Theories of Truth

There appear to be two sides to the coin when determining 'what is truth?'. There is an objective school and a pragmatic school of truth. In the objective school, notions are objectively determined to be true, independent of their value to the student. This is the classical notion of truth, famously and doggedly pursued by the ideal scientist. In the subjective school, a notion is true if its acceptance maintains a higher living standard than its dismissal or questioning by the student. The pragmatic truth is maintained by refusal to question its origins and dismissal of possible alternatives if desirable. For example, scientific paradigm shifts may be somewhat resisted by scientists who have spent a lot of energy on a certain idea that is being undermined by a new, objective truth. This emotional, financial and social commitment on the scientists' behalf imparts a subjective, pragmatic property to them, hampering an objective investigation into their origins and possible alternatives. Therefore, considerable resistance can be expected for large paradigm shifts where there exists a correspondingly large gap between pragmatic and objective truth.

To students of the objective school, the subjective school can be seen as an institution built upon logical fallacies and its placement on a more rigorous footing can be seen as desirable for its followers. However, actively imposing objective alternatives to subjective truths would be harmful when their owners benefit emotionally, financially or socially from them. This leads to the following degrees of acceptance of a notion by two students of differing schools:

• When truthfulness of a notion does not provide any pragmatic benefit, an objective truth will be readily accepted by both students.
• When a notion is both pragmatically and objectively true, both students enjoy a high living standard with the objective student being more inquisitive on the origin of the truth.
• When a notion is pragmatically true but objectively false (or vice versa), differences in belief have potential to fuel ardent debate.

The fly in the ointment in the third case is often in the differing subscription to schools of truth rather than in any specific argument of the quarreling parties. This could explain the persistence of debates on matters such as religion. Thus, in analogy to economics, information can be said to have positive and negative externalities, leading to "inefficiencies" in its allocation.