Conflating the Notion of Truth.

Reading a few articles on the Internet led me to re-think a few of my notions regarding Truth.

What is truth? Is there one, many or none? Truth is an important facet in many theories, because it is arguably the steadiest foundation for any argument. But is there only one kind of Truth? I believe that this is sorely mistaken. I believe that there are many kinds of truths, each true but each requiring a different theory to substantiate them. For example, "Killing is wrong" is arguably true. "Pluto revolves around the Sun" is true. "1 + 1 = 2" is true. But are they necessarily the same kind of truth? By conflating notions about Truth we tie ourselves down with unnecessary problems of definition.

Now, the case that there can be no truths is problematic. There is at least one form of truth that common sense tells us exist, which are natural, physical truths. The enterprise of Science reasonably imparts to us the knowledge that there can be some form of truth that exists within and beyond our perceptions, physical facts that are simply there even if we are not there to project our mental states onto them. For example, we know that Pluto revolves around the Sun, and this fact holds reasonably true even without constantly keeping an eye on Pluto to see if it decides to go rogue. Through observation, empirical deductions and the scientific method we can arrive at some form of truth, the truth of physical facts. This form of truth can be said to bear correspondence to Nature in so far as it is properly scientifically proven.

Another form of truth can be found in Mathematics. For at least one school of thought in Mathematics, there is the belief that "1+1=2" is true because mathematical entities exist to which "1+1=2" correlates to, i.e. the concept of "1" "+" and "2" exists so that we can bear correspondence to it. In this case, Mathematics can be said to be similar to the aims of Science, although in a much purer logical form which assures certainty.

Now, you might say this obviously means that Truth is purely by correspondence; since all naturalistic studies imply that, it must be so. But I argue that this is not the case in ethics. For ethics, what defines Good? There must be something "real" we can talk about, something above our subjective intuitions, such that we can actually argue about whether moral truths exist at all. The recent trend of postmodernist delusions that there is no objective truth can easily be torn down if we posit Prof. Simon Blackburn's challenge: how can any situation have different moral outcomes without a change in the situation itself? In every scenario, there must be a right way of going by moral acts, even if this is not immediately made clear. We only need to clarify the situation and find the fundamental structure of that scenario so that we can engage in analysis.

However, this does not mean that there exists an immutable, non-malleable truth within ethics. If so, then there cannot possibly be any case that morality can evolve. Civil rights and later moral standards in the 19th and 20th century cannot possibly come about if moral truth is unchangeable. Therefore, I argue that these are in fact social truths, truths that are socially contingent, formed out of an unknowing inter-subjective web that pervades society at any one time. These are formed out of sentiment and emotive factors, much like what Hume had said, but this cannot be reduced to a mere "yuk" factor. It is not a mere subjective emotion, but rather the zeitgeist of the dominant social norms.
To that end, there must be at least two forms of truth, one as I mentioned in the first paragraph, and the second of which is a type of coherence within society which gives rise to social truths such as ethical truths.

This is a very rough sketch of my thoughts; hopefully I can expand on this sometime soon.