Inadequate Criteria
Critique of inadequate proposed criteria of truth: common consent, utility, feeling, and the authority of the individual.
Several proposed criteria of truth are examined and found insufficient as ultimate criteria. Instinct (the Scottish Common Sense School): a blind natural compulsion to accept things as true — gives no rational ground for assent. Sensibility (Jacobi): a fine feeling for truth — equally unable to manifest truth as such. Utility (Pragmatism — William James): truth is what works — but 'works for what?' requires a prior independent standard. Authority (Huet's Fideism, De Bonald's Traditionalism, De Lamennais's universal consent): real but not ultimate — authority must itself be grounded in the knowledge and truthfulness of the authority, and that grounding presupposes direct evidence. Clear and distinct perception (Descartes): a subjective criterion that cannot distinguish genuine clarity from the illusion of it without presupposing exactly what it claims to provide.
Self-awareness
Instinct
Thomas Reid (1710-1796) and his followers, who are known in the History of Philosophy as “The Scottish School of Common Sense,” taught that the ultimate criterion of truth is a blind instinct by which the mind is impelled to accept things as true. This instinct is called the “faculty of inspiration and suggestion,” or, more briefly, “common sense.” According to this theory there is in us a tendency or urge of nature by which we are forced, through the very constitution of our mind, to assent to some things as true. The theory is altogether inadequate and untenable. A criterion manifests truth; a blind instinct manifests nothing. Given such an instinct, man would still ask why it should force his assent to certain things as true. Hence this instinct-theory is neither a criterion, nor is it an ultimate explanation of our knowledge of truth.
Sensibility
Some philosophers have offered as the ultimate criterion of truth a fine feeling ,of sensibility, a disposition to react delicately and surely to truth, without being able to justify our conviction intellectually.
Such was the doctrine of Jacobi (1743-1819). Like the theory of “common sense,” this theory of sensibility offers us as a criterion something which has no power to manifest, but only to sway or compel.
The reasoning mind still asks why it should be inclined or compelled to accept a thing as true. The mind still looks for a criterion which will manifest the truth, will show it shining in its visibility, will evidence the truth. Sensibility for truth can be neither a criterion nor an ultimate explanation of our knowledge of truth.
Utility
William James (1842-1910) was the foremos* exponent of the theory called Pragmatism, which maintains that the workableness, the practicability, the usefulness of a thing for private or public life, is its test of truth, and is the ultimate criterion of truth.
That which works is true; that works which is found useful. The doctrine offers us no ultimate criterion.
Even if utility be recognized as a criterion of truth, there is still to seek the reason for utility itself. Why is this true thing useful? What end or aim or purpose does it serve? The Pragmatist answers, “It serves human life; it offers an enlargement of human life.” The obvious reply takes the form of a further question, “What is meant by an enlargement of human life? Unless I know what human life is for, how can I know what serves its ends? I still need evidence of the meaning and purpose of human life.”
Hence, utility is not a valid, nor an ultimate, criterion of truth.
Authority
Authority may indeed manifest truth to us, and, in so far, it is a criterion of truth. But it cannot be the ultimate criterion of truth. For authority is based upon something else, and we must know its bases before we can know its value as a source of truth. We must know that the authority (speaker or writer) is a truth-teller; that he is understood rightly; that he can have no motive to deceive; that he is well informed in the matter about which he bears testimony.
Knowledge of these things gives us evidence of the truth which is manifested by authority; thus evidence, and not authority, is the ultimate criterion.
Daniel Huet (1630-1721) taught that Divine Revelation, that is, the authority of God speaking, is the ultimate criterion of all truth. Since the acceptance of authority is faith (Latin, fides), this doctrine is called Fideism.
De Lamennais (1782-1854) taught that the mind of individual man is powerless to attain truth; the “general mind,” the consensus of all humanity, is the means and criterion of truth. Thus the authority of the human race is made the ultimate criterion of truth.
De Ronald (1754-1840) held that God instructed our first parents and gave them speech wherewith to impart truth to their progeny, and so truth has come down through the ages by the authority of human tradition, which is the ultimate criterion of truth.
This doctrine is’known as Traditionalism.
Self-awareness
Some philosophers have fallen back upon a subjective criterion as the ultimate criterion of truth, and they assert that the mind itself together with its clear and distinct knowledge is such a criterion.
Protagoras (5th century b. c.) made man “the measure of all,” and so he made the mind and the senses the ultimate test of truth. He also made truth rela~ true, for he taught that what one individual holds as true, is true for him, and what others hold as true, is true, respectively, for each of them. With this ancient skeptical doctrine that of Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) has a close affinity. For Kant does not make knowledge consist in the conformity of the mind to reality, but in the filtering of reality into the mind through innate mental forms which qualify and shape it. Thus the mind’s forms become the ultimate criterion of truth. Galuppi (1770-1846) makes our consciousness, our mental awareness of truth, its ultimate criterion.
None of these subjective criteria is acceptable as the ultimate criterion of truth. Even if we could accept any or all of them as criteria, we should still be thrown back upon the necessity of finding reasons for our acceptance; none of the criteria would be ultimate. Only the visibility of objective truth manifesting itself to the mind (that is, objective evidence alone) can satisfy the mind and leave no further question; only this can be accepted as the ultimate criterion of truth.
Summary Of The Article
In this article we have made a brief study of several fallacious theories about the ultimate criterion of truth. We have found inadequate the doctrines that present as such a criterion a blind instinct, a sensibility for truth, usefulness, authority, or awareness of mind and its clear ideas. We rejected these faulty theories by reason of their own inadequacy, and in the light of our earlier study of objective evidence as the ultimate criterion of truth.