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A consensus theory of truth is the process of taking statements to be true simply because people generally agree upon them.


Varieties of consensus


Consensus gentium

An ancient criterion of truth, the ''
consensus gentium In argumentation theory, an (Latin for "appeal to the people") is a fallacious argument which is based on claiming a truth or affirming something is good because the majority thinks so. Alternative names Other names for the fallacy includ ...
'' (
Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through ...
for ''agreement of the people''), states "that which is universal among men carries the weight of truth" (Ferm, 64). A number of consensus theories of truth are based on variations of this principle. In some criteria the notion of universal consent is taken strictly, while others qualify the terms of consensus in various ways. There are versions of consensus theory in which the specific population weighing in on a given question, the proportion of the population required for consent, and the period of time needed to declare consensus vary from the classical norm.


Consensus as a regulative ideal

A '' descriptive theory'' is one that tells how things are, while a ''
normative theory Normative generally means relating to an evaluative standard. Normativity is the phenomenon in human societies of designating some actions or outcomes as good, desirable, or permissible, and others as bad, undesirable, or impermissible. A Norm (ph ...
'' tells how things ought to be. Expressed in practical terms, a normative theory, more properly called a ''
policy Policy is a deliberate system of guidelines to guide decisions and achieve rational outcomes. A policy is a statement of intent and is implemented as a procedure or protocol. Policies are generally adopted by a governance body within an orga ...
'', tells agents how they ought to act. A policy can be an absolute imperative, telling agents how they ought to act in any case, or it can be a contingent directive, telling agents how they ought to act ''if'' they want to achieve a particular goal. A policy is frequently stated in the form of a piece of advice called a ''
heuristic A heuristic (; ), or heuristic technique, is any approach to problem solving or self-discovery that employs a practical method that is not guaranteed to be optimal, perfect, or rational, but is nevertheless sufficient for reaching an immediate ...
'', a ''
maxim Maxim or Maksim may refer to: Entertainment * ''Maxim'' (magazine), an international men's magazine ** ''Maxim'' (Australia), the Australian edition ** ''Maxim'' (India), the Indian edition *Maxim Radio, ''Maxim'' magazine's radio channel on Sir ...
'', a '' norm'', a ''
rule Rule or ruling may refer to: Education * Royal University of Law and Economics (RULE), a university in Cambodia Human activity * The exercise of political or personal control by someone with authority or power * Business rule, a rule pert ...
'', a ''
slogan A slogan is a memorable motto or phrase used in a clan, political slogan, political, Advertising slogan, commercial, religious, and other context as a repetitive expression of an idea or purpose, with the goal of persuading members of the publi ...
'', and so on. Other names for a policy are a ''recommendation'' and a ''
regulative principle The regulative principle of worship is a Christian doctrine, held by some Calvinists and Anabaptists, that God commands churches to conduct public services of worship using certain distinct elements affirmatively found in scripture, and conversel ...
''. A regulative ideal can be expressed in the form of a description, but what it describes is an ideal state of affairs, a condition of being that constitutes its aim, end, goal, intention, or objective. It is not the usual case for the actual case to be the ideal case, or else there would hardly be much call for a policy aimed at achieving an ideal. Corresponding to the distinction between actual conditions and ideal conditions there is a distinction between actual consensus and ideal consensus. A theory of truth founded on a notion of actual consensus is a very different thing from a theory of truth founded on a notion of ideal consensus. Moreover, an ideal consensus may be ideal in several different ways. The state of consensus may be ideal in its own nature, conceived in the matrix of actual experience by way of intellectual operations like abstraction, extrapolation, and limit formation. Or the conditions under which the consensus is conceived to be possible may be formulated as idealizations of actual conditions. A very common type of ideal consensus theory refers to a community that is an idealization of actual communities in one or more respects.


Critiques

It is very difficult to find any philosopher of note who asserts a ''bare'', ''naive'', or ''pure'' consensus theory of truth, in other words, a treatment of truth that is based on actual consensus in an actual community without further qualification. One obvious critique is that not everyone agrees to consensus theory, implying that it may not be true by its own criteria. Another problem is defining how we know that consensus is achieved without falling prey to an infinite regress. Even if everyone agrees to a particular proposition, we may not know that it is true until everyone agrees that everyone agrees to it. Bare consensus theories are frequent topics of discussion, however, evidently because they serve the function of reference points for the discussion of alternative theories. If consensus equals truth, then truth can be made by forcing or organizing a consensus, rather than being discovered through experiment or observation, or existing separately from consensus. The principles of mathematics also do not hold under consensus truth because mathematical propositions build on each other. If the consensus declared 2+2=5 it would render the practice of mathematics where 2+2=4 impossible.


See also

*
Argumentum ad populum In argumentation theory, an (Latin for "appeal to the people") is a fallacious argument which is based on claiming a truth or affirming something is good because the majority thinks so. Alternative names Other names for the fallacy includ ...
*
Coherentism In philosophical epistemology, there are two types of coherentism: the coherence theory of truth; and the coherence theory of justification (also known as epistemic coherentism). Coherent truth is divided between an anthropological approach, wh ...
*
Confirmation holism In philosophy of science, confirmation holism, also called epistemological holism, is the view that no individual statement can be confirmed or disconfirmed by an empirical test, but rather that only a set of statements (a whole theory) can be so. ...
*
Consensus reality Consensus reality is that which is generally agreed to be reality, based on a consensus view. The appeal to consensus arises from the idea that humans do not fully understand or agree upon the nature of knowledge or ontology, often making it unce ...
*
Philosophy of history Philosophy of history is the philosophical study of history and its discipline. The term was coined by French philosopher Voltaire. In contemporary philosophy a distinction has developed between ''speculative'' philosophy of history and ''crit ...
*
Truth Truth is the property of being in accord with fact or reality.Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionarytruth 2005 In everyday language, truth is typically ascribed to things that aim to represent reality or otherwise correspond to it, such as belief ...
*
Truth by consensus In philosophy, truth by consensus is the process of taking statements to be true because people generally agree upon them. Imre Lakatos characterizes it as a "watered down" form of provable truth propounded by some sociologists of knowledge, p ...
*
Truthiness Truthiness is the belief or assertion that a particular statement is true based on the intuition or perceptions of some individual or individuals, without regard to evidence, logic, intellectual examination, or facts. Truthiness can range from i ...
*
Wikiality References to Wikipedia in popular culture have been widespread. Many parody Wikipedia's openness, with individuals vandalizing or modifying articles in nonconstructive ways. Others feature individuals using Wikipedia as a reference work, or posi ...


Related topics

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Belief A belief is an attitude that something is the case, or that some proposition is true. In epistemology, philosophers use the term "belief" to refer to attitudes about the world which can be either true or false. To believe something is to tak ...
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Epistemology Epistemology (; ), or the theory of knowledge, is the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge. Epistemology is considered a major subfield of philosophy, along with other major subfields such as ethics, logic, and metaphysics. Epi ...
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Information Information is an abstract concept that refers to that which has the power to inform. At the most fundamental level information pertains to the interpretation of that which may be sensed. Any natural process that is not completely random, ...
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Inquiry An inquiry (also spelled as enquiry in British English) is any process that has the aim of augmenting knowledge, resolving doubt, or solving a problem. A theory of inquiry is an account of the various types of inquiry and a treatment of the ...
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Knowledge Knowledge can be defined as awareness of facts or as practical skills, and may also refer to familiarity with objects or situations. Knowledge of facts, also called propositional knowledge, is often defined as true belief that is distin ...
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Pragmatism Pragmatism is a philosophical tradition that considers words and thought as tools and instruments for prediction, problem solving, and action, and rejects the idea that the function of thought is to describe, represent, or mirror reality. ...
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Pragmaticism "Pragmaticism" is a term used by Charles Sanders Peirce for his pragmatic philosophy starting in 1905, in order to distance himself and it from pragmatism, the original name, which had been used in a manner he did not approve of in the "literary ...
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Pragmatic maxim {{C. S. Peirce articles, abbreviations=no The pragmatic maxim, also known as the maxim of pragmatism or the maxim of pragmaticism, is a maxim of logic formulated by Charles Sanders Peirce. Serving as a normative recommendation or a regulative princ ...
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Reproducibility Reproducibility, also known as replicability and repeatability, is a major principle underpinning the scientific method. For the findings of a study to be reproducible means that results obtained by an experiment or an observational study or in ...
*
Scientific method The scientific method is an empirical method for acquiring knowledge that has characterized the development of science since at least the 17th century (with notable practitioners in previous centuries; see the article history of scientifi ...
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Testability Testability is a primary aspect of Science and the Scientific Method and is a property applying to an empirical hypothesis, involves two components: #Falsifiability or defeasibility, which means that counterexamples to the hypothesis are logicall ...
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Verifiability theory of meaning Verificationism, also known as the verification principle or the verifiability criterion of meaning, is the philosophical doctrine which maintains that only statements that are empirically verifiable (i.e. verifiable through the senses) are cognit ...


References

* Ferm, Vergilius (1962), "Consensus Gentium", p. 64 in Runes (1962). * Haack, Susan (1993), ''Evidence and Inquiry: Towards Reconstruction in Epistemology'', Blackwell Publishers, Oxford, UK. * Habermas, Jürgen (1976), "What Is Universal Pragmatics?", 1st published, "Was heißt Universalpragmatik?", ''Sprachpragmatik und Philosophie'', Karl-Otto Apel (ed.), Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main. Reprinted, pp. 1–68 in Jürgen Habermas, ''Communication and the Evolution of Society'', Thomas McCarthy (trans.), Beacon Press, Boston, Massachusetts, 1979. * Habermas, Jürgen (1979), ''Communication and the Evolution of Society'', Thomas McCarthy (trans.), Beacon Press, Boston, Massachusetts. * Habermas, Jürgen (1990), ''Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action'', Christian Lenhardt and Shierry Weber Nicholsen (trans.), Thomas McCarthy (intro.),
MIT Press The MIT Press is a university press affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts (United States). It was established in 1962. History The MIT Press traces its origins back to 1926 when MIT publ ...
, Cambridge, Massachusetts. * Habermas, Jürgen (2003), ''Truth and Justification'', Barbara Fultner (trans.), MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts. * James, William (1907), ''Pragmatism, A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking, Popular Lectures on Philosophy'', Longmans, Green, and Company, New York, New York. * James, William (1909), ''The Meaning of Truth, A Sequel to 'Pragmatism, Longmans, Green, and Company, New York, New York. *
Kant, Immanuel Immanuel Kant (, , ; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German Philosophy, philosopher and one of the central Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works in epistemolo ...
(1800), ''Introduction to Logic''. Reprinted, Thomas Kingsmill Abbott (trans.), Dennis Sweet (intro.), Barnes and Noble, New York, New York, 2005. * Kirkham, Richard L. (1992), ''Theories of Truth: A Critical Introduction'', MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts. * Rescher, Nicholas (1995), ''Pluralism: Against the Demand for Consensus'', Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK. * Runes, Dagobert D. (ed., 1962), ''Dictionary of Philosophy'', Littlefield, Adams, and Company, Totowa, New Jersey. {{Theories of Truth
Truth Truth is the property of being in accord with fact or reality.Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionarytruth 2005 In everyday language, truth is typically ascribed to things that aim to represent reality or otherwise correspond to it, such as belief ...
Theories of truth Consensus