The fastest production car in the world is the Hennessey Venom F5, a sleek high-performance sports car that can reach speeds of up to 301mph.
The claim The fastest production car in the world is the Hennessey Venom F5 is true.
But, inevitably, another car will be produced that can reach speeds higher than 301mph.
Does the fact that a new even faster car will be produced at some future time make the claim The fastest production car in the world is the Hennessey Venom F5 not true?
If “truth” is defined as a binary value, meaning an unchanging judgment of either “true” or “false” ascribed to a proposition, then this claim poses a problem.
For simplicity’s sake, the claim The fastest production car in the world is the Hennessey Venom F5 will henceforth be referred to as X.
Under a binary conception of truth, X must be one option or the other. It must be either true or false, it cannot be both.
X is true today, but X will not be true soon when a manufacturer comes out with a car faster than the F5. After that point, X will be false. Therefore, X is only true for a specific period of time.
Note that, if a faster car comes out tomorrow, X will no longer be true even though nothing about the claim itself changed. (Remember, the claim is The fastest production car in the world is the Hennessey Venom F5 not The fastest production car in the world right now is the Hennessey Venom F5.)
If this is the case, then, according to a binary definition of “truth,” a claim that can be true can also be false.
If “truth” is defined as a binary value then claims like X cannot be binarily categorized coherently; their “truth value” is indeterminable.
And yet, it is still clear that X is currently a true claim. The F5 actually is the fastest production car in the world.
So what gives?
The problem lies in how “truth” is being defined. In order to be able to coherently say “X is true,” we need to define the term “truth” in a nonbinary way.
In order to figure out what precisely is meant by a word, one must examine how that word is used. For instance, the word “and” means “to conjoin” because it is used to conjoin. So how is the word “truth” used?
To find out, consider the process through which one evaluates claims. What does one do when trying to determine whether to describe a claim as “true” or “false?”
Take X for instance. Why is X true?
X is deemed true because it is justified by the available evidence. When one googles “world’s fastest car,” she can read articles by car enthusiasts and automotive organizations citing the F5 as the world’s fastest car and watch videos of the F5 in action.
Of course, it could be the case a faster car exists somewhere in the world that is being kept secret from the public. But when one describes X as true, does she mean “X can never be false?”
Take a true claim similar to X like Donald Trump is the President of the United States.
When one says, “The claim Donald Trump is the President of the United States is true,” does she mean “The claim Donald Trump is the President of the United States is always justified by the available evidence?” Clearly not. She means, “The claim Donald Trump is the President of the United States is currently justified by the available evidence.”
The term “true” is used in place of the phrase “currently justified by the available evidence.” The crucial word in this definition is “currently.” If claims are deemed true according to the currently available evidence, time must be factored into a coherent definition of “truth.”
Here things start to get a little semantical. The noun “truth” means something different from the adjective “true,” but the two obviously must be meaningfully related.
If the adjective “true” can be coherently defined as, “currently justified by the available evidence,” it follows that “truth” can be coherently defined as “the temporal process of determining whether a claim is currently justified by the available evidence.”
Just like how a proof can be adjectivally described as “mathematical” if it follows the procedural rules of mathematics, a claim can be adjectivally described as “true” if it follows the procedural rules of truth (as temporal process of justification).
With this new definition of truth, the un-determinability problem no longer arises. Now, X can be both true, meaning currently justified by the available evidence, and false, meaning not currently justified by the available evidence, at different times without rendering the definition of “truth” incoherent.
While truth as temporal process is nonbinary, the choice of describing a claim as “true” is still, of course, binary. Claims are either described as “true” or “false.” There are two options, so the decision of how to describe claims remains binary, but the rules that govern how one can use these terms have changed.
Since “truth” is now understood to be a necessarily temporal process and “true” a necessarily temporal adjective, X can be true today and false tomorrow should new evidence become available tomorrow that un-justifies the conclusion currently justified by today’s evidence.
This procedural understanding of truth encourages epistemic humility for one no longer needs to imply she possesses any unalterable knowledge about the objective nature of the universe when she determines a claim to be “true,” only that she believes she has reached the most justified conclusion one can reach at the time. Obviously this is still a big claim, but it is not objective-nature-of-the-universe big.
Along these same lines, this conception effectively delegitimizes temporal chauvinism. People living in the twenty first century are no physically better at perceiving truth than those who lived long ago, they are simply better technologically equipped. Conclusions made in 2018 may be more precise and better supported than conclusions made during the Dark Ages, a progression that can only be attributable to humanity, but credit goes to every developing generation throughout all of history not merely those living during the internet age or any other arbitrary time period. Indeed, truth as temporal process allows for the usage of common vocabulary in describing the temporal validity of conclusions in a way that respectfully recognizes the incontrovertible effect of time upon truth judgments, e.g., “That was true for them at the time.”
Finally, truth as temporal process rejects all concepts that cannot be temporally justified. Of course, there are many varying perspectives concerning how a claim should be justified, but concepts deemed unfalsifiable (and thus unjustifiable) by one’s epistemic standards cannot be regarded as true by definition. This ties into the epistemological humility required to accept truth in this sense as mentioned earlier. One’s perception of what should be consciously regarded as true becomes constrained by her specific set of epistemic standards, standards that she should apply impartially to all claims regardless of whether she feels any emotional attraction to or disdain for them.
In sum, “truth” defined in simplistic binary terms proves inadequate for it cannot account for the temporal nature of truth judgments and should be replaced by a definition of “truth” that incorporates the fundamental justification process and the essential ingredient of time since it is more coherent, linguistically useful, and philosophically beneficial.