When I teach, such are the times, the objection to the correspondence theory of truth often takes a form something like this:  “You say thought ought to reflect how the world really is.  If we think dogs are cats, we’re mistaken, because dogs are not cats.  But ‘dogs’ and ‘cats’ are just words.  We can define words any way that we like.  If some language used the word ‘dogs’ to mean both dogs and cats, who is to say they are wrong?”

There is no need to deny that some people might speak a language in which the same word were used for both dogs and cats.  But such a language would be inconvenient, for it would be missing a distinction that actually exists in reality.  If speakers of the language imagined that dogs and cats were the same species just because they used the same word, “dog,” for both of them, they would be mistaken.  One sort of “dog” would pant and wag its tail; another sort of “dog” would purr and lick itself clean.  The first sort of “dog” would chase the second sort, but the second sort would rarely chase the first.  The two sorts of “dog” would be unable to interbreed, and people who liked one sort as pets would often dislike the other.  Yes, one can use words any way one wishes, but not every way of using words is fitting, because not every way corresponds to reality.  Truth really does lie in the equation of intellect with thing.

The question about calling both cats and dogs “dogs” may seem silly.  But there is such a thing as motivated error:  Often, when people keep asking the same silly questions, there is a reason, rooted in desire.  For though no one in our culture seriously proposes to call cats “dogs,” people in our culture do earnestly seek to have us all call animals “persons,” some persons “non-persons,” some non-marriages “marriages,” and so forth.  Because the case for these ways of thinking is difficult to make, proponents fall back on sophisms about words meaning whatever we say they mean and about reality being whatever we want it to be.  Or they resort to insults, in the fashionable psychotherapeutic style.  Those who resist “saying of what is that it is not, and of what is not that it is,” are said to have a “phobia” or irrational fear.

Then again, perhaps those who warn of phobias are onto something, for a certain irrational fear does seem to be abroad. Perhaps we might call it aletheiaphobia, fear of acknowledging the truth of how things really are, logophobia, fear of the supreme Logos; or nomophobia, hostility to eternal law.

St. Thomas’s adherence to the correspondence theory of truth -- that “an opinion is true or false according as it answers to the reality” -- is apt to provoke protests in our day. We are told that truth is a “social construction,” which lies not in the agreement of intellect with reality, but in mere consensus among different intellects.  It would seem that even on its own terms, this consensus theory of truth could be true only if everyone agreed that it were true, for otherwise there would be no consensus.  Not everyone does agree that it is true; therefore it is false.

Since the incoherency of the consensus theory seems not even to make a dent in its vogue, one wonders what kind of consensus its proponents think it does enjoy.  Perhaps this kind: “Everyone I talk to thinks truth lies in consensus!”

I was once privileged to hear a lecture by a visiting scholar in defense of the consensus theory of truth.  During the discussion period afterward, someone asked him quite soberly whether poisonous mushrooms would still be deadly if everyone thought they were harmless.  Four things were noteworthy:  First, that he said a great many erudite words in response; second, that despite these many words he never answered the question; third, that everyone recognized the evasion; and fourth, that despite recognizing the evasion, nearly everyone continued to take him seriously.

Distinguish, distinguish, distinguish!  “Natural” is one of those polyvalent words that get us into tangles if we don’t keep its various senses straight.

By the “natural,” the classical natural law thinkers meant what pertains to our nature, our creational design.  For example, the power to reflect on our purposes is called natural because we are endowed with it; honoring parents is called natural because it is fitting for us; and friendship is called natural because we need it in order to flourish.

But in the modern period, people came to call things natural if they are simple, spontaneous, unlearned, unrestrained, unimproved, or unmodified by law or custom.  This is what people have in mind when they say it is more natural to babble than to speak, to eat with one’s fingers than to use utensils, to bang two rocks together than to play bongo drums, to push to the front of the line than to wait for one’s turn, or to have sexual intercourse entirely without care or commitment.

Notice that things that are natural in the modern sense are usually profoundly unnatural in the classical sense.  For example, the modern thinkers Thomas Hobbes and John Locke called anarchy our “state of nature” or natural condition because they thought government was an invention; we didn’t have it at first.  Why did they think it had to be invented?  Because anarchy was so violent and inconvenient.    But to a classical thinker, the very fact that anarchy is so violent and inconvenient shows that it isn’t our natural condition.  The state of affairs most suited to the complete and appropriate unfolding of our natural potentialities is richly articulated by customs and upheld by just laws.  Whether we had all these things from the first is beside the point.

So when the modern thinkers denied that man is naturally political, they might have thought they were disagreeing with the classical view, but they weren’t even properly addressing it.  They meant something different by the “natural.”

A recent headline in the Wall Street Journal announces, “Twitter CEO Costolo struggles to define vision.”

All right, it’s a business publication.  Still, am I the only person who finds it diverting to associate the word “Twitter” with the word “vision”?

History presents to us two nearly opposite meanings of freedom.  Among the classical thinkers (bearing in mind that not all ancient thinkers were classical), the term referred not to the absence of government, but to a certain kind of governance, whether over a multitude of people, a single man, or an aspect of a man.

Thus, in the political sense, the people of a republic were called "free" because they collectively ruled themselves (rather than being under the thumb of a tyrant).  In the domestic sense, a freeman was called "free" because he ruled himself (rather than being ruled by a master).  In the moral sense, a virtuous man was called "free" because he was ruled by the principle that most fully expressed his nature, this being his reason (rather than being ruled by his desires).  And in the religious sense, a Christian was called "free" because he served the Author of his being, in whose image he was made, apart from whom he could not truly be himself, for to be alienated from the one in whose image I am made is to be alienated from my own being.

By degrees, the meaning of the term changed.  So long as they do not think too deeply about the matter, modern people tend to regard freedom not as freedom from the wrong kind of rule, but as freedom from rule.

In the political sense, this would make the people of a republic freer than the people of a tyranny only if they happened to make fewer rules for themselves than a tyrant would.  In fact, the only true freedom would be anarchy, which has no rules at all, although freedom in this sense turns out to be inconvenient.  In the domestic sense, a freeman would be freer than a slave not because he ruled himself, but only because he was more nearly able to do as he pleased -- if, in fact, he was more nearly able.  In the moral sense, a virtuous man would be freer than a vicious one only if his reason happened to put less constraint on his will than his base desires did.  The only true freedom would be following whatever impulse one happened to have at the moment; however one might dress this up by calling it “autonomy,” as though we were gods, the condition is less superhuman than subhuman.  In the religious sense, a person would be free only if he served nothing and no one.  Since in this view of things, God looks like a tyrant, some suppose that the only free spirit is the atheist.  Carrying the line of reasoning still further, some take the view that not even the atheist is truly free, if he serves the cause of atheism.

The culmination of the idea is that no one is truly free unless he does what he does merely because he does it; unless he has no particular reason for doing anything at all; unless his choices are meaningless.  In this sense, freedom is not so much inconvenient as futile, and human existence is absurd.  Which is just what some people conclude.