Truth...
kida
Join Date: 2003-02-20 Member: 13778Members
Join Date: 2003-02-20 Member: 13778Members
in Discussions
<div class="IPBDescription">My thoughts...Yours?</div> Aspiring to follow a truth is in the most simplest of words, difficult.
To many of us, the truth could consist of many meanings. It could be a world, where equality is of utter importance; it could be dieing for something one strongly believes in. In any case, the truth is collected from a series of our own moral, social, and environmental constructs. Simply put, the truth is different for each and everyone one of us.
The possibilities are there, but what exactly are they? Let me impose a simple explanation to this question. Place a cone in your hand, the bottom is covered by the palm, the top is easily seen from above at eyesight, and the sides are almost circumambulant in vision. The problem is that we do not fully understand the entirety of the object, since several points are blocked out of view.
Principally, the fundamental idea is that in order to understand the top of a cone, one must understand the bottom and the sides. In other words, the possibilities of a definitive and miscible truth are there, but humanity hasn't truly searched or grasped it.
This is the reason why people are willing to kill each other, this is the reason why we are constantly destroying ourselves, and this is why capitalism is the ruling economy of today's world. Humans are falliable creatures as is proven by the concepts of Adam Smith; humans will kill each otther over differentiating views of a religious "truth." All of this begs the question of: how? How do we form a society, where a common truth is formed in the minds of a nationwide people? How do we know it will not expand into something worse? How do we know people will not war over it? And the crux of it all: How do we prepare ouselves to face that truth?
On a sidenote:
I wish the government would tell us the damn truth for once instead of dodging questions and giving us bad feedback. It makes me wish that a polling system could be made, where every intelligible human would have a vote on a say of things, instead of leaving power in a few minority.
To many of us, the truth could consist of many meanings. It could be a world, where equality is of utter importance; it could be dieing for something one strongly believes in. In any case, the truth is collected from a series of our own moral, social, and environmental constructs. Simply put, the truth is different for each and everyone one of us.
The possibilities are there, but what exactly are they? Let me impose a simple explanation to this question. Place a cone in your hand, the bottom is covered by the palm, the top is easily seen from above at eyesight, and the sides are almost circumambulant in vision. The problem is that we do not fully understand the entirety of the object, since several points are blocked out of view.
Principally, the fundamental idea is that in order to understand the top of a cone, one must understand the bottom and the sides. In other words, the possibilities of a definitive and miscible truth are there, but humanity hasn't truly searched or grasped it.
This is the reason why people are willing to kill each other, this is the reason why we are constantly destroying ourselves, and this is why capitalism is the ruling economy of today's world. Humans are falliable creatures as is proven by the concepts of Adam Smith; humans will kill each otther over differentiating views of a religious "truth." All of this begs the question of: how? How do we form a society, where a common truth is formed in the minds of a nationwide people? How do we know it will not expand into something worse? How do we know people will not war over it? And the crux of it all: How do we prepare ouselves to face that truth?
On a sidenote:
I wish the government would tell us the damn truth for once instead of dodging questions and giving us bad feedback. It makes me wish that a polling system could be made, where every intelligible human would have a vote on a say of things, instead of leaving power in a few minority.
Comments
The scenario in "A Brave New World" is the closest to what I'm alluding to. I believe they had one quote that went something like "3,527 repititions make 1 truth."
I just read a short story about the truth, and I for the life of me can't remember where it was.
ahhhh, yes.
Spider Robinson. Melancholy Elephants. 1985 (collection of some of his SF)
Satan's Children. 1979 (the actual story)
The concept concists of a new drug that causes the user to to WANT to tell the full truth. The inventor gives it blind to a group of 10 people. 3 of them come back with in a week ansking for more. 5 of them thankhim and never take it again (having compleatly reworked their lives around total truth).
One comits suicide.
one kills the creator.
The rest of the story is interesting, however that short piece will do.
Alot of people could benefit from pure truth.
However, think about how many tiny white lie most of us make every day.
Then think of the larger lies that most of us make also.
Then think of all the lies we tell to our selfs.
Imagine what it would be like to have all of our illusions striped away.
It would suck.
screw the truth.
/me pops the blue pill
Jack me back in.
(I apologize for the bitterness in this post, I aint feeling to good with my self or the world atm <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif' /><!--endemo-->)
EDIT:
For any one interested in thoughts about things like this I realy suggest you pick up Spinder Robinson's work.
Callahan's Cross Time Saloon is a great place to start, from there look at the sequal:
Callahan's Legacy.
Both are collections of short stories, witha general over arcing plot to drive it.
Alot of it is from the perspective of a semi hippy, with many hippy ideals. Just b/c those are there does not say that the ideas in there are not worth it. Many of the ideas are briliant, and realy thought provoking in their own right.
Above all His writing is wonderfull, its amusing, and touching.
Bah. (still bitter)
To many of us, the truth could consist of many meanings. It could be a world, where equality is of utter importance; it could be dieing for something one strongly believes in. In any case, the truth is collected from a series of our own moral, social, and environmental constructs. Simply put, the truth is different for each and everyone one of us. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
I beg to differ. If a "truth" differs from one person to another, then its not truth at all. If that is all truth is, then truth is a thought, an opinion, and should be called as such to avoid smearing real truth. Truth exists regardless of the existance and thoughts of human beings. For example, no humans exist, but everything else does. Is it still true that the atmosphere is primarily made up of Nitrogen? Yes. Humans dont exist, yet truth still does.
I believe in thesis and antithesis. A is not non-A. If something is true, then it stands to reason that the opposite is false. For a long period of time this was the mainstay of philosophy, then along came Hegel, Kierkegaard and friends, and all that went out the window.
And now we have popular definitions of truth, such as kida's: "Simply put, the truth is different for each and everyone one of us. "
I think before we take this further, we should define truth. My definition of truth means something that is correct. Your definition of truth seems to be "Something that is believed by a specific individual to be correct". Is that the way this will go?
1 kind is that of 'facts' (these tend to be wrong). Things like 'nothing can exed C' or 'the atmosphere is primarily Nitrogen'. They are accepted as scientific facts triths) untill proven other wise. (remember, the solar system revolved around the earth for a very long time. and nothing was able to break the sound barrier either, and relativity just makes everytihng screwy)
so thats one kind.
Another kind is that of beliefes and such.
The Great truths. And the oposite of these is generaly not a falshood but ANOTHER great truth.
one that comes to my mind atm (hmmm, I wonder why?) Is that of:
Love Is Wonderful. This is True.
The oposite of that is:
Love Sucks. This is also True.
think about it sometime <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif' /><!--endemo-->
Note, most of this argument is from Callahan's Legacy (well, thats what you get for reading a philisophical book when your depressed)
To continue on the line of 'personal truths'
Think about it this way:
most of us have little lies that we tell ourselfs every day. If we remove those we have only our personal truths (something that is rather hard to face up to).
I think Kida was more getting at personal, and great truths then JUSt Facts.
'Facts', as you would define them, are based off of reality, and reality is absolutely true. Facts may have their revisions, but ultimately, they can only reflect one truth and be correct.
Again, I still dont think we have a decent working definition for truth - does anyone disagree with the following:
Truth is something that is correct regardless of whether it is percieved as such i.e. regardless of its surroundings.
The other problem of 'facts' is that we either have to decide to ignore the factor that nothing can be 'realy' known, or include it (personaly, I always say exclude it. B/c with it you get stupid questions about 'how do I know that this is realy what steak tastes like?'. Technicaly it is possible that we are living in the matrix, I chose to ignore this as irelivent b/c it has no actual bearing on anything.)
I still stick by my claim that absoloute truth is a bad thing <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif' /><!--endemo-->
A triangle by definition has 3 sides, 3 points and all the angles add up to 180 degrees, anything that isn't like that isn't a triangle. This is truth.
Unfortunately we end up with the fact that the only solid truth's are those that are Apriori, it is true by definition and, as such, you cannot learn anything further from it. If you think of a triangle you can work out all of its various properties because the triangle isn't a triangle without them. Unfortunately you can't learn any other truth's from a triangle.
Another classic example is that a Spinster is an unmarried woman, it sounds like a sentence but in actual fact means nothing. You may as well just say 'spinster' because the rest of the sentence add's nothing at all to it.
Finally, we don't all need to know the whole truth to be able to live with each other, we all just have to believe the same lies. Its not truth that makes people happy, its understanding. If you think the same things as someone else then you understand them, simple as.
East, we dont have to know the whole truth all the time in order to live together you're right. In fact, it helps people get along if they dont know every little thing their neighbours are doing, but I'm not sure thats what kida's getting at.
S/he started out by saying that truth is different for different people. I think thats ludicrous. Truth is truth, whether people believe it and hold to it or no. The opening statement was "Aspiring to follow a truth is in the most simplest words, difficult". I think that idea is flawed from the outset. What if there isnt "a truth", but instead there is "The Truth". It seems that the idea that there may be only one Truth has already been discarded, and I dont think thats fair to do without examining the possibility first.
Thansal seems to quite dislike the idea of their being The Truth, but has stopped short of demonstrating any flaws in the idea. I suspect s/he rejects it based purely on the grounds that s/hes not as comfortable with that idea as with his or her own.
She wants to base society off a common truth - I dont believe that merely picking someones idea (which according to the original posters definition - an idea=a truth) and applying it to society is a clever way to go.
Actually Marine, thats not quite what I meant although it is practically true. However, theoretically if we fully understood each other then a) we could forgive those who do things we don't agree with because we know why they did them and b) most people wouldn't do things that hurt others because they'd understand the affect they would have. Those that would still do bad things would be weeded out easily and we'd have some sort of utopia left over... thats all theory and will never come about though because perfect understanding just simply isn't possible.
What I actually meant was that it doesn't matter if we all believe the truth or not, if we all believed the same things then there wouldn't be any confrontations whether those things were true or not. If we all believed the sky was green then no one would argue about it, if we all had the same religion and the same idea's on that religion there wouldn't be any fighting over it.
Of course if that was true we would have no need for a discussion board.
Any discussion on "The Truth" with capitals and everything is always meaningless as it is totally metaphysical, The Truth about what? Are you talking about the real world around us? Concepts like love and altruism? Right and wrong? The only way we can have any kind of discussion like that is if we all agreed that God existed in which case there would be a Truth, possibly even a TRUTH! Of course for us to learn this truth we too would have to be omniscient, we could possibly retain a small percentage of truth in that all the knowledge we have is true... but I still couldn't call that <i>The</i> Truth. Otherwise you could say someone who knows nothing at all, they have a mind that is completely empty except for one thing which is true... thats obviously not The Truth either.
Seems a clumsy way to word things but I can't think of a better way right now and yet again I'm at work (and Ill and I've only had about 30 mins of sleep... sigh).
I capitalised The Truth so as to distinguish it from kida's truth. The Truth is something that is true, the opposite is false, and that applies for every man and woman that ever lived. I believe that anything based upon a lie is ultimately destined for failure - relationships, business deals etc etc.
I must admit when I talk about The Truth, I am thinking of my own personal beliefs, which as you guessed is God. I dont think I need to be omniscent, seeing as I believe I have an omniscent God who communicates and is real to me. Do you agree that having an omniscent being communicate The Truth to you is good enough? I understand you dont believe in that being, but I'm hoping at least that you can understand why I believe in The Truth without feeling the need to be omniscent myself.
I also agree with you about not having to be omniscient, you don't have to know the truth because God is there to know it for you, because if there was something you needed to know then it would be made known to you by him. If there is a God then there is a TRUTH even if we are totally incapable of perceiving it.
But do you agree that if there wasn't a God then the idea of Truth would be pretty meaningless (though I guess you'd argue without a God the entire universe would be meaningless).
In the other thread about the religious spectrum, I mentioned my theory about atheism and nihilism. If there is no God, then we all came from no where, are going no no where, and at the end of the day everything we do is pointless and meaningless. If I'm Mother Teresa or Hitler, 300 years from now I'll mean little. Two billion years from now this earth will be destroyed, the universe will probably collapse and everything you did and said meant nothing.
If something is ultimately meaningless, then I consider it meaningless NOW.
If there is no God, then there is nothing after this life, then this life is meaningless. And I just feel that thats not true. People are important and valuable, I just know it. Even if I didnt believe in God, I'd still insist against my better judgement that this isnt all for nothing.
A triangle by definition has 3 sides, 3 points and all the angles add up to 180 degrees, anything that isn't like that isn't a triangle. This is truth.
Unfortunately we end up with the fact that the only solid truth's are those that are Apriori, it is true by definition and, as such, you cannot learn anything further from it. If you think of a triangle you can work out all of its various properties because the triangle isn't a triangle without them. Unfortunately you can't learn any other truth's from a triangle.
Another classic example is that a Spinster is an unmarried woman, it sounds like a sentence but in actual fact means nothing. You may as well just say 'spinster' because the rest of the sentence add's nothing at all to it.
Finally, we don't all need to know the whole truth to be able to live with each other, we all just have to believe the same lies. Its not truth that makes people happy, its understanding. If you think the same things as someone else then you understand them, simple as. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
I'd like to further extend this analogy to show a flaw in our perception of "truth".
What we see as truth is, as the first post said, is limited by our perception.
Now, regarding the triangle:
A triangle is a figure consisting of three points and three sides, correct?
Consider that we can percieve only three spatial dimensions.
If we may, for the moment, assume there are additional spatial dimensions, what we see as a line between two points may very well be a triangle, but the remaining point and lines exist on a dimension we can not observe.
It may be, in truth, a triangle, but we will only be able to accept it as a line, and nothing else.
Truth is absolute perception of a piece of reality. Reality is defined by our perception. Therefore truth is also defined by our perception. One person's truth may be another's falsehood. However, within the space of one's mind, truth is subjective, but, through the influence of others, malleable.
However, if I said "as far as I can see, this triangle only has three sides" then I am telling the truth. Truth is not dependant upon perception. Truth is dependant upon what is, and what is not real.
What is right/true and wrong/false does not depend upon my perspective or the best knowledge available to me.
[offtopic]
"triangle" is just a conceptual representation of something that does exist in real-life. it's just been mathematically abstracted; most mathematical abstractions don't exist "in real life".
i think what we're arguing about is the ability of any conceptual "abstraction" as such to represent "reality." that being said, the abstraction is based on our perception, but the reality is not. Since our perceptions are imperfect, we will never be able to fully grasp the "reality" of things, as such (or be sure that we have grasped it).
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It may be, in truth, a triangle, but we will only be able to accept it as a line, and nothing else.
Truth is absolute perception of a piece of reality. Reality is defined by our perception. Therefore truth is also defined by our perception. One person's truth may be another's falsehood. However, within the space of one's mind, truth is subjective, but, through the influence of others, malleable. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
nice contradiction there. you just admitted that there is a truth that may exist beyond our perception, and yet you turn right back around and define truth as our perceptions.
remember the phrase "a rose by any other name is just as sweet" (paraphrased)? we may say "i percieve the rose to have such-and-such qualities" such as being red, having leaves, having a sweet-smelling aroma.
however, if we did not have a sense of smell, and could only see in ultraviolet, we would have a completely different perception of the rose. however, that wouldn't change anything about the rose, we would only percieve a different part of it; it would still be red, and have a sweet smell - albeit imperceptible by us.
Our concept of a rose would change, but the whole point is that Reality does not change to suit our senses, which are flawed. The rose is still a rose regardless of how we see it.
I know a triangle is just an abstract, I mentioned it because it is a good example of apriori truth (or whats true by definition). This kind of truth being the only one we can actually point and say this is TRUTH, its also pretty useless for finding out other TRUE things.
You could argue that what we call a Rose is nothing but a collection of our perceptions, that there is nothing actually 'under' the sensory experiences at all. After all if someone was completely colour blind and every rose they saw was a shade of brown (with a pink stalk) then they would still recognise it as a rose. In fact if you asked them they would still call its petals red and its stalk green as they would have had the colours reversed when taught them too.
The interesting question would be if they would still think of Roses as romantic or would they wonder why so many people thought the colour brown was so pretty?
Just rambling, time to go home now.
Society itself cannot operate on the basis of relative morality.