Vocabulary

battle over 就……展开辩论

celestial ledger

err v. 犯错误;出差错

to err is human 人非圣贤，孰能无过；

causation n. 诱因，起因，祸端；因果关系

Summary

What Is Truth?

The existence of truth with a capital T, which is a kind of complete record of whatever was, is, or will be, error-proof, beyond doubt and dispute, a final test of the rightness or wrongness of people's ideas and theories is not necessarily a truth. The reason lies in people's imperfect perception, imperfect memory, deficient information and so on. Even the wisest may make mistakes. Truth is discovered, not created.

Excerpt

To avoid unnecessary confusion, four facts must be understood:

1. One event can precede another without causing it.

2. Not all causation involves force or necessity.

3. There is a wild card in human affairs—free will.

4. Causation is often complex.

The following cautions will help you avoid oversimplification in your analyses:

Remember that events seldom, if ever, “just happen.”

Remember that free will is a powerful causative factor in human affairs, and it is often intertwined with other causes.

Be aware that, in dealing with human affairs, outcomes can be unpredictable.

Thought

人对真理的渴求是人类发展的动力之一，过去追求绝对真理可能并不是最明智的选择，但至少要相信相对真理的存在并保持持续的动力，不轻言放弃。

In fact, no one can be wrong. (What an argument this would make against objective tests—true/false, multiple choice, and so on: “My answers can't be wrong, professor. They're my truth!”)

没有绝对真理，也就相应的没有“绝对谬误”。

小孩子才评判对错，成年人衡量利弊。在批判性思考中，我们讨论的也不是对错，而是观点的价值。况且我们自己也会犯这样或那样的错误，单纯评判他人对错也是一种不公正。

Even when our perception is initially flawless, our memory often distorts the data. We forget details, and when later attempting to recall what happened we resort to imagination to fill in the blanks. Though we may at first be aware that such a process of reconstruction is occurring, this awareness soon fades, and we come to believe we are remembering the original perception.

很多人在评判事实时会依赖于自己的记忆，但记忆真的就是准确的吗？人都会扭曲自己的记忆，选择自己喜爱的记忆、忘却自己憎恨的记忆、或把自己的记忆转化为自己想要的场景都是人之常情。这就意味着记忆不可靠。人也会受扭曲的记忆而引导，被虚假的记忆而哄骗。