Real or True

According to Babbie, the word true, means “agreeing with reality,” or being “Consistent with fact.” Likewise, he defines truth as “being in agreement with reality,” or “Conformity with fact.” On the other hand, he defines real as “actually existing as a thing,” or reality as “the quality of having an actual existence (Babbie, pp.36-37).” In dissecting these definitions, Babbie recognizes that they are helpful, even though, they suffer from the language inherency, which is unavoidable as long as words are used to define words. A good example is the Copernicus’ history—first taken as false, but eventually accepted as true.  In addition, he uses the example the American Founding Fathers, as having made intersubjective deliberations which eventually became the bedrock of American democracy. In fact, not only did they reach intersubjective union that “self-evident,” is the need for human liberty, but they established the three government branches to balance and check each other, and they agreed that no bill could be passed into law without agreement by a majority or consensus. Howard Becker’s essay on “Becoming a Marijuana User” (1953, pp. 235-242), also make an intersubjective agreement although at this point it is seen that in a subculture, social problems can be produced and solved the results. With this, Becker traces the entire social process, where by people are influenced into using something by friends. According to him, these friends can be the non-users and employ intersubjective agreement concerning the benefits disadvantages of marijuana and yet they are simply overwhelmed by their version of reality or truth.  Therefore, the aspect of real or true is premised on “intersubjective agreement,” both in definition and application.