the remote (or “farther off”) criterion of the present determination or manifestation of the truth. We may inquire (d) whether, in the chain of criteria, there is an ultimate and supreme criterion, which is the test of all truth.
This, then, is the purpose of our present inquiry: to discover whether there is an ultimate and supreme criterion of truth, and, if so, to know what it is.
Objective Evidence
The ultimate criterion of truth (and, as we shall see later, the supreme motive of certitude) is called objective evidence. The term evidence comes from the Latin e-videre, “to look out,” “to see out.” When the mind lays hold of truth, truth “looks out” at the mind; in the phrase of an advertiser, it “smiles right back at you”; it is evident. Evidence is called objective to indicate that the criterion of truth is not something that proceeds from the knowing-power, but belongs to the object of knowledge and marks that object as true for the grasp of the knowingpower.
Evidence is that light and clearness in the object which manifests it to the mind as true. Evidence has been poetically defined as “the splendor of truth manifesting itself to the mind.” Evidence is neither more nor less than objective truth, inasmuch as this causes the mind to enunciate judgments that are logically true. In a word, objective evidence is the intelligibility, the “understandability,” of things manifested to the attentive mind. It is the object itself as clearly known.
Sometimes truth is so evident that it not only requires no process of reasoning to reach it, but obtrudes itself, so to speak, upon the mind. It is like the daylight in an unshuttered room; its presence is not to be doubted. Such evidence is called immediate because no medium, no process of discovery, is necessary to find it and recognize it. Truths that are immediately evident are called self-evident. Thus the truth that the sun is shining to-day, is immediately evident; it is a self-evident truth. So also is the truth that “A totality is greater than any one of its component parts.” So also is the truth that “A thing cannot be at the same time existent and non-existent.”
So also is the truth, “I exist,” and the truth, “I can think and reason validly.”
Sometimes, however, truth is not immediately known; a medium is required for the mind to reach it, a process of reasoning, a “digging out” of evidence. In this case the evidence itself is called mediate, and the truths known by such evidence are not self-evident, but mediately evident truths. Such truths are like the daylight that one admits to a tightly shuttered room; the process of loosing and opening the shutters is required before the light shines in.
Thus it is not immediately evident (not selfevident), but mediately evident, that “The sum of the angles of any triangle is 180°.” The ultimate criterion of truth (that is, objective evidence) is, therefore, not a mechanical thing, not a device that may be applied to a doctrine to test it, as a socket or “outlet” is used to test an electric bulb.
It is the visibility of objective truth, and when this visibility is not immediately evident, it is sought for by attention, by study, by investigation, by analysis of the thing or doctrine in question into its simple elements, by the application of reason. With respect to truths taken on the authority of speakers or writers, objective evidence is found in the bases of such authority, that is, in the known truthfulness and knowledge of the speakers and writers. With regard to doctrines of the experimental order (such as the doctrine that water is composed of two parts hydrogen to one part oxygen), objective evidence is discovered by careful experiment and observation.
Often a large amount of evidence eludes the investigator, and leaves him uncertain of truth and constituted in the state of doubt or, at best, of opinion.
That there is a criterion of truth, and an ultimate criterion, is not, therefore, a guarantee that all truth is knowable to man. Nor is it a guarantee that all knowable truth may be fully grasped by means of a simple test, directly applied. It cannot be too often repeated that objective evidence is not a trick, not a charm, not a mechanical device. It is objective truth itself as manifest through attention, reflection, reasoning, experiment, observation, analysis, synthesis.
Truth itself is a lightsome thing. When it is not obscured by complexities, it stands self-revealed, selfevident to the attentive mind. When complexities obscure it, it may be possible (by reasoning, analysis, etc.) to clear these away and allow the native light of truth to shine; then it is mediately evident to the mind. But the evidence, whether immediately or mediately attained, is the light and splendor of truth itself, manifesting itself to the mind.
Error, as we have seen, and as daily experience testifies, is possible. It is possible because objective evidence may not be fully had, or may not be properly sought; because man’s mind is lazy and apt to be headlong or precipitate in judgment; because man is prone to allow likes and dislikes to influence his mind, and his will may refuse to allow the intellect to study and investigate a matter with a view to knowing the truth; because man is prone to judge on insufficient evidence; because man’s pride leads him to pronounce judgment where judgment is not justified. But in every case where truth is known, it is known because there is evidence for it, evidence that is truly objective, whether internal or external, direct or indirect. And ultimately this evidence resolves IZitself into the splendid luminosity of truth itself, shining visibly to the intellectual vision, not to be denied. “It shines right back at you.”
Summary Of The Article
In this short article we have discussed the meaning of criterion, and have distinguished criteria as internal and external, subjective and objective, proximate, remote, and ultimate. We have asserted objective evidence as the ultimate criterion of truth, and have explained the assertion. We have discussed the meaning of mediate and immediate evidence.