I'm not really sure where this thread is going however I'll answer the original question with my thoughts. (Or perhaps the thoughts of a past lecturer of mine from my uni days.)

Let me share a story with you.

A man is walking down a street when he yells out at the top of his voice as he begins to have a heart attack and colapses to the ground. A passer by quickly leaps to action and begins to preform CPR. Another person looks out of their window as this occurs and sees the passer by attacking a man on the ground.

The truth of the situation comes from your perspective. If you don't see everything then you don't really know what is going on. For each person our own truth is limited by what we observe and our past experiences, which combine to form a truth in our minds.

So yes truth is subjective.

Hey Hawk, these philosophy forums are not always up to par, however, if for no other reason than for the simple sake of those readers who may not know any better, I'm responding to this post, because I do.



Exactly what is the reasoning that leads one from above to below?

Conflates truth and thought/belief.



Presupposes that omniscience is necessary for knowledge.



First conflates thought/belief and truth, then follows by conflating personal perspective/worldview and truth.

Another tack...



Is this a true claim? Did the man have a heart attack?



This passer-by thought/believed that the man had a heart attack. However, his thought/belief regarding that plays no role whatsoever in whether or not the man did.



This person believes that he is witnessing one man attacking another man on the ground. Whether or not that belief is true, does not in an way shape or form depend upon the holder of the belief.

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Here's the problem, and my reasoning in denying that truth is subjective...

A single event was witnessed by different people. The fact that different folk have different beliefs about the same event does not effect/affect the event itself. The event is not subject to thought/belief about it. The event is the actual state of affairs. Different folk can form different belief about the same event. That does not make truth subjective; it makes it necessarily presupposed. All belief presupposes it's own truth. This holds good because we know beyond any and all reasonable doubt, that 'I believe X' means I believe X is true, without exception. So, while the different folk in the story had different perspectives according to the different beliefs about the event, not all of them could be true. It cannot be both, that a man was peforming cpr on another, and that a man was attacking another.At least one of those claims is false, and possibly both. Which one, if any, is true makes no difference here...

'The man was having a heart attack' is true if, and only if the man was having a heart attack.

That is the truth condition that the different perspectives depend upon. Whether or not the man was having a heart attack is not subject to the personal perspectives. That is because truth is not subjective.

creativesoul if for example the man at the window called the police and as the police were arriving the man having the heart attack died. The police arrest the passer by and at court the guy at the window speaks the oath: I promise to tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth. And then he goes on to tell the court how he saw the passer by attacking the man. Does not in that instance, even though his truth is wrong, show that he believes his truth to be correct and as such his truth is subjective.

This response shows a few things. It shows that belief and truth are being treated as if they are one in the same thing. They are not, although they are often confused with one another.

Truth cannot be false. Belief can.

Ok now I see where you are coming from. Thanks for the clarification.

Glad to help out wherever I can...

The true nature of reality cannot be known, therefore the representation is necessarily false. It is useless mental rubbish. Throw it out.

You are correct. The true nature of reality cannot be known.

However, the representation of that unknown still exists because some people believe they do know the true nature of reality. It represents something that cannot be known.

The same as "God."

People are not going to throw that out as mental rubbish just because you say so.

If someone wants to hold onto a belief based upon a necessarily false representation, then that is their own business. The point I'm making is that that is what it is.

So reality does not exist? Truth does not exist?

How did you get there from what we've discussed?

This thread is going to hell in a hand basket.
That's where its going.

A few things about truth...

We employ it first; we engage truth long before we know what the term "truth" means, long before we have a complex enough belief system that can be used to argue about whether or not it is objective and/or subjective. It connects our newly formed thought/belief about the universe and ourselves to ourselves and to our other pre-existing thought/belief. Truth is unknowingly instantiated by all thinking agents/beings, by all creatures capable of intentional action; acting for a reason. It has the practical use of differentiating between false and true claims/beliefs/thoughts, for a thinking creature who cares about such things. Truth is central to the personal belief system, and because knowledge is true belief that is justified in the right kind of way, truth is central to knowledge as well. I mean, knowledge must be true. That holds simply because it makes no sense to say that I know X but X is false. Just as it makes no sense to say I believe X is the way things are, but X is not the way things are. Thus we can see that truth and reality are necessarily entwined in all ahuman thought/belief.

Truth is not objective in the sense that we can look at it like we can, say... the moon, or the cup on the table. It is objective in the sense that it is an objective common denominator - an irrevocably extent element - in all human thought/belief and knowledge; it plays a crucial role regardless of whether or not the subject is aware of it. It is not subjective in the sense that it's content can change from one person to the next like, say... personal belief does. It is subjective in the sense that it requires a creature capable of caring about what it is that they think/believe in order for it to be instantiated in a meaningful way through discourse. That is so because truth has no content; it does not contain anything. Therefore, it is irreducible. Analyzing truth in order to find it is a futile adventure.

Truth gives meaning a foothold in human thought/belief about the world and/or ourselves. It is connective in the sense that all mental relationships between the objects of thought necessitate truth. It relates thought/belief to reality and offers a foundation for meaning to rest itself upon. This can be seen when people argue about what something or other ought to mean. Semantic arguments are circular if for no other reason than they neglect the presupposition of truth while employing it. However, such unnecessary difficulties can be altogether avoided simply by knowing what it would take in order for a claim to be true.

Truth has no dimension because it is not a physical/material thing. Rather, it is necessarily presupposed within thought/belief formation and it's crucial importance finds a way to smack us upside the head when we're wrong in our taking an account of things, and we suddenly grasp why that is so.

Truth, if conceived of properly in the mind - and if by that I mean identified and recognized for what it does - can be used to root out nonsense, and to gain understanding of another's claims that are otherwise seemingly disjointed. It can be utilized to separate the wheat from the chaff, to borrow a religious expression from our Christian counterparts. It is a very powerful 'concept', perhaps the most. This power can be easily seen when looking at the unshakable conviction that some people have in their belief system. Such conviction is the vehicle for preserving the truth that has been already presupposed, and can represent the unwillingness to admit mistake, no matter how overwhelming the evidence/reason to the contrary is. However, it is also not necessarily the all-liberating vehicle, as grasping it correctly can also lead to disillusionment, and hence can greatly increase one's own discontentment, through forcing them to come to terms with their own problematic set of beliefs. That is especially true of those who'd rather know that they have been wrong about things, than to continue being wrong about thing. So in a sense, one could say that truth is not necessarily a good thing to understand, because such understanding can result in depression and other negative reactions that are tied up in one's own recognition of being wrong about things.

Hence, the phrase... ignorance is bliss.

Truth is a good thing.

Truth is meaningless & useless if has to remain just objective & if never to be subjective

Explain.

Why is it needed to explain?