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Truth and Accuracy

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Hi there fellow O'ists.

For my Modern History class I've been asked to write an essay on truth and accuracy in Huckleberry Finn. The essay is to be in response to a quote in which the author states that something can be 100% true in spirit, but only 80% accurate. I take it that accuracy is the degree of the quality of truthhood and I have knowledge of what a truth is, a statement about a fact of reality, so I'm wondering what the writer of the quote means by true 'in spirit'.

According to O'ism (as I understand it) all truths are both obsolute and objective, so how could anything be true 'in spirit'?

I'm confused. Could anybody help me out?

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A lie is a lie.

The author is confused, or taking literary license. The concept of "accuracy" pertains to measurement quantities. Assume that you have a digital scale that has a 3 decimal place readout in kilograms, then you can never ever distinguish a .0121 kg object from a .0123 kg object, and that is because of the accuracy of the scale. But clearly that can't be what the author is talking about.

The actual distinction that is being gotten at is between literal truth and a mushy concept of full cooperation and total disclosure. Literal truth simply about what words mean and rules of language that relate word meaning in sentences to some assertion, qua logical proposition. People very often make inferences that are not strictly warranted from the literal truth of an assertion. For example, if I say "I used to drive a Japanese car", you are likely to conclude that I no longer do. But literally, I only told you that in the past, I did this thing on a regular basis and I did not assert that I don't still do this. Basically, I set you up to make this inference because I was not fully cooperative and did not reveal all of the facts -- I didn't say "I used to drive a Japanese car, and I still do but now I drive an Italian car most of the time".

The particular statement "something can be 100% true in spirit, but only 80% accurate" strikes me as utter nonsense. Why not say that something can be 100% true in words but only 80% accurate "in spirit"? That way, there would at least be a meaningful relationship between reality and representation of reality.

If you didn't bobble the author's quote in copying it here, then I'd suggest politely correcting the author who doesn't understand what truth is.

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I suspect David is right and you probably have some mushy moral relativist teacher, but I think to be fair you would have to supply the full question and include some context about the novel because, frankly, I'm having trouble recalling the details of Huck Finn.

However, as I recall, wasn't there some moral dilemma concerning Jim? Didn't he protect Huck from an Indian and Huck didn't want to get him in trouble? (My memory on this is very shaky)

If so, then the questioner might be trying to make a distinction between the biblical imperative to always tell the truth and doing the right thing, which is actually a good distinction to make.

If this is the case, and I had a good teacher, and the teacher wouldn't mark me off for doing so, then I might wax poetic on this very distinction and make the moral case for lying when appropriate and relate it to the story. I would supply a stark, heart wrenching example of when it would be wrong NOT to lie like: if a child molester asked you where your daughter went to school and which way she walked home and when. It would be virtuous to lie in this situation, Ayn Rand called it the virtue of "honesty": the refusal to fake reality.

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Okay, the following is the entire quote + the task I was given, word for word.

"Regarding historical accuracy there ...[are] several aspects to be considered: the script itself, the director, the actor's interpretations, the physical elements- sets, ... props, landscapes.. -and the instances of artistic licence. Accuracy and truth are two different things. I would come to consider Ghosts of Mississippi 100% faithful to the spirit of truth and 80% to the spirit of accuracy." Morris, W., 1998

Task: Choose a film or novel which purports to tell a true story about the race issues from slavery (e.g. Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn or Glory) to the Civil Rights movement (e.g. Malcolm X, Salute). How useful is the above distinction between accuracy and truth in analysing the value of your text as an historical source.

So, relating this to Huckleberry Finn, I am supposed to analyse how accurate the novel is as a historical source whilst taking into consideration the above distinction the author has made.

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Okay, so this is presumably a quote from Willie Morris "The Ghosts of Medgar Evers". It's a stupid thing to say and a stupid theme to assign because it's impossible for you to know what the author "really" meant. There is an article in the Fredericksburg Free-Lance Star (Feb. 28, 1998) that you could look at for context. It means, it (the movie) is not fully truthful but it only lies in ways that he considers to unimportant. So for him, "truth" is a particular moral goal, and "accuracy" is, simply, truth. As long as a lie supports a justified goal, then a lesser standard of "mere accuracy" doesn't affect the "higher truth". The newspaper article brings this point out clearer, I think. The question being ask is, if an author is willing to misrepresent facts to support a higher political end especially one pertaining to race, then to what extent should they be forgiven for their misrepresentations? In short, to what extent to the ends justify the means; or, to what extent is honesty a virtue?

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