Thanks for this piece, Chris. I'm a fan of Blake, and I do enjoy The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. I've often wondered at how nuanced his intentions were because many of his aphorisms seem reversible. How does one tell, for instance, who is the wise man and who, the fool? There seem to be some basic psychological troubles that resonate throughout. The final line you quote--“Truth can never be told so as to be understood and not to be believed”--is nearly inscrutable owing to the double negative. What does he mean by "Truth"? Is he saying that any formulation that one communicates in a believable manner is taken for truth? Curious to know how you parse that sentence.
The ambiguity of the pieces in this pamphlet intrigued me, I found it fascinating. My take on “Truth can never be told so as to be understood and not to be believed” is that truth cannot simply be explicated. Even if you have a glimpse of the true situation, if you must convey it to someone else, they have no choice but to take your report on faith. As such, there is no way of laying out truth that it is simply a matter of understanding, there is always a question of trust and belief.
I take it here that Blake is denying what we would today call 'objective truth' (this term was not in currency when Blake was writing, and its forerunners in Kant's philosophy were being written around this time). Since to grasp truth is to see beyond your corner of existence, there is always something of a leap of faith involved in accepting that truth. Equivalently, but put another way, to accept a truth is to alter your beliefs, for it is your beliefs that constitute your world.
I might rewrite his phrasing to eliminate the negatives as 'Truth is a matter for your beliefs, rather than a rigid formulation that can be explained.' Thus one can understand an equation, or understand how to conjugate a verb in a certain language, but truth as Blake sees it is never as simple as mathematical congruence or conformity to grammar. It exceeds language, and thus is never just a matter of understanding. It is always a matter of belief.
On my before lunch 40-minute walk around my block I’ve been listening to “The Great Courses: The Big Questions of Philosophy” by David Johnson. In lecture 5 he claims that for philosophers one of the debatable definitions of knowledge is “justified true belief”. But so far, he has not defined “belief”.
People often say: “I believe ___” or “the truth is ____”. I take it that these two statements are not equivalent. Is reasonable to say that when someone says “I believe XX” that they take XX as true, but don’t feel that they have enough evidence to take XX as true? Overlooking the common situation that the phrase “I believe ___” is often used instead “I take ___ as true” when the speaker actually means the latter. Am I correct in saying that that you claim that even for “I take ___ as true” there is an element of doubt that is bridged by belief?
There is a whole school of thought in analytic philosophy that assumes exactly what you say here: that "I believe..." is equivalent to "it is a true statement that...". This flows partly out of the work of Bertrand Russell, Wittgenstein's mentor. It was exacerbated by Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, even though it seems that Wittgenstein's purposes were *against* this approach!
Incidentally, my first brush with philosophy was on my Artificial Intelligence Masters degree, where I took an optional course on philosophy. On introducing this idea about belief, I objected that "I believe things that I know are false". The lecturer replied "no you don't", and that was the end of that discussion(!)*. My later pursuit of philosophy was categorically not inspired by this fellow, with the unfortunate surname of 'Pratt'.
"Am I correct in saying that that you claim that even for 'I take ___ as true' there is an element of doubt that is bridged by belief?"
Aye, there is a slippery slope here, but in general there is no way to avoid having to invoke some acceptance of uncertainty or leap of faith in attempting to make true assertions. Much of this is simply 'dismissal of lunacy' - but of course, we let ourselves dismiss things as insane that we have simply not been able to bring our rationality to bear against, and this is part of the core problems of contemporary epistemology.
It is this that my book Wikipedia Knows Nothing, which I think you started (but I don't know if you finished) attempted to address. I fear that the propositional logic approach to truth and belief has led us up a garden path, and we need a new epistemology.
Wonderful to hear from you, Frank - I hope you have a happy Gregorian New Year!
Chris.
*For more on this topic, please see "Moore's Paradox and the Belief in False Things", which I wrote back in 2009, just a few years into my philosophy career!
Thanks for this piece, Chris. I'm a fan of Blake, and I do enjoy The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. I've often wondered at how nuanced his intentions were because many of his aphorisms seem reversible. How does one tell, for instance, who is the wise man and who, the fool? There seem to be some basic psychological troubles that resonate throughout. The final line you quote--“Truth can never be told so as to be understood and not to be believed”--is nearly inscrutable owing to the double negative. What does he mean by "Truth"? Is he saying that any formulation that one communicates in a believable manner is taken for truth? Curious to know how you parse that sentence.
Hi Asa,
The ambiguity of the pieces in this pamphlet intrigued me, I found it fascinating. My take on “Truth can never be told so as to be understood and not to be believed” is that truth cannot simply be explicated. Even if you have a glimpse of the true situation, if you must convey it to someone else, they have no choice but to take your report on faith. As such, there is no way of laying out truth that it is simply a matter of understanding, there is always a question of trust and belief.
I take it here that Blake is denying what we would today call 'objective truth' (this term was not in currency when Blake was writing, and its forerunners in Kant's philosophy were being written around this time). Since to grasp truth is to see beyond your corner of existence, there is always something of a leap of faith involved in accepting that truth. Equivalently, but put another way, to accept a truth is to alter your beliefs, for it is your beliefs that constitute your world.
I might rewrite his phrasing to eliminate the negatives as 'Truth is a matter for your beliefs, rather than a rigid formulation that can be explained.' Thus one can understand an equation, or understand how to conjugate a verb in a certain language, but truth as Blake sees it is never as simple as mathematical congruence or conformity to grammar. It exceeds language, and thus is never just a matter of understanding. It is always a matter of belief.
Many thanks for engaging!
Chris.
On my before lunch 40-minute walk around my block I’ve been listening to “The Great Courses: The Big Questions of Philosophy” by David Johnson. In lecture 5 he claims that for philosophers one of the debatable definitions of knowledge is “justified true belief”. But so far, he has not defined “belief”.
People often say: “I believe ___” or “the truth is ____”. I take it that these two statements are not equivalent. Is reasonable to say that when someone says “I believe XX” that they take XX as true, but don’t feel that they have enough evidence to take XX as true? Overlooking the common situation that the phrase “I believe ___” is often used instead “I take ___ as true” when the speaker actually means the latter. Am I correct in saying that that you claim that even for “I take ___ as true” there is an element of doubt that is bridged by belief?
Hey Frank,
There is a whole school of thought in analytic philosophy that assumes exactly what you say here: that "I believe..." is equivalent to "it is a true statement that...". This flows partly out of the work of Bertrand Russell, Wittgenstein's mentor. It was exacerbated by Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, even though it seems that Wittgenstein's purposes were *against* this approach!
Incidentally, my first brush with philosophy was on my Artificial Intelligence Masters degree, where I took an optional course on philosophy. On introducing this idea about belief, I objected that "I believe things that I know are false". The lecturer replied "no you don't", and that was the end of that discussion(!)*. My later pursuit of philosophy was categorically not inspired by this fellow, with the unfortunate surname of 'Pratt'.
"Am I correct in saying that that you claim that even for 'I take ___ as true' there is an element of doubt that is bridged by belief?"
Aye, there is a slippery slope here, but in general there is no way to avoid having to invoke some acceptance of uncertainty or leap of faith in attempting to make true assertions. Much of this is simply 'dismissal of lunacy' - but of course, we let ourselves dismiss things as insane that we have simply not been able to bring our rationality to bear against, and this is part of the core problems of contemporary epistemology.
It is this that my book Wikipedia Knows Nothing, which I think you started (but I don't know if you finished) attempted to address. I fear that the propositional logic approach to truth and belief has led us up a garden path, and we need a new epistemology.
Wonderful to hear from you, Frank - I hope you have a happy Gregorian New Year!
Chris.
*For more on this topic, please see "Moore's Paradox and the Belief in False Things", which I wrote back in 2009, just a few years into my philosophy career!
https://onlyagame.typepad.com/only_a_game/2009/12/moores-paradox-and-the-belief-in-false-things.html