10 Certainties About the Truth
As part of UCLA’s centennial celebration, the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture is holding a series of conversations called 10 Questions: Centennial Edition. Every Tuesday evening for ten weeks, experts from diverse disciplines are exploring answers to some of life’s biggest questions, including “What Is Love?,” “What Is Community?,” and “What Is Citizenship?” The discussions, held at Kaufman Hall on UCLA’s campus, are open to community members, free with RSVP. Can’t attend? We’ll be sharing weekly highlights.
"What is Truth? On October 23, Victoria Marks, professor of choreography and associate dean of academic affairs for the UCLA School of Art and Architecture, introduced the evening and read “On the Fifth Day,” a poem Jane Hirshfield wrote on the fifth day of Trump’s presidency as a protest against the anti-science political climate. During the ensuing discussion, theologian and research scholar Jason Sexton, artist Vishal Jugdeo and First Amendment scholar Eugene Volokh, covered everything from facts to deep fakes. Here are ten things we learned along the way.
1. Truth is not a matter of perspective. Jason Sexton brought up how people sometimes say, “That may be true for you, but it’s not true for me.” He explained that anyone can have perspectives on the truth, but their perspectives don’t change the facts or reality.
2. The transcendentals (truth, beauty and goodness) are not things that can be created or established by convention. Jason Sexton said, “They simply just are there to be recognized.” It’s up to us to recognize them and cultivate awareness of them. No matter how much we want to, we can’t make something true by wishing it.
3. “Truth is something that both seizes you and frees you as well.” Sexton explained that we find the truth through prior reality, and "it has to be stable and discoverable."— Lisa Beebe, Oct. 25, 2019
This post is an excerpt. Read the full article on the KCET website.
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