[M.D. Holloway]

By "the truth" realism understands knowledge about reality which corresponds accurately to what actually is the case. At the same time, however, realism recognizes that the "accuracy" of this correspondence is always only relatively absolute, at best, because truth claims about any aspect or dimension of social or natural reality are always partial and limited, and for five principal reasons:

1. Reality is in motion, constantly changing, and therefore truth claims must constantly change as well to register these changes in the objects about which they claim to provide the truth;

2. Knowledge of reality is inevitably limited by the level of development of the (technical/scientific) means and methods used to investigate and discern what actually is true, and this is the case in all areas of knowledge about natural and social reality;

3. Any claim to true knowledge of reality always, at best, only reflects

a. a particular spatial extension and/or temporal duration of what is always ultimately much vaster and more complex,

b. that which is recognizable at a single level or across a single series of levels of abstraction, and

c. that which is recognizable from a single perspective or vantage point (or a slightly larger number of nevertheless still finite and limited vantage points);

4. Any claim to true knowledge of reality, even in the physical sciences, is always at least partially effected and influenced -- and potentially disenabled, potentially distorted, as well as it is enabled, made possible -- by the contest of social and political -- and ideological -- interests within a given, historically concrete society; and, finally,

5. Once knowledge about any object is ascertained, this knowledge is very often put to practical use in ways which will, intentionally or not, effect significant changes in the very same object.




The key, then, given these qualifications, in assessing competing truth claims, must be to assess these relative to each other in terms of how more or less accurately they are able to explain what they purport to explain -- and to do so without significant gaps, incoherences, and inconsistencies -- as well as, and this is perhaps even more important, what kinds of ends and interests these competing truth claims respectively enable (actually or potentially), and how more or less adequately they do this.