Truth is a difficult word. In the classical tradition truth involved reaching an objective understanding not just of events but of moral values such as goodness and virtue. In Plato for example true knowledge could be discovered, it existed independent of our understanding, our job was to uncover it. [1]

After a great deal of debate about positivism, most social science has moved away from this classical idea but does draw on concepts of truth implicitly or explicitly. For example one idea of truth is that of correspondence, in saying something is true you are claiming a correspondence between how you are describing a situation and how it really is. Here you might divide how it really is into facts and propositions. As to the first, we can recognise that we all see events in different ways but there are facts which should not be a matter of dispute. For example in describing a football match we can agree on certain events - goals were awarded, eleven players took part on each side, one was sent off and there were a certain number of people watching. However interpretation of the match will be varied. For example which team played better, was the outcome fair, should a goal have really been awarded, might all be in dispute. Arguments about interpretation are so difficult to resolve as they are value laden and we are selective (show confirmatory bias) in what we present as evidence.

But is there a way of separating true interpretation from untrue (or truer from less true) and if so how would we do so? Here much is made of the logic of an argument. If that logic is deductive then a logical conclusion should flow from the proposition. This is the logic of syllogy expressed in classical form as:

Socrates is a man (major premise )


All men are mortal (minor premise )

Therefore Socrates is mortal (conclusion)

However a problem here is that logic is only as good as the premise. For example we could substitute man for woman (or that matter for fish, gazelle or eagle) and the logic would work equally well.

In contrast in inductive logic, the conclusion flows from repeated observations. induction is intuitively appealing yet induction was famously attacked by Popper on the grounds that a countervailing example might exist - in one example black swans were later found in Australia and rebutted the British view that all swans were white.

Where does this leave us? Those wanting to argue for the rigour and objectivity of social science while accepting the multi-dimensional idea of truth, often evoke principles of procedure and position. In other words while recognising that social science does not establish anywhere, anytime truths the explanation that social scientists produce are special as they are based on rigorous strategies such as triangulation, participant confirmation, inter rater reliability, the use of large data sets, appropriate statistical techniques and so on. Furthermore social scientists form communities of practice with a special concern for truth as they are at a distance from policy makers and practice groups. In this way social science establishes credibility, objectivity and trustworthiness and a claim to be treated seriously.

Pragmatism and truth

Some social science more explicitly draws on the Pragmatic tradition of Peirce, James and Dewey in discussing truth For example instead of truth we might substitute the idea of justified belief (Dewey). A justified or warranted belief is a claim to knowledge founded on its usefulness in addressing a real world problem, it is justified by an analysis of the consequences of acting on that belief. Often justified beliefs will have a social dimension so that knowledge of consequences has been worked at by discussion with others and a consensus arrived at. In the pragmatic tradition we are perhaps working towards objectivity even if objectivity is never possible. In contributing to the debate the later radical Pragmatist Rorty argued that there was not much point in discussing objectivity as we would not recognise an objective description of the world even if there was one.

Truth and language

A more or less pragmatic approach to the logic of argument was put forward by Toulmin, though see also Habermas. Toulmin tended to write of the force, rather the truth of argument and suggested that while there was an architecture to argument that was independent of field there was a subject knowledge element that those claiming knowlege could only supply by engagement with a particular field. Toulmin’s archecture consisted of:

The claim (C). This was the argument whose merits we are seeking to establish

The data (D). These were the facts we appeal to as a foundation for the claim

The Warrant (W). This was the bridge to make the argument coherent. Any warrant and claim made needed to be qualified by, for example, saying this might / could be the case. A warrant might be rebutted (R) (for example an acceptance that it provides a partial not a general case).

So much for the logic but an argument also needs backing (B). This refers to the background understanding in a particular field that would give authority to the warrant. [2] Establishing a forceful argument was not just a game of logic.

A radical critique of truth claims

There is room for a root and branch critique of objectivity if we are so minded. For example a critique could cover these claims:

1. Social scientists cannot background (or bracket) their beliefs. They excericse subjectivity and bias just as much as any other group (see Foucault) . Furthermore social scientists are not divorced from policy makers or practice groups. Rather their work has been distorted by chasing funding and influence. They are no longer seeking truth or talking truth to power (see for example globalisation).
2. Ideas of coherence, logical force and impersonal reason are not universal as claimed but subjective understandings of reason formed in the Enlightenment. In practice ideas of rationality are gendered (see feminist methodology) and distorted. Furthermore there is throughout social science a bias towards explanation and a belief that events must have causes when in practice they might be better though of as chaotic / complex.
3. The facts of a situation might be more complex than we imagine. In any study the data are not objective but they are rather selected through theory laden and / or distored procedures. For example when Durkheim was discussing suicide what counts as suicide was much more in doubt than he acknowledged -how could anyone be sure that cause of death was recorded accurately? It would be impossible to be really be sure of intention but also because many coroners would have avoided the term suicide as they knew the act was unacceptable.
4. The language we use to present explanation is far more complex than certainly positivists allow. We want a language to describe what is objectively there but instead language is really a game, based on intersubjective understanding in communities of practice. Post structuralist make the argument that language is always problematic as each word we use has a meaning that can only be fixed in relation to other words. (see post structuralism) 

Finally post truth

The term post truth was according to Oxford Dictionaries the Word of the Year 2016, was defined as ‘relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief’.

https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/word-of-the-year/word-of-the-year-2016

In USA of course the term became widely used in the context of the US presidential campaign, and in UK it became aired in the debates on Brexit. The term is provocative. If social scientists wants to differentiate their claims from post truth claims then they need to explain why their explanations are more objective, trustworthy or simply better.

References

[1] A good support for making sense of the classical tradition lies in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, see for example an entry on Plato and mathematics at https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/platonism-mathematics/

[2] Toulmin, S. (2003). The Uses of Argument. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.