What is truth?
By this I mean 'How do you define the concept of truth?'
I am not asking 'What particular things do you hold to be true?'
(Nothing quite like jumping in to the deep end on the first day, is there?)
Have fun, kiddies!
oh, ps: Don't make this harder or more complicated than it needs to be. Right now all we need to do is define our terms so that when we progress we'll be using words with a meaning that is understood, at least in our little community here. All I want to do is get a working definintion going.
25 comments:
ding ding round one
It's what lies behind your everyday being. You rely on it to govern your decisions and actions...it may have been passed down to you through your up bringing or you may have discovered your own truths through experience and education. It is a benchmark for how you feel about the world and how you move through it.
So if a homeless person believed they were the President of the United States, and that assertion guided everything the person did throughout their day, inspiring them to talk at lenght about international affairs and address everyone they meet as "Madam Ambassador," would it be true that the person in question was the President?
To them they are.....but to the rest of the world they are clearly crazy. The rest of the world's truth would be that they are acting on self created false truth.
Everyone's truth will be socially constructed, a crazy man would have crazy truth.
If all truth is socially constructed, is that not the same as saying all truth is relative? Would it be incorrect to say that because the crazy mean clearly isn't the President, that his truth is false, untrue, wrong? Is there no objective truth?
Um, I feel like this is too easy but isn't truth what can be objectively proven and/or evidenced? Though this leaves a lot in the hands of the person doing the 'proving' and their methods, and I'm sure there are lots of other problems with this position, but I reckon it's a good start for a definition any road.
Are we talking empiricism here? Because that's been used as a proof of the existence of God, y'know.
There are physical truths....I am fat and the crazy man isn't the president. There are ethical, moral, spiritual etc etc truths which are elastic depending on ...well a million variables.
Interesting to note, the Cambridge online dictionary has one seperate definitions for "truth" and "God's truth".
"the truth" is "the real facts about a situation, event or person"
But what is real?
If you said I was stupid and I said I was hurt by your remarks, would that be "the truth"?
Well, if I felt emotional pain, it would be one truth that I was emotionally hurt. Would I be physically hurt? No. So in that sense, my statement would not be the truth.
Reality is so infinitely ambiguous that it is impossible to know the truth (that's why I say "Truth is faith").
But you can know the facts.
It would be impossible to prove the homeless person is not the President because you would first have to define in what sense he believes he is the President.
Perhaps the homeless person is, in fact, an American President from the future who has travelled back in time, but appears to us as a ranting mad man.
You might say this is unlikely, but if I told you ten years ago the World Trade Towers in NY would collapse within the decade you would have said that was unlikely, too.
You might say - I've asked him and he's not from the future. OK, maybe he's the President of the US, by his own definition.
Then you counter that. Then I think up another possibility. And this whole thing would continue infinitely.
Therefore you could never discount with 100% certainy that the homeless person was the President.
When we say "tell me the truth" we mean "tell me what you believe to be real". So, if the homeless person believes he is the President, then he's telling you the truth (as far as he's concerned).
The concept of truth depends on the language we are using. The concept of truth is hazily defined in terms of the english languange. In languages which are less hazy (such as languages used in logic and mathematics) the concept of truth can be defined within a given universe.
Unfortunately for Chaucer's bitch the concept of truth in general (i.e in application to all possible universes) has no definition for these languages (and actually for most languages which you might come up with off the top of your head). That's called Tarski's undefinability of Truth. It sucks!
So hears my non rigorous notion of truth: The truth about X is what any sufficiently intelligent entity would regard about X assuming they had sufficiently much knowledge about X and sufficient time to think about the problem.
b, lets say X is the universe and the intelligent entity is Einstein. The problem is, no matter how much time he had to think about it, he would never know the whole truth about the universe. In fact, it apears that every answer creates several new questions.
Sorry dude. Einstein would be way too stupid. And I'm not talking about silly little finite periods of time. I'm talking about higher cardinalities. I think there is a lack of sufficient imagination on your part here.
Also the creation of new questions is irrelevent. If I ask whether badgers or possums have the largest genome (for which I give a rigorous definition) then someone with sufficient intelligence, information and time can answer the question. It's irrelevent that you might then be tempted to ask whether badgers or possums have the most genes!
In terms of knowing the whole truth about the universe: There is nothing inconsistent in (relative to a rigorous language L) knowing the truth or falsehood of every statement (although this can't necessarily be done algorithmically).
All of these statements I can prove mathematically. I can't take it further to a statement about all mathematical truth but that is another matter and not relevent to the sort of empirical questions Chaucer's bitch is likely to be asking anyway.
Well, actually, I don't believe you, b, can prove anything to me, unless I agree to abide by your (mathematical) rules.
So, basically, a truth must be limited by the rules and instruments used to define it.
btw, even your "rigorous definition" is not the truth.
When a wasp flies into a window pane, it believes the air has stopped it. It doesn't try to fly round the window because it cannot comprehend glass. So, the wasp's truth = I am being forced back by the air. And it keeps trying to fly through the glass as if it were air.
From our position, as glass comprehenders, the truth = the wasp is forced back by glass.
Like the wasp's, the human mind is limited in what it can perceive. Therefore, your assumption that you can know the truth about badgers and possums genome is not correct - you can only know the truth as far as your human mind allows you.
If you're saying, "I'm not talking about something as stupid as a human", then what are you talking about? The unknowable truth (from a human perspective)?
Basically, to know any ultimate truth, we're heading towards infinite wisdom.
reality.
..how do i define it? with great trepidation, bubbe.
If you don't agree to the axioms of mathematical logic Simon on what logic am I to accept your arguments? If you are talking about an informal logic in the English language then I must warn you that the ambiguities and expressive strength of the English language render a logic based on it inconsistent.
For your wasp example the wasp does not have sufficient information. For the rigorous definition the entity needs potentially unbounded memory and computational power.
There is an error in your argument. Even if for every bounded entity there is a truth it cannot resolve that does not imply that there is a truth that cannot be resolved by any bounded entity.
b, all I'm saying is that to agree with your "proofs" I must agree with your rules. I didn't say I could prove anything with my words.
Which leaves you perhaps thinking "Why should I listen to them then?"
My point is, we can only know a truth as far as our limited minds can understand it.
A wasp is never going to understand the concept of glass, no matter how much information it is given. More importantly, it can never be aware its truth (that the air is forcing it back) is false.
As humans are also limited, we can never be certain a truth we believe we have prooved is actually just what our limited minds can perceive.
The wasp has a rule which goes: "Transparent = air". If we agree with the wasp's rules, then "Glass = air" is the truth.
Therefore, unless our minds are infinite, we cannot be certain about anything.
I'm not saying your mathematical rules are wrong. I'm saying, because my mind is limited, I can never know for certain if they are right.
But we need, for practical purposes, to make rules. The wasp needs to make the rule about air and transparency so it can navigate. For a wasp, the rule is very practical. Most wasps don't get caught behind panes of glass.
I am a huge fan of the 'Whole' Truth more than the 'Nuthin' But' version.
Truth is the first casualty of War and discussions on the nature of Truth.
Truth is something that can be tested under any conditions and always presents the same conclusion.
As Jack Nicholson succinctly put it,
"You want the Truth,
you can't handle the Truth!"
now back to our studio audience...
This isn't meant to address the question, but I felt like sharing it with you and, for the life of me, I can't find an email. It's from the book I'm reading, "Special Topics In Calamity Physics". A father and daughter are discussing the Italian film, "L'Avventura" in which a woman's disappearance, though central to the plot, is never explained.
"L'Avventura," Dad said, "has the sort of ellipsis ending most American audiences would rather undergo a root canal than be left with, not only because they loathe anything left to the imagination-- we're talking about a country that invented spandex-- but also because they are a confident, self-assured nation. They know Family. They know Right from Wrong. They know God-- many of them attest to daily chats with the man. And the idea that none of us can truly know anything at all-- not the lives of our friends or family, not even ourselves-- is a thought they'd rather be shot in the arm with their own semi-automatic rifle than face head on. Personally, I think there's something terrific about not knowing, relinquishing man's feeble attempt to control. When you throw up your hands, say, 'Who knows?' you can get on with the sheer gift of being alive......
Maybe this IS on topic after all. There is no truth. There's only good company. Company! Company! All you need to know, you can find in showtunes, doll. Sondheim is my god.
I'm very wary of any notion of absolute truth, for the reasons Keith hints at - truth always seems to lead to fundamentalism. Any society needs certain shared beliefs, but as long as they remain that - shared beliefs rather than absolute truths, and anyone who opposes them is an infidel burn burn burn the witch etc etc - things tick along just fine.
For example, most people in Western nations believe that liberal democracy is a pretty good way to go about things. They can argue about what sort of democracy they want, and (most importantly) if someone opposes these ideas, they can say why they support them. But when liberal democracy becomes an article of faith, and you wage a bloody, pointless (and bloody pointless) war to install it in a place where it has little hope of survival, that's when problems start, and your citizens start pretending to be Canadian.
Tim: You can believe in absolute truth without thinking you have access to it.
Can absolute truth exist in infinity?
You can believe in absolute truth without thinking you have access to it.
...mirrors my "Truth is faith" statement. Without having access to abolute truth, you are forced into an act [leap] of faith.
I'm with the guy [can't remember his name] who asked, "Why do you need to believe in anything?"
Belief = control. We wouldn't have large civilisations if one small group didn't have the means to control the majority. The way to control a majority is to create a set of rules and then have the majority believe in that set of rules.
So, for example, to control Russia, you invent a set of rules called Communism. Once you have persuaded enough people to believe in the rules, you can use your position as master of the rulebook to control all those people. As your followers increase in numbers so does your power.
This is why claiming to be the provider of absolute truth is the key to becoming master of the universe.
But if I'm right, then what I've just written can't be trusted.
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream
Post a Comment