Truth and realty: how do they relate to each other? Truth is often viewed as something that changes from one person to the next or from one situation to another situation.
Reality on the other hand is fixed. Take the moon for an example. The moon’s reality is fixed and cannot be changed from one person to another or from one situation to another. The moon exists outside of human control and perception. We cannot change the moon into something else. If someone says the moon does not exist or that the moon is a tree, such a person is deemed to have a serious mental disorder and cannot be taken seriously by anyone.
My grandmother witnessed man landing on the moon, and she felt it was somehow changed by human presence on its surface. While we can leave footprints on the moon’s surface, we have not actually changed it into something else. The moon exists, and the person who says that the moon exists is speaking the truth. Likewise, someone who says something contrary to the moon’s reality is either lying or suffering from a serious mental abnormality. Either way, such a person cannot be trusted or taken seriously by anyone other than those similarly disconnected from reality.
I will define truth by its connectedness to reality, not to varying situations or to differing people. While it is obvious that truth is absolute, it is also obvious that most people do not take it as such. So we hear someone say something like, “Look up! That spherical object in the night sky is the moon.” And then someone responds, “No, that’s only your interpretation! According to my way of looking at things, that is not the moon; it is a tree.”
No. We shall not entertain that sort of nonsense here. The moon is, in truth and in reality, the moon. A tree is in truth and reality a tree. Reality is what it is. Circumstances, situations, personal preferences; none of these sorts of ideas have any bearing on what reality is. The person who believes his or her personal preference is that the moon in a tree or even a figment of human imagination, is a person not worth listening to or taking seriously (except that he or she is seriously suffering from an acute mental illness and referred to a mental institution that deals with such people).
Truth is a statement that corresponds to reality. This does not change when the reality we are talking about is not a physical object.
God, for example, is not a physical object. Yet He is real. He is not the product of anyone’s imagination. Human beings, on the other hand, are physical objects. But humans are not only physical objects. There is a dimension to our existence that is not physical. Some call it the mind; other the soul; still others the spirit. Humans have a non-material aspect of their reality. We not not truthfully reduced to flesh and bone. We are aware of our own existence. We can imagine. We can think. We can be happy or forlorn. We can make plans. We can remember the past. We can consider the future. We can feel a variety of emotions in the present. None of these aspects of human personhood is strictly material or physical. One might well argue that it is our non-physical differences that make us persons and not merely objects.