Truth

B_Hickboy

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how has no one said "the truth? you cant handle the truth!"????

truth is reality, but reality is different to different people. (is that philosphical enough for ya?)
But reality is NOT different for different people. Perception is what differs from one person to the next. It would be a sublimely arrogant position for me to take if I said that my perception accurately reflected the true nature of things.
 

TripHammer

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But reality is NOT different for different people. Perception is what differs from one person to the next. It would be a sublimely arrogant position for me to take if I said that my perception accurately reflected the true nature of things.

Yes. There is NO truth. Only perception. Everyone sees everything differently. "Truth" is the word we use when we want to solidify our perception and sell it to others who we feel aren't as perceptive.
 

D_Tim McGnaw

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Whether something is true, whether someone thinks something true, and whether something can be proved true are three entirely different matters. They are not different "kinds of truth." What you are calling "subjective truth" is mere belief.

It is senseless to say that something is "true for" someone. At best, that is just a confused way of saying that the person believes it. We already have a word for saying that someone believes something, namely the word "believe." We have the word "true" to signify the difference between cases in which what someone believes is what is actually so and cases in which it is not. To talk about things being "true for" people, like talking about "subjective truth," defeats the essential purpose of the word "true."


I agree that for almost all intents and purposes objective fact, demonstrable reality is really the only truth. But there are facts which cannot be proved to anyone else but which remain true facts.

For instance, I am the only witness to a crime which leaves no clues to who committed it, I am the only one who saw the culprit in the act, the culprit dies in unrelated circumstances after the commission of the crime, certainly it may be impossible for me to prove to anyone else that the culprit committed the crime but the fact that this culprit committed the crime remains true, and in this case the only other person who might be able to verify this fact (the culprit) is dead so no one is able to objectively view this fact a true.

This makes the truth in this instance entirely subjective because only I can vouch for its verity and no one else.
 
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RalDudeHangin

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Building on what everyone has said . . . Truth can be defined two ways: Subjectively and Objectively.

Objectively is "easy". Empirical data can prove if a hypothesis is right or wrong. It refers to determining what the values of variables are in a physical system. Using the laws of science, we can "prove certain truths" like the existence of gravity, heat, and chemical reactions. In the realm of science, we're on a level playing field (new discoveries and exploration not with standing). Gravity is gravity regardless of your personal belief system.

Subjectively? Beauty is indeed in the eye of the beholder. Truth can be what an individual believes to be an unquestionable conviction. In some cases there is a fine line with objectivity ... it all depends on what the hypothesis is being evaluated against.

"She is beautiful... true or false". Depends what you like.

"Murdering is wrong... true or false". What about the death penalty? What about Dr Kevorkian and assisted deaths? Abortion? "Eye for an eye" still exists in some countries . . .

"Jesus is the Lord and his Father is the Creator of the universe... true or false". Ask a Catholic, a Muslim, Tom Cruise, and Helen who works in the bakery at Food Lion and then get back to me . . .

Truth . . . it depends what playbook you're using.
 

Calboner

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But reality is NOT different for different people. Perception is what differs from one person to the next. It would be a sublimely arrogant position for me to take if I said that my perception accurately reflected the true nature of things.
Right; that's why we have words like "reality" and "truth" on the one hand, and words like "perception" and "belief" on the other. It amazes me that some people think that words from the second family can be explained in terms of the first.
Yes. There is NO truth. Only perception. Everyone sees everything differently. "Truth" is the word we use when we want to solidify our perception and sell it to others who we feel aren't as perceptive.
You assert that there is no truth, only perception. By your own lights, this statement must itself be mere perception and devoid of truth. Since you admit that what you have said is not true, I see no reason why I should take it seriously. Enjoy your "perceptions."
I agree that for almost all intents and purposes objective fact, demonstrable reality is really the only truth. But there are facts which cannot be proved to anyone else but which remain true facts.

For instance, I am the only witness to a crime which leaves no clues to who committed it, I am the only one who saw the culprit in the act, the culprit dies in unrelated circumstances after the commission of the crime, certainly it may be impossible for me to prove to anyone else that the culprit committed the crime but the fact that this culprit committed the crime remains true, and in this case the only other person who might be able to verify this fact (the culprit) is dead so no one is able to objectively view this fact a true.
I accept everything that you have said up to this point.
This makes the truth in this instance entirely subjective because only I can vouch for its verity and no one else.
This is a non sequitur. Whether something is true and whether something can be proved true are entirely different questions. The fact that we cannot prove something that happens to be true does not mean that its truth is of some special variety, different from the way in which things that can be proved are true. Truth does not come in different colors or flavors or shapes or sizes or anything else according to the epistemic status of the thing that is true (whether it is known or can be proved).
 

D_Tim McGnaw

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I accept everything that you have said up to this point.

This is a non sequitur. Whether something is true and whether something can be proved true are entirely different questions. The fact that we cannot prove something that happens to be true does not mean that its truth is of some special variety, different from the way in which things that can be proved are true. Truth does not come in different colors or flavors or shapes or sizes or anything else according to the epistemic status of the thing that is true (whether it is known or can be proved).


But you can see that my point about there being different kinds of truth is not based in a confusion of belief with truth, which was your first objection to my point right ?

My point is that, you are right, the truth is the truth, naturally. But for the purposes of divination of the truth (part of the OP question being about divining the truth ) there are two kinds of approach based on the two ways in which truth is experienced, the kind of truth which it is possible to objectivise and the kind which can only be experienced subjectively.
 

TripHammer

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You assert that there is no truth, only perception. By your own lights, this statement must itself be mere perception and devoid of truth. Since you admit that what you have said is not true, I see no reason why I should take it seriously. Enjoy your "perceptions."

Ah, pompousness in logic. How I've missed that. A truly time-honored technique often used by those who seek to force their version of "truth." Enjoy your arrogance.
 

Calboner

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Ah, pompousness in logic. How I've missed that. A truly time-honored technique often used by those who seek to force their version of "truth." Enjoy your arrogance.
Pomposity is a matter of style, not of logic. Whatever you think of my style, you have not addressed the logic of my argument. You give every indication of being simply incompetent to recognize your own incoherence.
 

rbkwp

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I think the only answer to Truth .. is Death'
No reply & no coming back
No arguments forthwith from anyone.
People are going to believe what they think .. irrespective
enz
 

Tattooed Goddess

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Hickboy, Stop using keywords that get all of the clucky chickens in an uproar about whatever they can recall their professor saying in Philosophy 101 30 some odd years ago.

Now go back to watching Steel Magnolias, we all know you probably cry during chick flicks.
 

B_Hickboy

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Hickboy, Stop using keywords that get all of the clucky chickens in an uproar about whatever they can recall their professor saying in Philosophy 101 30 some odd years ago.

Now go back to watching Steel Magnolias, we all know you probably cry during chick flicks.
Yeah, I can't watch that one. If I want a good cry I watch the ending of Forrest Gump. That scene where he's at Jenny's grave gets me every time.
 

B_bigbanana

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Truth endures time, speculation, criticism, and a lie. Truth can not be manipulated and it is not always comforting. It is certainty surrounded by uncertainty. Truth can not be moved. Truth exists to give stability in a shaken life. Truth is not what you make it because you did not make it. It is foundation. In questioning there is only one real answer...truth.
 

B_Hickboy

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Truth endures time, speculation, criticism, and a lie. Truth can not be manipulated and it is not always comforting. It is certainty surrounded by uncertainty. Truth can not be moved. Truth exists to give stability in a shaken life. Truth is not what you make it because you did not make it. It is foundation. In questioning there is only one real answer...truth.
I like that. I wanted to tell you before somebody with a chip on his shoulder came up in here to pick it apart.
 

Tattooed Goddess

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Truth endures time, speculation, criticism, and a lie. Truth can not be manipulated and it is not always comforting. It is certainty surrounded by uncertainty. Truth can not be moved. Truth exists to give stability in a shaken life. Truth is not what you make it because you did not make it. It is foundation. In questioning there is only one real answer...truth.

Good for you, Mr. Hallmark.
 

JustAsking

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I can't quite find the certainty that Calboner does that there is only one kind of truth. Or let me say that I am not sure that one kind of truth is the only useful kind, coinsidering that usually that one kind of truth is inaccessible to us.

Consider these two statements. Do they represent the same kind of truth?

1) The sum of the interior angles of a triangle is always 180 degrees.
2) The force on an object is equal to the product of its mass and its acceleration.
 

Calboner

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I can't quite find the certainty that Calboner does that there is only one kind of truth. Or let me say that I am not sure that one kind of truth is the only useful kind, coinsidering that usually that one kind of truth is inaccessible to us.

Consider these two statements. Do they represent the same kind of truth?

1) The sum of the interior angles of a triangle is always 180 degrees.
2) The force on an object is equal to the product of its mass and its acceleration.
I think the burden is on you to explain how there is a difference in the so-called "kind of truth" -- a combination of words that seems to me devoid of sense -- pertaining to the one and that pertaining to the other.

In what does the truth of (1) consist? In the fact that the sum of the interior angles of a triangle is always 180 degrees. In what does the truth of (2) consist? In the fact that the force on an object is equal to the product of its mass and its acceleration. For any proposition of the form "Such and such is the case," what does its being true consist in? In such and such's being the case. The difference lies in the propositions, not in the job that the word "true" performs, namely to take us from merely considering the proposition to asserting it.

We may use the word "truth" to mean "something that is true" or "true proposition" (as in the phrase, "We hold these truths to be self-evident"). In that sense we may speak of different truths. E.g., we may say that the sentences (1) and (2) express different truths. But that is just to say that they express different true propositions. The entire difference is explicable, once again, in terms of the difference between the propositions. There is no work whatever for the notion of a difference in the so-called "kind of truth" to do.

I confess that I really do not understand why anyone would be attracted to the idea that there are different so-called "kinds of truth." The idea seems to me simply to rest on a confusion of the bearers of truth -- the propositions, as I have called them, which can be as diverse as anything conceivable -- with truth itself.

The question "What is truth?", at least when asked in a spirit of philosophy rather than of politics (as when posed by a certain Roman governor), is in effect a trick question. It is in fact a trick question of the very trickiest kind, in that the people who pose it in all sincerity are themselves victims of the trick.

The word "truth" is, obviously, an abstract singular common noun. Generally speaking, given any such noun N, it makes sense to ask the question that comes from prefixing the phrase "What is . . . ?" to it -- "What is food?", "What is humor?", "What is photosynthesis?", etc. In each of these cases, we answer the question by mustering our knowledge of the thing -- the stuff or the quality or the process -- signified by the noun. In the case of "What is truth?", we do not even know what we are supposed to think about. The only knowledge of truth that we can muster is our knowledge of what things are true -- our knowledge of truths. When we try to consider truth itself, in abstraction from truths (true propositions), we are completely at a loss.

The reason for this perplexity is that the noun "truth" does not work in the way that those nouns do. To say how it works is not at all easy. But the kernel of any explanation is contained in what I said earlier about the adjective "true": to apply that word to a proposition is to assert the proposition. "Truth" consists in being true, and "true" is an adjective that works in the fashion just specified. To think that in calling a proposition "true" we are attributing to it a quality of some kind is a logical illusion. Once one has fallen prey to that illusion, one will engage in a fool's errand trying to explain what this quality is, and will either conclude that it is an impenetrable mystery, or one will produce bogus and incoherent answers (or both).