I cannot agree with this. The definition itself will lead into much confusion. If "truth" is all information then all information is equally true and therefore cannot be conflicting, because that requires distinction between true/false which is not had through such an equation. I put it to you, that information is organized data and not equal to truth. Information, while it is both - essential for, and a product of - thought/belief, it cannot equate to truth unless one is willing to sacrifice the distinction between true/false information. I am not willing to do such a thing. Information can be necessarily true, not necessarily true, false, or not truth-apt - depending upon the manner in which it corresponds to fact/reality.



Warrant is a little tricky and is much more complex that it may seem at face value. It incorporates both trust and truth, and develops in stages which are subject to the inner workings of the mind. However, that is not case in the beginning. Becoming aware of that which constitutes sufficient reason to believe is a personal matter because it is conceived in the mind, of that there can be no doubt. So, it would seem that because belief is a property of the mind and the mind is a property of the subject, that it would follow that warrant is also a property of the mind, because it is connected to belief through necessity. Furthermore, it would seem to make sense that because of that there could be no universal warrant. However, that is not necessarily true. Becoming aware of warrant and the existence of warrant are not the same thing, for one. Warrant grounds belief and complex belief becomes necessarily entwined with warrant. That is the case, however, it does not follow that all warrant is subject to the mind, nor does it follow that there is no universal warrant, nor does it follow that everything that we can conceive of is subject to the mind.

Universal warrant is primary and distinct from personal warrant in both elemental constituency and contingency. Universal warrant grounds initial belief, and personal warrant later becomes necessarily entwined with belief. That holds good and is logically supported by our taking note that warrant necessarily comes prior to belief, but is also later influenced by it. So, we can and often do change our minds regarding what constitutes sufficient reason to believe based upon life experience. So there needs to be a distinction made.

From the premiss that at conception we are void of thought/belief, it follows that warrant, which grounds initial thought/belief, cannot be contingent upon belief, because it cannot be subject to, based upon, nor influenced by that which does not yet exist. Rather, initial thought/belief formation must be a product of some pre-existing warrant. That is what I am calling universal warrant, and it has significant moral import. Such a thing must be able to yield all the different types of belief, or else it has no explanatory power, and could not be properly called universal.

In the context of universal morality, all the different moral codes/beliefs must be able to be reasonably shown to converge upon this. In addition, it must involve behavioral expectation, for that is the objective primary common demoninator of all ethical/moral discourse and behavioral codes. They all converge upon behavioral expectation of oneself and/or others. However, all behavioral expectation is not morally significant. I mean I expect the sun to shine today, however that expectation is morally irrelevant. I expect to have to use the bathroom soon, and that is also morally insignificant.

Now, you may still be wondering how universal warrant is not subject to the mind, seeing how it necessarily happens there. That is a legitimate point, one deserving attention. It directly involves identifying that which is subject to the mind, that which the mind is subject to, and how those things are distinct from one another.

I'll leave it here for now, because that is a lot to absorb in one sitting. Any questions or concerns so far?

Elmo,

What is the difference between your belief in God and God?

If "truth" is all information then all information is equally true and therefore cannot be conflicting,

Correct.

But we are speaking of information that is not subject to the human mind, and that would only be information that pertains to truth.

Truth is what exists. (What is.) This kind of truth is not an opinion. Actual truth, like actual reality, cannot be known by the human mind and is not subject to the human mind. It is what it is.

If an objective reality exists, not subject to the human mind, then information pertaining to that reality must also exist, not subject to the human mind. That is truth and all (true) information pertains to that.

What we (humans) think is truth is an opinion and is subject to the human mind. So is the information that we have. The information we have compiled, organized and identified is also an opinion and must be judged "true" or "false" by the human mind. (This information is not included in the information pertaining to actual truth because it is subject to the human mind, hence it is an opinion.)

TRUST:

If trust, as we agreed, is natural and not subject to the human mind (where we have to learn mis-trust) then truth is also natural and not subject to the human mind. It is what it is regardless of what we think about it.

Information, (therefore truth) is not what we "think" it is, and it is not what we think we know it is. Truth is unknowable by the human mind because the human mind can only think it knows what truth is.

All information pertaining to truth is also unknowable because when it falls under the scrutiny of the human mind, we can only think and have an opinion about what is true and what is false. Humans cannot know that because their perceptions are limited. BUT even if they were very good at discerning truth from 'all information' about what is (reality) it is still an opinion and subject to the human mind because they THOUGHT about it and made a judgment.



No sacrifice is necessary if one acknowledges that the human mind cannot know for absolute certain if information is true or false. They can only think they know.




Granted truth exists, and granted true information exists. But once you think about it and decide what is true and what is false then your conclusions are subject to the human mind and they are at that point opinions or points of view.

Creative,

What is the difference between what you think is truth and truth?

What is the difference between what you perceive as reality and true objective reality?

The preexisting warrant would seem to arise from the same place of trust, and truth not subject to the human mind, and as the mind examines it and thinks about it, it becomes difficult to separate the personal from the universal warrant except that the universal warrant arose from information pertaining to actual truth.


As the human mind perceives, observes and interprets objective reality it develops its personal point of view and opinions, and later begins to make decisions on what is true and what is false. All of these conclusions are opinions or perceptions.

A bit more about "information" equals "truth."

Information collected by human observation is not infallible and is probably incomplete and even completely false. Because it is not complete (not whole, not perfect) it cannot be called "true" with complete certainty.

Therefore, it is more correctly called "perception" or "Opinion."

The only true information is information that pertains to what actually is. (Truth)

Only true information is information. False information is not information at all. Incomplete information is incomplete, so not perfect or acceptable as truth. (Just as a bunch of car parts are not acceptable as a car.)

The inability for the human mind to know for certain what information is true means that the human mind cannot know the whole of truth.

Facts:

A fact is a conclusion supported by information believed to be true but it is still subject to the human mind.

I cannot follow all of that Jb.

Truth is truth, reality is reality, and information is neither.

There is false information, and claiming that false information is "not really information" does not make any sense. It is only a consequence of unnecessarily attaching the term "actual" to truth and reality and treating truth, reality, and information as if they are all the same thing. There is no "actual" truth nor "actual" reality. Reality is the overall state of universal affairs. Truth is a necessarily presupposed relationship between thought/belief and reality which facilitates thought/belief formation. I believe X means I believe X is true. Now, whether or not X is true, is not determined by how we think about it. It is determined by whether or not X follows from or is a fact(obtains a state of affairs).

Let X be "The dog has fleas."

The statement/belief "The dog has fleas." is true if and only if the dog has fleas, regardless of whether or not anyone checks. If the dog has fleas then the statement "The dog has fleas." is true because it follows from a state of affairs. If the dog has fleas, then it is a fact that the dog has fleas.



No. A fact is a state of affairs that obtains in reality. You've described statement/belief, not fact. All belief is "believed to be true". Whether or not statements/beliefs are true depends upon whether or not they correspond to fact.



Of course.



No. All conclusions are not opinions. Opinions are unsupported by fact because they correspond entirely to subjective personal preferences/tastes. It is a true that my favorite ice cream is mint chocolate chip. However, the truth of that claim is not about the ice cream, it is about my subjective opinion regarding ice cream. So, while it is true that mint chocolate chip is the best tasting ice cream, based upon my opinion, it cannot be a fact that mint chocolate chip is the best tasting ice cream because there is no objective state of affairs for that statement to obtain.

Perception is a term that describes a combination of functions regarding our physiological nervous system. Using it in a manner to describe one's worldview or opinion leads to confusion. Keeping those things separate avoids such a thing.

I'm sorry you can't follow that. You may be personally and/or extremely attached to the idea that you can determine what is true and what is a fact. Try not to be so attached to that idea.

The ability to determine what is true and what is a fact is subject to the human mind and it cannot be universal. If you cling to that idea, your universal truth that supports universal morality will fly out the window. At the human mind level of observation, yes you can make those determinations. But those determinations are subject to the human mind. They are your personal perceptions, beliefs, opinions, etc.



It makes perfect sense. What you call false information is, in truth, meaningless, therefor it is not information. Example:

Imagine you are an international spy and you have allegedly retrieved a microchip with information about a plot against the government. When you hand it over, it is discovered that all of the "information" on the chip is false and meaningless. The consensus is this: You did not get the information. You failed your mission.

Do you think your boss will be just as happy with what you have on the chip? Of course not. It is worthless and meaningless.

Information that is meaningless and false is not really information. It is gibberish.



Creative, I got the term "actual reality" from you in our many discussions about reality and what is real. Actual reality is objective reality. (No one person can know what objective reality truly is, because what they know is from their single point of view.)

If you are saying that there is no objective truth or objective reality then you are saying that everything is subjective.
Actual truth and actual reality are what I mean by objective truth and objective reality.



This is your definition. Okay. That then is what I am calling actual reality, and that is objective reality. Agreed? Lets not get lost in semantics.




X could be true. X could be false. What I believe or think about it will not effect whether it is true or false. Agreed? It is either true or it is false.(not true)

Who decides if it is true or false? If we (humans)decide it is true, does that make it true? If we decide it is false, does that make it false? No and no. IT IS WHAT IT IS.

It is either true or it is gibberish. If it is gibberish, it is "bad information" or false." False information is worthless, hence it is not true, hence it is not information at all because it is gibberish and has no relation to truth.

False information is not information.

Our decisions and what we think about anything we perceive as information does not change the nature of that information or gibberish. It only determines what we claim to think about it.

BUT X information being true or false is not dependent on what we think about it. Agreed?

So what is the difference between what you believe about X and X?



True.



No. A fact is a term used by the human brain.

If no one has checked to see if the dog has fleas, the fact that he does have fleas is irrelevant. If no one knows the dog has fleas, no one can call it a fact. By doing so, you have removed yourself as a thinking observing human brain and become an all knowing God.

Facts are things that have been observed and deemed to be true by a thinking human observer. They can't be called universal truth.

Maybe the dog does not have fleas, maybe the fleas have a dog. It doesn't really matter. The truth that fleas are living on the dog, is not a fact until it is observed and labeled a fact by the human observer.

Facts are not universal. Truth is.



Facts are also(sometimes) believed to be true. If you are saying that all facts are truth I think you are giving the term "fact" too much weight and importance. An all knowing universe (or God) does not determine what is or is not a fact. A human mind does.



No, statements are points of view that are subject to the human mind. Statements are made by humans. Statements are also subject to interpretation by the human mind.

Statements are not universal truth or universal information. Even look at this statement. It is subject to your interpretation.






Then what are they? You can't say that all conclusions are truth or fact, because some of them are neither and all of them are subject to the human mind and hence can't be called universal with certainty.



Some opinions certainly are supported by facts. Some more than others. Some not at all. No opinions can be called universal truth.




Unless you are an all knowing God you must admit that you cannot know what true objective reality is. Your perception is your perception.

I have nothing further to add.

Then I have to conclude that you have failed to prove your claim.
(And I have failed to understand your thinking.

I think you might want to give what I said above some more thought.

Creative,

What is the difference between what you think is truth and truth?

What is the difference between what you perceive as reality and true objective reality?

You know, of course, that there is only one truth: Jesus.

I AM THE WAY AND THE TRUTH AND THE LIFE.

People who fail to heed His warning have nobody to blame but themselves.

I will blame you freaky.
Because you make no sense.

Apparently this thread is dead because Creative has given up and has nothing further to add, and he refuses to answer my questions.



What is the difference between what you think is truth and truth?

What is the difference between what you perceive as reality and true objective reality?

What is false information if it is not meaningless gibberish?

What good is any information if it does not pertain to universal truth?

There's a lot to be said regarding this Jb.

First, I suspect that you are confusing that which we are aware of with our being or becoming aware of it and/or our words with what words describe. Now, we could sit and bicker over definitions for the rest of our lives, or we could think about what definitions are, what they do, what they don't do, whether or not they are adequate/useful, and how that is all properly determined. An adequate definition has no exceptions, it describes what it is supposed to describe and nothing else.

Secondly, I suspect that you're confusing that which is subject to the mind, and that which the mind is subject to.

I. Humans are sometimes, but not always, the sole determining factor in what is true. Whether or not they are all depends upon whether or not the truth claim refers to a man-made concept.

A. When using natural language, there are some expressions which are truth-apt and some which are not.

1."Ah, shoot!" is not truth apt.
2."Washington D.C. is the capital of the U.S.A." is.

Now regarding 2. it becomes quite clear that that is a completely man-made concept, and therefore we are the ones who determined what a "capital" is, what the capital of the U.S. is, and therefore we established whether or not the capital of the U.S.A. is - in fact - Washington D.C. We decided all of that in this case. "Washington D.C. is the capital of the U.S.A." is a truth claim. Truth claims purport to set out what the case is. That claim is true if and only if Washington D.C. is the capital of the U.S.A. There are no other truth conditions.



No. The problem here is how you've worded this. "The ability to determine..." refers to our own capability to become aware of what is true and what is a fact. I suspect that you're treating the terms "truth" and "fact" as though they are truth and fact. They are not. By the end of this post, I will have covered the "determined" part many times over.



Some beliefs are true and some are not.

You're confusing truth and fact with "truth" and "fact" and calling them both "determinations". I think you mean "apprehensions". We did not "determine" that the earth revolves around the sun. Our apprehending that the earth revolves around the sun has no bearing whatsoever upon the fact that it does. It did so long before our knowledge of it.

"The earth revolves around the sun." is a truth claim made up of a series of meaningful marks - a man-made product of our natural language, and the claim is true if and only if the earth revolves around the sun - independently of the language claim. There is no other truth condition. In other words, truth is not "determined" by our language. That which we call "the earth", that which we call "the sun", and that which we call "revolving" has nothing at all to do with our natural language, and neither do any other external objects and/or their effects/interactions which our language is meant to describe. Those things are not determined by nor subject to our minds. Our apprehension is.



No, Jb it makes no sense at all. False claims are not meaningless.

If I were to say that I had a rack of double D breasts, you would know exactly what I mean, because you would know exactly what it would take for that claim to be true. "Creative has big boobs." purports to set out the case at hand, and it would be true if and only if creative has big boobs. The fact that I do not have such a thing makes the claim false, not meaningless. You know exactly what that means, and so does anyone else who is fluent in our natural language. That clearly shows that false claims are not meaningless. A meaningless claim cannot be either true nor false.

"Red blue goth driving saturn queen dogfood" is meaningless.

"This claim is false" is meaningless.



Or neither.



No one "decides" if something is true, however we can become aware of facts which obtain and create statements that purport to represent facts. "It is what it is" is useless by itself because it tells us nothing at all about what "it" is. A is A. That is the law of identity, and all by itself it is meaningless. Meaning in language is the placeholder of distinction.



False information is not worthless nor necessarily "gibberish", Jb. Without knowing what constitutes being false, we also cannot know what constitutes being true. I would not call that "worthless".



What one believes about X is subject to the mind, whereas X may or may not be.



Yes "fact" is term and so are all other terms. What difference does that make? That is clearly insufficient for describing what a fact is and confuses the term "fact" with the state of affairs which facts obtain.



It is still a fact and remains a fact as long as that which we call a "dog" has that which we call "fleas". That is the state of affairs which the term "fact" purports to represent. The state of affairs is not "determined", nor effected in any way by our becoming aware of it. We do not "determine" that, therefore, we do not "determine" facts, we apprehend them and determine the language meant to describe them.



It does not matter if no one knows. It does not matter if we have not "called it a fact". If the dog has fleas then it is a fact.



No, that does not work, you're confusing the term "fact" with what it represents. "Fact" is a term created by us. What the term represents has nothing to do with the term we've chosen to represent that. Facts are states of universal affairs. "Facts" obtain those states. We long held that the orbits of the planets were perfectly circular. We called that a "fact". Based upon your definition here, that is still a fact. That same definition makes the existence of Elmo's God a fact as well. We observed and deemed the planetary orbits to be true. That is not, and never was a fact, though. That is because facts are not "determined" by humans, they are apprehended(or not).



What do you mean that "it does not really matter" if the dog has fleas? That is the only thing that matters, Jb. If what you say is the case, then it was not a fact that dinosaurs once roamed the earth until we said so.



What do you mean "No"? None of that has anything to do with truth. A statement is true if and only if what it sets out as the case is the case. That's it, there are no other truth conditions. The case at hand is the state of affairs(reality). A true statement corresponds to or necessarily follows from the case at hand, the way things are, fact/reality. That's all there is to it.

"The cup is red" is a true statement if and only if the cup is red.



Some are "fact".



Lack of absolute certainty is a skeptical measure of one's own confidence regarding how well their belief matches up to reality, and a little skepticism is healthy imo. Too much however, will lead to insanity. Most radical skeptics(those who claim we cannot know anything) do not act in the same manner which they purport to be reasonable. Just because conclusions come from the mind, does not mean that we cannot have a significant amount certainty in any of them, nor does it make all conclusions opinions, nor does it make all conclusions equally subjective.

Opinions are determined solely within the mind by personal preferences/tastes. Fact is apprehended by the mind(or not), not "determined" by it. That is an important distinction lacking in your expressions here. It seems like you believe that just because everything expressed by humans comes through a subject, that everything coming through is equally subjective. That is just not the case.



"true objective reality"...

What is that?

Yes people who know things tend to be attached to the idea that knowledge can be had and that determining what is true and what is fact is a part of gaining knowledge.

Okay what I got from all of that basically is that you are saying that fact equals truth, and that the term "fact" is a term humans use to describe what they believe is true.



I said:
Unless you are an all knowing God you must admit that you cannot know what true objective reality is.




I can't really describe it because it cannot be known in its totality. But I do believe it exists.

So since you do not agree with me that truth equals all information and all information must pertain to truth, then I hope you have a convincing definition of truth.


In order to prove your claim that morality is universal and objective, not subject to the human mind, you will need to prove that all the attributes of universal morality that you listed is also objective and not subject to the human mind.

(Trust, truth, universal human warrant, universal behavioral expectation)

We agreed that trust is natural and mistrust has to be learned.

We did not agree on what constitutes universal (objective) truth.

We have clarified that you define fact as truth or a claim that is true. Correct?

So that is where is are now.

SO...

What constitutes objective universal truth?

Fact does not equal truth, nor does that follow from anything I've written. "Facts" are necessarily true, I mean that is what makes them "facts", but that does not make fact equal truth.

"True objective reality" is meaningless unless you can describe it. It adds only confusion, no clarity. It's like saying "I believe X exists, but I have no idea what X is."