Description

We are living in a time when the very conception of truth is under intense debate and attack. Many people claim we are now living in a post-truth world of alternate facts, a world in which there is no shared reality that everyone would see if they would only open their eyes. Instead there are competing realities, variously espoused by Democrats, Republicans, Mormons, Catholics, Evangelical Christians, Atheists, Agnostics, Muslims, Buddhists, Jews, Palestinians, Russians, Ukrainians, and so forth – all competing with each other and leading some people to bitterly oppose and even kill their opponents so their reality will prevail. How can reality not prevail? If there is a truth, why isn’t it obvious? Why do people think they have to defend it so vigorously? Because it isn’t obvious after all! Cicero asked, “If the truth would tell itself, who would hire a lawyer?” It is time for a different account of truth and reality that can give our lives and society stability and meaning in the face of these competing conceptions.

I have found a great solution in post-modern thinkers. They collectively imply that truth is a word we use to identify things of great and obvious value to us that may not be valued by other people. The word “truth” does not refer to a particular reality that has been unchanging through all of time. There are not “eternal truths” or “eternal principles,” but truth claims that have changed over time in all societies, and have been defended by proponents who out-argue, out-shout, out-last, or even kill off their opponents. If we reconceive truth in this way, we can avoid the problems of our current “truth crisis,” especially the cynicism and nihilism that are plaguing our world as a result and leading to increased conflict, polarization, and death, especially through the rise of fundamentalism worldwide.

In this paper I will give several concrete examples of how we might think of truth in this way. I will explain why this could so valuable and useful to us, especially in Mormon Studies and in the LDS Church. One of my favorite examples is the story of how Louis Pasteur convinced the world that there are invisible microbes trying to kill us. How could the world not believe in these microbes? It didn’t! Pasteur had to find a way to demonstrate their existence with his famous experiment showing sheep dying from anthrax in the French countryside while everyone watched. This story is told in Bruno Latour’s 1988 book The Pasteurization of France. Latour asks how we convince people to accept our account of reality. “I am telling you the truth” is the strongest possible claim. We need not live in a post-truth world. We do need to reconceive truth so it makes better sense to us now. We need to prevent the death that all fundamentalisms inevitably bring.

Speakers
Kary Doyle Smout