Calling beliefs "truths".



He believes that it is true, but it is not. It is false. This is exactly how we can know that belief is insufficient for truth, and highlights the very reason why it is a mistake in thought to call a belief "truth".



Indeed we do understand these things differently. You call belief "truth", and I've shown exactly why that is a mistake. Are you really attempting to claim that you hold no belief?



The realm of logical possibility demands that we acknowledge our inherent knowledge limitations. It is possible that there are forces in the universe which we are unaware of, and/or which we have wrongfully described.

It is also possible that there are states of affairs that exist unbeknownst to us, beyond our access. It is not possible to have knowledge of those things.



Belief presupposes truth. Faith is not doubting the truth of a source. The childs faith was in the truthfulness of his parents.



You have no idea what you're talking about. You're the one that invoked 'god'. I'm not a theist, nor do I hold that truth is attached to, or contingent upon a concept of 'god'.



I agree that experience is necessary for thought/belief. It is one of those common denominators. I'm not sure what you believe I'm saying here, but I can tell you that you do hold belief about it, and your reponses presuppose that that belief matches up to the way things are. For instance you believed that it was likely that I held that the existence of god was a true concept. Your asking me that question was the manifestation of the belief into behavior.

Thought/belief is directly tied to human behavior.

Denying belief is denying thought.



So are you claiming that you do not believe that you would get hurt real bad? Or, are you claiming that you know that you would, and that that knowledge contains no belief?

Explain.



So are you saying that you don't believe that Barack Obama is the current president of the United States?

I have re-read your post and I simply disagree with it.

You said:



No, that's not what I said at all. That your misunderstanding of what I said no doubt due to jumping to conclusions far removed from the issues I've addressed.

Language is nothing more than our external means of communication with each other. I speak to these issues in terms of the language we use because that's how we do things today.

What do you expect me to do? Grunt at you like an illiterate cave man? Do you think that would help?



Micheal, just because we now use language to communicate these ideas more readily, and hopefully more clearly, does not mean that they are dependent upon language.

Many of the "truths" that we believe we know today are indeed communicated via language. And it would be extremely difficult to communicate these correspondences to a caveman.

Do you think a caveman even had the ability to know or understand that pure water freezes at 32 degrees F? They had no concept of temperature scales or anything like that. All they knew was that at certain times of the year it would get cold and water would become hard. I'm sure they didn't even understand why that was the case.

Their correspondences between descriptions of things and the state of affairs were quite limited, and therefore their knowledge of "truths" were quite limited.

In fact, even people who lived on a view hundred years ago still believed that ghosts, gods, or demons were responsible for disease, etc. That was the case because they lacked a deeper scientific understanding that could only have only evolved alongside language.

That doesn't make language responsible for truth or connected to it directly. Language is merely one part of the whole process.




My thinking is perfectly right on the money.

Your insults are fatally flawed.

I'm totally on top of the whole issue of how humans determine something to be "true" and what they mean when they say that something is "true".

And evidently the mathematical community and scientific community share my views. In fact, that's precisely where I was trained myself!

I understand what they mean by truth.

I understand how they determine things to be 'true'.

I understand the limitations in the processes.

I understand that there are domains of applicability that are important to consider.

I understand that just because we call something "truth" that doesn't mean that it can't be wrong!

If we discover it is wrong, then we realize that it was "never" the truth, *(or that it was limited to a restricted domain of applicability).

But that's how it works.

That's what the professionals mean by "truth".

They don't mean that they are 100% absolutely certain that they got it right without any doubt whatsoever.

Human "truth" will always be subjective, and it will always be open to the possibility of being WRONG!

And yes, if it is wrong, then it's not "truth" (i.e. it's not a correct description of the state of affairs in question). But that's irrelevant.

We all understand that!

That comes with the condition of being a mere mortal human.

We can never know absolute omniscient truth.

That's a given.

No one is even remotely attempting to claim otherwise.

In fact, Jeanniebean has said repeatedly that she can never know anything with 100% certainty other than she exists.

And that's the TRUTH. That's about the only TRUTH that you can indeed be certain of.

Everything else is just our best guess from having made observations, experiments, logical deductions, and whatever else we can come up with to try to ascertain whether our descriptions of reality appear to be "correct".

That is what we mean when we say that something is "true".

At least in the professional circles.

Talking about what laymen on the street might consider to be "true" is a whole other issue that I have absolute no interest in whatsoever.

I stated this above but I realize that this can easily be misunderstood, so allow me to elaborate on this point here:

To even speak of an "Absolute Omniscient Truth" is to suggest that such a thing might actually exist. But we can't know this.

Just because we can speak of something doesn't mean that it exists.

What do I even mean by these words:

Well, I'm trying to convey the idea of an "Absolutely correct description of a specific state of affairs where everything associated with that state of affairs is known precisely"

That would be what we would mean by an absolute "omniscient" (or all-known) truth.

However, we have no way of knowing that this is even possible.

In fact, according to quantum mechanics it's not possible. Especially at the quantum scale.

So even the very idealized notion of being able to correctly describe certain states of affairs may not even be possible. Not only for humans, but maybe in principle in general.

Maybe that kind of idealized "truth" doesn't even exist at all.

The mathematical laws of quantum mechanics suggests that this may indeed be the case. But we can't be sure about that even though that is indeed a mathematical truth.

Just because it's a mathematical truth doesn't mean that it's absolutely true. Mathematical formalism could be wrong! Then all mathematical "truths" would be in question.

Muddle.

That is exactly what the following quotes set out as the necessary conditions for truth. That is the only conclusion that follows from taking the claims to their logical ends.











NOW it is quite clear what is being claimed and confused...

Truth does not need a description for it's existence nor it's employment in human thought, belief, and knowledge. Prelinguisitic children have knowledge. That and that alone shows that you're setting things out the wrong way Abra...

This is nothing more than your very own inability to think abstractly.

Apparently you are limiting a "description" to being language only.

But that is your error.

Language is nothing more than the way in which we convey those descriptions. The descriptions themselves are the ideas!

In fact, it makes absolutely no sense to speak about the "Truth" that water freezes at 32 degrees Fahrenheit unless you already have a clue what 32 means, what degrees means, and what Fahrenheit means.

All of that is man-made concepts.

That particular "truth" doesn't even exist in nature. Degrees and Fahrenheit don't even exist outside of human definitions.

The caveman who simply noticed that water gets hard when it FEELS cold outside would be as close to "truth" as your going to get without moving forward to more complex descriptions.

So yes, a LOT of so-called "truths" that we claim to know are indeed entirely dependent upon our conceptualizations of the descriptions.

After all, what do YOU keep saying?

"The CUP is on the Table!"

Well duh?

What is a CUP, and what is a TABLE, and what does it mean to be "on" the Table?

That my friend is a description of a state of affairs.

Moreover, I have asked you to give me an example of a "truth" that is not a description of a state of affairs and you have been totally unable to meet that challenge.

So the pooh-pooh is on you buddy.

Until you can come up with a comprehensible concept for your idea of what "truth" might mean, then you are just blowing nothing but empty hot air and empty insults that have no merit whatsoever.

If you can't give a meaningful and comprehensible idea of what you mean by "truth" then you are just blabbering into the wind with no meaningful ideas at all.

It shows now such thing.

You're the one who is unable to abstract the concept of a description beyond the words that we use to communicate those ideas.

That's your limitation, not mine.

If pre-linguistic children have "organized knowledge" then they must have some way in their own minds of keeping track of various concepts. It may not be English words, but it would still be some form of "language" to their mind. Obviously they understand the concepts in their own mind (if indeed they actually do as you claim)

Moreover, what would that have to do with "truth". A pre-linguistic child doesn't think in terms of true or false. On the contrary they are probably totally absorbed in notions of like and dislike. They are attracted to things that they find pleasing and repelled by things that they do not find pleasing. They have no concept of "truth" at that stage.

Truth itself is a human construct that doesn't even exist until a person matures to a level where they are able to comprehend and recognize whether a particular description and a state of affairs actually match up.

You should be well aware that even many college students have difficulty in logic classes because they can't fully grasp what it actually takes to determine whether or not a particular description is true or false. Many of them flunk the class because they can't understand the process in a formal sense. And they already have language.

Yet you're expecting me to accept that pre-lingual children are able to correctly ascertain whether something is true or not.

You'd have a very difficult time trying to show the "truth" of that claim.

You have nothing to offer in this thread Michael. All you keep doing is denying humanity's standard notions of "truth" and trying to speak in terms of some ill-defined notion of "truth" that you can't even define, or even given a meaningful example for.

I have no clue what you are talking about, but I'm convinced that it has absolutely nothing to do with humanity's meaning of the concept of "truth". At least not in they way it is used in science and mathematics.

If you are attempting to speak about some sort of idealized philosophical notion of truth that you can't even define or give an example of, then you may as well be talking about pink unicorns.

Why should anyone believe that your concept of 'truth' exists if you can't even describe it?

At least a pink unicorn can be described!

But you can't even describe your concept of truth.

How are we supposed to have a clue what you are talking about if you can't describe your concept nor give an example of it?

Like I say, you clearly are NOT talking about the same concept of truth that is used by mathematicians and scientists.

We've made that abundantly clear.

So what are you talking about when you speak of "truth"?

You don't even have a comprehensible definition of what you mean by this term. You can't even communicate it. You can't define it, or describe it, or give an example of it.

So how is anyone supposed to know what you are even talking about?

To a very young child everything is assumed "true." (**see below) They have not been introduced to the idea of false. To a young child just learning to use language, they expect people to speak the truth. They have to learn that people will tell lies.

So what happens when a young child first experiences the difference between true and false and comes face to face with the realization of an utterance that is false?

The candy is in the blue jar. <----- the lie.
The candy is in the red jar. <------the truth.

Her mother told her the lie. Her father told her the truth.

Now if this happened a number of times, she will soon realize that her mother is a liar. Her utterance cannot be believed.

The candy being in the red jar corresponds to the state of affairs.
The statement is true.

**--> The term "true" in the first sentence is not really the right word because without the concept of false it is meaningless to the observing child. Everything is just information at that point. True and false have no meaning.

To a young child everything experienced is the state of affairs.

I think that is a crystal clear example.

He's not alone. I, for one, agree with the points Creative is making even though, in the beginning, I did not. However, I discovered that the reason I took issue with what Creative has been saying has to do with how we learn and with how fundamentally we hold onto the 'belief' that we, as individuals cannot be so misinformed and still be able to communicate and understand others. But globally, do we really communicate well and thoroughly understand others?

Abra in response to creative:



Your claim does not correspont to reality, let me explain why. If you do a little research you will find that this subject has been a long discussed philisophical topic.

Furthermore, I have brought this topic up with others and not only was I surprised to hear that they too agree with Creative, but I felt like I really needed to play catch up.

So I've been carefully reading this thread and I have read some outside sources as well. It's been very interesting.

My main problem is not being able to comprehend what he writes. If I understood that better I might agree with him more often, but I don't like agreeing to something I don't comprehend.

What does this have to do with how humans define what they mean by "truth".

The concept of truth is still a concept of deciding whether or not a particular description of a state of affairs is correct or not.

The psychology of how different individuals arrive at their conclusions would be a whole different topic altogether.

The basic concept of what we mean by "truth" would remain the same.

I'm that's not the case then perhap you can offer me a definition or example of a "truth" that is not a description of a state of affairs.

Moreover, what would that "truth" even mean?

What would it mean to say that something is "true" if you haven't even referenced a description of a state of affairs?

What is it that would be "true" if not the description of the state of affairs?

Like Jeanniebean's candy jar example. The descriptions describe which jar the candy is in. The state of affairs is which jar the candy is in.

Which description that correctly reflects the state of affairs is said to be the TRUE description.

The actual state of affairs themselves have no 'truth value' in and of themselves. They can't be said to be "true" or "false" until there has been a description or expectation of some sort.

An empty jar and a far filled with candy are both valid states of affairs. They are neither "true" nor "false". They are just states of affairs.

The only thing that becomes "true" or "false" is when there is a description making a statement about these states of affairs. Only then can we say whether this description is "true" or "false".

The psychology of how different people might go about their process of evaluating the truth of descriptions is an entirely different issue.

You have to have a meaningful definition for "truth" before you can start asking how different people might arrive at it.


~~~

Abra in response to creative:



Your claim does not correspont to reality, let me explain why. If you do a little research you will find that this subject has been a long discussed philisophical topic.

Furthermore, I have brought this topic up with others and not only was I surprised to hear that they too agree with Creative, but I felt like I really needed to play catch up.

So I've been carefully reading this thread and I have read some outside sources as well. It's been very interesting.


What subject?

The meaning of "truth"?

Or a psychological discussion of how different individuals arrive at their conclusions concerning what is true?

I'm well aware that many people have quite inappropriate ideas of how to properly assess the truth value of various descriptions of states of affairs.

Is that what we are supposed to be discussing here?

And, if so, then shouldn't we have a rock-solid foundation for what we mean by the concept of "truth" before we go off attempting to evaluate how different individuals might evaluate "truth"?

~~~~~

In fact, in on that topic I'd like to share what I saw in a documentary on child psychology.

They were evaluating children for the ability to recognize when they have been lied to or deceived. What they discovered is that the human brain isn't even capable of doing this until about the age of 4 or 5.

So if you told a 3 year old that there is candy in a jar and she looked in the jar and there was no candy she would not accuse you of lying to her. She has no concept of being deceived. She would simply say, "There is no candy in the jar" and act like she doesn't even understand why it's not there. After all you said it should be there so it should be there! But it isn't there.

The child is merely confused by this. The child doesn't think to herself, "Oh that nasty lady lied to me"

For the child it can actually be quite confusing when a description doesn't correctly describe reality. They just don't understand why things are the way they should be (i.e. "Why aren't the descriptions correct?") The notion that the description could be "false" never occurs to a child that young. They are just confused about why things aren't matching up.

What I understand currently is this:

The state of affairs is the state of affairs. It is what it is.
The state of affairs is what is. It is true.

We may not know what the state of affairs are.
We may interpret the state of affairs incorrectly.
We do interpret the state of affairs according to our unique view of them.
We may not be aware of the state of affairs.

We may have opinions about the state of affairs.

But the state of affairs is what it is.

Each and every observer sees and interprets the state of affairs from a unique perspective and viewpoint. Each interpretation is unique and different. No individual will see things exactly the same. They may agree on some things but not all things.

As a painter I have two points of view. My left eye and my right eye. Each eye sees relationships differently. In painting a still life from life, if I close one eye the orange might be placed differently in relation to the other stuff. Each eye has a slightly different picture.

Painting from a photograph is quite a different experience because there is only a single point of view.

A single point of view does not have all the information. Neither does two points of view or three or four. That is why no single individual can know the true state of affairs.

They can see from their single point of view, and agree or disagree.

But the state of affairs is still what it is. It is not affected by the observers itself, but it cannot be known in its entirety.

Well from my perspective he appears to be purposefully argumentative and purposefully vague.

If he wants to discuss a concept called "truth" then why can't he define what he means by that concept?

If he wants to discuss the psychology of how different people define "truth" then why not just be crystal clear and come right out and say so?

That would be perfectly fine with me.

I've described my concept of what I consider to be "truth" in great detail. And evidently it's the same concept used by mathematicians, scientists, and even by Jeanniebean in her candy jar example.

I've asked for alternative definitions and examples for other concepts of "truth" and thus far I haven't been given anything but a HARD TIME, insults claiming that my logic is fatally flawed, and extremely vague and meaningless run-a-round baloney in total gibberish!

That's even an assumption right there.

We assume that the state of affairs is not affected by the observer, and we feel pretty confident about this in terms of the macro physical world. In fact, many secularists are so convinced of this that they have concluded that a totally objective universe exists "out there" that is completely independent of any observer.

A lot of secular-minded people hold this out to be a certain 'truth'.

In other words, they hold this out to be the "obviously correct description" of the state of affairs of the macro physical universe.

"The cup is on the table" - it's an "obvious truth", or so they claim.

However, as we all surely know by now, when we example the fabric of this macro reality at really tiny scales things change drastically. It may ultimately be "False" that the state of affairs is independent of the observer.

That may be an incorrect description of the actual state of affairs.

And that's where things become quite interesting and controversial.

Let's stand back and look at the thread topic again:



Ok, Creative has taken the stance that he errs on the side of truth not being subjective.

Then he asked for those who err on the side of "yes" to say why it is that they hold that position.

Ok fine:

I error on the side of "yes" truth is indeed subjective.

Then I explain why I hold that position. I explain in detail precisely what I mean by "truth". I define it. I give concrete meaningful examples of it. I show that it's the same concept of truth as used by mathematicians, scientists, and engineers for at least two millennia or more.

I even explain why it is indeed ultimately subjective via the very processes, premises, and axioms use to determine it. All of which are ultimately human constructs.

So what do I get in return for offering my position on this?

I get accused of using "fatal logic".

An insult not only to me, but to the entire mathematical, scientific, and engineering communities.

~~~~

So what do I do?

I politely ask for an alternative definition, example, or description of an alternative concept for what is meant by "truth".

Do I get a meaningful reply to my request?

No, all I get back is gibberish and insults.

So what's the point to this thread other than to insult everyone who offers their views?

~~~~

I was asked to state my position and I did so.

All I get back in return is insults and gibberish.

Was that the purpose of this thread or what?

Shouldn't someone be thanking me for offering my views rather than insulting me and proclaiming that my logic is faulty logic when they don't even have a meaningful or comprehensible alternative view to offer in return?

Yes Abra, you are right.

My post was purposely kept within the context of physical and classical reality in order to show how I understand what Creative is trying to say.

In other words, I am trying to stay on the same page with this thinking, rather than slip into alternate points of view.

Which as you know, in my world, are varied.

In a holographic model anything is possible.

I am purposely staying inside the classical model.

THAT REMINDS OF SOMETHING.

The field of psychology has learned a lot from the visual cliff experiements with children originally conducted in 1960. The experiment was conducted to determine if depth perception was learned through experience or it was inherent.

Since that time the tests have evolved. Below are videos of two such tests.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?index=1&feature=PlayList&v=eyxMq11xWzM&list=PLA625D6E261AA07A1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwqZNPmxD34&feature=related


What they show is what creative has been trying to get across. We act on our ‘beliefs’ because we presuppose our beliefs are true.

In one video babies are placed in the center of a table, either side of which appears to drop off dramatically. The babies are coaxed, by their mother, to venture across one of the edges, and by faith alone the babies, hesitantly, deny what they inherently ‘know’, about the situation, and make the journey.

Note that the babies believed that the cliff they perceived represented danger and without being coaxed by their mother, the children would not venture over the cliff.

Oddly, when the mothers went to the other side and tried to coax their babies to ‘that’ side, the babies would not go. Apparently they are not of an age that they can understand about plexiglass and when belief was pitted against faith for the second time, the babies favored their own beliefs rather than their faith.

How is this like the idea that a child believes that Santa Clause is real? The child takes the idea of Santa Clause on faith. It becomes a belief through faith.

Questions:
Does the belief of the baby in the video have a basis in reality: Does a cliff present danger to a baby?
If a child beliefs in Santa Clause, does that belief correspond with reality?

Does the baby in the cliff experiment have knowledge that equates to fact?
Does the child who believes in Santa Clause have knowledge that equates to fact?
What’s the difference between the two?

Are definitions of knowledge and belief synonymous?

Does knowledge correspond to fact? Would false knowledge be meaningful?
Does reality correspond to fact? Do facts correspond to truth?
If a fact were found to be false, did it ever correspond to truth?
Does truth ever correspond to something false?

If knowledge were the only thing that ever guided our behavior, would all of our beliefs have a basis in fact/reality?

If belief is the only thing that ever guides our behavior, would everything we believe have a basis in reality/fact?

What does it take for opinion to be considered belief?
What does it take for opinion to be considered knowledge?
When are opinion, belief, and knowledge ever synonymous?
What makes them different?

How do we get to the truth of this matter?

EXACTLY. That was how I felt at first and why I bucked. HONESTLY, it took a lot of persistence and relaxing my ego & mind to see what I have intuitively understood all along.

I don't explain it as well as creative, and I have to really think about questions regarding the topic, which is why my last post includes so many questions. These were the same or similar questions that I have been asking myself throughout this thread.

I'm just hoping they might help someone else achieve the 'AH HA' moment as I did.