I have had a few ah ha moments myself, as when I could see the difference between a true belief and a fact.

How individuals refer to truth and what they accept as truth determines how a communication will affect the beliefs and thus the behaviors of others.

Whenever a communication begins with misconceptions, the entire communication is at risk of being misunderstood and misrepresented.



If we expect truth to be consistent then truth cannot be affected by belief rather belief is affected by truth.

Truth exists/persists whether people percieve it or not, believe in it or not, recognize it or not.

Communication between beings only result in truth when the symbolic representation of thoughts/ideas can be corresponded to fact/reality.

Abra said:


Good question and that's part of the issue isn't it. If we use the word true or truth inaccurately, then we are not communicating properly, are we?

Communication itself is comprised of thoughts & ideas based on our pre-existing beliefs. When we communicate our thoughts or ideas, we are in effect communicating our own beliefs.

Our beliefs are comprised of all kinds of information. Some of the inforamtion is common knowledge, some opinion, some belief and some combination of all of these.

So when we communicate, those with whom we communicate must translate all the symbols by correspinding them to reality. That is how truth is discerned and attributed.

Abra Wrote:


If children are lied to before being capable of knowing anything else, they may believe there is truth in the lie. But we know there is not truth there, there is only belief - and we know belief is only 'thought' by the individual to be true.



Not so - as I wrote above:
If we expect truth to be consistent then truth cannot be affected by belief rather belief is affected by truth.

Truth exists/persists whether people percieve it or not, believe in it or not, recognize it or not.

Abra Wrote:



That’s what creative has been doing here – in many different ways. So I’ll go back to the beginning and one of his first definitions, because if you can’t understand it yet – then you probably need to begin this thread from the second page that this definition comes from.

By creative:

So that I'm not accused of making wrong assumption again, I would like to ask - are you having an issue understanding what is meant by "state of affairs?"

I know I did when I first started getting into philosophy. Maybe, (if you would like,) creative would be kind enough to supply an understanding (he's more capable than I.)

I don't think so.

The state of affairs is the way things are in the moment.

It is what is.

you haven't shown me what you call a mistake. not attempting any claim. saying i hold no belief.



agreed. but what does that have to do with truth?



could your faith in god not be in the untruthfulness of the bible or whatever teachings you've had from others? my guess is that your faith in god is an unquestioned trust regarding the truthfulness of your sources so how is that any different than the unquestioned truthfulness of the child's source; that source being his own parents which he has no more reason to doubt their truthfulness than you have reason to doubt your pastor or bible or whatever sources from which you've come to have faith in your belief of god. niether you nor the child has experienced santa or god so neither of you can know your belief to be true. both require faith to believe so how does belief presuppose truth. if your belief is true, why the need for faith to believe?





well who brought up the silliness about the concept of god being thrown out with morals. sure wasn't me.



not so. i never said i believed that it was likely that you held that the existence of god was a true concept. it was a statement, not a question. if i'm not misstaken i said 'i'd guess'. another guess i'd make is that you won't find anywhere that i've said i 'believe' anything whatsoever. what my responses presuppose to you does not change MY meaning of my responses. moreso a simple mistake on your part.



true, it can be, as evidenced by the crusades and the inquisition. this jihad we must put up with today.



nope. i think. i don't believe.



another easy one. i consider the risk that i'd get hurt real bad to be so high as to prevent me from stepping in front of a car. the only knowledge that i claim as pedestrians being hurt by cars go is in the experiences i've had seeing or reading about the consequences that others have suffered by not watching where they step. i can't know an accident will happen any more than an insurance company can know that a teen driver will have an accident any more than it can know an adult driver with years of driving experience will not have an accident. yet the teen driver will pay much much more in premiums because the company is experienced in assessing risk in large numbers of people. insurance companies don't rely on knowledg of what will happen or believe anything will happen. they accept a transfer of risk from the insured in exchange for money. sometimes their bet pays off as with me who's paid premiums for decades and never submitted a claim. sometime their bet goes south big time as when they write a million dollar life policy and the insured is killed in an accident a month later with only one monthly premium payment having been made. i assess risk no differently other than i have fewer statistics to look at.



no need to believe it, i've experinced barry as potus.

Yup! That's what it is.















1. Descriptions are constructs.
2. Descriptions are ideas.
3. Truth is description.
4. Truth is an assessment of a description.
5. Truth is a correct correspondence between a description and a state of affairs.
7. Truth is the act of asigning truth value to a description of a state of affairs.

Those were the claims made as evidenced by the quotes. What is shown below is but only some of the logical absurdity/circularity that necessarily follows, as is numerically indicated and the end of each conclusion.

C1. Truth is a construct.(from 1,3)
C2. Truth is an idea.(from 2,3)
C3. Truth is an assessment of itself.(from 3,4)
C4. Truth is a correct correspondence between itself and a state of affairs.(from 3,5)
C5. Truth is the act of assigning the value of itself to itself.(from 3,7)

--

Descriptions require language. They are language constructs. Descriptions set out the way things are using language. Natural language presupposes truth. That's how it works. Descriptions perform double duty as well. They 1.set out pre-existing thought/belief, and they 2.act as a basis for potential thought/belief by merging with other descriptions and producing innovative thought(ideas). The new ideas are put to paper resulting in new descriptions.



This is a prima facie example of mistakenly calling a state of affairs(that water freezes @ 32F) "the truth", and further muddling the conversation, by losing focus while simultaneuosly contradicting what was already claimed. It leads to the confusion already witessed by the facts in evidence. Language is man-made. Descriptions are man-made. They describe states of affairs. IFF they correspond to fact/reality then they are true. They do not need to be true in order to be called 'true'. That shows that truth is not a description. Truth is what the description obtains(or not). They(descriptions) do indeed depend upon language and that is exactly why it is a mistake in thought to call descriptions, ideas, and states of affairs 'truths'.



He has knowledge. Again, belief is being conflated with that which makes it so. It can be set out in a better way, with a better use of language.

If the caveman takes notice of water and sets it out as different from other things, then he forms a belief or a set thereof about certain states of affairs. If the caveman notices changes in temperature, then he forms belief or a set thereof about different states of affairs. If the caveman notices that when it is very cold, the water changes, then he has just drawn a correlation between his own thought/belief regarding two separate states of affairs. By doing so, he has formed a more complex belief about the way things are. He has inferred that the change in temperature is somehow connected to the change of the water. He has formed a true belief, albeit a relatively simple one.

THE POINT IS that the caveman has engaged truth the entire time. He has actively employed truth/reality correspondence in order to form all of the separate thoughts/beliefs that began working in conjunction with one another in order to arrive at the more complex correlation between the water and the temperature. He combines all these prior beliefs about the world and what is in it. The new belief depends entirely upon the truth presupposition that is contained within all of the pre-existing beliefs that ground it.

Thus, we can see that the presupposition of truth is central to the entire thought process.



Indeed it is a description, but the basic point is completely missed. The claim sets out the way things are, but it is NOT truth, even if it amounts to being true. 'The cup is on the table' is a true claim about the way things are if, and only if, that is the way things are. It requires language to make the claim. Being fluent in English is required to understand the claim. THE POINT IS that neither making the claim, nor understanding the claim makes it true. THE POINT IS that the claim is true IFF it corresponds to the way things are(fact/reality).



And I'll repeat myself, the question itself sets things out the wrong way. There is no such thing as "a truth". I am not going to follow a vein of thought which constitutes being the beginning of misunderstanding truth, and inevitably ends in a state of utter confusion.



I've already addressed this aspect as well, and in doing so have clearly explained exactly why searching for meaning of truth is folly. Truth is the heart of meaning.

Truth/reality presupposition is what gives meaning to all human thought/belief. Truth connect thought/belief to reality. Thought/belief is what gives meaning to natural language. Therefore, meaning is contingent upon truth. Words do not - cannot - give meaning to truth. Consequently, I further understand that to be "in search of the meaning of truth" by looking to define it, is foolish. That pursuit has no end because it has no place to begin. It is to forever talk about personal definitions and argue semantics about that which gives rise to semantics. Thought/belief and meaning begin at truth/reality presupposition.

We can only approach the topic by looking at how truth is necessarily engaged within thought/belief, by parsing out how it is and has been put to use. Doing that allows us to become aware of how truth works. Knowing how thought/belief works is to understand how truth works within it. It is to grasp the difference between a discussion of truth and truth. It is to understand the difference between truth and belief. It is to understand that truth cannot be adequately defined by natural language, because natural language necessarily presupposes truth.

Truth/reality correspondence is engaged and employed during thought/belief formation prior to natural language acquisition/creation. Among other things, language sets out what we believe to be true. Language cannot contain truth, it merely attempts to obtain and preserve it. The presupposition of truth/reality correspondence is the basis for thought, belief, and knowledge. Thought, belief, and knowledge give rise to natural language. Natural language shows and uses the meaning that we have already attributed to the words via thought/belief. Language, therefore, conveys the truth presupposition that is already inherent to meaning.

Until that is understood, truth cannot be.



I see that.

Creative, I am going to totally ignore the first part of your post where you were facetiously misrepresented what I had said in a lame attempt to pretend that there were logical contradictions within it.

My stance is clear. And is used in mathematics, engineering and the sciences all the time. In fact, it is from having studied these fields that I have obtained this meaning.

We assign "Truth Values" to statements that are descriptions of a state of affairs. If we believe to have sufficient reason to conclude that these statements are a correct description of the state of affair we accept that that they are "TRUE" descriptions within the limitations and domain of applicability of the processes, premises, and or axioms that we have assumed during this process.

Almost any profession mathematician or scientist will indeed agree that this is indeed how science and mathematics works when attempting to determine the "Truth Value" of something.

The "Truth Value" being a reflection of whether or not a particular description "correctly" describes a state of affairs.

You have attempted to "muddle" this yourself facetiously, and then pin that muddledness onto me!

That my friend is ignorant, and you are clearly being as hostile as you can possible be in this communication rather than attempting to actually comprehend what the other person is actually saying.

~~~~~

You are purposefully attacking my position using underhanded and devious tactics.

~~~~~

And that is totally uncalled for.



I have no problem with any of that.

The only thing I would comment on is the following:

"Natural language presupposes truth."

Of course it does! And it presupposes truth precisely as I have described it!



That wasn't what I was doing at all. That's your misunderstanding.

I'm talking about the statement (i.e. the description) "water freeze at 32F"

That's a description of a state of affairs precisely as I had laid out.

And before you can TEST that description against the actual state of affairs, you need to know what these concepts mean: "Water", "Freezing", "The number 32", "The Fahrenheit temperature scale".

You need to understand and KNOW what all those concepts are before you can even begin to assess the "TRUTH VALUE" of this description.

Once you understand all of these concepts, then you can go into the lab and do whatever experiments you feel need to be done to TEST to see if this description actually matches up with the state of affairs.

If you have decided that it matches then you say that this description is TRUE.

You aren't saying anything at all about the state of affairs other than you have determined that this description appears to be a correct description of the state of affairs insofar as you can tell.



There were no contradictions in anything I've said here.

My presentation is perfectly consistent with my definitions and methods of defining and determining the truth value of descriptions of states of affairs.

I'm being 100% perfectly consistent.

I don't know what to say other than to suggest that you are either having grave difficulty in understanding my position, or perhaps you have formed a mental block of hostility against even wanting to try to comprehend it.

But my position is totally consistent and without flaw.



It shows no such thing!

I've already defined precisely what I mean by truth in this scenario.

If you want to claim that truth is something OTHER than this, then you need to give YOUR DEFINITION for what you believe truth to actually mean.

I'm still waiting on that.

If you are attempting to equate "truth" to actually BE the state of affairs, then I would personally reject that notion. Because that notion of truth has no meaning. It's a totally useless ideal.

What good would such a definition be?

Everything would be truth then and there could be no such thing as a falsehood.

All states of affairs would be "TRUE" and there could not exist any state of affair that was "false" because if it existed it would also be defined as TRUTH.

So you can't define the actual state of affairs themselves to be "Truth". That's a meaningless definition.



I'm not calling descriptions, idea, and states of affairs 'truths'.

The meaning of truth is the relationship between a description and a state of affairs.

And that relationship is said to be "True" if we conclude that it is indeed a correct correspondence, and "false" if we conclude that it is not a correct correspondence.

That is how we, as humans, determine whether or not to claim that something is "True".

We do the best we can, within the limitations of this process and we (or at least the professionals) know that these conclusions are not 100% certain. They could indeed be in error!

In other words, what we call "truth" could indeed be mistaken!

That's the pragmatic FACT of the human condition.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~



Hey, if you are on some sort of quest to find the "Holy Grail" of some philosophical idealized notion of some sort of "Perfect Absolute Universal Truth" then I agree with you, THAT pursuit would indeed be foolish and futile!

If that's YOUR DEFINITION of "truth" then you will never find it.

I would be the very first to totally agree with you on that point!

~~~~~

But that's not what I mean by 'truth'.

When I speak of 'truth' I speak of it within the context of human reality (and within the context of it's everyday social meaning). We can only know 'truth' in terms of how we describe things.

~~~~~

From a Zen Master's point of view, they see "truth" as something entirely different.

If you want to know the "truth" of a snow bank, go outside naked, lay down in the snow and make snow angles. That experience is the "truth" of snow banks.

You can view truth from that spiritual perspective as well.

~~~~

As far as I can tell, the 'truth' that you are eluding to is the philosophical Holy Grail of some idealized notion of some sort of Absolute Perfect Universal Truth

And that's classically thought of as having "objective" reality.

In other words, it's is philosophically assumed that such a 'truth' actually exists, but is beyond our ability to know it.

That itself is an assumption.

Especially if restricted to the physical realm.

In terms of a philosophical Holy Grail of Absolute Perfect Universal Truth it could be the the Absolute Perfect Universal Truth is that life is but a dream and we are the dreamers.

Who can know whether that's an accurate description of reality or not?

No "pretending" necessary. This isn't make-believe. This is the case at hand. The claim here is that I've somehow "misrepresented" your earlier claims. In order for that to be true the numerically sequenced quotes below would need to be different that what was written. They're not. The claims were made on your part during the justification process(arguing for the position of subjective truth). They are copied and pasted below as they were written. There is no misrepresentation here. If need be - the date, page, and post can be readily referenced.

--



Those are your claims. They are simplified below. The numbers correspond. If this simplication is held as a problem, and I suspect that is going to be argued, then skip the simplifications altogether, because the conclusions follow from the claims themselves.

1. Descriptions are concepts.
2. Descriptions are ideas.
3. Truth is a description.
4. Truth is an assessment of a description.
5. Truth is a correct correspondence between a description and a state of affairs.
7. Truth is the act of asigning truth value to a description of a state of affairs.

Those were the claims made as clearly evidenced by the quotes. The numbers correspond and no meaning has been lost nor changed by the simplification. What is shown below is but only some of the logical absurdity/circularity that necessarily follows form those claims, as is numerically indicated and the end of each conclusion.

C1. Truth is a concept.(from 1,3)
C2. Truth is an idea.(from 2,3)
C3. Truth is an assessment of itself.(from 3,4)
C4. Truth is a correct correspondence between itself and a state of affairs.(from 3,5)
C5. Truth is the act of assigning the value of itself to itself.(from 3,7)

--

Now, what exactly is the problem?

Which claim did you not make? Which conclusion does not follow from the claims that were made? What is it that you're objecting to here?





--

Edited to correct "construct" to concept. Ooops. Inconsequential oversight.

According to your own claims, you are. Are you now changing your mind?

I'm in total agreement with this. This is why I try my best to present my views on what truth means to me and how I determined it.

That should be accepted whether agreed with or not.

But Creative would rather just trash my view as being "Fatal Logic".

That's a direct attack on my view, not an attempt to understand it.

In fact, all he ever does is attempt to muddle it and belittle it.

He doesn't seem to be interested in understanding it at all.



Well, I certainly agree with this. But isn't that the VERY QUESTION of the thread?

Is truth subjective?

What if the "true" answer to this question is YES!

Then we must accept that there will indeed be inconsistencies between what different people deem to be "true".

The demand that everyone must have precisely the very same consistent truth, is basically the same as demanding that truth must in indeed be OBJECTIVE.

But isn't that the very question that is being addressed????



Well, you'd have to be more clear on that. What are YOU calling "truth". It sounds to me like you are already taking a position that there does indeed exist absolute objective truths which no one can individually deny.

I mean, if that's your personal stance, then that's fine.

But if so, then shouldn't you need to describe how this is supposed to work? How would truth be defined in that system?



Well, that's my definition of truth.

However, we must take that with a grain of salt because not everyone is going to be in unanimous agreement with which symbolic representations of thought/ideas actually correspond to fact/reality.

Isn't that precisely where most arguments concerning 'truth' lie?

Person A: God created the world 6000 years ago.

Person B: Carbon dating reveals the TRUTH that the world is far older than that.

Person A: I don't accept the TRUTH of Carbon dating.

In other words, they are saying that they do not accept that carbon dating is a correct description of the state of affairs.

And so both of these people are actually working within my model of "truth". Yet they still have vastly different opinions of which descriptions correctly describe the state of affairs.




Well, if that's the case, then clearly we need to sit down and discuss the differences between what we each mean by "truth".

Perhaps may agree or disagree. But that would certainly be the place to start if we hope to make any progress.



Well, there's certainly nothing wrong with that. That precisely what we should do.

But if we are already starting out with vastly different ideas of what 'truth' even means then any progress toward that goal would probably be futile.



Well, with all honesty Di, this is mumbo jumbo to me.

Let's look at it in detail:

1. Truth is autonomously engaged and enacted.

That's not a definition of truth. That is a statement about engaging and enacting in something that has yet to be defined (i.e. 'truth')

2. Truth is connective, in an odd sense it is relative.

Again these are statements about a concept that has yet to be defined.

"Truth is connective". My bones are connective too. Does that tell you anything about what bones are?

"in an odd sense it is relative".

An odd sense? What does that mean?

Truth is relative to what????

Is he actually saying anything here?

3. It relates/connects thought/belief to reality.

Well, FINALLY we're getting somewhere.

Isn't this precisely the definition I gave?

I actually went into great detail to describe precisely what that relationship is!

The relationship is between a description and a state of affairs.

If the description is deemed to be correct, then it is said to represent TRUTH.

If the description is deemed to be incorrect, then it is said to be a FALSE.

So it is this relationship between a description and a state of affairs that we ultimately call "TRUE" or "FALSE"

4. It is neither objective, nor subjective.

It's actually BOTH! Simultaneously.

The description, and the determination of whether or not the description correctly represents the state of affairs is entirely SUBJECTIVE.

The state of affairs itself is potentially OBJECTIVE.

So TRUTH (the assignment that we give to a particular description) is dependent upon BOTH the subjective description (and the evaluation process) as well as on the objective state of affairs itself.

So he appears to have some vague idea of what I'm talking about but he seems to be unclear on precisely how it all fits together.

All of this is completely consistent with my description of how we define and evaluate things to be "TRUE" or "FALSE".

~~~~~

Moreover, if there is some OTHER explanation or definition for "truth" that can actually be stated in comprehensible way I'd be interested in reading about it.

[center]
I'm all EYES!


[/center]

From where I sit, it takes little to no complex analysis at all to recognize the incoherency that pervades these claims.

Abra,

I understand your claims. I also understand that they are hit and miss and sometimes completely contradict one another as they are written. I have no idea which ones you hold and which ones you don't.

How could I?

You're also taking things waaaaaaay too personally. I'm critiquing the thoughts/claims being put forth, not the person making them.

An interesting discussion.

Reminds me of Alice in Chains "The man in the box."

The song is how when we believe something, we censor ourselves ability to absorb new ideas and only consider what supports our beliefs as truth.

That is probably a good way to go about it.

Otherwise you may have to scrap all current knowledge or information every time new apposing information arrives just because they don't agree.

Or else just do what I do.

Consider it for eternity.

For truth, itself, to be rightfully called "both" subjective and objective as has clearly been done here, it must be wrongfully equated to a subjective description, to the human determination of truth value, which is NOT truth, and to the state of affairs being described.

That is exactly the error that has been committed here, as clearly witnessed again by the evidence below.



This equates truth with "the assignment"(whatever that is supposed to mean) to a description. By virtue of that mistake, then wrongfully claims the dependence of truth upon the description(which has the logical consequence of truth being contingent upon language).





Yup, that's it.

They are actually having to rewrite physics because of a star gong nova close enough to watch what happens, scrapping old defective knowledge...

What star and how are they having to rewrite physics?

Gee whiz, you gonna make me look that up?? Okay, bbl with details.

Start another thread on it.



This one has direction.