What is Truth?
What is Truth?
Sunday, 12 April 2009
Question: What is Truth?
Answer: Not what it used to be, so it seems.
It seems appropriate to ask Pontius Pilate’s famous question at any time of the year, but it is especially poignant when I am travelling at Easter to do staff recruitment interviews. When Pilate asked the question, it was unclear whether he was genuinely searching for the answer, or suggesting that there was no answer, or simply asking a rhetorical question - or maybe even trying to appear profound and philosophical in a deeply uncomfortable situation. For Christians, the paradox is that he was looking into the eyes of the Truth as he asked the question.
In my Theory of Knowledge classes, my students learn (I hope) that there are three main types of truth - correspondence truth, coherence truth and pragmatic truth. However, a article in MIT’s “Technology Review” suggests that there may be a fourth type of truth - Wikipedia truth.
The article makes fascinating and challenging reading. It asks the question ‘on which epistemology is Wikipedia’s ‘truth’ based?’ It is an important question, given the widespread use of Wikipedia among students today.
Wikipedia is not based on principles such as consistency or observability, nor on first-hand experiences, nor even objective truth. Under Wikipedia’s code, the criterion for inclusion is that the information has appeared in another publication. According to Wikipedia’s official policy, “The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth”.
This is one of Wikipedia’s three core policies, the others being ‘no original research’ and ‘neutral point of view’.
Rather than trying to do justice to the article, I recommend that you read it for yourself - it can be found at http://www.technologyreview.com/printer_friendly_article.aspx?id=21558&channel=web§ion= , or if that doesn’t work, download a pdf copy HERE.
My staff recruiting interviews this week took me to several places including northern Canada. This was my view walking to catch one flight. The plane, an HS-748, was 38 years old - it was made when I was still in high school. For a bonus image showing how I had to travel on one sector this week in a snow storm, click HERE