Truth, Essence, and Existence: A Philosophical View
Truth and Falsehood
1. Truth and Their Opposites: Falsehood and Lies.
By truth, we mean some kind of agreement or correspondence between what we think and what we say.
Falsehood is the lack or absence of agreement or correspondence between what we think and what we say.
A lie is consciously transmitted false information intended to deceive. Lying is a social issue, and it is done with a purpose, either good or bad.
Certainty and Doubt
2. Certainty and Doubt.
Certainty: The assurance that what I think and say is true.
Doubt: Insecurity about whether what I think and say is true.
Essence and Definition
3. Essence and Definition.
Essence refers to the note(s) or feature(s) that make a thing what it is, thus differentiating it from other things. This thing, composed of the essence, can be an individual, a species, a genus of species, etc. Sometimes it is easy to determine the essential note of something; other times, it is not. For example, a Velazquez painting has one essential feature: being painted by Velázquez.
Nature and Classification
4. Nature and Classification.
Essence is a fundamental ontological concept. It encompasses the characteristics that make something what it is, allowing us to differentiate it from others.
The universal essence is the same for all beings of the same kind. Therefore, we use it to classify things found in our experience. We distinguish things from one another by having a certain model present in our reason, according to which we classify the objects of our daily experience.
Existence of Essence
5. Existence of Essence: Plato and Ockham.
Plato, drawing from pre-Christian Jewish theory, posits that in the divine mind, there are role models according to which God made the world. This world of role models is the first creature created by God, referred to in Jewish theory as the Logos of God. The classic Christian notion on the subject is clear: God first created forms or models and then built the world according to that model. Plato asserted the real existence of ideals to which reality must conform.
However, William of Ockham denied the following:
- The existence of an essence shared by all individuals belonging to the same kind of things (i.e., natural kinds).
- The existence of ideal copies, distinct from individuals, that serve as benchmarks for their authenticity.
For Ockham, we cannot talk about truth as authenticity because each thing or person is what it is. There are no shared features among things with the same name, nor is there an ideal model to which the thing or person should aspire. All individual things are equally authentic because we cannot compare them with any ideals beyond their control.
Ockham reinforces the dignity of individuals. This reassessment of individuals in the physical world leads to the appearance of the experimental method. The primary reason Ockham denies the existence of role models is that if such models existed, God would be bound by them in the act of creation, contradicting the divine attribute Ockham considered most important: omnipotence.
Theory of Truth
6. The Adequacy Theory of Truth.
The adequacy theory of truth has its origins in Platonic Christianity. It states that truth is the correspondence between the conceived essence and the real essence. This correspondence is adaptation. We are in the truth when our ideas are consistent with the divine ideas according to which God created the world. This theory fails to hold for those who question the existence of metaphysical realities.
Meanings of “Coherence”
7. The Two Meanings of the Term “Coherence.”
Coherence refers to the absence of contradiction between the subject and predicate of a proposition, and also the absence of contradiction between two propositions. It is the opposite of inconsistency. It is coherent to say, “The Bushmen are nice” because there is no contradiction between “Bushman” and “friendly.” It is not coherent to say, “The people of Zamora are Andalusians; they are blond or black” because of the contradiction between the subject and predicate.