The belief is a true belief, not a fact. It is true because it corresponds to fact, not because it is one.

We do not make up the facts. We make up the language which sets the facts out in an understandable fashion. Facts are not affected by our thought/belief about them. Belief cannot be fact.

No that would not have led to anything productive. All that would have led to is arguments of semantics and the meaning of specific words and terms.

We've been down that road already. It's a dead end.

I've already expressed my views on this using the words of Dr. Richard Feynman simply because I feel that he has stated it so elegantly. Also, if you fail to understand Feynman's view on this then I can't be held responsible for your failure to understand.

"We can't define anything precisely. If we attempt to, we get into that paralysis of thought that comes to philosophers… one saying to the other: "you don't know what you are talking about!". The second one says: "what do you mean by talking? What do you mean by you? What do you mean by know?" - Richard Feynman

I've been there before. I've tried myself in the past to create formal systems of logic based on perfect semantics. It's a hopeless cause IMHO. It's never going to happen and it can't be done as far as I'm concerned.

It's an admirable goal, but a quite unrealistic one. I gave up on that approach many years ago and have since resigned myself to the 'fact' that words are merely symbols that we use to the best of our ability to try to convey our thoughts to each other.

The idea behind communication should be a mutual desire to genuinely understand what the other person is attempting to convey. Trying to use words as the basis for semantic arguments is a futile and unproductive endeavor IMHO.

As far as I'm concerned we don't need to bother with all those erroneous terms in any case. That will not be "progress" but rather it would be an impairment to progress.

~~~~~

If we simply accept that truth is nothing other than a correct description of the actual "Universal State of Affairs" (for whatever system is under consideration).

Then we have indeed make progress.

Then we can address the "Universal State of Affairs" for the system under consideration. And from that we can discuss what represents a "correct" description of that "Universal State of Affairs" for that given domain considering whatever restrictions may apply to that "Universe of Consideration"

Then, and only then, can you actually come to a conclusion.

~~~~~

An that is precisely what it takes for something to be "True".

And therefore we may indeed know of many different "Truths" that are applicable to different domains of considerations and different universal states of affairs.

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I've already shown clearly that in some situation some truths are indeed entirely subjective.

So as far as I'm concerned that's already a GIVEN.

But I don't think that you are in agreement with that.

Thus we either have a failure to communicate, or we may as well just agree to disagree. Why bother continuing if we are already unable to concede to what has already been well established?

Okay, that's just semantic rubbish. I don't really care about that kind of word play.

Without observers, there are no facts.

I agree, that's totally unproductive semantic rubbish.

Why bother playing such unproductive word games?

What's the point to it?

If a "fact" is a statement of a state of affairs that happens to be true, then a "belief" that is also a statement of a state of affairs that happens to be true is also a "fact".

It's ridiculous to argue trivial semantics like this.

What's the point to it?

It's never going to lead to anything productive.

Everything we speak/write depends upon what we believe to be true. It is not a matter of semantics, it is a matter of fact. However, I would not expect the difference to be known according to the last few posts...

Well that's certainly encouraging.

On second thought, I do understand what you mean by a true belief. But I think you knew all along what I was saying.

If it's a fact that there is water in the ocean and someone believes that there is water in the ocean. The their belief is indeed a fact.

It may be a coincidental fact, but it's still a fact.

Well at least they believe the fact.

The belief is in the fact. They accept the fact as being true.

I understand that Creative is saying that the actual 'fact' is not the belief.

But when you start getting that picky with meanings and words etc. a lot of confusion can happen because you are talking about language rather that using it to actually communicate ideas.

Alright, let's talk opinion...



I am of the opinion that not knowing what the difference is between a true and false claim is a tell-tale sign of not knowing what truth is.

Any objections?

I would never presume to object to your personal opinions. You have a right to them.

I would share that same opinion.

But why bring that up at this stage of the conversation. We had already established what is required for truth. Truth is a correct description of a "State of Affairs". As is a fact.

So we already know what constitutes truth.

Why keep drumming on that? That's a done deal. We've already progressed to that point.

We know what truth is.

Now if we want to ask what it would take for something to be true, we need a specific description and a specific state of affairs.

Once we have those specific things we can begin the process of assessing whether or not we have a "Truth". In other words, we can begin to assess whether the description that we are claiming to be "True" does indeed correctly correspond to the state of affairs in question.

Before you can ask "What does it take for something to be true?" you need to have a state of a affairs and a description of that state of affairs.

Because "TRUTH" is nothing more than a correct correspondence between a description of a state of affairs and the actual state of affairs itself.

That's all that "TRUTH" amounts to.

If the description and the state of affairs match we say that we have a "Truth" (i.e. the description of the state of affairs is true).

If we can show that the description does not match the state of affairs, then we say that it's not true (i.e. it does not represent truth)

If we can't determine the correlation between the description and the state of affairs, then we can't place a concrete truth value on it.

Seems to me that we not only already made progress, but we have already arrived at the final conclusion of what constitutes truth.

The only thing left to do at this point would be to use that knowledge to determine whether certain descriptions are indeed correctly describing specific states of affairs.

I've already been using that process for the bulk of my life.

What I've found is that many states of affairs are not known well enough to even assign to them a concrete description. Thus for many things in life is it is either impractical or outright impossible to determine a concrete truth value.

You certainly can't determine the truth of a state of affairs that can't even be describe precisely.

..

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Well ****. An argument. I wasn't expecting that.



Almost. The description is yours, not mine. I disagree with it as well.

Truth is correspondence to fact/reality.

That suffices.

Children have knowledge, false, and true belief without ever having a description of a state of affairs.

So, just because we need language to talk about truth, does not mean that it owe's it's existence to language. In other words, your argument does not make truth subjective, nor contingent upon language.



Try again.

Nevermind...

It is probablle like a hell if i now.