The “why” in “why do we seek the truth” has to do with a biological desire that has been reinforced by our reward system to value the acquisition of insight into the true nature of things. In the hippocampus we find two systems of importance here, one which seeks to discover the unknown, as a biological imperative (this is why dissonance is such a problem to us) as well as a dopamine release system which is linked to that acquisition, and reinforces pathways that in our past have proven to accomplish that goal. The two are inextricably linked, and at a basic biological level, explains our will to push frontiers and knowledge of the environment. Being that the materialistic underpinnings of both the manifestations listed above are located together, their cybernetic influence upon each other is more closely linked than their relations to other areas of the brain.

This is only the start, and like all other basic biological values, how we spend our time, how we achieve the things that give us pleasure, the method we do so, and what is the end, becomes mediated by our social and cultural milieu, and tweaks from the initial imperative in novel directions by our experiences. This value system, the will or desire to achieve what grants us pleasure, and reduces suffering, as well as what is in line with underlying biological “wants”, is the source from which actions manifest, including actions and subjective psychological processes that encourage us to the pursuit of truth.

While everyone has this “to a degree” the more our experiences inform us to the beneficiality of uncovering truth, in a specific manner, whether scientific or philosophical, the more inclined we are to pursue them. The greater source of pleasure or accomplishment we find in creating a habit of searching, finding, contemplating, and theorizing, the greater possibility we will pursue it more often. Thus, we find the mutual reinforcement between accomplishing new conceptualizations and modes of being, which we consciously attach the definition of “truth” to, and the feeling of its intuition. A deeper analysis of the content of the word “truth” may here begin to break down as we dive deeper into the phenomenological realm. What the word stands for, merely is the expression of what we believe to be actual. But what we believe to be actual, in concepts, in thought, in idea, is merely the expression of our attempt to organize the chaos of factors that make up our orientation within the world, from our DNA instigating a perceptive system, to our embodied Being and its navigation in the external environment. The conceptual level merely scratches the surface of what underlies such statements or consciously held beliefs. What we seek is an optimal mode of Being in the world, for which a consciously held belief can support as an epiphenomenon and a causal agent towards the makeup of our Being. It is merely surface level expression which attempts to label an intuited idea which we may or may not embody. The real truth which we seek is to be found in how we are, in the manner in which we act, in how we are so situated in the world, the attitude we take up, the things our body does. While this can be consciously directed, that conscious direction arises from subconscious content, form the totality of our body, and psyche, in the integrated Being. The “why” in “why we seek the truth” from a philosophical standpoint, can be explained by a deeper investigation into the effect upon our Being that such “seeking” entails, and the “why” behind such a question is even posited runs tangentially to the same answer.

The biological closeness of the neuronal divisions which have been uncovered as exploration of the unknown, as well as the pathway reinforcement system, and the functions inherent, provide the necessary basis to explain the human drive towards exploration of the unknown. The biological purpose of rewarding exploration through chemical intervention, in the form of serotonin and its empirically observed “pleasurable sensation” worked through environmental expansion is for purely primitive human’s evolutionary reasons, from a materialistic perspective. While environmental expansion provided benefits to our ancestors in the utilization of different domains, in expanding territory, in more options and potential which can be uncovered in new areas, the use of exploration and its place in the realm of idealism is now the frontier which is phenomenologically “closest” to us. This means that the drive which once was directed at environmental expansion, has been reallocated according to our current environment, that of the social world, the world of language, ideas, and their cultural transmission – memes. Given that ideas rule the social milieu in which our Being is oriented, given that memes and ideas are the currency which direct our consciousness and its impulses, that is, beyond the instinctual, it is deducible that we may “seek the truth” for merely biologically fitness enhancing purposes even in the realm of ideas.

Those ideas which captivate us and inform our beliefs plays an integral role in shaping the mode of Being from which we act from in the world. While these ideas and their subsequent belief modification may be consciously formulated, the level at which they affect our psyche and our value system is stemming from subconscious alteration. Meaning, we may conscious receive the memetic material from reading, from conceptually piecing together information, from auditory sources, from reflection upon experience, but the content that arises into consciousness which states “I believe something” is integrated based on a predisposition that is wholly subconscious, and, from one perspective, even sub-psyche. Our conscious rationalization of beliefs is merely the expression of an attempt to justify what we have deterministically been led to perceive as the truth. Given that this perceived, intuited, believed, “truth” plays a role in modifying our value system and mode of Being, we can connect its role to the biological “goals” inherent in our DNA.

The connectivity to a subconscious stratum, and our mode of Being, implies a modification of our conscious attention, and our very navigation of the world we find ourselves in. Thus, the seeking of truth is always a perceived fitness enhancing activity for evolutionary reasons. On the basis of what we believe to be “true” our behavior is modified, the way we interact with others is modified, how we spend our time, and what we perceive is all modified. These changes based on our belief system can be better or worse in relation to the replication of our genome, the task which the survival machine which we intuit consciously as “us” is tasked at accomplishing. What we intuit as “true” can have several senses, towards which I expound upon in “Truth Claims and their Corollaries”, but one such method of interpreting the word “truth” is the pragmatic utility of a content upon our subjective experience, or upon what is practically beneficial and useful. This method relies on the empirical data that we can phenomenologically analysis, and it is from this methodology which we will perceive, as it is all we truly have available to us (everything else is merely an abstraction from the empirical groundwork).

We may attempt to consciously hold on to the “belief” that what is true is the objectively verifiable statements, or that which holds logical consistency, what “true” necessarily implies for a biological organism, in the preconscious processes, is what is beneficial and useful to the organism, which, for us, is the DNA’s protection and reproduction. Thus we may consciously state that we don’t believe something to be true merely because we wish it to be, but because it is, but the reason why we believe that truth claim, stems from a subconscious belief in the utility of such a belief. If we believe something to be true due to verifiable evidence, logical conclusions, in consequence of the scientific method and its deductions, the very belief in such a method’s veracity is for pragmatically utilizable reasons. Taken from a phenomenological perspective, we act out what we believe to be truly the most effective at accomplishing a goal. Whether this goal may be looked at from an Individual psychology perspective, as constituting power and dominion over our environment, or whether it be social feeling and an inferiority complex looking to be rectified, or if we look at it as removal of dissatisfaction, or the pursual of satisfaction, the underpinning perspective here is irrelevant. What is necessary for the “seeking of truth” is that it only correlates with Objective Truth in that it is objectively the drive of our subjective experience for a reason that is biological in nature. If we consciously hold the view that it is being done otherwise, the statement itself is arising for fitness enhancing purposes of the individual. Perhaps this idea is popular in the current social milieu, perhaps we attribute reason and logic to its statement, no matter from which experiential factors the statement “seek the truth” and our actual “seeking” and “finding”, finds its conscious rationale to be, its core structure is founded upon the pragmatic utility for the individual.

Thus beliefs which seem wholly contradictory in their expounding are understandable, such as “I am a nihilist”. The belief that everything is meaningless wholly negates the very existence of the Being which finds it significant to think such a thought, or state it to others. It is a statement that is destroyed by logic upon any comparison with “objective truth”. Yet, for the conscious individual who states such a belief of the meaninglessness of all experience, there is an objective truth that the content is consciously believed to be representing the “truth”. How can this be so? How can we explain such a seemingly contradictory phenomena existing? The statement and its corresponding subculture of adherents find it mutually beneficial to their psyche to state their “nihilist” belief. There must be a psychological benefit to the individual who can live with the conscious belief in a world devoid of meaning, otherwise, they would not be alive. If we follow the statement to its logical conclusion, and truly take it as the truth, the individual would find no reason to state the belief, nor reason to believe it, nor reason to breathe, eat, and continue living. The fact that self-purported nihilists exist confirms our deduction that pragmatic truth runs our belief system, whether or not we consciously believe it. There is a significance and a meaning behind any idea, any belief that we may hold, and this significance impacts our Being in such a way that we value the “seeking of truth” both for the pragmatic utility in the mode of being which is supported by the very journey of seeking, and of the pragmatic utility of the discovered “truth”, regardless if such a truth is modified by the utility it has to the individual, regardless of its logical or non-logical justification. Whether that is spurred by social context, environment, indoctrination, survival, or purported philosophical consistency and reason, the underlying factor which all phenomenologically experienced “seeking of truth” contains is the pragmatic utility of the endeavor.

We seek the truth for the same reason we do anything. Because of existence. Because of life. Because of DNA. Because of evolutionarily beneficial prerogatives. Because of our developed neuronal structure. Because of our past experiences. Because of our perceptual system mediated by a value system which informs our Being, and the subsequent orientation we have to our environment. Because of the social milieu we find ourselves in, and its cybernetic influence upon us, and us upon it. Because of the Being which we are. We seek the truth because of its pragmatic utility towards the goals which we have developed from the totality of influences and factors which make up, in the overarching synthesis, the totality of our Being. The principle of sufficient reason guides us to deduce that there is good reason for these goals, and we find explanations for driving factors from many perspectives, across the domains of philosophy, psychology, and biology, yet, experientially, we find them in the content of our subjective experience. For us, this is the most real, and from this, stem all our pursuits and goals. If we ask ourselves, why do we seek the truth? It is because it is the most natural thing for us to do, and we couldn’t do otherwise.