"What I tell you three times is true." (Lewis Carroll) Might this formula - Or a more sophisticates version of it actually determine what we believe to be true?

        This quote from the poem “The Hunting of the Snark” written by Lewis Carroll in 1876 could be attributed to on of Carroll’s most famous characters, the queen in Alice in wonderland. The Queen’s style was very dictatorial. It is known that one of the strongest tools in the hand of a dictator is propaganda. A dictator may use propaganda to get a person to believe something that is not necessarily true. In a more modern day context, this may best be represented throughout the perceptual filtering of the truth by the media, where the ‘facts’ of a current event are filtered, to affect the individual. For example the Media coverage of the Middle East violence has created an upsurge of protest. Israel is largely portrayed as the provoker, and actions are regularly taken out of context. CNN and the BBC have been noted for their bias toward the Palestinian side. Numerous articles have been written detailing these specific violations of objectively. When repeatedly reading such article, the public have no reason not to believe the so called facts presented by the media to be true. Through this example, one sees how the authorative knowledge presented by the media, can have great affect on the truth, and cause people to believe something that is entirely untrue.

        Human beings learnt through their senses. ‘Our sense perception enables us to appreciate the world.’ What is out there in the world, we see, smell, touch, taste, and hear with our senses, and the perception of what we see, smell, touch, taste, and hear is reasonably objective. When referring to the formula “What I tell you three times is true,” one can see how empirical knowledge relates. If someone tells us something three times, but all five of our senses are against what we are being told, we have a problem. In this case we see how the senses that allow appreciate the world, are being challenged by a formula. This also introduces the question of whether we should trust our senses, as we know that they can deceive us.

We often learn through our past experiences. Our past experience can often condition us to expect things. For example, when touching something very hot, like an oven hob, it is a natural reflex to quickly remove the hand from the hot surface, after doing this once, one knows that it is painful, and not a good idea to touch a hot hob. When relating the formula to past experience, one can see an example of how the formula may not determine what we believe to be true. For example, if a person were to say ‘touch the hob, it is freezing’ three times, we would not be able to, because our past experience to too strong, and we see how empirical knowledge has more power that the source of language in this case.  

Belief has great influence on the truth. If you believe in something you are more likely to see the truth in it, whereas a person that does not believe in something may fail to see the truth in that something. For example a child looking up at the clouds may believe that they can see pictures in the formation of the clouds, as they believe this, they are more likely to look for these pictures in the cloud formations. When you are looking for something, you are more likely to find it. So a tendency to accept the belief that there are pictures in the cloud formations has been accepted by this child, regardless of the evidence to the contrary. Here we see how belief can be more powerful than the truth. When looking at the formula, “What I tell you three times is true,” one can see that the formula has no relevance here, when one believes in something and are looking for the truth behind this belief, they are most probably going to find what they are looking for. Telling the child three times, twenty times or even 500 times that there are no such things as pictures in cloud formations will not change the fact that the child believes this to be true.

One thing that is important to notice is that the aforementioned formula does not essentially have to be used to prove things that are  not necessarily true to be true, but can also work with things that are already know to be true. For example if I say that ‘London is the capital city of England’ three times, it does determine what we believe to be true, as it is fact that London is the capital city of England. In this case one can see how the formula works entirely flawlessly.

What seems to be important in the title of this essay is that it questions whether a formula ‘might’ not does but might determine what we believe to be true. Through the use of example in this essay I have been able to show that in some cases the statement “What I tell you three times is true,” can be shown to be true whereas in other cases it can not. Through the examination and discussion of, including examples of repetition, religion, propaganda, past experience, and empirical knowledge, the truth of Lewis Carroll’s statement; “What I tell you three times is true,” can be held true in some cases and not in others. Personally I feel that in general “What I tell you three times is true,” is not a viable statement, as the truth of a statement should be based on fact, rather than the amount of times it is told, if the truth of a statement were to be determined by the amount of times it were repeated it would show how sad and naïve the nature of human beings really are.

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