What is Truth?

[maxfreakout]

But if something can be wrong it also can be true, doesnt it?

Perhaps, but the important point is, you couldnt possibly know if it was true



Sartre paraphrased Descartes as saying:

"i doubt, therefore i exist"

 

[Pariah]

Max, you may be misunderstanding what doubt is - I would say doubt is not the complete absence of truth, rather the questioning of assumptions: you said there is no truth, but the fact that you doubt (and therefore, exist) is undeniably true: for you at least, although its not the case for me - I can doubt your existence

 

[restin]

And if you doubt you certainly assume that there is truth-

As if you say *I doubt what you say*

you automatically say *I doubt that what you say is true*

assuming that the other could say the truth but you doubt it.

 

[maxfreakout]

Max, you may be misunderstanding what doubt is - I would say doubt is not the complete absence of truth, rather the questioning of assumptions: you said there is no truth, but the fact that you doubt (and therefore, exist) is undeniably true: for you at least, although its not the case for me - I can doubt your existence

im not saying that doubt is the complete abscence of truth, doubt is a feeling of uncertainty about truth

the argument you give that the fact that i doubt is certain, is the same argument that Descartes gave, for the existence of absolute undeniable certainty

but i disagree with this argument, i think absolute undeniable certainty is impossible

in Indian philosophy, they make a distinction between:
1. knowing that p is true
and
2. knowing that you know that p is true

what i am saying is, while the 1st type of knowledge may or may not be possible, the 2nd type of knowledge (knowing that you know) is absolutely, inherently impossible, and it is for that reason, that i am saying that nothing is true, there is no such thing as 'truth'. You can never know that you know, because anything that you think you know, could turn out to be wrong

 

[spice]

'What is truth"?

Relative.

 

[Pariah]

The statement "Nothing is true." Doesn't seem to be what you meant - the sentence "Nothing is true." cannot logically be true.

"Nothing is certain." is much easier to defend, and may be more like the idea of truth as an asymptote, but doesn't really tell us much about ...well, anything, and is refering more to knowledge than truth (although they do feed into each other):

I said earlier about what we call knowledge not requiring certainty - but a lack of reasonable doubt: being a *true belief which provides the best explanation for the evidence (explanatory theory) - although this is describing what knowledge is, not truth, it defeats the effect of uncertainty which cripples more simplistic theories.

*notice I haven't really tried to demonstrate what truth is - so what I'm really talking about is knowledge. Maybe I'll give a proper answer by the end of the week, involving us constructing a reasonable framework try to explain our experiences: a self referencing system if ever there was one.

 

[Psychoid]

Truth is conclusions obtained from subjective perception.

 

[ophiuchus]

my statement about truth which so far is the only one i can find to make sense by any definition is:

truth is an indesputable fact, verified only by past and present time.

this is therefore not absolute, but true due to the fact that there is future time... and i believe this to be pretty accurate although not truely 'true' by my definition, because of time.

but nothing can be true/absolute, even on the most basic level, whereas an electron can only be predicted, but never located so i think the only way that truth could ever exist, is without time.

but then nobody would ever observe it, so would it still be true?

 

[restin]

Truth is conclusions obtained from subjective perception.

The funny thing is, you have nothing other than subjective perception. No one has. subjective perception + subjective perception + subjective perception = objective perception? No. subjective perception + subjective perception + subjective perception = 3* subjective perception. Therefore subjective perception is the most objective perception possible and therefore, calling it subjective perception is futile. :smoke:

 

[maxfreakout]

The statement "Nothing is true." Doesn't seem to be what you meant - the sentence "Nothing is true." cannot logically be true.

i absolutely positively did mean that nothing is true

the statement 'nothing is true' IS true (in exactly the same sense that Socrates meant when he said 'i know that i know nothing')

the statement 'something is true' is impossible to defend, because you could never know it

"Nothing is certain." is much easier to defend, and may be more like the idea of truth as an asymptote, but doesn't really tell us much about ...well, anything, and is refering more to knowledge than truth (although they do feed into each other):

there is no such thing as certainty, so 'nothing is certain' is also true, but neither 'nothing is true' nor 'nothing is certain' require any defense, because the onus is on the person who thinks that 'something is true' to defend it (because they are positing an extra entity, ie truth, so by Ockham's razor they are making things unnecessarily more complicated and this must be justified) but it is completely 100% impossible to defend such a belief

I said earlier about what we call knowledge not requiring certainty - but a lack of reasonable doubt: being a *true belief which provides the best explanation for the evidence (explanatory theory) - although this is describing what knowledge is, not truth, it defeats the effect of uncertainty which cripples more simplistic theories.

knowledge and truth cannot be separated from each other, they are both aspects of each other, truth is a precondition of knowledge, because the statement:

i know that p

really means:

i know that p IS TRUE

knowledge must be certain, because if a statement p is false, it (obviously) cannot be known to be true (because it isnt true), there is no way around this, certainty is impossible, and yet certainty is the same thing as knowledge, if you remove the requirement of certainty, then it becomes impossible to distinguish mere belief from knowledge, you can believe anything you want, but you cant know anything (because nothing is true)

defining knowledge as 'lack of reasonable doubt' is a false definition of knowledge, because you could believe something without any reason to doubt it, and yet it may still turn out to be false


"i know that i know nothing" - Socrates

 

[Pariah]

You've missed explaining away an important word of mine "evidence", although I should have perhaps gone into more depth, I'll try and clarify:

In the past knowledge was just a subset of beleif and truth.

What you're saying is *partly* a reiteration of Gettier's work and others (although by this point "truth" has been demonstrated as being possible). someone can have a justified true beleif that was not knowledge: which works by trying to undermine justification:


(see Gettier's Job Seekers)-

Smith and Jones applying for job, smith has strong evidence for jones getting the job (the interviewer told him). Smith has also counted the money in jones' pocket.

"The man who will get the job has 10 coins in his pocket" smith is justified in this truth.

*but* smith will in fact get the job, and he himself has 10 coins in his pocket (unknown to himself) - the statement was true, the way in which it was inferred was false.

The statement is true, and justified, but he doesn't *know* because he was basing his belief on the coins in jones' pocket, not his own: it was a lucky guess.


Ignoring defeasability, causal, and reliability theory (look them up if your interested), and moving straight on to Explanationist.

Gettier's problem seems to go back to saying that justified true belief isn't good enough for knowledge. To solve gettier's problem we introduce "evidence" or more specifically "all justifying evidence", known and not known - the totality:

We know something when we beleive it, its true, justified *and* is still justified after all the evidence that we don't have is taken into account.

!That was a definition of knowledge.!

So put into practice with the job seekers thought experiment: Smith doesn't know jones will get the job, because all contravening evidence hasn't been taken into account: counting the number of coins in jones' pocket is not part of the justifying evidence.

The lack of reasonable doubt comes into play when we want to *find* knowledge - more of a practical consideration than a definition.


"knowledge and truth cannot be separated from each other, they are both aspects of each other, truth is a precondition of knowledge"

"they are both aspects of each other"

Truth is a precondition of knowledge, but knowledge is not a precondition of truth - knowledge is a subset of truth, not the other way around - they are not identical and are not intersecting sets (categorical logic uses these terms to *try* to understand the root of perception).

This whole truth / knowledge thing is a lot less muddled if you deal with truth first (and seperately) from knowledge, and only then after you've established your basis of truth, start messing around with the possibility of knowing anything*.

*Edit: took out an uncompleted thought


The Socrates quote, despite looking good on T-shirts would be a contradiction if it wasn't a misquote; the way I understand it he is really saying that wisdom comes from wondering about things (lost in translation from greek). He's not trying to make a non-truth claims about anything - its a shame it isn't as soundbite friendly.

Fascinating stuff though, I haven't really gone into all the points I would like to, but I reeaaally need to study for exams - I'll have time to burn starting friday night, so maybe I'll continue then.

 

[st.bot.32]

i think of truth along the lines of this anecdote.

1. at an intersection a cyclist and a car run into each other.

2. the cyclist says "but the driver was looking at his cell phone, not paying attention! it's his fault!"

3. the driver says "but the cyclist went through a red light! it's his fault!"

statement 1 is a fact. statements 2 and 3 are both the truth. the problem is getting to statement 1 if all you have are statements 2 or 3 at your disposal.

as far as reality goes, what keeps me from becoming a complete solipsist is that reality is generally consistent

 

[maxfreakout]

You've missed explaining away an important word of mine "evidence",

there is no evidence that cannot be disproven by better evidence

What you're saying is *partly* a reiteration of Gettier's work and others

no what i am saying has nothing to do with Gettier

if knowledge must be 1. Justified, 2. Believed, and 3. True

then what Gettier was talking about, was the first condition, justification

I am not talking about the justification of knowledge, im talking about the third condition, TRUTH

knowledge has to be true, what i am saying is, that for any proposition, you could never know if it was true or not, to know that a proposition is true is impossible, because anything you believe to be true might actually turn out to be false. It follows from this, that knowledge is impossible, and that nothing is true

(although by this point "truth" has been demonstrated as being possible)

No it hasnt, how could it possibly be?, ''truth'' doesnt mean anything

someone can have a justified true beleif that was not knowledge: which works by trying to undermine justification:

yes that was Gettier's point, but it isnt what im saying


Ignoring defeasability, causal, and reliability theory (look them up if your interested), and moving straight on to Explanationist.

We know something when we beleive it, its true, justified *and* is still justified after all the evidence that we don't have is taken into account:

but for any belief you have (ie for any proposition you believe to be true), you might find out that your belief was wrong (ie it might be disproven), you can not possibly know that any proposition is true

!That was a definition of knowledge.!:

any definition of knowledge, will necessarily fail to distinguish it from belief, this is because there is no knowledge, you can believe any proposition you want (ie, believe that any proposition is true), but you cannot possibly know that any proposition is true

Truth is a precondition of knowledge,

but because you cannot know that any proposition is true (ie you cant know whather or not it satisfies the truth condition), there cant be any knowledge

but knowledge is not a precondition of truth - knowledge is a subset of truth, not the other way around - they are not identical and are not intersecting sets (categorical logic uses these terms to *try* to understand the root of perception)..

i am saying there is no truth, and no knowledge

The Socrates quote, despite looking good on T-shirts would be a contradiction if it wasn't a misquote)

it is a misquote (probably the most misquoted misquote ever) but it is not a contradiction, the proposition 'nothing can be known to be true' is TRUE


wisdom, is knowing that you know that you cant possibly know anything[/quote]

 

[maxfreakout]

You've missed explaining away an important word of mine "evidence",

there is no evidence that cannot be disproven by better evidence

What you're saying is *partly* a reiteration of Gettier's work and others

no what i am saying has nothing to do with Gettier

if knowledge must be 1. Justified, 2. Believed, and 3. True

then what Gettier was talking about, was the first condition, justification

I am not talking about the justification of knowledge, im talking about the third condition, TRUTH

knowledge has to be true, what i am saying is, that for any proposition, you could never know if it was true or not, to know that a proposition is true is impossible, because anything you believe to be true might actually turn out to be false. It follows from this, that knowledge is impossible, and that nothing is true

(although by this point "truth" has been demonstrated as being possible)

No it hasnt, how could it possibly be?, ''truth'' doesnt mean anything

someone can have a justified true beleif that was not knowledge: which works by trying to undermine justification:

yes that was Gettier's point, but it isnt what im saying


Ignoring defeasability, causal, and reliability theory (look them up if your interested), and moving straight on to Explanationist.

We know something when we beleive it, its true, justified *and* is still justified after all the evidence that we don't have is taken into account:

but for any belief you have (ie for any proposition you believe to be true), you might find out that your belief was wrong (ie it might be disproven), you can not possibly know that any proposition is true

!That was a definition of knowledge.!:

any definition of knowledge, will necessarily fail to distinguish it from belief, this is because there is no knowledge, you can believe any proposition you want (ie, believe that any proposition is true), but you cannot possibly know that any proposition is true

Truth is a precondition of knowledge,

but because you cannot know that any proposition is true (ie you cant know whather or not it satisfies the truth condition), there cant be any knowledge

but knowledge is not a precondition of truth - knowledge is a subset of truth, not the other way around - they are not identical and are not intersecting sets (categorical logic uses these terms to *try* to understand the root of perception)..

i am saying there is no truth, and no knowledge

The Socrates quote, despite looking good on T-shirts would be a contradiction if it wasn't a misquote)

it is a misquote (probably the most misquoted misquote ever) but it is not a contradiction, the proposition 'nothing can be known to be true' is TRUE


wisdom, is knowing that you know nothing

 

[GOD]

This thread is another stupid philosophical argument . Thank god that most people find things like that boring .

How red is red ? Is green better than red ? What would we be doing if we werent bored and asking ourselves stupid unanswerable questions . Do poor people ask questions like that ? Have they the time ? Are they rich enough ?

 

[Pariah]

I do feel I'm going round in circles a bit on this one, but here goes.

"there is no evidence that cannot be disproven by better evidence"

I couldn't have put it better myself - but in this case truth is theorised to exist as something outside of the self, and outside of the evidence.

"you could never know if it was true or not"

You've used knowledge as a precursor to truth in that statement (and all the others by the look of it), where again, I'll state that it should be the other way around - use truth as the precursor and you don't fall into that logical black hole of the necessity of knowledge.

Ok, allow me to pose a counter theory (more accurately a cluster of theories), then compare them to "nothing is true".

Lets first say that: a proposistion is true when things are as they say they are. This isn't to say that there is a single way of depicting reality, but that it represents a small range in the spectrum of reality. (just so thats covered).

Lets now say that perceptions put us in contact with reality: that there are material objects, which we perceive, and those perceptions can be explained by physical laws - although our senses are not certain in anyway, they give us reason to beleive something.

Now we have our little explanation of knowledge:
"We know something when we beleive it, its true, justified *and* is still justified after all the evidence that we don't have is taken into account."

So, what virtues does this set of theories have?

Its consistent with its self and the data its explaining,
it explains a lot of phenomena,
we get to keep a hold of the useful things we've learned in the past,
and we have some sort of direction to head in to find more things out in the future.

Lets look at "nothing is true" despite it looking to me like its just saying A = notA:

It doesn't seem to match any sort framework that can be demonstrated,
It doesn't explain why we seem to be experiencing reality,
We have to throw everything we claim to know out of the window (the window that isn't true),
We have no way of making head or tail of anything if we accept it.

I'm still very confused how a statement can be accepted when it's fundementally apposed to logic: something that denies its self in its own definition: in a universe where nothing is true, the statement nothing is true cannot possibly be true: a universe where nothing is true cannot exist.

There is one other good way of describing what truth is, which is much simpler, without running into the crazy circularity seen above (I'm talking about the circularity hidden in the reality based theory to), but you could also say its used to explain what the reality based theory can be based on...so to speak:

"Everything is names"

On the surface it doesn't seem to tell us anything about anything either, but its not making any claims about the external or internal existence (or non-existence) of truth or knowledge, so doesn't run into the problems associated with them. To put it one way its saying that truth is the name of our way of communicating agreement between names, be they names that fall into the category of things, or the category of ideas, or any other names or names of names you care to use.




Phew ...there you go, what do you think?

 

[maxfreakout]

"you could never know if it was true or not"

You've used knowledge as a precursor to truth in that statement (and all the others by the look of it), where again, I'll state that it should be the other way around - use truth as the precursor and you don't fall into that logical black hole of the necessity of knowledge.

Truth is a condition of knowledge, in order to know that p, p must be true

Therefore, in order to know that you know that p, you have to know that the statement 'i know that p' is true

BUT, you cannot possibly know that the statement 'i know that p' is true, therefore knoiwledge is impossible

Lets first say that: a proposistion is true when things are as they say they are. .

but you cant possibly know if things actually are as any proposition says they are, this is what Descartes was implying with his idea of an evil demon tricking you into believing in an external world

therefore you can never know if any proposition is true
all you can do is BELIEVE that some proposition truly describes a state of affairs, but believing is not the same as knowing


This isn't to say that there is a single way of depicting reality, but that it represents a small range in the spectrum of reality. (just so thats covered).

Lets now say that perceptions put us in contact with reality: that there are material objects, which we perceive, and those perceptions can be explained by physical laws - although our senses are not certain in anyway, they give us reason to beleive something..

yes you can believe anything you want, you van believe that there is a physical world (ie you can be a materialist), or you can believe there is no external world (ie you can be an idealist)

but you cant possibly know either way

I'm still very confused how a statement can be accepted when it's fundementally apposed to logic: something that denies its self in its own definition: in a universe where nothing is true, the statement nothing is true cannot possibly be true: a universe where nothing is true cannot exist..

the statement 'nothing is true' does not deny itself, to deny that p is to claim that 'not-p' is true, but the statement 'nothing is true' is not claming that any statement is true, it isnt denying or affirming anything

 

[Brugmansia]

I hate truth, it's a ruthless killer.

 

[Pariah]

You seem to be restating all of your previous statements without discussing what I'm really "bringing to the table" - what do you think of the idea of nominalism - the statement that everything is names?

I've already discussed how you don't require certainty, previously by using a probablistic / evidence framework of knowledge aquisition, using truth as an assumed external, and now by putting forward the idea that truth is really just our way of naming things that agree.

Lets look a moment at how you attempt to refute what I'm saying:

I say "here is a theory" and you say "but how do you know the assumtions are true"

all I'm really doing is posing a logical flow of ideas: "If you assume this set of ideas, then it follows that in these conditions this conclusion is found."

You say that you disagree with the assumptions, and give a reason.

I have demonstrated in several ways why the reason to refute the assumption is flawed - namely that it doesn't apply because in the assumption it is stated that truth does not require certainty.

The ball is now in your court: demonstrate why truth and knowledge require certainty, keeping in mind that I've already demonstrated a framework that doesn't.

Whould you say that :
1. knowledge and truth require certainty
2. Nothing is certain
therefore nothing is true.


That arguement requires that you know what knowledge is.

how do you know that knowledge requires certainty? I'd be very interested to here your response to that... seems pretty much bullet proof logic to me, the arguement defeats itself.

 

[maxfreakout]

You seem to be restating all of your previous statements without discussing what I'm really "bringing to the table" - what do you think of the idea of nominalism - the statement that everything is names?.

because i am making a very simple point, which has nothing to do with nominalism

i am simply saying that knowledge requires truth, you cannot know something to be true which isnt true

But the requirement that knowledge is true, makes knowledge impossible because you cannot know that any proposition is true

I've already discussed how you don't require certainty, previously by using a probablistic / evidence framework of knowledge aquisition, using truth as an assumed external, and now by putting forward the idea that truth is really just our way of naming things that agree..

put it this way, knowledge *certainly* requires the truth of what is known, to say that

I know that p

is precisely to say that

I know that p is TRUE

do you agree with this? ie the statements:

'i know that p is true' and 'p is (actually) not true'

are mutually contradictory, yes or no? There is no possible way to define what it means to say ''i know thap p'' without the requirement that p is TRUE

Lets look a moment at how you attempt to refute what I'm saying:

I say "here is a theory" and you say "but how do you know the assumtions are true" ..

no i am not saying this, i am not attempting to refute anything you are saying. The word 'assumption' explicitly implies that what is assumed is not known, you assume what you dont know, not what you do know (if you knew something was true you wouldnt need to assume it was true)

i am saying that knowledge is impossible because it has to be true.

I have demonstrated in several ways why the reason to refute the assumption is flawed - namely that it doesn't apply because in the assumption it is stated that truth does not require certainty.

truth doesnt require certainty, but knowledge *certainly* requires truth, you cannot know something which isnt true, do you agree?

The ball is now in your court: demonstrate why truth and knowledge require certainty, keeping in mind that I've already demonstrated a framework that doesn't..

knowledge requires truth, by definition, because 'to know that p', is the same as saying 'to know that p is TRUE', you have already agreed with me that knowledge requires truth

Whould you say that :
1. knowledge and truth require certainty
2. Nothing is certain
therefore nothing is true.

no, i would say that
1. knowledge requires truth (which we both agree with)

2. nothing is true

therefore knowledge is impossible

how do you know that knowledge requires certainty? I'd be very interested to here your response to that... seems pretty much bullet proof logic to me, the arguement defeats itself.

knowledge doesnt require certainty, but knowledge DOES require truth, which as i have demonstrated, makes it impossible to know anything