from Truth, by Simon Blackburn

"... the conversational move of expressing a belief is not, one hopes, a ploy of pursuing the advantage of having the hearer believe something. It is, or should be, a matter of cooperation rather than manipulation. I may want you to become like-minded with me about some issue, but this should be because that is the truth about the issue in my eyes. It should not be because it would be expedient to me for you to be so minded. It is sometimes said that one of the casualties of the general suspicion and mistrust that permeated the old Soviet Union was that the distinction beteween truth and other motivations to believe tended to break down. Upon hearing a purported piece of information, the reaction was not 'Is this true?' but 'why is this person saying this? -- What machinations or manipulations are going on here?' The question of truth did not, as it were, have the social space in which it could breathe. This is a generalization of the attitude behind the question the trenchant British television interviewer Jeremy Paxman is supposed to ask himself on talking to a politician: 'Why is this lying bastard lying to me?'

"Sadly, it may indeed be wise to ask this question, especially in a political culture of mistrust, rhetoric and spin. There are plenty of people of whom Paxman's question is the one to ask, but this is because they are manipulative villains, not because the issue of truth and the issue of utility come to the same thing." p. 10

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"... Socrates is not a carboard cutout absolutist. He does not roar and bawl the absolute across the hall; famously, he questions and questions but never dictates. He is not a dogmatist. This shows what we have already come across, that you can admit the authority of truth without immediately supposing that you possess it. The admission might precede a dark night of scepticism, whereby although truth, real truth, should be the target of our inquiries, we fear that we shall never achieve it." p. 28