The capacity to know and acknowledge Truth; a necessary Essential Characteristic of the conscious Person. The ground of Self-Transcendence. The capacity for truth presupposes Truth itself: only because objective truth exists can the person be capable of truth.
The capacity for truth means that the person is not enclosed within her own consciousness but can touch reality and grasp beings as they are. It grounds the right to freedom of conscience: because the person is capable of truth, she has the right to follow her conscience. Self-transcendence presupposes the capacity for truth: only one who can know the true can open out beyond himself toward the other (cf. Bexten 2017, pp. 150–160) (German).
The Capacity for Truth as Self-Transcendence
The capacity for truth is the most fundamental form of Self-Transcendence. In cognition the person crosses the boundaries of her own consciousness and touches reality itself. She does not remain trapped within the circle of her own representations but reaches that which lies beyond herself: beings as they are in themselves. This capacity to transcend oneself toward truth distinguishes the person radically from any machine. A computer processes data, but it knows nothing. It stands in no relation of truth to reality.
The Capacity for Truth and Artificial Intelligence
This point has particular significance in the context of Artificial Intelligence. AI systems produce outputs that look like judgments about reality. But they are not acts of cognition. The machine lacks the intentional relation to truth. It does not “know” whether its outputs are true or false, because it has no access to truth as such. Ascribing “knowledge” or “understanding” to AI systems confuses the syntactic processing of signs with the semantic grasp of truth.
The person, by contrast, can err. But it is precisely the possibility of error that attests to her capacity for truth. Only one who can miss the truth can also hit it.
The Capacity for Truth and Rationality
The capacity for truth stands in the closest connection with Rationality. Reason is the faculty by which the person grasps truth. Yet the capacity for truth goes beyond mere rationality. It means the orientation of the whole person toward truth: not only discursive thinking, but also intuitive insight, essential intuition, and contemplative beholding. The person is not merely able to draw logically correct inferences. She can grasp truth as such and acknowledge it as truth.
The Capacity for Truth and Freedom of Conscience
Because the person is capable of truth, she has a conscience: the capacity to know what is morally right and to know herself bound to it. The right to freedom of conscience is therefore grounded immediately in the capacity for truth. This right protects not subjective arbitrariness but the dignity of the person as a being capable of truth: no one may be compelled to act against his conscience, because conscience is the place where the person encounters truth.
Necessary and Inalienable
As an essential characteristic, the capacity for truth is necessary and inalienable. It belongs to the being of the person, not to her present state of consciousness. Even a human being who is not currently conscious ontologically possesses the capacity for truth.
Ontological classification:
- Superordinate concept: Essential Characteristic
Ontological relations:
- presupposes: Truth
- grounds: right to freedom of conscience
- is presupposed by: Self-Transcendence, Capacity for Love, Error, Judgment, Cognition
- stands in close connection with: Rationality
Chapter assignment: Chapter 4: Personhood (German)
Sources: Generated by querying the Personhood ontology.
Further sources:
- Aristotle: Metaphysics II, 993b (“It is right also that philosophy should be called knowledge of the truth”).
- Thomas Aquinas: De veritate q. 1, a. 1 (veritas est adaequatio rei et intellectus).
- Seifert, Josef (1987): Back to ‘Things in Themselves’. A Phenomenological Foundation for Classical Realism. London/New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul (capacity for truth and essential intuition).
See also
Four Faculty-Limits (the capacity for truth as ground of the four faculties), Truth-Apt Act, Truth, Self-Transcendence, Cognition, Person, Reason, Rationality, Free Will, Capacity for Love, Affectivity, Artificial Intelligence, Essential Intuition, Essential Characteristic, right to freedom of conscience, Thinking