What We Believe to Be True

On Dialogue: What We Believe to Be True

Sometime around 2012 or 2013, while studying philosophy in college, I wrote a paper exploring the nature of truth, reality, and human understanding. Much of it was inspired by physicist and philosopher David Bohm and his book On Dialogue. I recently went looking for that paper, hoping to revisit what I had written and see whether my conclusions still held up more than a decade later. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find it.

I still have Bohm's book, complete with my notes, and I remember much of what I was trying to articulate. The central idea was that our understanding of reality is shaped by everything we've experienced. Our upbringing, education, culture, relationships, and environment all contribute to how we interpret the world. Those interpretations influence how we understand subsequent experiences, reinforcing or modifying our existing beliefs. We become the product of an extraordinary accumulation of experiences, each filtered through everything that came before it.

Consider how differently two people might interpret the same event. One person's upbringing might lead them toward a religious explanation, while another's might lead them toward a scientific or secular one. Neither necessarily recognizes how profoundly their accumulated experiences influence what seems obvious to them. We tend to experience our own understanding of reality as something natural, sometimes even self-evident, without recognizing the assumptions that helped produce it.

This reminds me of Plato's allegory of the cave, presented through Socrates in The Republic. The prisoners have spent their lives watching shadows on a wall, unaware of the world beyond them. Those shadows constitute their understanding of reality because they have never experienced anything else. When one prisoner escapes and discovers the world outside, he realizes how limited his understanding had been. Yet returning to explain what he has discovered presents another problem: the others have little reason to believe him. Their entire experience tells them that the shadows are real.

A rainbow offers another interesting example. We generally speak about seeing a rainbow, as though there is one singular object in the sky that everyone is observing. But that's not quite how rainbows work. The rainbow I see is produced by sunlight interacting with water droplets at angles determined by my position as the observer. Someone standing beside me sees light from a slightly different collection of droplets. As we move, the droplets contributing to what we see change. That's also why we can never reach the end of a rainbow. The familiar rainbow in the sky has no fixed location waiting for us to arrive.

Both observers experience something real, but their perspectives aren't identical. Neither is necessarily mistaken about what they're seeing, even though the physical principles producing those experiences remain the same. That's an important distinction. Different experiences of reality don't mean that reality itself is whatever we decide it should be.

This brought me to the question that fascinated me most: What is truth?

I wasn't arguing that contradictory claims could both be objectively true. Rather, two people can hold fundamentally incompatible beliefs while each remains convinced that their understanding represents objective truth. And because those beliefs are often deeply connected to identity and experience, challenging them can feel like challenging the individual rather than merely questioning an idea.

I remember using a particularly provocative example in my original paper. I asked readers to consider the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests from the perspectives of a protester and a soldier operating a tank. What did each believe was happening? What did duty, freedom, order, and patriotism mean to each of them? How might their upbringing, experiences, and loyalties have influenced their understanding of the circumstances?

I wasn't suggesting that their positions were morally equivalent. The Chinese government's violent suppression of the pro-democracy protests is a historical fact, and understanding how someone might rationalize participating in that suppression doesn't excuse it. I was interested in how people could arrive at dramatically different interpretations of the same circumstances, each convinced of their own righteousness.

Looking at the world today, that example feels disturbingly relevant.

I think about the Israeli military and the genocide in Gaza, which has been documented by a United Nations Commission of Inquiry. I think about the war with Iran and what American service members may be asked to do as these conflicts continue. What does a soldier believe when carrying out an order? What happens when loyalty to one's country, government, or commanding officer conflicts with one's responsibility to humanity?

These aren't merely philosophical questions. After World War II, the Nuremberg trials established that following orders did not automatically absolve individuals of responsibility for international crimes. Understanding why someone believed they were acting appropriately was not sufficient to excuse what they had done. The distinction between understanding a person's thinking and holding that person accountable for their actions matters enormously.

My own experiences have influenced how I approach these questions. I served in military intelligence in the United States Air Force during the Iraq War, a period that left me with a lasting awareness of how information, language, and propaganda can shape public understanding. I've written about that before in Because I Know Better. I was trained to recognize and resist propaganda, although that certainly doesn't make me immune to it.

I've also carried a particular saying with me for most of my life, something my grandmother used to say: "Believe nothing you hear, and only half what you see."

I've never taken that entirely literally. To me, it has always been a reminder to remain skeptical, to recognize manipulation, and to consider the difference between what we're told, what we observe, and what the evidence actually establishes.

This is partly why I find our current political environment so frustrating. I have strong convictions about Donald Trump and the MAGA movement, informed by years of observing what I consider patterns of dishonesty, manipulation, authoritarianism, and disregard for democratic institutions. But recognizing patterns doesn't absolve me of the responsibility to evaluate evidence, and that same responsibility belongs to people whose political beliefs differ from mine.

We may not be responsible for the environments that shaped our earliest beliefs, but at some point we become responsible for what we do with them. Being raised with certain assumptions can help explain why someone believes something. It doesn't permanently excuse refusing to reconsider those assumptions when confronted with credible evidence.

I don't think this requires extraordinary intelligence. It requires personal responsibility, intellectual honesty, and a willingness to acknowledge uncomfortable facts.

Bohm's approach to these problems was dialogue. Not simply debate or conversation, but an effort to examine the assumptions underlying our thinking. He described how we become attached to our opinions, experiencing them as truths and defending them almost instinctively. Dialogue asks us to suspend those assumptions long enough to recognize them, consider other perspectives, and become aware of the limitations of our own understanding.

I still believe in that approach. But I struggle with its application when the other person is unwilling to participate in the same examination. I've encountered that problem repeatedly in political conversations, particularly with people deeply committed to defending MAGA. Evidence is dismissed, contradictions are rationalized, and any challenge to an established belief becomes something to resist rather than consider.

Dialogue cannot be something only one participant is willing to undertake.

There are also limits to what I believe we should be expected to entertain as legitimate differences of opinion. White supremacy, for example, isn't simply another equally defensible interpretation of reality. Nor is racism exclusively a matter of individual prejudice or ignorance. It can be embedded in institutions, laws, practices, and systems that perpetuate inequality regardless of any one person's intentions.

We can examine how racist beliefs develop, understand the influences that reinforce them, and attempt dialogue with people willing to reconsider those beliefs. But doing so doesn't require us to suspend our commitment to human dignity or overlook the harm those beliefs and systems produce.

My own philosophical development eventually drew me toward humanism. For a time, I understood religion primarily as a framework for morality, and I came to believe that a relationship with God didn't necessarily require an organized religion. Eventually, I also began recognizing how religious institutions could become instruments of control. And unfortunately, when people are given levers of control, they have a tendency to pull them.

What remained important to me was the underlying principle that human beings deserve dignity, freedom, and fundamental rights, regardless of religion, nationality, race, or identity. Those principles don't require me to have perfect knowledge of every moral question. They give me a foundation for recognizing when the treatment of other human beings is unacceptable.

And that brings me to what I believe is the most important limitation of dialogue: understanding cannot become an excuse for inaction.

If people in positions of power violate the law or abuse the rights of others, we have a responsibility to respond. That response should be grounded in evidence, due process, and accountability, not political revenge. I want institutions that investigate wrongdoing without regard for political affiliation, enforce the law fairly, and operate with meaningful public transparency. We should not have to choose between upholding democratic principles and holding people accountable for violating them.

I don't believe that commitment contradicts Bohm's philosophy. Suspending an assumption doesn't mean abandoning every conviction, and understanding how someone arrived at a belief doesn't make that belief true. We can recognize the limitations of our own thinking while still making judgments based on evidence. We can remain open to learning without pretending that every moral position deserves equal consideration.

Perhaps that's what I've come to appreciate most about revisiting these ideas. Dialogue isn't about surrendering what we believe or endlessly questioning ourselves into paralysis. It's about recognizing how our understanding develops, how easily we can mistake assumptions for facts, and how much responsibility comes with claiming to know something.

I began exploring those questions more than a decade ago, and thirteen years of additional experiences have undoubtedly changed the way I understand them. I wish I could find that original paper. I'd like to know what the younger version of myself understood, what he overlooked, and whether I would still agree with him today.

I still have my annotated copy of On Dialogue. Perhaps I'll read it again and discover something I missed the first time.

After all, that would be rather fitting.