The Concept of Truth Among the Dagaaba Eremon of Ghana By Sylvester Yuokaah
The below article was composed By:
Name: Sylvester Yuokaah
Education: Philosophy And social Sciences Student at Spiritan University college, Ghana.
Mail: yuokaahsylvester@gmail.com
INTRODUCTION
For anyone to adhere to any concept of truth among any association, culture or social group, it must be acknowledge that such a person is also accepting certain traditional beliefs, norms, customs and philosophical doctrines. For example, if you accept the statutes and rituals of the group you are associated then you believe that what the group presence to you is the truth and this is either material or metaphysics of immaterialism of the concept truth. Therefore in order to avoid the ambiguity of the concept and conditions under which the definition of truth will be first specified and will be considered adequate from material point of view and then proceed to the immaterial perspective.
The desired definition does not aim to specify the meaning of a familiar word used to denote a novel notion on the contrary; it aims to catch hold of the actual meaning of the old notion of the Dagaaba ethnic group through to modern times. This notion of the Dagaaba people is characterized precisely enough to enable anyone to determine whether the definition actually fulfills its task. The description of the formal structure of the language in which the definition will be used will be concisely told with the meanings the background information of the Dagaaba people.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE DAGAABA PEOPLE AND THEIR CONCEPT OF TRUTH
Oral tradition has it that the Dagaaba group is an outgrowth of the Mole-Dagbani group, which migrated to the semi-arid Sahel region in the fourteenth century CE. They are believed to have further migrated to the lower northern part of the region in the seventeenth century .Presently; the Dagaaba group is the inhabitants of the Upper West region of Ghana with WA as their capital town. The Dagaaba people are strongly built and rooted in traditional faith as compared to the other religious belief[1]s. And any discussion of Dagaaba views on truth begins with the connection between truth and meaning. This approach determines truth for sentences via reference and satisfaction. It provides away to see truth as determined by satisfaction. That is, a sentence is true for them if it is satisfied by any or sequence of preposition.
The traditional theories of truth of the Dagaaba group are theories in metaphysical views. The concept of truth in their sentences consists in its agreement with reality. Truth according to the Dagaaba people is yelmenԑ, which is derived from the words yeldeebo and yelbeԑ. The prior means acceptance and the latter mysterious or miraculous thing. Truth is defined as a statement, which is free from faults. Truth for them is a god-giving gift, which stands by itself without the influence of anyone. That is to say, that truth is independent of humanity. They also hold a strong belief that truth is an agreement which is intrinsic and above human comprehension. Some clans of the Dagaaba group especially the Eremon people hold truth to be yelnoↄ and it means an interesting thing or good news.
For them truth is that which gladdens the heart and bring peace, joy and harmony to the society. The Eremon people have an adage that stars it is the truth that shall set you free. And this is to enable them bring a clear understanding of the definition given. This Dagaaba group view truth to be what is in conformity with reality.
However, truth for them is also universal but its universality holds many critiques and they say is so because the intention, act and the circumstance where truth is defined or addressed is what differs or possess the problem for the universality of truth. For example, what we see is what we say and the interpretation to what we have observed is what bears the critique and not truth itself. Therefore, to be able to achieve the goal of truth the sentences and prepositions must be verified with concrete and coherent evidence or facts to enable distinguish falsity from truth. On the one hand, when truth is defined as a gift from god, they mean that in reality some people have set apart by the gods to reveal the truth and hidden mysteries of the world to them.
Therefore, for them the people set apart do not lie because these persons are from the gods. The people set apart by the gods are the custodians of truth on earth and they carry the will of the gods and are free from all the distempers of the mind, which Francis Beacon spoke of. In the other hand, among the Dagaaba group if you go to a vicinity like Yeripa, the clans found there claim that the society is what determine what truth is, with the chief and his council as the bridge between the final judgments of truth. The society with the chief and his council define truth has what is in reality, and it is first within the individual and therefore with the support of the gods it is voiced out as the intellectual midwifery of the Socratic Method does.
HOW SCHOLARS, INDIVIDUALS AND CERTAIN PROPOSED THEORIES APPROACH THE CONCEPT OF TRUTH
Truth we must notice is an abstract word and can only be described or talked about but do not have a precise definition. Truth generally can be said to be a spontaneous genuine depiction of facts or statement of reality. Truth is therefore intuitive and divine but Prokolos argues that truth is the agreement between the knower and the known. He is quite convincing when we make deduction from his definition, truth is what is knowable to the person in question only. But this thinking of Prokolos is also reflected in Descartes when he said, I have never had any doubt about truth, because it seems a notion so transcendentally clear that nobody can be ignorant of it…the word truth, in strict sense, denotes the conformity of thought with its objects. In view of this, St. Thomas Aquinas also states”veritas est adaequatio rei et intellectus.”[2] Simply putting, a judgment is said to be true when it conforms to external reality. That is whatever we hold to be true as to be in agreement with the intellect and the object addressed. So if Descartes says it is truth which justifies itself it is a fact he holds, because whenever the intellect and the object comes in agreement the truth must prevail to justify itself from falsehood.
Consequently, at this juncture we look at what some theories of truth say about the concept of truth. Commencing, the correspondence theory of truth which is in the opinion of the realists have it that a statement is true if it corresponds to the state of affairs it attempts to describe. That is, if what we accept as true corresponds to the world. The realists argue also that a language captures reality and does not create reality .This stand of the realists posit a relationship between thoughts or statements on one hand and the things or facts on the other, so the correspondence theory is that when you make a statement, it is true, if and only if the statement actually corresponds to reality.
Nevertheless, coherence theory of truth which is the next theory bear the opinion of idealists. They have realized that it is possible to imagine true statement that it is possible to imagine true statement that has no correspondence with reality. For example, we know that triangles have three sides and that the sum of their interior angles is 180 degrees. However, where in reality do we ever find a real triangle, as we know that every triangle we find is the real triangle? In addition, this theory is equivalent to the ideology of Plato, when he said the things we see are copies of the essence of the real things, which are in the world of forms. The fact there are statements that have no correspondence with reality leads us to coherence.
Moreover, Bertrand Russell maintained that a statement to be true must have a structural isomorphism with the state of affairs in the world that makes it true. But J. L. Austin, opposes this by saying’” that there must not necessarily be any structural parallelism between a true statement and the state of affairs that makes it true. It is only necessary that the semantics of the language in which the statement is expressed are such as to correlate whole -for- whole the statement with the state of affairs. These theories are to enable us grasp the Dagaaba concept of truth from the transitional theories viewpoint. The theories presented do not define truth but a description for a better apprehension of the concept.
CONCLUSION
Working on the truth is fundamental to understanding the concept itself. However, categorically taking into accounts the constraints of radical interpretation of the concept, it is realized again that truth cannot have a precise definition but bears diverse description and theories that broadens the horizon of the whole concept of truth. In understanding these connections, it is seen that truth is not redundant or trivial concept but equally it is not a locus for metaphysical commitments but it is a concept one has to be skeptical about. Truth is not something one can claim having but it is a constant enquiry to open new doors. Nonetheless, the Dagaaba concept of truth is embedded in the definitions and theories held in description given to the concept of truth as it deals much on the traditional perceptive. However, for everything discussed to do justice to the intuitions, which adhere to the classical Aristotelian conception of truth- intuitions, which find their expressions in the well-, known words of Aristotle’s metaphysics. “To say that that which is, is not and that which is not is, is a falsehood, therefore to say that which is, is and that which is not, is true”, depicts that we are bound to keep on asking what truth is. And how can it be justified till we are devastated. So to do away with all these stress and struggles in seeking for truth using human intellect, let implore assistance of divine illumination[3] for profound revelation to enable us distinguish truth from falsehood.
Bibliography
Frederick copleston, s.j. History of philosophy. New York: Image books Doubleday, n.d.
Glanzberg, Micheal. “The concept of truth.” Tarski,truth and meaning, n.d.
Lentz, Tuurey. Google chrome. 1997. http//www.njas.helsinki.fi/pdf-files/vol4num2/yiridoe.pdf (accessed November 14, 2021).
Marias, Julian. history of philosophy. new york: dover publications,inc., n.d.
Stumpf, Samuel Enoch. A history of philosophy :socrates to sartre and beyond. asia: McGraw-hill Education, 2012.
Tarski, Alfred. google chrome. march 5, 2010. http:www.jstor.org/stable/2102968 (accessed November 14, 2021).
[1] Lentz Tuurey,” Youth and Culture Connect News,” Accessed November 14, 2021,https://www.njas.helsink.fi/pdf-files/vol4num2/yiridoe.pdf
[2] Samuel Enoch Stumpf, A History of Philosophy: Socrates to Sartre and Beyond (Asia: McGraw-Hill Education,2012)
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