“Dixit itaque ei Pilatus: Ergo rex es tu? Respondit Jesus: Tu dicis quia rex sum ego. Ego in hoc natus sum, et ad hoc veni in mundum, ut testimonium perhibeam veritati: omnis qui est ex veritate, audit vocem meam. / Dicit ei Pilatus: Quid est veritas? Et cum hoc dixisset, iterum exivit ad Judæos, et dicit eis: Ego nullam invenio in eo causam.”
“Pilate therefore ſaide vnto him, Art thou a King then? Ieſus anſwered, Thou ſaieſt that I am a King. To this end was I borne, and for this cauſe came I into the world, that I ſhould beare witneſſe vnto the trueth: euery one that is of the trueth heareth my voice. / Pilate ſaith vnto him, What is trueth? And when hee had ſaid this, he went out againe vnto the Iewes, and ſaith vnto them, I find in him no fault at all.”
—John 18:37–38, The Bible, Vulgate / King James Version

Theories of Truth

There are numerous theories of truth. The most common, correspondence, states that a statement is true insofar as it corresponds to the world. The other main approach, the coherence theory of truth, states that a statement is true insofar as it is coherent with one’s other beliefs. Like most others who try to be broadly realistic in their approach to philosophy, I hold a correspondence theory of truth.

Identity politics instead relies on an entirely different theory of truth, one more closely aligned to ideas such as pragmatism (a pragmatic theory of truth holds instead that a statement is true if it is useful to believe it) and postmodernism. I call it Palatabilism: the principle that all statements and actions must be palatable (acceptable, inoffensive) to a given group or individual.

Like the essentialist theory of being, palatabilism is a description, assigned by me to others, rather than a clearly defined philosophical doctrine with which adherents identify. Indeed, it is traditionally considered intellectually gauche to express palatabilist beliefs too explicitly, and so even those who act according to such a principle in practice will usually deny that they do.¹

The Varieties of Palatabilist Experience²

I have identified four axes along which palatabilist attitudes may differ, while still being recognisably palatabilist. These categorisations are my groupings, and my terminology. They are not necessarily mutually exclusive within their axis, nor complete, nor discrete.

Delimited by scope of judgement

• Auto-palatabilism: It must be palatable to oneself
  E.g., the default bestial instinct that all humans adopt defensively: we do not like to believe that which upsets us—albeit, most of us grow beyond that, or are supposed to.
• Power palatabilism: It must be palatable to the powerful
  E.g., censorship, whether by formal state structures or other centres of power such as business and the media, uses this palatabilism; it is often quite pragmatic, serving power for the benefits power can provide, but monarchist / fascist ideologies sometimes make this power palatabilism a point of principle.
• Inverted or Intersectional palatabilism: It must be palatable to the powerless
  E.g., the very widespread current Sklavenmoral, near-ubiquitous on the left, and to which most current power centres must pay at least lip service; I group intersectional palatabilism as a subset of this, using the notorious intersectional approach of assigning effective notional points to various states of supposed powerlessness to create an inverted hierarchy.³
• Religious palatabilism: It must be palatable to the religious traditions
  E.g., traditional religions often deny that truths can exist if they go against the formal tenets or scriptures of their faith. What distinguishes this strand is the element of path dependency from arbitrary initial conditions. While many religious doctrines start out from some other form of principle, such as Confucianism's devotion to authority, or Christianity's radically Sklavenmoral adoration of poverty and suffering, they all have, grandfathered in, some eccentricities that are not related to their core mission. For example, the insistence of some Christians that evolution is false, solely because their Scripture implies it, or the Jewish insistence on circumcision and keeping kosher, for which their retrospective justifications are utterly implausible.
• Universal palatabilism: It must be palatable to everybody
  E.g., the ‘nice’, liberal-centrist version of the above: “Wouldn't it be nice if we could all agree and figure things out together, and not be mean to each other, y'know?”. This is of course both impossible and easily exploited: a cynical special interest group can simply declare itself offended by a reasonable criticism in order to silence dissent. For example, an extremely wealthy and powerful ethno-religious minority could pretend to be offended by comments about its power, or about the tyrannical behaviour of their parent state—hypothetically, of course.

Delimited by sub-/objectivity

• Subjective palatabilism: What is palatably so for one may not be so for all
  E.g., cultural relativism, whereby offences carried out elsewhere (or elsewhen) are excused as being part of that culture.
• Objective palatabilism: What is palatably so for one is so for all
  E.g., the cultural imperialism of American liberals⁴ insisting that their idiosyncratic identity fetishes must be accepted by all cultures around the world, and must be applied retrospectively to all historical societies. This is distinct from, though similar to, normal moral realism, e.g. most traditional religions, which hold their truths to correspond to the world rather than to rely on palatability for their force.

Delimited by extent of palatability

• Passive palatabilism: It must not be actively offensive
  E.g., one could assign a neutral state to statements, between offensive and palatable, that are perhaps uncomfortable but not outright offensive; a correspondence-truth exemption, for example, like in the law on defamation. Passive palatabilism is less threatening than active palatabilism—and so will often be claimed even when the actual content of a holder's beliefs is plainly actively palatabilist.
• Active palatabilism: It must be actively inoffensive
  E.g., the most radical identity politics claims, such as “silence is violence”: it is not sufficient to be passively inoffensive; one must be actively making statements that are palatable to the given subjects.

Delimited by scope of subject

• Ethical palatabilism: An action must be palatable to be good
  E.g., the minimal palatabilist claim, which is even so not trivial: that the good (whatever that is) is so iff it is palatable to the given subjects.
• Veridical or Truth palatabilism: A statement or belief must be palatable to be true
  E.g., the widespread dismissal of any statement that is found offensive: it is now common for someone to “disagree” with a purported statement of fact solely on the grounds that it is offensive. Traditionally this should have no bearing on its truth value, but to a palatabilist it cannot be true if it is offensive.
• Ontological or Being palatabilism: A thing or situation must be palatable to exist, to be real
  E.g., the mystical nature of trans identity is believed to exist because it is palatable to social justice activists; conversely, the bizarre-to-outsiders claim that disputing the ontological claims of trans identity means denying the very existence of trans-identifying individuals is born of this ontological palatabilism.

This final categorisation reflects the sliding scale along which identitarians enact palatabilism. At the extreme are those who refuse to accept the very existence of anything that is unpalatable to their world view. Less extreme are those who refuse to accept the truth of any unpalatable statements. Finally, there are those who refuse to accept the morality of any unpalatable statements, actions, events. But palatabilism, as a subconscious way of thinking, not a public, formal doctrine, is often held in a veridical or even ontological manner in practical terms, even if the subject would claim otherwise. The consequences of one’s statements and actions speak louder than one’s self-professed rationality. This inconsistency can arise through intellectual sloppiness or even ignorance, or it can be part of a cynical motte-and-bailey scam.

Consequences and Conclusions

Theories of truth are pragmatically important because our beliefs are an important source of our actions. Holding a correspondence theory of truth, I make decisions about my actions in the world based on what I observe of it, and when I receive feedback from the world that my observations, and thus my beliefs, did not correspond to it, I—try to—update my beliefs and change my actions. Of course, I am a jealous, arrogant beast like everyone else, and there are many emotional factors that feed into my beliefs beneath the thin veneer of rationality. Still, I do my best, and eventually the world beats me into accepting its reality, whether I like it or not.

Holders of palatabilist theories of truth need never trouble themselves with this feedback loop. If the world gives them feedback that their beliefs are false, that evidence can be, and is, ignored as unpalatable. Given that the world does exist⁵, this creates a dangerous gap where harmful actions continue to be taken, despite enormous feedback from the world, without the possibility of a course correction.

In practice, the correspondence theory of truth is correct, and it is therefore impossible to exist in the world without holding at least some basic correspondent beliefs. Everyone who holds these false palatabilist theories of truth therefore exists in a constant uneasy truce, a liminal state between reality and their fantasies of how they wish reality to be. Eventually they must return to reality, or they must die. Yet just as it is often said of markets that they can remain irrational for longer than an individual investor can remain solvent, the same is true of palatabilists: palatabilists can remain committed to their delusions for longer than they can escape irreparable harm from them.

This problem is both mitigated and exacerbated when it is extended to groups. When the prevalence of palatabilists is low, they will be outweighed by the correspondentist majority. Organisations will make token concessions to appease the militant palatabilists, but continue to broadly seek reality-based solutions. But when the palatabilists reach a critical mass, they will take over the organisation. The organisation, be it a government, a corporation, a school, etc, will now extend the above self-destructive behaviours to the whole of society, harming not only themselves, but those they have responsibility for.

The disparities of enthusiasm and time also play a role here. If palatabilists are more enthusiastic than correspondentists, which they generally are, owing to the moral fervour inherent in their passion for palatability, they will be more likely to seek positions of power where they can enact their beliefs. Thus even a minority of palatabilists can, by infiltrating positions of influence, destroy an organisation by rendering it incapable of reacting to reality, instead constantly making harmful choices that are palatable to the given groups or individuals. Even if individual palatabilists manage to recover their senses and perceive the world, rather than perceiving only what is palatable, they will both become apathetic, and abandon their positions of influence, and be deliberately side-lined by the residual palatabilist faction, who in a hegemonic palatabilist environment will have a constant source of impassioned new acolytes rising through the ranks to replace the disillusioned elders.

It is hard to know what, if anything, can be done about all of this. As discussed, the palatabilist instinct exists in all of us as animals. Indeed, it has been suggested that the reasoning faculty itself arose only as a way to justify one's interests to others, rather than as a way to seek truths that would give one a competitive advantage; perhaps both are somewhat true, and other factors besides. Palatabilism thus cannot ever be completely purged from debate, and perhaps it should not be. There are benefits, both personal and social, to having a stubborn instinct to persist with your epistemic priors, rather than swaying wildly between beliefs. More broadly, it is likely that upsurges of palatabilist fervour are both rooted in material causes and cyclical in nature. So this too will pass, as it passed for our ancestors: long-term, the trick is to ensure that the damage done is sufficiently minimal that we will have descendants to survive and look back on our struggles with the same equanimity.

Short-term, recent experience tells us that appeasement of these views does not work. This simply entrenches the palatabilists in their positions of authority, from which they will not return the forgiving favour. The Principle of Explosion itself warns that when it comes to truth there can be no compromise, or else any other statement can ultimately be derived. The only course I can therefore recommend is one of radical truth-telling. Of course, this approach is deeply in my nature already, so I am extremely biased in its favour. Yet I think it is right.

In particular, in an era when palatabilism is the enemy, spiky unpalatability is called for. Do not be kind, do not be compassionate, do not be altruistic, unless the stark truth calls for it. Reality can look after itself and does not need our defence, but our ability to defend ourselves from reality depends on wresting back the truth from those who want to prioritise hurt feelings over it.