The meaning may change with time but in it's essence it meant that the truth (of it) was easy to see and needed no detailed explanation.

Indeed. Still the best ideology known to nations, and - to my own liking - it is being revisited, slowly but surely... even as we speak. But that is a matter political philosophy.

The nebula. A great expanse of stars.

Truth has many meanings. There is the hard cold truth of the pain of a stubbed toe. Stark reality to the owner and subject to the subjective belief of all others. Many topics appear to create similar comparisons.

"Human kindness creates growth in human spirit." Conceptually, the truth (or level thereof) would be different for every individual. There are those, presumably, who have never known human kindness where the concept would convey an empty string of words. Likewise there are those who have no concept of spirit, much less the human version. In each the life experiences that would convey a sense of "truth" to the statement would be as disparate as the stars.

Sorry to have not been involved much here metal. I've been wasting my time - evidently - over in religion for the past few days. I am very interested in the 'concept' of truth, as it seems that you are as well. If you would help, let's make an example of what a good philosophy thread looks like. You being much more scientifically inclined, and my focus almost always being influenced by methodological analysis should work out nicely. And of course there are many others who, hopefully, who would be willing to join in with the same good-willed spirit.



I agree. Many people have different ideas about truth. Along with all of the different ideas, comes how people actually use the word, otherwise know as meaning. Then we also have the kinds and/or categories such as the classic bottom-up 'logical truth' which was all about coherence/consistency following the rules of classical logic, and the later propositional truth which is about correspondence with fact/reality. Then we have the necessary presupposition of truth/reality within all thought/belief formation, which on my view, forms the foundation of all others.

"The cold hard truth of the pain of a stubbed toe."

Let's unpack that a bit.



Tying truth to meaning can be an arduous task. I mean there are many many philosophers who've attempted it through a theory of meaning. The logical consequences for truth are hinted at in the above quote. However, Davidson wrote an article called Truth and Meaning that perked and has since retained my attention. He basically does away with personal meaning problems by using Tarski's T-sentences. Here it is. This is grounded by one basic claim...

If a linguistic(listener) knows what it would take for a speaker's claim to be true, then the linguist knows what the speaker means.

What is your take on this?

So your whole point is that truth is "objective."

You could have just said that.

If you are right, then no one can really claim to know the truth of anything because all they are really doing is expressing a personal opinion.

The mathematics of set theory come to mind. We need a set of assumptions to work with truth, just as with many other concepts. We first assume the linguistic has the same general frame of reference, intelligence, roughly the same education, background, morals, (lots of sets working here!) and maybe even others.

Break the sets of human experience and rapid divergence occurs! A set including only Mormons makes "John Smith was close to God!" a truth so obvious as to be unchallengeable. The same utterance in circles other than Mormons gets less accepting results. As in your explanation, one would have to understand the statement being made but one also would have to have a frame of reference for understanding. A Somali with good English skills, reading the Book of Mormon, might think John Smith was a con man.

Truth occurs in science in sets also. I am often subjected to "Scientific Group Action". Truth being the consensus of a majority of scientific minds who fill all the criteria of knowledgeable listeners. (I don't know if this is any different from the "truth" found by a jury other than scientific facts being offered rather than the obvious BS of a bunch of lawyers! I guess that is a different truth.).

A piece of foam falls from the Shuttle during takeoff and damages the wing. The truth to many is that a flimsy piece of foam cannot hurt the skin of a spacecraft. The truth of what causes 9/11 buildings to fall after being hit with a jetliner is the same... truth by consensus.

Set theory goes one step farther in finding sets of those who believe and expanding certain sets to hold more believers, usually by plying the set with untruths. The anatomy of a political campaign.

No Jb. That is not my whole point. That is why I placed scarequotes around the term objective in the OP... 'objective'. The terms "objective" and "subjective" are useless when discussing truth.

My position holds that there is no such thing as subjective truth. A belief and/or a statement is either true or not, and as has been already laid out, that is not determined by anything other than whether or not it corresponds to the way things are/were. Any position that holds that there is such a thing as subjective truth confuses truth with belief.

Edited to note:

metal,

we've crossposted... I'm reading your response now and will attend to it momentarily. Thanks for continuing.

How can any individual know what is true then?
How can any individual know what "the way things are/were" are?

Your lofty definition of truth is unattainable to an individual human observer, so doesn't that pretty much make it a moot point?

Slap me silly and call me Susan, I agree with CreativeSoul on something. Very well said.

"And of course there are many others who, hopefully, who would be willing to join in with the same good-willed spirit. "

We do not hold these truths to be self evident!

Never stop searching for the truth, that way leads to the dark side (Most people think that only fear leads to the dark side, but so does giving up searching for the truth).

That is not the point I was making Spider.

"The way things are/were" (the truth of things) being dependent upon individual observers, cannot be known objectively, especially by a single perception.

So, if truth of "the way things are/were" cannot be known objectively then to speak of something as "truth" (objective truth) is pointless because it depends on perspective and opinion (are these not subjective things?)

Your mote is filled with alligators, and that's the truth.

I wish.

Sorry I meant moot point.

Actually it may be spelled "alligator moat"

We have to deal with the world we live in. We have to get as close to the truth as we can and always be willing to adjust our understanding of truth.

Truth doesn't depend on perspective or opinion, our belief of what is truth depends (in part) upon those things.

Could this be simply because the term "truth" is so often used to denote a belief? In this case, one that is being held with unshakable, or nearly unshakable conviction. That level of conviction being a near one to one correspondence of the amount of times that such a belief has been revisited and subsequently re-confirmed in thought? Set theory would be effective in describing these shared beliefs it seems.



Indeed, s/he might think that very thing, especially without an overlapping set of religious beliefs.

Davidson's project holds that knowing the meaning of a statement comes on a purely holistic basis, as opposed to knowing the meaning of each individual term, and then understanding how those terms are being used in relation to one another, like many linguists hold. So in effect, the Somali, if s/he knew what it would take for any given claim of the Mormon faith to be true, would know the meaning of the claim. Let's take an example...

"Joseph Smith had certain powers that no one else on earth could possess at that time."

If the Somali knew what it would take for the above claim to be true, then by default alone, s/he would know what that statement meant. In order for the above to be true, the following would have to be the case...

At time t1, Joseph Smith would have to have had certain powers(presumably given by a supernatural entity) that only one person at a time could have.

So, in a sense, I can see where set theory would apply, I mean there would have to be some shared assumptions/common denominators, however shared belief does not necessarily equate to truth. To be honest, my understanding of set theory is sorely lacking... perhaps a brief explanation or a good link would help matters out here, as I would like to be able to look at this from the approach that you're suggesting, and that requires my knowing a little more about set theory. It seems that I've seen it used before in order to describe social conventions... by Dan Dennett maybe?



Are you familiar with Tarski's T-sentences? Davidson employs them, albeit with a caveat here and there in order to put interrogative, exclamations, and other non truth-apt statements into truth-apt form(which we may get into later). Regarding this context, it seems that the T-sentence encompasses/entails both of your examples above. This is how the T-sentence works...

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

It could be further reduced without loss of meaning...

"The cup is on the table" IFF the cup is on the table.

I think that Davidson's project is an attempt to derive some sort of predicate calculus from these. Although I have no idea how that would work.



These are very good examples of people claiming personal belief as truth, or maybe equating fact and truth. Let's apply the T-sentence in order to afford us the ability to see how common convention does not necessarily obtain truth. Although, we already know that due to our knowing that we've been mistaken in the past regarding what was once held to be common knowledge, but has since been falsified. Never-the-less, the T-sentence would put truth outside of belief.

"A piece of foam damaged the wing" IFF a piece of foam damaged the wing.

So, according to the examples that we're working with, in addition to examining the suggested "truth by consensus", the question becomes a matter of whether or not it makes sense to assent to a such belief(that the foam damaged the wing). This would require some investigation and analysis. As implied, there would be some folk who question whether or not a piece of foam is even physically capable of damaging the spaceshuttle. This could be tested in order to determine the plausibility of the claim. Doing so, tends to remove doubt of that possibility. Likewise, there are those people who question whether or not jetliners could cause the twin towers to collapse in the way that they did. This too, can be tested in order to determine the plausibility of the claims. What Tarski's T-sentence suggests is that the truth of the claim is solely determined by whether or not the claim corresponds to actual states of affairs...

"The jetliners caused the twin twoers to collapse" IFF the jetliners caused the twin towers to collapse.



Indeed, or the anatomy of a conspiracy theory.

The only things that can be called "true" are statements. A statement is true IFF it corresponds to fact/reality. The fact that we can falsify claims by showing how they do not correspond to the way things are, clearly shows us that we have some access to the way things are. Subsequently, our coming to fully grasp how we've been mistaken requires our becoming aware of the lack of correspondence.



You're asking me how an individual can know reality. We do not know reality, we come to know things about reality.



Seeing how the definition comes from us, the definition is obviously not "unattainable". The important thing here is noting how we have arrived at that definition. Truth is not some unexplicable entity or phenomena. Rather, it is a necessarily presupposed element of thought/belief.

Seeing as how the past no longer exists, when considering the past (the way things were) would you agree that the past can only be thought about, (memory) written about, (records)or theorized about?

What other ways would anyone claim to know the truth about the past?

Well, first of all, I disagree with the claim that the past no longer exists. There are remnants of the past everywhere you look. There are nothing but remnants of the past. Secondly, what does this have to do with truth?

This is your statement:




"Were" denotes the past.

Also, I disagree that the past "exists."

As you said, "there are nothing but "remnants" of the past. Remnants are remnants. They are clues perhaps. But they are certainly not "the past" itself.

A thing or an event can only exist in the present.