Amanda Ayer

The criterion of truth is the measure of the truthfulness and reliability of our knowledge. It is also the basis for determining the correctness of our concepts and how much our perceptions, ideas, and concepts accord with objective reality. Idealism holds to the idea that the criterion of truth does not involve the integration between theory as created by human intelligence and objective reality, but rather that the criterion of truth involves the "clarity and correctness" of perception, viewpoints, and concepts by the subject. For instance, the Machists 1 think that the criterion of truth is experience, however, they neither interpret experience from a materialistic viewpoint, nor view experience as the result of humans interacting with nature as they reform it. The Machists view experience as a summary of perceptions and as the subjective experience of humans. In this sense, perception must be tested by perception itself. In attempting to escape the trap of solipsism , they proposed "collective experience" as the criterion of truth. According to such a view, anything that involves "common significance," that is, anything acknowledged by everyone, is the truth. Lenin exposed the absurdity of idealist theory by pointing out that by following the view of "socially formed experience" it is very easy to consider as normal the most absurd and farcical notions, such as ghosts, for such beliefs are also a form of human "experience." Religion also possesses a "common significance," for innumerable people believe in ghosts and miracles, etc. Nevertheless, religion does not become the truth because of this. The concept of the "criterion of truth" held by the Machists played a dominant role in modern bourgeois philosophy. Jean Jacques Rousseau and John Dewey, along with other reactionaries in philosophy all denied scientific criteria. They would rather that the masses remain ignorant of how to understand and determine the truth

In the sense in which astronomy or botany are sciences, philosophy is not a science. Philosophers have theories, but their theories do not enable them to make predictions; they can not be empirically confirmed or refuted in the way that scientific theories can. But, it will be objected, this is not true of all the sciences. Palaeontologists do not make predictions: in pure mathematics there is no appeal to experience. But even if they are not predictive the propositions which figure in the historical sciences are at any rate empirically testable: and even if the propositions of pure mathematics are not confutable by observation, they are subject to recognized methods of proof. There are standard procedures for deciding whether they are true or false. But where in philosophy are such procedures to be found? If anywhere, in formal logic which has come very close to mathematics. Nowadays, indeed, it is hardly possible to draw a line between them. But by the very process of becoming a science, formal logic detaches itself from philosophy. Philosophers do indeed make use of formal logic. They employ deductive arguments; sometimes they are able to take advantage of the economy and precision of logical symbolism. But the premises on which they reason, the propositions which the use of logical symbolism helps them to state more clearly, are not themselves drawn from formal logic. The truths which can be established by formal logic alone are not philosophical