Absolute and Relative Truth

There are different forms of truth. They are subdivided according to the nature of the reflected (cognizable) object, according to the types of objective reality, according to the degree of completeness of mastering the object, etc. Let us first turn to the nature of the reflected object. The whole reality surrounding a person, in the first approximation, turns out to be consisting of matter and spirit, forming a single system. Both the first and second spheres of reality become the object of human reflection and information about them is embodied in truths.

The flow of information coming from the material systems of micro-, macro- and mega-worlds forms what can be designated as objective truth (it is then differentiated into subject-physical, subject-biological and other types of truth). The concept of "spirit", correlated from the perspective of the main issue of the worldview with the concept of "nature" or "world", in turn breaks down into existential reality and cognitive reality (in the sense: rationalistic-cognitive).

Existential reality includes the spiritual and vital values ​​of people, such as the ideals of goodness, justice, beauty, feelings of love, friendship, etc., as well as the spiritual world of individuals. The question of whether my idea of ​​goodness (how it developed in such and such a community), my understanding of the spiritual world of such and such a person is true or not is quite natural. If on this path we achieve a true idea, then we can assume that we are dealing with existential truth. The object of development by an individual can also be certain concepts, including religious and natural sciences. One can raise the question of the conformity of an individual's beliefs to one or another set of religious dogmas, or, for example, of the correctness of our understanding of the theory of relativity or the modern synthetic theory of evolution; both there and here the concept of "truth" is used, which leads to the recognition of the existence of conceptual truth. The situation is similar with the ideas of one or another subject about methods, means of cognition, for example, with ideas about a systematic approach, about a modeling method, etc.

Before us is another form of truth - operational. In addition to the selected ones, there may be forms of truth due to the specifics of the types of human cognitive activity. On this basis, there are forms of truth: scientific, everyday (everyday), moral, etc. Let us give the following example, illustrating the difference between ordinary truth and scientific truth. The sentence "Snow is white" can qualify as true. This truth belongs to the realm of ordinary knowledge. Turning to scientific knowledge, we first of all clarify this proposal. The scientific correlate of the truth of ordinary knowledge "Snow is white" will be the sentence "The whiteness of snow is the effect of incoherent light reflected by snow on visual receptors." This proposal is no longer a simple statement of observations, but a consequence of scientific theories - the physical theory of light and the biophysical theory of visual perception. Ordinary truth contains a statement of phenomena and correlations between them. The criteria of scientificity are applicable to scientific truth. All signs (or criteria) of scientific truth are interconnected. Only in a system, in their unity, are they able to reveal scientific truth, to delimit it from the truth of everyday knowledge or from the "truths" of religious or authoritarian knowledge. Practically everyday knowledge is substantiated from everyday experience, from some inductively established recipe rules that do not necessarily have evidentiary force, do not have strict coercion.

The discursiveness of scientific knowledge is based on a forced sequence of concepts and judgments, given by the logical structure of knowledge (causal structure), forms a feeling of subjective conviction in the possession of truth. Therefore, acts of scientific knowledge are accompanied by the confidence of the subject in the reliability of its content. That is why knowledge is understood as a form of subjective right to truth. Under the conditions of science, this right turns into the obligation of the subject to recognize logically substantiated, discursively demonstrative, organized, "systematically connected" truth. Within science, there are modifications of scientific truth (according to the areas of scientific knowledge: mathematics, physics, biology, etc.). Truth as an epistemological category should be distinguished from logical truth (sometimes qualified as logical correctness).

Logical truth (in formal logic) is the truth of a sentence (judgment, statement), due to its formal logical structure and the laws of logic adopted during its consideration (in contrast to the so-called factual truth, the establishment of which also requires an analysis of the content of the sentence). objective truth in criminal proceedings, in historical science, in other humanities and social sciences.Considering, for example, historical truth, A. I. Rakitov came to the conclusion that in historical knowledge "a completely peculiar cognitive situation arises: historical truths are a reflection of the real, past socially significant activities of people, i.e. historical practice, but they themselves are not included, are not verified and are not modified in the system of practical activity of the researcher (historian)" (the above provision should not be regarded as violating the idea of ​​the criterial signs of scientific truth.

In this context, the term "verifiability" is used in the sense strictly designated by the author; but "verifiability" also includes an appeal to observation, the possibility of repeated observation, which always takes place in historical knowledge). In humanitarian knowledge, the depth of understanding, which is correlated not only with reason, but also with an emotional, value attitude person to the world. This bipolarity of truth is most clearly expressed in art, in the concept of "artistic truth." As V. I. Svintsov notes, it is more correct to consider artistic truth as one of the forms of truth that is constantly used (along with other forms) in cognition and intellectual communication. An analysis of a number of works of art shows that there is a "truth basis" of artistic truth in these works. "It is quite possible that it is, as it were, moved from the surface to the deeper layers. Although it is not always easy to establish a connection between "depth" and "surface", it is clear that it must exist ...

In reality, the truth (falsehood) in works containing such constructions can be "hidden" in the plot-plot layer, the layer of characters, and finally in the layer of coded ideas.

The artist is able to discover and demonstrate the truth in an artistic form. An important place in the theory of knowledge is occupied by the forms of truth: relative and absolute. The question of the relationship between absolute and relative truth could fully become a worldview issue only at a certain stage in the development of human culture, when it was discovered that people are dealing with cognitively inexhaustible, complexly organized objects, when the inconsistency of the claims of any theories for the final (absolute) comprehension of these objects was revealed.

Absolute truth is currently understood as such kind of knowledge that is identical to its subject and therefore cannot be refuted with the further development of knowledge.

There is such a truth:

• a) the result of the knowledge of certain aspects of the objects under study (statement of facts);
• b) final knowledge of certain aspects of reality;
• c) the content of relative truth, which is preserved in the process of further cognition;
• d) complete, actually never completely unattainable knowledge about the world and (we will add) about complexly organized systems.

Apparently, until the end of the XIX - beginning of the XX century. in natural science, and in philosophy, the idea of ​​truth as absolute in the meanings indicated by points a, b and c dominated. When something is stated that exists or actually existed (for example, in 1688 red blood cells-erythrocytes were discovered, and in 1690 the polarization of light was observed), not only the years of discoveries of these structures or phenomena are "absolute", but also assertions that these phenomena actually occur. Such a statement fits the general definition of the concept of "absolute truth". And here we do not find "relative" truth that differs from "absolute" (except when changing the reference system and reflection on the theories themselves that explain these phenomena; but this requires a certain change in the scientific theories themselves and the transition of some theories to others). When a strict philosophical definition is given to the concepts of "movement", "jump", etc., such knowledge can also be considered absolute truth in the sense that coincides with relative truth (and in this respect, the use of the concept "relative truth" is not necessary, as it becomes superfluous and the problem of correlation between absolute and relative truths). Such absolute truth is not opposed by any relative truth, unless we turn to the formation of the corresponding ideas in the history of natural science and in the history of philosophy. There will be no problem of correlation between absolute and relative truths even when dealing with sensations or in general non-verbal forms of human reflection of reality. But when this problem is removed in our time for the same reasons that it did not exist in the 17th or 18th centuries, then this is already an anachronism. As applied to sufficiently developed scientific theoretical knowledge, absolute truth is complete, exhaustive knowledge about an object (a complexly organized material system or the world as a whole); relative truth is incomplete knowledge about the same subject.

An example of this kind of relative truths is the theory of classical mechanics and the theory of relativity. Classical mechanics as an isomorphic reflection of a certain sphere of reality, notes D.P. Gorsky, was considered a true theory without any restrictions, i.e. true in some absolute sense, since it was used to describe and predict real processes of mechanical motion. With the advent of the theory of relativity, it was found that it could no longer be considered true without limitations. The isomorphism of the theory as an image of mechanical motion ceased to be complete over time; in the subject area, relationships were revealed between the corresponding characteristics of mechanical motion (at high speeds), which were not fulfilled in classical mechanics. Classical (with restrictions introduced into it) and relativistic mechanics, already considered as corresponding isomorphic mappings, are interconnected as less complete truth and more complete truth. Absolute isomorphism between a mental representation and a certain sphere of reality, as it exists independently of us, emphasizes D. P. Gorsky, is unattainable at any level of knowledge.

Such an idea of ​​absolute, and even of relative truth, connected with entering the process of development of scientific knowledge, the development of scientific theories, leads us to the true dialectic of absolute and relative truth. Absolute truth (in aspect d) is made up of relative truths. If we recognize absolute truth in the diagram as an infinite area to the right of the "zx" vertical and above the "zу" horizontal, then steps 1, 2, 3 ... will be relative truths. At the same time, these same relative truths turn out to be parts of absolute truth, and therefore, simultaneously (and in the same respect) absolute truths. It is no longer absolute truth (d), but absolute truth (c). Relative truth is absolute in its third aspect, and not just leading to absolute truth as an exhaustive knowledge of the object, but as an integral part of it, invariant in its content as part of an ideally complete absolute truth. Each relative truth is at the same time absolute (in the sense that it contains a part of the absolute - r). The unity of absolute truth (in the third and fourth aspects) and relative truth is determined by their content; they are united because both absolute and relative truths are objective truths.

When we consider the movement of the atomistic concept from antiquity to the 17th-18th centuries, and then to the beginning of the 20th century, in this process, behind all the deviations, there is a core line associated with the growth, multiplication of objective truth in the sense of an increase in the volume of information of a true nature. (True, one has to note that the above diagram, which quite clearly shows the formation of absolute truth from relative ones, needs some corrections: relative truth 2 does not exclude relative truth, as in the diagram, but absorbs it into itself, transforming it in a certain way) . So what was true in the atomistic conception of Democritus is also included in the truth content of the modern atomistic conception.

Does relative truth contain any moments of error? There is a point of view in the philosophical literature according to which relative truth consists of objective truth plus error. We have already seen above, when we began to consider the question of objective truth and gave an example with the atomistic concept of Democritus, that the problem of evaluating a particular theory in terms of "truth - error" is not so simple. It must be admitted that any truth, even if it is relative, is always objective in its content; and being objective, relative truth is non-historical (in the sense we have touched upon) and non-class. If delusion is included in the composition of relative truth, then this will be the fly in the ointment that will spoil the whole barrel of honey. As a result, truth ceases to be truth. Relative truth excludes any moments of error or falsehood. Truth at all times remains truth, adequately reflecting real phenomena; relative truth is objective truth, excluding error and falsehood.

The historical development of scientific theories aimed at reproducing the essence of one and the same object is subject to the correspondence principle (this principle was formulated by the physicist N. Bohr in 1913). According to the correspondence principle, the replacement of one natural science theory with another reveals not only a difference, but also a connection, a continuity between them, which can be expressed with mathematical precision.

The new theory, coming to replace the old one, not only denies the latter, but retains it in a certain form. Thanks to this, a reverse transition from the subsequent theory to the previous one is possible, their coincidence in a certain limiting region, where the differences between them turn out to be insignificant. For example, the laws of quantum mechanics transform into the laws of classical mechanics under conditions when the magnitude of the quantum of action can be neglected. (In the literature, the normative and descriptive nature of this principle is expressed in the requirement that each subsequent theory does not logically contradict the previously accepted and justified in practice; the new theory should include the former one as a limiting case, i.e. the laws and formulas of the former theory in certain extreme conditions should automatically follow from the formula of the new theory). So, the truth is objective in content, but in form it is relative (relative-absolute). The objectivity of truth is the basis of the continuity of truths. Truth is a process. The property of objective truth to be a process manifests itself in two ways: firstly, as a process of change in the direction of an increasingly complete reflection of the object and, secondly, as a process of overcoming delusion in the structure of concepts and theories. The movement from a less complete truth to a more complete one (ie the process of its development), like any movement, development, has moments of stability and moments of variability. In unity controlled by objectivity, they ensure the growth of the truth content of knowledge. When this unity is violated, the growth of truth slows down or stops altogether. With the hypertrophy of the moment of stability (absoluteness), dogmatism, fetishism, and a cult attitude towards authority are formed. Such a situation existed, for example, in our philosophy in the period from the late 1920s to the mid-1950s. The absolutization of the relativity of knowledge in the sense of replacing some concepts by others can give rise to wasted skepticism and, in the end, agnosticism. Relativism can be a worldview setting. Relativism causes that mood of confusion and pessimism in the field of cognition, which we saw above in H.A. Lorentz and which, of course, had an inhibitory effect on the development of his scientific research. Gnoseological relativism is outwardly opposed to dogmatism. However, they are united in the gap between the stable and changeable, as well as the absolutely relative in truth; they complement each other. Dialectics opposes to dogmatism and relativism such an interpretation of truth, in which absoluteness and relativity, stability and variability are linked together. The development of scientific knowledge is its enrichment, concretization. Science is characterized by a systematic increase in the truth potential.

Consideration of the question of the forms of truth leads closely to the question of the various conceptions of truth, their relationship with each other, and also attempts to find out whether certain forms of truth are hidden behind them? If such are found, then, apparently, the former straightforwardly critical approach to them (as to "unscientific") should be discarded. These concepts must be recognized as specific strategies for the investigation of truth; try to synthesize them.

In recent years, this idea has been clearly formulated by L. A. Mikeshina. Keeping in mind different concepts, she notes that these concepts should be considered in interaction, since they are complementary in nature, in fact, not denying each other, but expressing the epistemological, semantic, epistemological and sociocultural aspects of true knowledge. And although, in her opinion, each of them is worthy of constructive criticism, this does not mean ignoring the positive results of these theories. L. A. Mikeshina believes that knowledge should correlate with other knowledge, since it is systemic and interconnected, and in the system of propositions sentences of object and metalanguage (according to Tarsky) can be correlated.

The pragmatic approach, in turn, if it is not simplified and vulgarized, fixes the role of social significance, recognized by society, the communicativeness of truth. These approaches, as long as they do not claim to be unique and universal, represent in the aggregate, emphasizes L. A. Mikeshina, a fairly rich toolkit for epistemological and logical-methodological analysis of the truth of knowledge as a system of statements. Accordingly, each of the approaches offers its own criteria of truth, which, for all their unequal value, should, apparently, be considered in unity and interaction, that is, in a combination of empirical, subject-practical and non-empirical (logical, methodological, sociocultural, and other criteria )

Absolute Truth and Absolute in Truth

Speaking about the relative nature of truth, one should not forget that what is meant is truth in the sphere of scientific knowledge, but by no means knowledge of absolutely reliable facts, such as the fact that today Russia is not a monarchy. It is the presence of absolutely reliable and therefore absolutely true facts that is extremely important in the practical activities of people, especially in those areas of activity that are associated with the decision of human destinies. So, the judge has no right to argue: "The defendant either committed a crime or not, but just in case, let's punish him." The court does not have the right to punish a person if there is no complete certainty that there is a corpus delicti. If a court finds a person guilty of a crime, then nothing remains in the verdict that could contradict the reliable truth of this empirical fact. A doctor, before operating on a patient or applying a potent drug, must base his decision on absolutely reliable data about a person’s disease. Absolute truths include reliably established facts, dates of events, births and deaths, and so on.

Absolute truths, once expressed with complete clarity and certainty, no longer meet with demonstrative expressions, as, for example, the sum of the angles of a triangle is equal to the sum of two right angles, and so on. They remain true regardless of who and when claims it. In other words, absolute truth is the identity of the concept and the object in thinking - in the sense of completeness, coverage, coincidence and essence and all forms of its manifestation. Such, for example, are the provisions of science: "Nothing in the world is created from nothing, and nothing disappears without a trace"; "The earth revolves around the sun", etc. Absolute truth is such a content of knowledge that is not refuted by the subsequent development of science, but is enriched and constantly confirmed by life. By absolute truth in science they mean exhaustive, ultimate knowledge about an object, as it were, the achievement of those boundaries beyond which there is nothing more to know. The process of development of science can be represented as a series of successive approximations to absolute truth, each of which is more accurate than the previous ones. The term "absolute" is also applied to any relative truth: since it is objective, it contains something absolute as a moment. And in this sense it can be said that any truth is absolutely relative. In the total knowledge of mankind, the proportion of the absolute is constantly increasing. The development of any truth is the building up of moments of the absolute. For example, each subsequent scientific theory is, in comparison with the previous one, more complete and deeper knowledge. But new scientific truths do not at all throw their predecessors "down the slope of history", but supplement, concretize or include them as moments of more general and deeper truths.

So, science has not only absolute truths, but to an even greater extent - relative truths, although the absolute is always partially realized in our actual knowledge. It is unreasonable to be carried away by the assertion of absolute truths. It is necessary to remember about the immensity of the still unknown, about the relativity and once again the relativity of our knowledge.

Concreteness of Truth and Dogmatism

The concreteness of truth - one of the basic principles of the dialectical approach to cognition - presupposes an accurate accounting of all conditions (in social cognition - concrete historical conditions) in which the object of cognition is located. Concreteness is a property of truth based on knowledge of real connections, the interaction of all aspects of an object, the main, essential properties, and trends in its development. Thus, the truth or falsity of certain judgments cannot be established if the conditions of the place, time, etc., in which they are formulated, are not known. A judgment that correctly reflects an object under given conditions becomes false in relation to the same object in other circumstances. A true reflection of one of the moments of reality can become its opposite - a delusion, if certain conditions, place, time and the role of the reflected in the whole are not taken into account. For example, a separate organ cannot be comprehended outside the whole organism, a person - outside of society (moreover, a historically specific society and in the context of special, individual circumstances of his life). The statement "water boils at 100 degrees Celsius" is true only if we are talking about ordinary water and normal pressure. This proposition will lose its truth if the pressure is changed.

Each object, along with common features, is endowed with individual features, has its own unique "context of life". Because of this, along with a generalized approach, a specific approach to the object is also necessary: there is no abstract truth, truth is always concrete. Are the principles of classical mechanics true, for example? Yes, they are true in relation to macrobodies and relatively low speeds of motion. Beyond these limits they cease to be true. The principle of the concreteness of truth requires approaching facts not with general formulas and schemes, but taking into account the specific situation, real conditions, which is in no way compatible with dogmatism. The concrete-historical approach is of particular importance in the analysis of the process of social development, since the latter is carried out unevenly and, moreover, has its own specifics in different countries.

Man cognizes the world, society and himself with one goal - to know the truth. And what is truth, how to determine that this or that knowledge is true, what are the criteria for truth? This article is about this.

What is truth

There are several definitions of truth. Here are some of them.

• Truth is knowledge that corresponds to the subject of knowledge.
• Truth is a truthful, objective reflection in the mind of a person of reality.

Absolute and Relative Truth

absolute truth - this is a complete, exhaustive knowledge of a person about something. This knowledge will not be refuted or supplemented with the development of science.

Examples: man is mortal, twice two is four.

Relative truth - this is knowledge that will be replenished with the development of science, since it is still incomplete, does not fully reveal the essence of phenomena, objects, etc. This happens due to the fact that at this stage of human development, science cannot yet reach the final essence of the subject being studied.

Example: first people discovered that substances consist of molecules, then of atoms, then of electrons, etc. As you can see, at each stage in the development of science, the idea of ​​an atom was true, but incomplete, that is, relative.

Difference between absolute and relative truth lies in how fully this or that phenomenon or object is studied.

Remember: absolute truth has always been relative at first. Relative truth can become absolute with the development of science.

Are there two truths?

No, there are no two truths . There may be several points of view on the subject being studied, but the truth is always the same.

What is the opposite of truth?

The opposite of truth is delusion.

Delusion - this is knowledge that does not correspond to the subject of knowledge, but is accepted as truth. The scientist believes that his knowledge of the subject is true, although he is mistaken.

Remember: lie- Not is the opposite of truth.

Lie is a category of morality. It is characterized by the fact that the truth is hidden for some purpose, although it is known. Z delusion same is not a lie, but a sincere belief that knowledge is true (for example, communism is a delusion, such a society cannot exist in the life of mankind, but whole generations of Soviet people sincerely believed in it).

Objective and subjective truth

objective truth - this is the content of human knowledge that exists in reality and does not depend on a person, on his level of knowledge. This is the whole world that exists around.

For example, much in the world, in the Universe exists in reality, although humanity has not yet known this, perhaps it will never know, but all this exists, an objective truth.

subjective truth - this is the knowledge received by mankind as a result of its cognitive activity, this is all that in reality that has passed through the consciousness of a person, understood by him.

Remember: objective truth is not always subjective, and subjective truth is always objective.

Truth Criteria

Criteria- This is a word of foreign origin, translated from Greek kriterion - a measure for evaluation. Thus, the criteria of truth are the grounds that will make it possible to verify the truth, accuracy of knowledge, in accordance with their subject of knowledge.

Truth Criteria

• sensory experience is the simplest and most reliable criterion of truth. How to determine that an apple is tasty - try it; how to understand that music is beautiful - listen to it; how to make sure that the color of the leaves is green - look at them.
• Theoretical information about the subject of knowledge, that is, theory . Many objects are not amenable to sensory perception. We will never be able to see, for example, the Big Bang, which resulted in the formation of the Universe. In this case, theoretical study, logical conclusions will help to recognize the truth.

Theoretical criteria of truth:

1. Compliance with logical laws
2. Correspondence of truth with those laws that were discovered by people earlier
3. Simplicity of formulation, economy of expression

• Practice. This criterion is also very effective, since the truth of knowledge is proved by practical means. .(There will be a separate article about the practice, follow the publications)

Thus, the main goal of any knowledge is to establish the truth. This is what scientists are dedicated to, this is what each of us is trying to achieve in life: know the truth whatever she touches.

objective truth

Let us turn to the main characteristics of true knowledge. The key characteristic of truth, its main feature is its objectivity. Objective truth is the content of our knowledge that does not depend on either man or humanity. In other words, objective truth is such knowledge, the content of which is such as it is “given” by the object, i.e. reflects it as it is. Thus, the assertions that the earth is spherical, that +3 > +2, are objective truths.

If our knowledge is a subjective image of the objective world, then the objective in this image is the objective truth.

The recognition of the objectivity of truth and the cognizability of the world are equivalent. But, as V.I. Lenin, following the solution of the question of objective truth, the second question follows: “... Can human ideas expressing objective truth express it at once, entirely, unconditionally, absolutely, or only approximately, relatively? This second question is the question of the relationship between absolute and relative truth.

Absolute Truth and Relative Truth

The question of the relationship between absolute and relative truth could fully arise as a worldview question only at a certain stage in the development of human culture, when it was discovered that people are dealing with cognitively inexhaustible complex objects, when the inconsistency of the claims of any theories for the final (absolute) comprehension of these objects was revealed. .

At present, absolute truth is understood as such kind of knowledge, which is identical to its subject and therefore cannot be refuted with the further development of knowledge. There is such a truth:

• a) the result of the knowledge of certain aspects of the objects under study (a statement of facts, which is not identical to the absolute knowledge of the entire content of these facts);
• b) final knowledge of certain aspects of reality;
• c) the content of relative truth, which is preserved in the process of further cognition;
• d) complete, actually never completely achievable knowledge about the world and (we will add) about complexly organized systems.

As applied to sufficiently developed scientific theoretical knowledge, absolute truth is complete, exhaustive knowledge about an object (a complexly organized material system or the world as a whole); relative truth is incomplete knowledge about the same subject.

An example of this kind of relative truth is the theory of classical mechanics and the theory of relativity. Classical mechanics as an isomorphic reflection of a certain sphere of reality, notes D.P. Gorsky, was considered a true theory without any restrictions, i.e. true in some absolute sense, since with its help real processes of mechanical motion were described and predicted. With the advent of the theory of relativity, it was found that it could no longer be considered true without limitations.

Such an idea of ​​absolute, and even of relative truth, connected with entering the process of development of scientific knowledge, the development of scientific theories, leads us to the true dialectic of absolute and relative truth.

Absolute truth is made up of relative truths.

Both in the past and in modern conditions, the three great values ​​remain a high measure of the deeds and life of a person - his service to truth, goodness and beauty. The first personifies the value of knowledge, the second - the moral foundations of life and the third - serving the values ​​of art. At the same time, truth, if you like, is the focus in which goodness and beauty are combined. Truth is the goal toward which knowledge is directed, for, as F. Bacon rightly wrote, knowledge is power, but only under the indispensable condition that it is true.

Truth is such knowledge that reflects the objective reality of an object, process, phenomenon as they really are. Truth is objective; this is manifested in the fact that the content of our knowledge does not depend on either man or mankind. The truth is relative - correct knowledge, but not complete. Absolute truth - complete knowledge about objects, processes, phenomena that cannot be rejected by the subsequent development of our knowledge. Absolute truths are formed on the basis of relative ones. Each relative truth contains a moment of absoluteness - correctness. The concreteness of truth - any truth, even absolute, is concrete - it is the truth depending on conditions, time, place.

Truth is knowledge. But is all knowledge true? Knowledge about the world and even about its individual fragments, for a number of reasons, may include delusions, and sometimes a deliberate distortion of the truth, although the core of knowledge constitutes, as noted above, an adequate reflection of reality in the human mind in the form of ideas, concepts, judgments , theories.

What is truth, true knowledge? Throughout the development of philosophy, a number of answers to this most important question of the theory of knowledge have been proposed. Even Aristotle proposed his solution, which is based on the principle of correspondence: truth is the correspondence of knowledge to an object, reality. R. Descartes proposed his own solution: the most important sign of true knowledge is clarity. For Plato and Hegel, truth acts as the agreement of reason with itself, since knowledge, from their point of view, is the disclosure of the spiritual, rational fundamental principle of the world. D. Berkeley, and later Mach and Avenarius, considered truth as the result of the coincidence of the perceptions of the majority. The conventional concept of truth considers true knowledge (or its logical foundations) to be the result of a convention, an agreement. Some epistemologists consider as true knowledge that fits into one or another system of knowledge. In other words, this concept is based on the principle of coherence, i.e. the reduction of positions either to certain logical attitudes or to the data of experience. Finally, the position of pragmatism boils down to the fact that the truth lies in the usefulness of knowledge, its effectiveness.

The range of opinions is quite large, but the classical concept of truth, which originates from Aristotle and boils down to correspondence, the correspondence of knowledge to an object, has enjoyed and enjoys the widest distribution. As for other positions, even if they have certain positive aspects, they contain fundamental weaknesses that make it possible to disagree with them and, at best, to recognize their applicability only on a limited scale. The classical concept of truth is in good agreement with the original epistemological thesis of dialectical materialist philosophy that knowledge is a reflection of reality in human consciousness. Truth from these positions is an adequate reflection of the object by the cognizing subject, its reproduction as it exists on its own, outside and independently of the person, his consciousness.

There are a number of forms of truth: ordinary or worldly, scientific truth, artistic truth and moral truth. On the whole, there are almost as many forms of truth as there are kinds of occupations. A special place among them is occupied by scientific truth, characterized by a number of specific features. First of all, this is a focus on revealing the essence, in contrast to ordinary truth. In addition, scientific truth is distinguished by the system, orderliness of knowledge within its framework and the validity, evidence of knowledge. Finally, scientific truth is distinguished by repetition and general validity, intersubjectivity.

The key characteristic of truth, its main feature is its objectivity. Objective truth is the content of our knowledge that does not depend on either man or humanity. In other words, objective truth is such knowledge, the content of which is such as it is "given" by the object, i.e. reflects it as it is. Thus, the statement that the earth is spherical is an objective truth. If our knowledge is a subjective image of the objective world, then the objective in this image is the objective truth.

The recognition of the objectivity of truth and the cognizability of the world are equivalent. But, as V.I. Lenin, following the solution of the question of objective truth, the second question follows: "... Can human ideas that express objective truth express it at once, entirely, unconditionally, absolutely, or only approximately, relatively? This second question is the question of the correlation absolute and relative truth.

The question of the relationship between absolute and relative truth expresses the dialectics of knowledge in its movement towards truth, in its movement from ignorance to knowledge, from less complete knowledge to more complete knowledge. The comprehension of truth - and this is explained by the infinite complexity of the world, its inexhaustibility in both large and small - cannot be achieved in one act of cognition, it is a process. This process goes through relative truths, relatively true reflections of an object independent of a person, to the absolute truth, exact and complete, exhaustive reflection of the same object. We can say that relative truth is a step on the way to absolute truth. Relative truth contains within itself grains of absolute truth, and each advance step of cognition adds new grains of absolute truth to the knowledge about the object, bringing it closer to complete mastery of it.

So, there is only one truth, it is objective, because it contains knowledge that does not depend either on man or on humanity, but at the same time it is relative, because. does not give exhaustive knowledge about the object. Moreover, being objective truth, it also contains particles, grains of absolute truth, and is a step on the way to it.

And at the same time, truth is concrete, since it retains its meaning only for certain conditions of time and place, and with their change it can turn into its opposite. Is the rain good? There can be no single answer, it depends on the conditions. Truth is specific. The truth that water boils at 100C is valid only under strictly defined conditions. The position on the concreteness of truth, on the one hand, is directed against dogmatism, which ignores the changes taking place in life, and on the other hand, against relativism, which denies objective truth, which leads to agnosticism.

But the path to truth is by no means strewn with roses, knowledge is constantly developing in contradictions and through contradictions between truth and error.

Delusion. - this is such a content of consciousness that does not correspond to reality, but is taken as true - the position of the indivisibility of the atom, the hopes of alchemists for the discovery of the philosopher's stone, with the help of which everything can easily turn into gold. Delusion is the result of one-sidedness in reflecting the world, limited knowledge at a certain time, as well as the complexity of the problems being solved.

A lie is a deliberate distortion of the actual state of affairs in order to deceive someone. Lies often take the form of misinformation - substitution of selfish goals for reliable unreliable, true for false. An example of such use of disinformation is Lysenko's defeat of genetics in our country on the basis of slander and exorbitant praise of his own "successes", which cost Russian science very dearly.

At the same time, the very fact of the possibility for cognition to fall into error in the process of searching for truth requires finding an instance that could help determine whether some result of cognition is true or false. In other words, what is the criterion of truth? The search for such a reliable criterion has been going on in philosophy for a long time. The rationalists Descartes and Spinoza considered clarity to be such a criterion. Generally speaking, clarity is suitable as a criterion of truth in simple cases, but this criterion is subjective, and therefore unreliable - error can also appear clear, especially because it is my error. Another criterion is that what is recognized as such by the majority is true. This approach seems attractive. Are we not trying to decide many questions by a majority vote, by resorting to voting? Nevertheless, this criterion is absolutely unreliable, because the starting point in this case is also subjective. In science in general, problems of truth cannot be decided by a majority of votes. By the way, this criterion was proposed by the subjective idealist Berkeley, and later supported by Bogdanov, who argued that truth is a socially organized form of experience, i.e. experience recognized by the majority. Finally, one more, pragmatic approach. What is useful is true. In principle, truth is always useful, even when it is unpleasant. But the opposite conclusion: the useful is always the truth is untenable. With such an approach, any lie, if it is useful to the subject, so to speak, to save him, can be considered true. The flaw in the criterion of truth offered by pragmatism is also in its subjective basis. After all, the benefit of the subject is at the center here.

So what is the real criterion of truth? The answer to this question was given by K. Marx in his "Theses on Feuerbach": "... Whether human thinking has objective truth is not at all a question of theory, but a practical question. The dispute about the validity or invalidity of thinking, isolated from practice, is purely scholastic question".

But why can practice act as a criterion of truth? The fact is that in practical activity we measure, compare knowledge with the object, objectify it and thereby establish how it corresponds to the object. Practice is higher than theory, since it has the dignity not only of universality, but also of immediate reality, since knowledge is embodied in practice, and at the same time it is objective.

Of course, not all the provisions of science need practical confirmation. If these provisions are derived from reliable initial provisions according to the laws of logic, then they are also reliable, because the laws and rules of logic have been tested thousands of times in practice.

Practice as a result of practical activity, which is embodied in concrete material things, adequate to ideas as a criterion of truth, is both absolute and relative. Absolute, since there is no other criterion at our disposal. These ideas are truths. But this criterion is relative because of the limited practice in each historical period. Thus, practice for centuries could not refute the thesis of the indivisibility of the atom. But with the development of practice and knowledge, this thesis was refuted. The inconsistency of practice as a criterion of truth is a kind of antidote to dogmatism and the ossification of thought.

Practice, as a criterion of truth, is both relative and absolute. Absolute as a criterion of truth and relative as a criterion of truth, since it itself is limited in its development at a certain stage of development (developing practice).