Topics Truth

Question If two different truths exist that call for opposite actions, can both still be true? An ongoing trade case I am writing about is being pursued by four domestic wire rod producers that claim exported wire rod from 10 countries is unfairly priced so low that it threatens their businesses. They want antidumping penalties to be imposed. Domestic wire manufacturers oppose this action as they say it will mean higher prices for them, and that they will lose business to their counterparts in other countries that have access to the lower-cost wire rod. Both have voluminous details and arguments…yet their “findings” are the exact opposite. The only belief they share is that if they do not win, the results will be horrific. If both side speak the truth, can either side's truth be considered a greater truth, one that subordinates the now lesser truth? Or, is truth a concept unto itself, meaning that it either is or isn’t, and truths cannot compete for being most truthful.

Accepted:
September 29, 2017

Comments

I'd suggest setting the word

I'd suggest setting the word "truth" aside, at least at first. You've given us a decision with two alternatives. There are reasons for and against each, and it's not clear that the reasons on either side have an edge. If, suppose, the case for imposing penalties was stronger overall, then we could say that that's what ought to happen, and we could even put this by saying it's true that penalties ought to be imposed. But saying that there are two different "truths" tends to confuse us.

Think about a less fraught case. You're trying to decide where to go on holiday and as it happens, there are two choices. If we want, we can model the decision-making process using the tools of what's called decision theory. There will be different considerations—say, expense, climate, quality of acomodations, sight-seeing possibilities... You could give each possibility a score on each dimension. You could also decide how much you care about expense, climate, etc. relative to one another. Putting all that information together, you could even come up with an overall score for each of your vacation possibilities. It's possible that the scores could end up dead even. This doesn't mean that there are two opposing "truths" about your vacation. It's just what we said: overall, the pros and cons even out.

In the case of the vacation, I'd probably flip a coin. In the case you have in mind, the law doesn't allow for coin flips, far as I know. I'd hope that the rules allow for hammering out compromise, though I'm completely naive about how such things actually work. But there's no paradox.

If I read your last question correctly, you're asking if things are simply true or false, or if there's room for incompatible claims to be true, with one being more true than the other. The standard answer in logic is that since nothing can be both true and false at the same time, incompatible things can't both be true, though one could be closer to the truth. (Simple example: you say that Al, Biff and Clancy robbed the bank. I say it was Al, Bart and Chuck. In fact, it was Al, Biff and Curley. We're both wrong overall, but you're closer to the truth than me.) This case isn't the same as your example, but laying out the differences would get tedious pretty quickly. My main suggestion is that in thinking about your question, we do well to lower the philosophical temperature. Talking about "Truths" as abstract Platonic thingees encourages us to leave more common-sense and, frankly, more nuanced description aside. We risk ending up trying to do our thinking on a level of abstraction where the air is too thin for keeping our focus.