The essence of truth seeking is questioning assumptions. This involves looking at a claim, statement or idea, and not only questioning the reasoning in support of it, but also the assumed premises the claim rests on. This means, checking the logical starting points of the reasoning, as well as the validity of the reasoning process itself. Most crucially, we must be prepared to check assumptions that are ‘already considered knowledge’ that we are using in the reasoning.
With each component idea that underpins a claim we must check both the premises and the logical connection, or inference, in the reasoning that links the premises to the conclusion. In other words, we must find the beginning of the logical sequence of reasoning, and check the assumptions here — always being prepared to check what we think we already know. You may not always have to do this, but you must at least be willing to do so.
The first job, therefore, is to do some intellectual digging, with appropriate questions, to get down to the base layer — the fundamental ideas the whole thing rests upon.
I repeat, the two major components under scrutiny are the reasoning process itself, and all of the assumed premises in the structure of the argument. It’s not as hard as it may sound. Your common sense can usually spot most illogical connections provided you are aware of the need to continually monitor them, and that you have some ability at, and guidance in, logical thinking — which is precisely what you will get from this guide.
I will leave the reasoning process aside for now. Initially, I want to focus on some of the things you need to be familiar with, in terms of questioning assumed premises — examining the component ideas that go to make up the individual pieces of the bigger idea that you are questioning.
Don’t assume, check!
Assumptions are great! We assume hundreds, if not thousands, of things all day long, and these assumptions are very appropriate in the context of every day life. We assume because we don’t want to have to endlessly check and re-check the obvious. Its the same with speech; to avoid stating and restating the obvious, we assume things, otherwise we would never get to communicate anything new. But it’s important to appreciate that when just one assumption at the beginning of a chain of reasoning is false, all logically downstream conclusions will, necessarily, also be false. Think of the computer analogy of ‘garbage in – garbage out’. As soon as the input of any logical connection in the reasoning chain is false, the outcome cannot be true.
Culturally speaking we over-rely on assumptions to an unhealthy degree. In schools, children are discouraged from questioning what is presented as fact. They are not taught to question the material they are presented with. In any course of study, we assume we are being presented with truth. In general: doctors don’t question what they are taught, economists don’t question what they are taught, political scientists don’t question what they are taught, and virologists don’t question what they are taught. Assumptions pile up on top of assumptions across all interrelating aspects of human life.
It shouldn’t surprise anyone to learn that there are hundreds of popular ideas out there, assumed as knowledge, that are false. If we fail to check our assumptions, it can leave the sum of our (claimed) knowledge peppered with false conclusions. Then, as we draw on it to interpret new events and ideas, our conclusions will depart further and further from the facts of reality, thus leaving us increasingly vulnerable to error, failure and suffering. Just like a ship or an airplane steering just one degree of course, over a long distance this adds up to being considerably off-track. Imagine how off track a person can get, if, when they read news reports, they assume truth, dropping context of other knowledge they possess, and failing to factor in that politicians lie, that there are political agendas being played out, and that people have been manipulating and controlling each other throughout human history!
Checking premises, and making sure assumptions are true, takes time and effort. The trick is to know when to do so, and when it’s not necessary. This requires both mental vigilance and common sense. These days, logically antecedent premises are assumed to be true by the average person almost all the time — even when the context demands they be checked. This is largely as a result of schooling and social conditioning. People are complacent, and the validity of the premises on which they both think and act are taken for granted. Most people still assume that cholesterol causes heart disease, that fluoride in tap water somehow protects teeth, and that their political leaders have their best interests at heart. Available evidence contradicts all of these.
The implicit premises at the base of most of the ideas discussed in your national news media are assumed to be true. So it’s important to understand the need to check these assumed premises in the process of discerning truth on any particular issue. But perhaps most importantly, before we even begin to research specific issues, we must be willing to check our own assumed premises — the most important ones we hold. The ones that influence our thinking. We must even be prepared to fully consider our understanding of the concept truth and the fundamental philosophical ideas it necessarily rests on. Otherwise we can find ourselves unwittingly supporting other ideas that implicitly undermine the concept.
Discerning truth is a process of thought. So the first thing to do is to check everything we think we know that effects the way we think. Be prepared to question everything, not one of your convictions should be placed beyond questioning.
It cannot be over stated how important it is to check assumptions if your intention is to discern truth. Incorrect conclusions are most often a result of assuming one or more basic premises to be true, that later turn out to be false. Every link in the chain of reasoning must be good, every floor of the building must be structurally sound.
The hierarchical structure of knowledge
All knowledge fits into a contextual structure; it builds upon itself, one step at a time. We learn the foundational things first, and then build on that. A child learn basic concepts first and then builds greater complexity on top of what he then knows. We cant begin by studying for a degree, and finish up by learning the alphabet! Think of the sum of your knowledge as a massive and complex skyscraper. Of course, many of the things we know can be at an equivalent level in the hierarchy, but others must be identified as logically antecedent in the same way that a lower floor in a building is logically antecedent of the floors above. You could learn how to make a dozen different dishes during a course on cookery, but all this knowledge would rest on top of your pre-existing knowledge of food, the concept of heating things to cook them, cooking with gas or electricity, the uses of various pots and pans, etc.
Every word we use, with the exception of proper nouns (names), represents a conceptual idea. There are simple ones pertaining to objects, such as chairs, trees, cars, etc; and there are those for attributes such as colour, length, rough or smooth, etc; and those for actions and relationships, and so on and so forth. The most basic concepts (those of objects) rest on the direct perception of reality and are all on the same level. But as things get more complex, concepts rests on earlier concepts, that in turn rest on still earlier concepts, with the whole structure ultimately resting on the self-evident — the direct perception of reality.
This means that when we consider complex ideas containing multiple higher concepts, there are necessarily a great many previous, more fundamental concepts ‘underneath’ the ones being considered. These antecedent concepts are implicitly assumed, just like the lower floors of a tall building holding up the ones above. For example, when you go to your doctor to consult him on some illness, what is the theory of health and disease from which his thinking stems? This necessarily informs his whole process of diagnosis and treatment. Similarly, to speak of bachelors implies knowledge of marriage, because a bachelor is an unmarried man. The concept bachelor implies and logically necessitates the concept of marriage. The concept of motion implies and necessitates the antecedent concept of entity — the thing that moves. The concept of change implies the concept of identity and the concept of time — that identity then, this identity now.
Our concepts are the tools of thought, each one an idea in itself, and if we are unaware of the hierarchical structure of knowledge, the higher concepts we use, such as energy, love, freedom, prosperity, can become like floating balloons (abstractions) in our minds. They float freely, disconnected from the antecedent concepts that provide the context to give them precise meaning. These floating abstractions are disconnected from the direct perception of reality which is ultimately their base. If the tools of our thinking are loose and ill-defined the efficiency with which we arrive at conclusions is compromised, and if the hierarchical structure of knowledge is not appreciated then we lose the ability to trace our ideas back to reality, to give them meaning, to literally make them real. This is what it means to understand an idea — to be able to integrate it with the rest of your knowledge, and thus connect it to reality.
But perhaps the worst consequence of failing to grasp the hierarchical structure of knowledge is this: we can contradict ourselves when we unwittingly argue against genetically antecedent concepts, while implicitly using them in our argument. Ayn Rand identified this as the fallacy of the stolen concept. I like to think of it as trying to cut off the branch you are intellectually standing on! For example, if someone argues that thought creates reality on the one hand, but demands evidence and proof that the climate emergency is real, they are contradicting themselves. Because to hold that thought creates reality destroys the concept of truth. More on this later.
The truth seeker must be aware of the hierarchical structure of knowledge and integrate this awareness into the thinking process. It will help to automatise the need to dig beneath any claim, to uncover the assumptions (premises) it allegedly rests on, to look back down the chain of causality, and see what in turn supports these premises, if anything.
For example, if we are talking about vaccinations, what is the premise(s) that the idea of taking vaccinations rests on? It rests on the idea of a virus that causes disease. It rests on a particular model of the cause of disease. It rests on something called ‘germ theory’ – the idea that a particular microorganism is responsible for each particular disease. If one investigates these ideas it quickly becomes apparent that there are serious questions around their validity and the truth about those claims is very far from certain. In fact, depending on how deep you dig you will discover that many of the assumptions made by modern virologists haven’t been logically proven at all. And worse, there is much evidence that contradicts them. If you want to know truth, you must be prepared to dig deep, and question the assumptions that others dare not.
This same mental process of observing cause and effect is then used in the other direction to examine possible knock-on effects and implications of the idea or claim. To continue with the virology example, what would be the implications if the idea of the ‘germ theory of disease’ was wrong? There would be no purpose in having vaccinations. Then one would have to ask, what is the effect of all the toxic ‘adjuvants’ listed in the insert (contents list) on the human body?
Implicit and explicit
A premise is a logical starting point we assume to be true at the beginning of a reasoning process.
In the well-known syllogism ‘all men are mortal, Socrates is a man, therefore Socrates is mortal’, the premises are that Socrates is a man, and that all men are mortal.
In this case they are obvious because they are explicitly stated. However, we are not usually conscious of all the assumed premises we use in our reasoning, and they are almost never stated in any claims made in the news media, or by politicians. In normal daily discourse most premises remain implicit for good reason, and this is appropriate. But this inevitably means that ‘implicit assumed premises’ can slip out of our conscious awareness altogether. The investigator, wanting to the know the truth of a particular claim, has a specific task that requires a different mental mode of operation. The same applies to those who aspire to know truth in a time of censorship, propaganda and deceit. They must raise their mental game to become more conscious of implications.
Implied ideas are those not mentioned or verbalised, yet they remain logically necessitated within the claim being made. Implications are commonly understood to be results, or knock-on effects, of a particular choice or action. However, the truth seeker must become aware of the implicit ideas that are logically antecedent in the reasoning chain.
You have to trace the line of reasoning that supports a particular conclusion both backwards, to see what it fundamentally rests upon (implicit premises), as well as forwards to see where it ultimately leads (implicit consequences). You can think of it as observing cause and effect with respect to conceptual ideas, always obeying logic. Another way of thinking of it is, being aware of the things that must also be true, for any particular idea to be true. The method, as we shall see later, is to un-pack ideas — to keep digging with questions, to uncover implicit premises.
Suppose that you are contemplating a medical procedure with potentially life-threatening consequences. In such a case you would want to know what theory and evidence the proposed treatment is based on, as well as all possible consequences. You would want to trace the line of reasoning back to see what is rests on, and forwards to see where it might lead.
Ideas implicitly rest on top of other ideas — whether or not they are true! A line of reasoning can be valid, yet yield a false conclusion because of a false premise. If we are being sold a dubious idea, we can identify it as false, even if the reasoning is sound, if we trace it back to an implicit premise that can be shown to be false. Similarly, if we accept a particular idea as true, we should be conscious of the other ideas it necessarily and implicitly rests on, which we are implicitly accepting as true.
Generally speaking, the more fundamental a premise is, the less likely we are to be aware of it, and the greater the potential negative impact if it turns out to be false. This is an important consideration when you are trying to discern the truth about a specific claim. But once again, its just as important when examining one’s own thinking.
We all hold fundamental beliefs that implicitly shape our world view, or personal philosophy, with little conscious awareness of them. We might not be able to express them at all. For example, few people are aware of the most basic premises that inform their concept of morality – what constitutes a good action or a bad one. But these beliefs and ideas remain implicit in all of their subsequent thinking and actions, continually affecting both the reasoning process and conclusions drawn. Some people believe in destiny, or fate. This idea implies that everything is pre-written in some way, and contradicts the idea of freewill. As we shall see later, acceptance of the idea of free will is an essential foundation of the concept of truth. It is only the capacity for choice that can enable humans to test their ideas, discern ‘truth’, and acquire ‘knowledge’. The concepts of truth and knowledge are both derived from the human ability to choose.
Another common example of a lack of awareness of the implicit is when people discuss which particular government policy should be enforced relating to some issue or other. Rarely are people aware that the fundamental principle beneath their discussion is whether or not people should be coerced by governments at all. However, by discussing which particular policies should be enforced, such people have already unknowingly agreed with the fundamental premise that people should be coerced by government. That becomes the given, the implicit basis, or starting point, of the current discussion. It is the more fundamental issue, after which comes the debate about which particular action people should best be coerced into performing.
A fundamental premise is contained within a particular belief with or without it being made explicit. It doesn’t go away because we don’t see it, or don’t grasp that it is logically necessary. When you board a ship, you implicitly accept that there is no breach in the hull. The fact that it is floating implies that there is no such breach.
We can think of these implicit premises as being bundled up, or packaged within, the more superficial idea being discussed. It’s like dealing with boxes and parcels without knowing their precise contents and only being vaguely aware of what’s inside.
You can only be sure someone is conscious of an underlying premise, if they make it explicit in their language, or if you ask them. And the only way YOU can be aware of assumed premises in your own thinking is by asking yourself! The aspiring truth seeker must be prepared to examine the fundamental premises implicit in their own thinking, as well as those packaged within any issue they subsequently investigate. Ask yourself questions like, “Why do I believe that?”, or “If I believe this, what else does it imply?” or “for this to be true, what else must be true?”
Learning to make ideas explicit is a very important component of learning to discern truth. It is how we get the whole issue ‘on the table’, mentally speaking, so that we can clearly see what we are dealing with. You need to be aware of the principle of making everything explicit right from the outset, because, initially, you are going to examine the implicit ideas buried within your subconscious mind. You need to examine the essential fundamental ideas that support the concept of truth and its discernment.
Conclusion
The truth seeker must be aware of the need to question assumptions, including one’s own deepest held beliefs that have a bearing on one’s mindset and thinking. Nothing should be beyond question, including the things we think that we already know, and especially the things that ‘everybody knows’. We must do this with an awareness of both the hierarchical structure of knowledge, and the implicit — premises and consequences.
You must make all the components of the argument supporting a claim explicit, in order to properly examine their logical strength.
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