Do People Value the Truth?
I made a thread about skepticism and said that we cannot coherently deny that language transmits meaning because by understanding this sentence you have proven that language transmits meaning.
I then challenged the justification for a lot of skepticism. Extreme brain in a vat skepticism has no evidence or warrant for it and does not justify building a world view around it.
I feel that somethings are undeniably true and preserving the truth is valuable and that we rely on truths to negotiate life and I see no value in a kind of "anything goes interpretive relativism" outside of genuinely ambiguous things that have proven good grounds to dispute.
I then challenged the justification for a lot of skepticism. Extreme brain in a vat skepticism has no evidence or warrant for it and does not justify building a world view around it.
I feel that somethings are undeniably true and preserving the truth is valuable and that we rely on truths to negotiate life and I see no value in a kind of "anything goes interpretive relativism" outside of genuinely ambiguous things that have proven good grounds to dispute.
Comments (120)
Note also that youve brought up three issues that, while sometimes connected, are usually tackled separately: truth, Cartesian scepticism, and relativism.
I watched the below video involving Rorty and in it they raised issue of the impact on civil rights movements on the idea that you can't define a concept among others such as whether you can define a vulnerable or threatened group or make a claim like "all men are made equal".
If possible yes, or just discuss their views, or present your own interpretation of their views, or present what you see as the standard arguments, etc., and then criticize them. Relativism in particular is very commonly misunderstood, so it would be useful to get an idea of what relativists, if such creatures exist, are actually saying, so that youre not attacking a straw man.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
So the thing here would be to pick out something substantial from the video and go through it in some detail.
"Pragmatism asks its usual question. "Grant an idea or belief to be true," it says, "what concrete difference will its being true make in anyone's actual life? How will the truth be realized? What experiences will be different from those which would obtain if the belief were false? What, in short, is the truth's cash-value in experiential terms?"
William James
If Im not mistaken, @T Clark agrees with James on truth, so maybe hell say something about it.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Maybe you could say what you think is wrong with that.
The next paragraph is important, because thats where he answers the question:
[quote=William James]The moment pragmatism asks this question, it sees the answer: True ideas are those that we can assimilate, validate, corroborate and verify. False ideas are those that we cannot. That is the practical difference it makes to us to have true ideas; that, therefore, is the meaning of truth, for it is all that truth is known-as.
This thesis is what I have to defend. The truth of an idea is not a stagnant property inherent in it. Truth happens to an idea. It becomes.
[/quote]
So do many people feel that - only not about the same truths you consider undeniable.
And how does one test for "undeniability"? How does one go about deciding which "things" are undeniably true, which are conditionally, provisionally, situationally, temporarily or partially true, and which things are false to what degree? How does one determine what truths are worth preserving, by what means and how long? Hoe does one "prove" the grounds for sufficient ambiguity to dispute?
When trying to demonstrate the importance of truth, often the most simple of examples and arguments are made. Things like "triangles have three sides, for instance. The simple example seems powerful because it's impossible to reasonably refute, but the reason that the simple example works doesn't extend to anything beyond that. It ONLY works on the most simple example, and when complexity is introduced, then relativism starts to take shape.
What leads to relativism isn't that there's no truth, it's that there's too much truth. The volume of truth is incomprehensibly immense. It's not just things that are true, but the validity of logic can be true, feelings can be true, stories, ideas, rules, the existence of cultural norms, the existence of societal norms, the existence of religious ideas, manners, the existence of morals, the existence of laws, the existence of values, different ways of defining words and the list goes on, you can add to it as you like.
Yet, It's not practical for a perspective to contain more than a handful of truths. One is forced to choose which truths to include or to ignore. Even then, these truths will be used subjectively, they will be used to mean something, to justify something, to explain something or some other purpose. This is a practical reality that one can never overcome.
Your OP is a highly specific collection of ideas, interpretations and arguments, their truth value is important but it doesn't change that this OP, and all things you express, are the result of your choices.
Your perspective will only ever contain truths, it can never be "the" truth.
Let's take ethnic or racial or sex differences.
I think in the case of the sexes and races I think it has been important to clarify where men and women and black and white etc are genuinely equal in the fight for equality.
I think we should not create artificial barriers and give people immediate equality of opportunity. But I don't see the value in stating something that can be proven to be untrue and that will not serve an individual or groups interest.
For example people with disabilities and learning difficulties, mental health issues, need and deserve special accommodations, so in some scenarios need to have real differences established and recognised. I have the concept of equal but different.
It would be a charade to act like people are all the same whilst they are struggling and acknowledging that you are only committed to something's truth on superficial level or social engineering but that it may be a complete fiction.
There is nothing there to refute: three sides are what defines "triangle. " One might generalize from that a bigger truth: "the definition of any thing is true of all examples of that thing."
Well,that didn't take long!
It would, indeed! As would pretending that "equal" (in a specified context) = "identical".
I gave an example in a previous thread where I said that we know language works because we can say something like "I live in the house with a red door and blue car outside" and people can successfully locate our house.
And we know facts about human anatomy because we can save lives by doing heart surgery. So we know that an array of things are true that can only really be questioned if you really believe everything is a radical illusion.
And on initial foundations of truth we can argue about the truth value of other statements.
Somethings may not have truth value like moral claims and I think it is best to acknowledge this and put morality on fact based footing rather than have to create a society on unsustainable fictions unless that is a commitment we want to make.
That's not helpful to people who haven't read, or can't remember all your previous threads.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
It works equally well to convey falsehoods, misconceptions, ambiguity and jocularity.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
You could just as easily say "I live in a big white house with four columns supporting a portico on Pennsylvania Avenue," and people could find the house all right, yet the statement might still be untrue. You could say: "I live in a reinforced plasteel bunker on the dark side of Vega Prime." and that could be true, but much harder to verify.
I didn't ask: "About what subjects are there many documented facts?"
I asked: How do you go about finding out or testing for a truth that someone "feels" is undeniable? And by what process do you decide which are worth preserving?
Extreme relativism is fairly rare. Sounds like you may be frightened of the postmodernists. I think that ship probably sailed decades ago.
Truth is an abstraction and does not work the same way wherever it is sought or found - there's mathematical truth, historical truth, cultural truth and subjective truth about ourselves, etc. To say the square root of 64 is 8, is a different type of truth from the statement we should not harm children. Truth may be necessary or contingent. And what about perspectival truths - the beliefs people hold as true, often without good reason - presuppositions, axioms, etc?
Quoting Andrew4Handel
How does one put morality on a fact based footing? Personally I think that 'unstainable fiction' may be a good definition of society. Everything eventually changes, even that which we consider the immutable social order.
But who is concerned about any of this? Are you in a position to usher in a new world of conceptual understanding for humanity? There are many people from a gamut of diverse religious backgrounds who think moral truths originate from god. They believe this is true. Is it likely that we will ever usher in a world where everyone agrees on what is true?
It is my opinion that it's the responsibility of the truth-teller to present said information "properly". As that happens, the truth is almost always chosen.
By acknowledging that it is a set of preferences not facts divine or otherwise and not taking any claims for granted.
Quoting Tom Storm
I am in the position like a lot of people to express an opinion on it and advocate for my viewpoint and ideas. Someone or some groups worldview always triumphs.
In a sense you are wearing away my confidence with this kind of objection. People often claim this issue is too big don't try and attempt to do anything about. Or that a persons opinions are not valid because of X, Y and Z which is a recipe for apathy.
And this is what was sort of referred to in The Rorty et al discussion I posted. Would you say to Martin Luther King "But who is concerned about any of this? Are you in a position to usher in a new world of conceptual understanding for humanity?"
Would you challenge his life and world changing statements by questioning his world view, authority and the truth value of his statements?
There are occasions where every little bit of activism and fight for your truth and values is vital.
What's that in plain English? And how does it reconcile morality (which brand??) with fact (which ones??)
But the point is not what anyone says to Dr King. The point is everyone comes with a perspective. I do not have Dr King's perspective. Additionally, I was referring to your discussion about the nature of truth, not what one does about social justice as they go about their business. Beliefs and theories are cheap. What matters is what people actually do.
Are you saying action is more important than philosophical theory and justification? What problem are you working to solve?
The problem that I see we have is that we cannot say "genocide is wrong" and that be a factual statement. This could lead to moral nihilism.
The truth may be that nothing is right or wrong and there is no justice.
Until we get to this point of acknowledging it our moral/justice systems will be a fiction. Acknowledging will mean we can decide that to do next and what the consequence is.
Some philosophers do acknowledge the problem of moral truths like Hume's no is from an ought and
that they cannot be comparable to scientific facts.
At a basic level it would be interesting to see what remains when we have clarified fact from fiction, faith, desires/wishes and supposition. I am skeptical that we are anywhere near building societies on facts.
Humans can't help but chose values and modes of being, so I think this is wrong. We quite readily develop an ethical systems on the principle of harm minimization and human flourishing. Just about all moral systems in the end boil down to these simple principles.
Humans build the ethical systems they want to suit cultures and times and situations and this has always been the case. Although perhaps the choices are a bit richer today than 200 years ago. To say genocide is wrong is a shared community value most cultures hold as true. But we know there are tyrants who don't care. That's always been the case. We are no less exposed to potential chaos now than ever before in history.
What's changed?
I don't think we have tried to base a society only on things we know to be true, yes it would be hard but not impossible.
Societies move from one set of dubious truths to another in what seems to be acts of self justification.
I think the reason for trying to create an equal society is that we cannot justify an unequal one which would mean installing laws that favoured no one group that or anarchy and I think that people would favour laws based on equality over anarchy. This has formed part of an ongoing process to some extent.
But this is just my opinions on a random forum and not a dictat.
Yep, that problem's been around for a while now.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
That will be fine. When/if it happens.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
OK
Quoting Andrew4Handel
It would, yes.
So I ask you yet again once more and for the final time:
Quoting Vera Mont
Morality hasn't failed. People are flawed and no moral system can guarantee compassion and generosity. Never has - whether we are serving gods or some political ideology.
People, however, choose to employ reason for some decisions and not for others.
Would you ask this to computer scientists, a rocket engineer or surgeon?
Obviously there is a successful method to do successful surgery and design a safe aircraft or to create a useful medical model.
You pose the question it seems any a way that seems to imply that it is too hard yet we already have a huge body of accurate and useful knowledge and ongoing disputes some of which get resolved.
I would just continue the current process but apply it more rigour in non science and technology areas. I think the problem is the unjustified claims interspersed among the facts (these can be the ones running society). When something is shown not to be factual then we institute an arbitration process such as how to run a society based on various people's desires and preferences and belief systems without the option of truth claims.
I am someone who left a childhood religious cult after coming to the realisation that it was false. I have never gone back and am irreligious. So yes it can be important to clarify to yourself and others what is and is not true. For some people it is easier not to go against family or society for an easy life.
Yes, if they asserted that some truths are indisputable. And each one would have a plausible answer as to how he would go about testing the veracity of a statement about any aspect of his speciality - and probably all of their areas of expertise.
Would they give intelligible answers regarding moral questions? Very possibly, but I wouldn't count on it.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Nothing to do with relative difficulty. I've simply been asking you to outline your method of approach.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
About what? Surgery? That was acquired by cutting open dead humans and live dogs for about 100 years; followed by two more centuries of trial and error.
Regarding morality, we have disputes on which occasional regional consensus is reached - then are challenged again, either from inside or outside, but OTH money culture so dominates the entire globe that it's difficult to discern any sense in the controversies, and of course nobody has ever been able to make sense of nationalism and religion.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
The current and traditional processes of settling moral disagreements are repression and armed conflict. Can't see doing that with any more rigour.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
To which imaginary "we" are you referring here? Name the country where that has been done... unless, by "arbitration process" you mean a few centuries of off-and-on democracy interspersed with periods of despotism.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
For yourself, it is essential to healthy survival. And it must be done through a process of your own invention, as seems appropriate to your questions and your needs. Whether the same process can be applied to others.... maybe. But only they know whether, how, when and by whom.
If you want to help them, write down your method step by step, as clearly and comprehensively as possible, and write a book. If you publish it, they will come. ... some of them...
Are you happy to doubt that you are reading this?
Your replying would surely show your doubt to be misplaced.
At the least, while you might be able to doubt anything, it makes no sense to doubt everything. And I mean that quite literally - in order to doubt, you need to hold something firm. To doubt that the cardiologist knows about hearts is to admit that there are cardiologists and hearts.
Neither happy nor sad, just failing to see how it applies to the methods of verification that computer scientists, rocket engineers or surgeons would use on any new datum offered to them.
Quoting Banno
Okay. Relevance to topic?
I was not asking whether hearts and cardiologists exist; I was asking for methods of testing the truth of a statement; for the criteria whereby to decide whether it is one that should be enshrined as indisputable or classified as ambiguous enugh to debate.
Sure, ask folk to show why they take something to be true. While you are at it, ask folk why they doubt stuff, too. It goes both ways. Sometimes doubt is unreasonable.
Yep. It's easy to find a few examples. See above.
Why?
Quoting Banno
I didn't ask anyonewhy. I asked the persons who made the original assertion Quoting Andrew4Handel
how they arrived at that conclusion.
Quoting Banno
Why should it? He made an assertion. I queried his methods of verification.
But no answer will ever be forthcoming, so it's a futile inquiry.
Because you seem'd so certain in your doubt...
So we agree that there are certainties, that some things are indubitable. Cool.
What doubt? Where?
Quoting Banno
No, we don't. I agreed with Andrew that many people feel that some things are certain, but not necessarily the same ones. I also agree that many people agree about which things are certain, but I have no way of know knowing whether you and I share any specific certainties. I may have stopped doubting some things; you may have stopped doubting some things (though not necessarily the same ones), but that doesn't protect those categories of things from doubt by other people; it doesn't render the things in themselves indubitable.
Every idea, statement, assertion and belief is subject to doubt, regardless of your or my personal convictions.
Why?
On the contrary, it would appear that some things must be held indubitable in order for others to be doubted.
Example already given.
Why? I'm "questioning" the floor of this room...
Where doubt enters this scenario, is with the question of what does it mean to be "reading this". Then we may consider the statement of the op:
Quoting Andrew4Handel
That meaning actually transmits from you to me, in the act of me reading what you wrote, is highly doubtful. This would require that I understand "reading this" in the same way that you do. Otherwise I cannot assume that I got the meaning you intended to give me, and meaning did not transmit. Discussions here at TPF demonstrate that you and I do not understand words in a similar way. Therefore I can conclude that meaning does not transmit, and I most likely understand "reading this" in a way other than you intend. Since you wrote "reading this" and you are proposing that someone else is the one doing the reading in the way that you intend by "reading", and it is likely that the person is reading in a way other than what you intend by that word, doubt is clearly justified.
I would answer with practical probability.
I act out of probability in every situation. Truth is that which has the highest of probabilities. It's the same principle as in scientific research, no scientist is ever claiming absolute truth, they are claiming levels of probability. Now, some seem to think that probability means there are no truths, and therefore other probabilities always balance out the highest probability, but that is a false interpretation of it. For example, General relativity has such a high probability that all experiments that have been conducted on it have perfectly verified it, including the latest about gravity waves, which was said to be the last experimentally unverified part of Einstein's predictions. So, in terms of normal speak, it would be considered truth. But in science, it is still just referred to as an extremely high level of probability.
Why I'm usually always bringing up science like this in these types of discussions is that the frame of mind humbles our experience of knowledge. It makes it possible to be certain of some truths without getting stuck in bias. Because even if something has a high probability, there might just be some discovery that flips it on its head, and when such a thing happens, those who are dead certain of truths in an absolutist form will still hang on to those truths, being mentally incapable of change. But if everything is formed out of levels of probability, you will never have a problem changing the "truths" that define your knowledge, if those "truths" were proven wrong by another higher probability.
If the subjective scrutiny of the individual's knowledge is always thorough and with as objective eyes as can possibly be, they will rid themselves of bias and be able to flow through knowledge without getting lost or stuck. They will also be able to interact with others of the same frame of mind in a way that better themselves and the world.
The way for an individual to scrutinize their own personal truths should always be: does it have the highest probability? And is that probability objectively formed or invented by themselves or someone else that they surrendered to?
Looks suspiciously like dogma, that does.
There are different ways of testing truth.
And so you should! Experience of - i.e. having previously tested - something may well have convinced you that it is what it seems to be; that a statement is true (or has a high level of probability in the current situation, context and moment in time) or a floor is solid.
The first time you encounter a particular floor, your previous experience of floors in general may have given you a high level of confidence in them, but there is also a chance that you will fall through it. The degree of probability of one condition (safe) vs another (unreliable) depends on a number of factors, at least some of which are available for observation and testing before you put your full weight on that unknown floor. Your odds against plunging to your death are directly proportional to your ability to doubt even the self-evident.
This is a very good point and I basically agree. I would fully agree if we could talk about absolute truth, whether it exists or not. And the word "undeniably", refers to such a truth, as do the words "indisputably", "unquestionably", etc. Esp. in philosophy, there are always different views about things. There's no one out there to tell what the absolute truth is. Also, some truths cannot be even described or expressed. They are what we call ineffable truths. In fact, there are times that I talk about something that I know well, it is --actually, seems-- very obvious, etc. and I want to use the word "indisputably", but I hold myself back. Because, 1) who am I to tell and 2) there can always be a different viewpoint about it.
Another thing that makes absolute truth impossible to tell is the context in which a statement is made. But then one can bind a statement with a certain context and say "This thing is always true in this specific case or cases". But even this can be very difficult to establish: there's always a possibility of a different view.
The nearest we can get to absolute truths and talk about them are commonly accepted truths and truths that could stand the test of time. (And, of course, there are truths which are supported by hard evidence, as in trials. But these are not of the kind we are talking here, i.e. philosophical truths.)
As for "interpretive relativism", i.e. a truth is relative, I believe it is something different. It can maybe be connected only to the factor of "context" that I talked about.
To me, truth is an affirming property that can be attached to something, maybe that something could be simplified to being a claim. We create rules in different contexts for how a claim can qualify for this affirming property of truth. The claim, the rules and the process of applying those rules are done by people. "A shape that has three sides is a triangle", and "any shape with three sides is a triangle", aren't much different from giving your dog the name "Mark" and insisting that it is true that your dog's name is Mark.
It is true that your dog's name is Mark, but it's not written into the fabric of reality, it's just, by convention, the owner is the one to name their dog, and so if you say the dog's name is Mark then it's Mark. I could nonetheless ignore this convention and insist that your dog's name is Billy. I will call your dog Billy and you will say "No... His name is Mark, why are you calling him Billy? Are you an idiot?" and almost any reasonable person would agree with you.
If there's a difference, it's that the convention stopping me from disputing what a triangle is comes from language, and the convention stopping me from renaming your dog is cultural. I don't agree that "the definition of anything is true of all examples of that thing". Yet, whether it is or isn't the case, would depend on the conventions of English. Though I'm not saying that means the conventions of English are arbitrary, the role of language is multifaceted and so are the reasons for rules or conventions.
"Undeniable" truths are only undeniable when you lock in the claim, rules and conventions that make them undeniable. I can refute "triangles have three sides", but to do that, I must undermine important logical, practical conventions, and I imagine this would be brought up against me if I tried. Do you agree with my analysis?
Are almost the same statement. The first iteration may be taken to refer to "a" shape; a single instance. The second is generalized to all examples of the shape. Neither proves nor supports the other. The thing is named and defined by "triangle" and "three sides"; there is no veracity or context to dispute.
The name given to a dog does not define even one dog, let alone an entire species. It can be disputed, if, for example I had adopted Mark from a pound, and then the previous owner showed up, claiming his dog named Rex. Neither claim disputes the animal's dogness.
I think that no after life has problematic implications for life and meaning and that moral nihilism is a negative conclusion but could be true.
It could be decided our behaviour is highly unethical such as failure to help the poor and disadvantaged and global inequality. I think creating new children is ethically problematic.
I don't think that trying to ascertain the truth would be an easy process just like truth and reconciliation projects. The truth may undermine our beliefs and values.
I don't seem to have a particular overriding goal in my life but if I had to choose it would be the desire to know the truth and understand the reality I have been thrown in.
All of the truth about everything, or just some particular truths about some particular things? The latter is doable: just pick a subject, make yourself a project plan, then question every aspect of the subject and test every answer. Whatever you try to discover the truth about, you'll need a method of approach.
Ideally fundamental truths like:
What is consciousness? What is the right thing to do? Is society fair? Is life meaningful or meaningless? Who is telling the truth and what beliefs are we taking for granted.
Well, you're not going to be alone with these sorts of ideas. Many people I know have been aflame with such notions since they were teenagers, decades ago.
I can't imagine how an afterlife would make sense, but that's more about me than a philosophical argument. Personally, I think not having a belief in an afterlife makes many of us more concerned about the only life we do have, which matters more than if it were just some brief stepping stone on the way to Allah and paradise. I think this likely to intensify the motivation to do something substantive about social justice and climate change - at least that's how it has played out for most of the secular humanists I have known.
One issue about the truth is what to do after you have discovered it. How would you react if there was proven to be an afterlife? And how should we react if we could prove there was no afterlife and why?
I am an agnostic about things like this. I think that living one's life under assumptions about the unknown could be living falsely.
I think that if we don't know something we should live as if we don't know it.
A trivial example is if you are going to visit your mum. and you don't know whether she is home or not.
You could visit her to try and find out and risk a wasted journey or phone her etc but it would be inappropriate to assume she wasn't home without trying to find out. (I can probably think of better examples in the future.)
But you can compare it to Pascal's wager and whether there is anything to lose by believing or not believing in God.
Two clear problems with Pascal's wager - 1) Which god/s do you pretend to believe in? If you settle on the Anglican Christ, boy is Allah going to be pissed. 2) You can't fake a belief - you are either convinced or you are not convinced. And pretending to believe is not going to fool any deities. Even if you manage to pick the correct deity or version of that deity to believe in. :worry:
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Hard to say. But even if someone can prove that consciousness survives death, what of it? It says nothing of itself about whether Hinduism (say) is true or not. We would actually need to know there is an afterlife AND why and how this is the case to derive any coherent meaning from it.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Isn't living like you don't know functionally no different than living like you don't believe? In the case of gods and goddesses - if I don't know, then I have no reason to believe - no reason to hold sacrifices or prayers or follow religious rules. And therefore I behave as if they are not a thing.
Just so. We bring things in to doubt when we have reason to do so.
And in doing so we hold other things as indubitable. So even , venturing tentatively onto a previously unexplored floor for fear of falling through, holds gravity indubitable.
The pop culture has it that we ought doubt everything, put it to the test. A bit of thinking shows this pop notion to be problematic.
You've refuted a lot of claims that I didn't make and I can't see how anything you said is related to my argument. My argument is that truth status is determined by rules and conventions, and that "the truth" of the dog's name or the definition of a triangle is determined by the rules and conventions of culture and language respectively.
I don't think so. Imagine if someone is suicidal for mental health reasons. I would want to give them a reason to live. They may have formed the belief that life is pointless and meaningless. False beliefs can motivate people do harmful things and reach bad conclusions.
I don't know if life is inherently meaningful and I have been in this situation myself. I am now in the situation that not knowing means that I don't rule out possibilities.
Not knowing can mean hope and possibility as well as anxiety and uncertainty. False beliefs can mean false hope or inappropriate despair.
I do think we are in an existential dilemma without answers when it comes to deciding how to live. But I do think we can explore the truth value in our beliefs. I don't how we can decide whose values we can run society on but currently we rely on democracy and political and ideological fights some of which appears to be pure propaganda.
I don't see how this is related to whether a lack of belief isfunctionally the same as disbelief, as I think I have illustrated.
I assume you don't believe in in the deity Ahura Mazda - like any gods, he can't be disprove, but I am assuming you live as though he doesn't exist. That's my point.
Some of those topics will be harder to investigate than others. Not least of your problem will stem from the assumption that language is intelligible, which is by no means always the case. I wish you luck and success, and offer my willingness to supply any small slivers of enlightenment I may have inadvertently collected over the years.
Quoting Banno
Ouch! :cry:
Quoting Banno
It wasn't my first encounter with gravity. Having extensive experience of gravity, I formed a high degree of confidence on the probability of its continued operation; thus it has become one of those things takes for granted and doesn't pay attention to unless there is some particular reason - e.g, being invited to the space station.
Quoting Judaka
Only one asaik : that a statement regarding the name of a dog is equivalent to restating the definition of a geometric shape.
If my response was unrelated to your argument, that might have been because you moved your argument.
From the original context:
"Things like "triangles have three sides, for instance. The simple example seems powerful because it's impossible to reasonably refute, Judaka"
"There is nothing there to refute: three sides are what defines "triangle. ""
to:
Quoting Judaka
But that's all right; it was yours to move.
No I actively disbelieve in any current religions and gods. I believe they don't exist because the evidence points to the fact that they are man made. I am not agnostic about things that could easily be man made.
I am agnostic about the basic concept of a fundamental first-cause type, intelligent, sentient creator deity.
I don't live as if I know that there is no God or no afterlife or as if I have moral certainties.
I think that a lot of decisions could be described as faith based because we don't know if we are right or have certainty and can't guarantee consequences.
Part of my own life long motivation struggles is based on not knowing what I should do, what risks I can take, if any of it means anything.
I did add to my argument. In my first comment, I didn't provide any argument to dispute the claim about a triangle having three sides, but the idea is that the claim is "indisputable" and that's why it's brought up, to prove that truth more generally also has this quality of being indisputable. That is why I made a post talking about why this claim was indisputable due to convention and not because of the nature of truth. The substance of my argument wasn't what you quoted, that was just an example for the sake of illustration. If you agree that these statements are true by convention then we agree, but I can't tell by your reply what you're trying to say.
It's indisputable, because there is nothing in it to dispute: it's not a claim; it's a definition.
A triangle is a triangle. No truth value attached; it's the arbitrary designation of thing with three sides, signified by an arrangement of letters in the Roman alphabet, derived from two Latin words.
Quoting Judaka
The names of things are the names of things. True by the nature and function or language.
If you want to call that convention, OK.
I doubt (pun) anyone wouldn't value truth one way or other; that seems wrong, if not absurd.
Anyway, radical skepticism seems mostly an intellectual exercise, that people then move past.
Quoting Vera Mont
The original designation of three-sided polygons as "triangles" has no truth value, since it was an act, but It is true that a triangle has three sides because, by definition, a triangle is a shape with three sides. You could view it as a contraction of "within English, a triangle is a shape with three sides" which anyone would who speaks English would agree is true. Without that English would cease to function as a language. Another example would be that the creation of the rules of chess had no truth value, but that, for example, you can't move your pawns backwards is a rule in chess, there is a truth value, and if there wasn't, then there would be no rules in chess at all.
Correct
Of course. As a claim, it can be disputed, tested, verified and proven....
.... within the confines of its context.
Obviously, you can move a pawn backwards; it's just that the rules of chess forbid you do it during a game. If anyone doubts that - and they can - you show them the rule book.
Quoting Vera Mont
Of course. I was saying that truth is determined by rules and conventions and can be contested by ignoring those rules and conventions. There is a clear difference between the rules of chess and the way in which we establish mathematical or scientific truths and a difference between the truth value of pawns being unable to move backwards and that 2 +2 = 4. However, each truth value is indisputable. I think this is because of the relationship between the rules and conventions with the claim, as well as the cultural attitude towards these rules and conventions. Do you agree? I'm not saying the laws of mathematics and the rules of chess are on the same level, but as far as truth is concerned, it's not about that.
I partially agree. I don't consider the definition of a word "a claim" that is verifiably true or false: it is, indeed, established by conventional usage. Nor do I consider the laws of mathematics to be "claims"; I assume, without expert knowledge, that they have been adequately tested for a high enough degree of probability that if a bridge falls down, I'm more likely to doubt the authenticity of the steel than the equations.
As to the cultural aspect, no. I don't agree that the truth of a claim regarding reality is in any way dependent on the attitude of any group of people.
The rules of games come into neither category: they're unreal; anything can be true.
In what way do you agree? It seems that you are unwilling to label things as true when they're true by convention or manmade rules. If I name my dog Mark, is it true that his name is Mark? Anyway, I do appreciate that the context is essential, and while we may disagree on why it is that laws of mathematics are different from the rules of chess, I think our conclusions are the same.
I agree that the definition of words is established by convention.
I don't agree that facts are controlled by public opinion.
Quoting Judaka
It is true within provision constraints, by reason of cause (you named him) and effect (he answers to it). The provisional constraints are: if the ownership of dogs and the convention of naming are accepted by claimant and questioner, and no other claimant has previously given the same dog a different name, and the dog complies by answering to the name.
It is not true in any universal or eternal sense.
Quoting Judaka
You mean in that one is a global constant, rigorously testable and verifiable, while the other is ephemeral fancy, subject to change from place to place and time to time? Yes, we might.
Quoting Judaka
There is another statement I find disputable, but won't dispute further.
In a way. Language is more of a placeholder for concepts and meaning than a reliable transmitter of it. If I say "No, don't throw it away" without proper enunciation or linguistic pauses one could easily hear "No, don't. Throw it away." For example. Famous example being "Pardon Impossible. To be sent to Siberia." A legal aspect of this is "the Letter of the Law versus the Spirit of it".
We simply have societal constructs and "common sense" contexts to determine what the meaning of words (or lack thereof) are.
That said, people value that which is useful. Even if said usefulness is but a myopic illusion. False dilemmas control society and individuals wholesale. "You're a bad person" = "you can never become a better person". Or the inverse "you're a good person" = "you can never commit an atrocity".
Quoting Vera Mont
Well it is. For example. the world was indeed flat until people decided it wasn't, and their decision was what bent the Earth into the shape of a sphere. I can send you a 100-page document I wrote about it proving this to be the case if you're interested.
Quoting Vera Mont
No, it's true by convention. Your opinion and your argument about the dog needing to comply to the owner calling its name is just something you made up. I'm not saying you can't have your own opinion, and your view seems reasonable to me. It's not just the definition of words that is defined by convention, but a lot of things. I will leave it there though since you seem uninterested in the semantics.
Really? In that case, I name you Ruby Tuesday, and from this day forward, that is your name, by the conventions of naming and ownership -- oh, by the way, I just bought you for 300 shekels. You'd better be worth it!
Quoting Judaka
A lot of things may be. But the Earth was never flat, and late-comer apes, however many conventions they invent, or wilful ignorance, or self-delusion can't turn an uniformed guess into a fact.
Quoting Vera Mont
Thanks for buying me and giving me a sweet name, though I am arguing the exact opposite of this. It's because the rules and conventions for naming exist that we can't just make up whatever rules we want. You or I or anyone can technically invent their own rules for naming and ownership and have them be equally valid in so far as neither are "in accordance with reality" since these are just made-up rules. However, the standard rules and conventions have legal authority, and cultural recognition, are socially enforced, are part of the language, and are embraced by the vast majority of people.
Quoting Vera Mont
Of course. My feelings about the word "truth" aren't representative of my views about reality, I am only talking about semantics, concepts, and convention. Honestly, I don't know if you really interpreted our discussion to always be set in the context of scientific facts, especially considering this thread is about relativism and skepticism, but I didn't.
In so far as accurately describing reality is concerned, and staying within the confines of a reasonable and scientific view of reality, and in so far as truth pertains only to "the state of being in accordance with reality" to the exclusion of manmade concepts, then convention is meaningless. Anyway, somehow this became a discussion where I'm trying to convince someone I'm not crazy, I hope I got through but I'll end my involvement in this thread here.
Exactly:
Quoting Vera Mont
If any of the provisions are missing, then the facts are more correctly stated as: "I call my dog Mark." If he doesn't answer to Mark, then it is not his name.
Proveit!
In politicians, voters consider truthfulness the highest valued trait:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/theconversation.com/amp/voters-value-honesty-in-their-politicians-above-all-else-new-study-175589
However, lying is more successful than truthfulness in getting one elected:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/sports.yahoo.com/amphtml/politician-liar-reelected-160719974.html
So, we want truth, but do love us a good lie.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/george-santos-lies-republicans-resign-b2264739.html
That's the key. We so much want some things to be true, and some things to be untrue, that we're prepared to accept whatever we want to hear, whether it's true or not.
Why? Do you value truth or something?
Not for its own sake, particularly. But I do resent baseless accusations.
So you don't value truth, but you resent falsehood?
That seems a bit negative...
I don't value truth for its own sake, but resent baseless accusations.
Quoting unenlightened
The first part is negative; the second, positive.
Do cripples value crutches? :chin:
Quoting Andrew4Handel
I suppose history and math have failed too ... When does it ever make sense, Andrew, to blame a tool because fools neglect or misuse it? :roll:
Every moment or so we are faced with information in our experiences and have to decide what to do with it.
So the requirement for truth in this scenario is to be able to act on some basis, to be motivated to make reasoned decisions.
But we don't have to question everything all at once to act. We probably have a distinct manageable set of input to assess the truth of.
I don't think we have enough instincts to survive like an animal in the wild so we live in societies with ongoing shifting narratives, values and paradigms we need to assess.
In this scenario I think a philosophers quest for truth is somewhat dubious because it seems psychologically more likely that the philosopher is trying to either prop up some of societies pre-existing paradigms/values or advocate for his or her own ideology rather than being unbiased.
Trouble is, folk expect too much from truth. Saying what is true is just what we usually do with statements. Denying this quickly leads to the sort of absurdities already mentioned here by several posters, but which the pragmatists, in their enthusiasm, failed to notice.
It's actually quite an amusing read.
People value different things at different times. Most people are selective skeptics and ideologically motivated reasoners.
I was feeling like this yesterday. There is potential infinitude of facts and perspectives with different layers of truth.
But in my latest post I have decided that all we have to deal with is the truth of our current moment. That moment could contain profound truths however.
It seems like Philosophy's use of premises and conclusion is valuable. Are the premises valid and does the conclusion follow and that gives us a tool to respond to a lot of claims, ideas and information quickly.
How about non-existent? I don't think philosophy is a quest for truth at all; it's more a search - quest is too romantic a word - for some modus vivendi that would yield the best results - best, that is, by the philosopher's reckoning, which is formed by his time and culture and experience and convictions.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Of course. Their function is to evaluate how well or badly their society is doing, as measured by their own standards, then try to figure out how it's failing or succeeding, then establish the principles by which it ought to operate. That does require the philosopher to believe some fundamental truths or even Truths - but these are not the same truths that scientists are searching for in the next room.
It takes about a thousand facts to add up to a truth, and a million to constitute a Truth. Facts may be comparable to fireflies, lightbulbs and stars with a commensurate lifespan.
:100: :fire:
If they are trying to dismantle a bomb then the truth of which wire to cut is very valuable. But, no one wants to sit through a movie listening to someone constantly remark about how it never happened and pointing out these are all just actors. So, evidently we are selective when it comes to whether the truth of things interests us. We like being right, I think. Which means confirmatory truths are pleasing. But I'd hesitate to say that's the same as valuing idealistic truth.
Or not.
Yes people can lie
but the point was that when verbal directions successfully get you somewhere you want to go then they must be transmitting truth. Words must transmit facts.
I can't work out what this entails exactly but it seems to mean we can represent facts in language. This may require a theory of what language or mental representations are.
I have a map of my home city and I could guide you without a map to the two houses I spent my childhood in. It seems my brain has stored loads of facts that I can use on a daily basis including the basic meanings of thousands of words. Some basic math facts and procedures. It could be similar to a computer's memory except a computer is not conscious of it's memories or their truth value.
I am just thinking aloud here but truth and falsity do seem to be evaluations we can make of mental states or properties available to consciousness and the act of consciously evaluating.
But it seems we actually have a large amount of verifiable facts available to our mind which I think serves a good foundation for forming further factual beliefs. Coming to think of it conscious states may be required for evaluations of truth.
Word can transmit facts. Nothing compels or impels them to do so. They're just tools, to be used as the competent user intends, or unpredictably, if the user is incompetent.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
We do. Not always accurately.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Of course. That's what critical thinking is. The more actively aware you are of this, the more effective your thinking will be. The first and biggest hurdle to overcome is fear of questioning received wisdom. The second is learning to trust yourself.
For me the brain in vat argument is rather non-workable and fallacious.
For me it's like saying what if you had a "boat" (brain) except the boat is made of lead and also has loads of holes in it and doesn't float at all (not fit for purpose/doesn't have much of any qualities of a boat), in itheriwrds a brain that doesn't "brain" . It never floated from the get go and never could transport passengers but is say "boat shaped" sitting at the bottom of the sea.
This is not consistent argument.
I would say in that case well it's not a boat then is it? Just as I would say a brain in a vat with no body, and only a one way sensory input with no control over a body and no ability to interact or impose on its environment, in other words no ability to express agency/autonomy, is not a brain at all.
It's something in a vat, defined as a brain without characterising much of any of its qualities within that definition.
Well for me there is truth ofc. And it is valuable as it is how reality truly is and truly works.
Having said that, I also believe" anything goes interpretative relativism" must exist as a neccesary compliment to the truth ie. "that which is relative to the absolute. That which fills the spectrum of uncertainty (0.00-0.999') with the truth being 1 - absolute certainty.
Relativism is imagination, pondering, postulations, beliefs, biases and all that is arbitrary and assigned either for convenience or because it works in finite restricted parameters - temporary. The truth however always works, everywhere, all at once. Despite what we relatively dream up about it.
The truth includes falsity. As falsity, delusion and fallacy also exist (are true). They're just not as permanent, unchanging and fundamental as truth. They cannot supercede what underlies them.
If some things are not true, never were true, nor ever will be true, and some things were true, but no longer are, and some things were never true, are not true but will be true, then it stands to reason these are "partial truths" of the universe, dependent on temporality/time or "context".
It also stands to reason then that if some things are more true, more permanent and applicable to a larger time frame, then there is one absolute fundamental truth that is consistent at all times. And is even more fundamental than time itself, because whilst time is part of the truth (it exists as a phenomenon) that is not to say that absolute truth is dependent on time, because if it was, it would change, it would not be absolute.
To me, it's always just seemed unimaginably cruel.
It helps keep things straight in one's mind to refrain from stuffing too much meaning into one little word.
There are communications - in whatever language - that convey information. These may be factual, instructional, deceitful, inaccurate, emotional, invented for entertainment, etc.
There are statements intended to be believed, that either convey information regarding specific subject matter or more general principles and concepts. These may be true - within situational constraints - or false, or distorted or mistaken.
There are testable, verifiable facts - which may be situational or general.
We are not equipped to evaluate anything for universal, eternal or absolute truth.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
I think this is a good take and works as a strong starting framework for how to view truth. I'd add a few things. Even if something is true, that doesn't mean that incorporating it into your decision-making is pragmatic. One must carefully select the inputs to be used in their perspective. It's very easy to make a logical argument using true premises that result in an undesirable outcome. The pros and cons of a perspective and the relevant outcomes are crucial.
Also, a perspective should be viewed as dependent upon the context and defined by the context in which it was given or formed. For example, even if there were "moral truths", they are formed within the context of moral philosophy. Arguing that something is of personal benefit to you doesn't work as moral justification, but it could be personally compelling. You could recognise that an act is morally wrong but personally beneficial, by including/excluding different truths and prioritising, interpreting and narrativizing accordingly. As for which perspective should be prioritised, there is no truth value to that, it's a choice.
By focusing on the truths you care about, you can construe another's actions as indifference towards the truth, but that's probably not what it is. They are just working with different truths, and arranging these truths in a specific fashion, to arrive at their perspective.
I believe that fundamental truths about reality would be valuable to all in terms of a framework for acting.
From truths about what harms us such as drowning or falling from a height. To truths about politics,how to do heart surgery and the fairest and optimal way to run a society. There could be metaphysical truths about the meaning or meaninglessness of life.
Sometimes we went to church 5 times a week. Sunday morning breaking of bread, Sunday evening gospel meeting. Every other Saturday ministry and an open air gospel meeting where we stood on a street while the elders preached (via shouting) to the public.
(I found that embarrassing as a socially anxious person). Prayer meeting Tuesday evening and bible readings on Thursday and on Friday at another church. (The only other sanctioned local Plymouth Brethren Church 20+ miles away.)
We weren't allowed to watch television, women couldn't speak in church meetings, women couldn't cut or style their hair. We weren't allowed to listen to the radio as well because a leader in the brethren hierarchy had declared that kind of thing a tool of the devil.
We were not allowed to shop on sunday and when I did on one occasion my mother blew a fuse and refused to wrap up my birthday presents for the next day and was upset the whole next day.
This Church like however many others believed in biblical inerrancy which is totally unsupported and biblical contradictions and inconsistencies have been recognised for centuries. It was also a" hell and damnation" sermon every sunday and waiting for the end times. And if you questioned any of this you got anger so you didn't bother.
I feel that this was all abusive and a profound waste of my time and after leaving at 17 and rejecting their bogus morality it made me suspicious of any unsupported/unjustified moral claims.
But did they or do they really believe it or was it an entirely faith or fear based belief, or a mixture of social control, fearmongering, hope and conformity etc?
To my mind that level of indoctrination warrants someone to put a very high value on the truth including for one's own sanity.
As to your question, did they really believe? Belief and the desire to believe can be very dangerous, easily manipulated and exploited. But, as Alan Watts said, faith is not clinging, faith is the confidence to let go, the courage to know that you dont know, and to find the truth in unknowing rather than clinging. None of which is against the spirit, so to speak, but might well be against many ideas of religion.
I used to ask, when an undergraduate, 'what happened to Capital-T Truth?' I meant, Truth as it is invoked in sermons and in soaring political rhetoric and which, it was assumed, science was always in the process of converging on. But I soon worked out that Capital T truth is a romantic notion. We live in a pluralistic culture, one in which the assertion of a capital-T truth is invariably met with 'according to whom?'
I think scientists, and people generally, are occupied with what is true in specific contexts and for particular ends - what works, what is a valid assumption and what is not. Truth is like the background of their activities, something which they are always seeking to approximate, but which may never be definitively proven except in respect of specifics. So - I think the upshot is that truth is valued very highly, but that reference to The Truth carries a lot of baggage (at least some of which you might have brought with you, pardon me for so saying.)
Quoting Andrew4Handel
There is, but its very non-PC to say it. Because every vote is equal, were inclined to say that so are all opinions. Of course everyone has a right to their opinion, but no-one, as a wise elder once said, has a right to their own facts - and not everything is a matter of opinion. And truth is often not something easy to face. Sometimes the facing of a truth can take suffering and sacrifice, were dragged to it against our will and wants. That is where the lessons of religion are supposed to count.
So the answer to @Andrew4Handel 's question is more like one of the "or" options, such as social control, rather than an answer of whether or not they really believed. The actual beliefs which were behind the behaviour were hidden, and the behaviour of the adults in the scenario was intended manipulate.
The child is born with the "desire to believe", and this cannot be properly represented as the "tabula rasa" because something has to support this capacity the capacity to actually believe. If we represent the belief as what is learned, then the belief itself a type of capacity, as the potential to act in a certain way. But the innate aspect, what the child is born with, is also a capacity, therefore of the same category. That makes any type of theoretical separation of the belief from the underlying support of the belief very difficult, vague, and to a degree arbitrary.
The desire to believe therefore, is also the capacity to be manipulated, as teaching is an act of manipulation. The teaching process is very clearly a process of manipulation. What role does "Truth" play in this process? One might argue, that if the teacher is honest, and what is taught is a "true" representation of what the teacher believes, then there is truth within that process. However, I would argue that upon analysis this would be exposed as mere justification, and not really Truth at all because the teacher might still hold false beliefs which are being honestly, and justifiably the beliefs which are taught.
So I propose that we must turn to the position of the student in this process of teaching, to be able to find the real role of "Truth" here. This is the underlying capacity to learn, the "desire to believe", what the student is born with. The teacher brings to the table various capacities to act, which are that which will be taught, as beliefs, and these capacity are justified by the social environment, or context of the teaching act. The student brings to the table the capacity to learn, as a predisposition. Truth is within this predisposition, the "desire to believe". It is of the highest value to the teachers because without it their efforts will be fruitless. Whether or not it is of high value to the student is another question, because I have represented it as the capacity to be manipulated.
It's a survival machine. In order to survive, it requires information; it must construct a mental model of its world. It must be able to rely on the consistency and continuity of the information in order to keep living. In order to live in a society, it must also learn the mores and expectations of that society, so it becomes necessary to believe what its care-givers teach it about the rules and customs.
What a child is taught may be non-factual, but it's more likely to be able to function in an intact world-view constructed of facts, misconceptions and fictions than a random scattering of pure facts.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
I too value truth highly, and for the same reason.
But it seems to me that the Plymouth Brethren also value truth highly. They think they have found the truth in the Bible, and do their best to live by it. In fact, I venture to say that despite much that has been said here, everyone values the truth. What would be the point of making an enquiry or attempting to respond to one if one did not value the truth? A billion doubloons or a sack of rotting fish heads.
The difficulty is though that we are not terribly good at getting hold of the truth, and some folks settle on the Book, and hold to that, and some folks affect indifference and think it sophisticated, and some few of us are continually looking for truth and poking at what we find wondering if it is the real thing or not. One learns to be cautious, anxious, and somewhat provisional in one's claims, because one sees that it is easy and comfortable to suppose one is rich in truth, when one is rather poor. This is a little bit I've got hold of, and I think it's about right. Give it a poke and see what you think.
Well, it is indeed certain that we cannot establish all truths, at all moments in time, everywhere, all at once. For that, we would have to be everywhere, at all times, all at once to measure and establish such truths in the constant change and permutation of the system.
But reality, luckily for us, has innate consistency imbedded within it. A consistency that we can follow/track, and it makes sense to us. Through intuition, reasoning and logic. A consistency that governs why we are here in the first place - the laws of physics, chemistry, biology, society and consciousness and diversity that evolved from it.
So there seems to be a uniting reason for the occurence and behaviour of all things. A reasoning or consistency or truth more fundamental than the rest that binds all things yet one we do not fully know nor uderstand yet.
But that permeating sense, or logic, is how we have been able to apply our senses to the world, or generate technology to sense/detect that which we cannot.
The complexity of the system we exist in is profound. But complexity is on a spectrum, is one pole, the other being simplicity, or singular principle.
This state allows us to delve into and ascertain things that are long gone (the past) as well as make algorithms and predictive formulas for those yet to come. Insights into how basic rules determine where we came from, as well as where we are going.
Thus, there is immense knowledge to be had. We need only pursue it, with our logic, a logic that precedes us and stretches beyond us.
I think this opinion is wrong. The desire to believe, to know, and understand, is not based in what is needed to survive. Simple single-celled organism seem to survive very well, without that desire. Therefore it is incorrect to say that survival requires a mental model of the world. So, we must conclude that the desire to make a mental model of the world is driven by some other intention, rather than the will to survive.
Others have suggested that the intent involved here is the will to "flourish", and this implies growth. But this still does not account for the reality of a fundamental capacity of living things, which is the ability of self-movement. The desire to move, to go places, cannot be accounted for by the will to flourish, just like the desire to know cannot be accounted for by the will to survive. Furthermore, the desire to reproduce is distinct from all of these. So common evolutionary theories have a lot of problems to work out.
How did the brain evolve to its present complexity? Where did it begin?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I don't think a human baby would live very long outside the womb if all it had was the ability to sense heat, light and plankton.
The mother takes care of the baby. There is no need for the baby to have a mental model of the world to survive.
I suppose not, if the mother keeps taking care of it into reproductive age and beyond. But how does the mother know to navigate the world to give her child all the things it needs?
At the moment I am thinking it must be a mental state and an appraisal of the correctness of that mental state where a belief is either correct or inaccurate although I can't clarify what a belief is other than a type of mental state or mental attitude.
But this position does seem to slide towards idealism where we can only reflect on mental states.
I feel like the truth is a state of affairs where a mental state happens to be an accurate representation of the external world. But we can never be sure that these to things correspond. I feel like the truth in a sentence and even any meaning in a sentence must be in the mind or head.
I feel like the truth could be whatever is the case. Maybe just whatever exists. A search for the truth could be an attempt to live and act authentically.
I think a lie could be called inaccuracy, deliberate inaccuracy, propaganda, misinformation misrepresentation all of which have a les metaphysical feel to them.
Vera Mont
I think this opinion is wrong. The desire to believe, to know, and understand, is not based in what is needed to survive.[/quote]
:lol:
See if this helps.
It's statements that are true or false.
Being true is what statements are used for, in the main. We understand what it is for a statement to be true by making use of statements.
The difference between belief and truth might be made apparent by considering an example. "The cat is on the mat" will be true only if the cat is on the mat. It is in this case irrelevant who is aware that the cat is or isn't on the mat. The cat is either on the mat or not, regardless of the attitudes that any particular person has towards the cat and the mat. So that someone, anyone, knows that the cat is on the mat does not change the truth of "The cat is on the mat". The cat might be on the mat without anyone knowing. Same goes for believing, disbelieving, accepting, learning, rejecting doubting or wondering if, the cat is on the mat. These are examples of attitudes one might have towards the cat's being on the mat.
The difference can be set out by giving some consideration to the logical structures involved. Truth relates to a sentence:
No person is mentioned here. But for attitudes, one includes who it is that has the attitude:
While truth relates only to a sentence, these examples relate a sentence to persons. They are commonly called proposition attitudes, since they set out the attitude of a person towards a sentence.
Truth is not a propositional attitude. Truth resides in statements, not in minds.
There's a bunch of confusions, that other folk will express, that appear to go against this view, leaning towards idealism or antirealism. Discussing those could easily get your thread another twenty pages. But what I've set out above is far and away the better account, and is pretty well accepted outside forums such as this.
I think that a statement like "Matt is taller than Oliver" is meaningful but becomes true in a context where it refers to a Matt that is taller than Oliver
But it is false in a situation where it refers to an Oliver who is taller than a Matt.
So a statement seems to be only true in certain context and it could accidentally be true such as if you say "It will rain of Friday" and it happens to rain on Friday and False if the predication was wrong..
Quoting Banno
This seems like we are saying that something exists regardless of our evaluation which I agree with but it doesn't seem to capture concept of truth.
I feel that truth seems to require a mental state where we have a belief and the belief is not false. I don't think language and written statements can mean anything outside of our minds ability to interpret symbols.
I feel like we care about the truth for psychological reasons but not always and not when the truth seems to sabotage us (which links into the selective skepticism topic)
I am not opposed to idealism but I don't know what the implication of a reality that is mind based would be. But some things like pain, language, music, mathematics and beliefs and thoughts seem to be entirely mind dependent.
A note on method. One approach to philosophical issues involves asking a complex problem and breaking it down into it's component parts, seeking to understand each of those and then putting the pieces back together to solve the bigger problem. It was perhaps first explicated by Descartes.
So here that approach would involve seeing what we can work out about truth, belief and meaning, including their parts and how they relate to each other, and then trying to put them together in a larger explanation.
The alternative might be trying to understand the whole problem in total, without separating the various parts. That approach is fraught with circular arguments and misguided assumption.
I am saying that it is the belief that is true or false not that they are the same thing.
A statement only seems to be true after it has been understood and in a context.
I don't see how a written sentence can convey anything without a mind. But I think the actual nature of reality cannot depend on notions like truth or falsity but just is.
It seems to me like conscious states provide us with detailed information that can be translated into ideas that don't need to have truth value but some times accurately map onto a state of the world.
And not sentences? I don't see how that could work.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Of course.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Sure. Quoting Andrew4Handel
If you mean that all facts are true - well, yes.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
"Map onto a state of the world". So the world has states, that can be stated... in statements.
Did you think something here would be in disagreement with what I said? What?
We know that folk sometimes believe stuff that is false. And folk sometimes disbelieve stuff that is false, in which case they have a true belief...
Some people believe that the truth always comes out eventually. But does it? Probably not. (Unsolved murders and so on.) Conspiracy theories run rampant vying for attention and the idea of a post-truth society.
Quoting Benj96
Cannot illusions can be consistent? Some illusions like The uneven lines and bent stick in water illusions persist consistently. I think modern technologies including the internet and interface technology has a made the brain in vat scenario more plausible and to the extent people are happy to spend hours at home in the same spot interacting with a computer screen in increasingly sophisticated ways.
I am not sure if science is showing us one uniting ubiquitous principle because we also have the creativity and novelty of human invention and technology including in the arts like an endless emergence of novelty. There appears to be combination of order and chaos.
Quoting Benj96
Is this uniting reason likely to be a law of physics? God? Logic? In the case of logic what is it and what is it derived from? I feel these fundamental kind unanswered questions can leave us up a creek without a paddle. Not on safe grounds for belief formation. But maybe you have an optimistic personality and I have a pessimistic one?
No I mean reality would be strange if reality relied on human statements and equations. I don't think you need to make a statement for something to be the true state of affairs. Maybe the statement itself counts as an assertion that we are confident about something to the point that it seems to capture a true state of affairs.
I have an uncertainty that we can know the true state of affairs and reason for being. So I suppose what I value about truth is aiming towards it. Always aiming towards it.
I suppose as well from my religious background they have an overriding narrative about reasons for existence and strong claim about their truths to the point of infallibility. It suggests a difficulty in dealing with uncertainty.
But there was supposed to be a day of enlightenment when you met God in heaven and all would be revealed to you. I am still partially waiting for that moment of revelation. it would be strange to die and not know what on earth an of this was fundamentally about.
I feel a lot of groups and ideologies try to have some kind of certainties for psychological reasons with the exception of Buddhists and their notion of impermanence although I don't know how effective that really is because I read one article that said Buddhists showed higher levels of fear of death than average.
But - to a large extent it does; property and mortgages and promises all rely on language, and are real. So some things are true in virtue of language, other things not so much.
Truth is complicated. It would be odd if we could set out in a sentence a method or algorithm that could distinguish all true sentences from false sentences. Examples that claim to do this - coherence and correspondence and pragmatics - all have counter instances.
Another thing folk miss is the difference between a list of things that are true and an explanation of truth, between what is true and what being "true" is. I think you and I do understand what it is for a sentence to be true. So I don't think a definition of truth is needed. I think were we differ is in which sentences we think are true. Some sentences you think are true, other folk think are false.
And this is why we need to clearly differentiate between a sentence's being true and its being believed true.
And keep in mind that you do know at least some things, and further that you need not rely on things to be beyond doubt before you believe them.
Philosophical thinking can attract folk to extreme views.
Some old notes...
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Statements are combinations of nouns and verbs and such like; Some statements are either true or false, and we can call these propositions. So, "The present king of France is bald" is a statement, but not a proposition.
Beliefs range over propositions.
(Arguably, they might be made to range over statements: Fred believes the present king of France is bald. Some rendition of the possible worlds definition of a proposition is needed.)
Jeff believes in democracy looks like a counter example to beliefs ranging over propositions, but the superficial structure hides the proposition: Jeff believes governments ought be democratic or some such
Beliefs are stated as a relation between an agent and a proposition. This superficial structure serves to show that a belief is always both about a proposition and about some agent. It might be misleading as the proposition is not the object of the belief but constitutes the belief.
This relation is such that if the agent acts in some way then there is a belief and a desire that together are sufficient to explain the agent's action. Banno wants water; he believes he can pour a glass from the tap; so he goes to the tap to pour a glass of water.
The logical problem here, the philosophical interesting side issue, is that beliefs overdetermine our actions. There are other beliefs and desires that could explain my going to the tap.
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We know some statement when at the least we believe it, it fits in with our other beliefs, and when it is true.
The "fits in with other beliefs" is a first approximation for a justification. Something stronger is needed, but material implication will not do.
It does not make sense to ask if we know X to be true; that's exactly the same as asking if we know X. The "we only know it if it is true" bit is only there because we can't know things that are false.
If you cannot provide a justification, that is, if you cannot provide other beliefs with which a given statement coheres, then you cannot be said to know it.
A belief that is not subject to doubt is a certainty.
Without a difference between belief and truth, we can't be wrong; if we can't be wrong, we can't fix our mistakes; without being able to fix our mistakes, we can't make things better.
Ukraine is fighting a war for it's survival, for the survival of its identity and political system and for the consistent application of rule of law in the world and national integrity.
But people can dispute property claims, political claims, legal claims and boundary claims. This is why I believe we have a problem with asserting as truth things that don't simply represent the current state of affairs.
I think that skepticism about these kinds of truth does not favour either side of a dispute but calls for a compromise where we are forced to cooperate or be in a constant state of war over our values.
If Russia defeats Ukraine it will be a loss for all of us for the value placed on notions like territorial integrity, democracy and so on. But these kind of human inventions seem to be defeasible. And social structures and values etc have to be defended by force or threat of force.
The concept of moral truth seems irrelevant if it unenforceable. Truths seem to just be what is and not what we want to be the case. We may have to acknowledge that political, ethical and similar statements are just statements of preference that we are going to battle for supremacy over. Or may be nature will just let us destroy ourselves through war or climate disaster or something else.
I think that my brain is veering between these two things. There is the concept of truth and a possibly infinite array of truths.
There is a concept of truth that only seems to apply to sentences and mental states and seems to imply a match between the content or representation of a sentence and reality. It seems to be relevant in terms of action in the sense that false beliefs may make you act inappropriately.
Another concept of truth seems to be the ultimate truth as in what is the underlying cause of reality or essences.
As we know time means things change. Thus "degree of truth" of any given existant is time dependent. Some existants are more time enduring - millions of years, billions of years, maybe even eternally - think thermodynamics at the basis of newtonian physics.
Some existants on the other hand are less time enduring (true only for a split second, or even nano or femtoseconds). Think quantum physics.
So truth permeates all rates of change from the very slow and consistent, to the instantaneous and brief. And the difference between the two ends of the spectrum is relativity and time/duration.
Everything changes (partial truths/temporally contextualised truths) except for fundamental truth (which does not change regardless of time).
The relationships between any given truth at any moment through time is the basis for knowledge. Knowability and awareness. And because knowledge is power, knowledge is the ability to control, predict etc, truth is also the basis for morality. Speaking the truth (educating/imparting knowledge) empowers people to use it benevolently.
Of course one can opt to use truths malevolently, but that requires hiding the truth/keeping it to yourself, so as to prevent others from being aware of your actions.
You cannot control others/manipulate them if they know more than you. If they're more aware. Because they instead would be in a position of control.
Definitions always seem to be a problem because we are trying to create words to describe something by discerning what features warrant a word attached to them to talk about them.
For example we could describe a dog as a four legged animal with fur and a tail but this would also describe a cat. In the end to correctly verbally describe a dog we may have to say an animal that barks and even eventually go right down to the level of genetic differences.
But in reality I would hazard to say that everyone can identify what is a cat and what is a dog.
So in the case of truth and falsity very young children understand and utilise truth and falsity by seeking to deceive their parents. Such as when a parent asks "did you make a mess in the kitchen?" and the child says "no".