Only in terms of Zen Truth.

This would only be true in terms of attempting to directly experience the state of affairs.

However, if you want to speak of Analytical Truth (which you speak of far more often than not), then truth as correspondence to fact/reality most certainly does have these same logical consequences because in order to make logical statements about that correspondence necessarily requires knowledge of what constitutes a correct logical analysis of that correspondence.

You can't avoid this when speaking of Analytical Truth.

The only way you can avoid this is to turn to Zen Truth and just accept that things are indeed however you experience them to be. But Zen Truth is necessarily subjective truth because everyone's experience of a state of affairs is subjective. In fact, the subject becomes an inseparable part of the state of affairs in that case.

Dogma

Verification of what?

A positive claim.

You refuse to acknowledge ANALYSIS when considering a concept of Analytical Truth.

Speaking of Zen Truth has nothing at all to do with 'dogma'.

It's just a term I use to refer to the direct experience of a state of affairs as opposed to logically analyzing it.

Clearly these different perspectives of 'truth' must be acknowledge. To totally ignore this distinction is,... well,... nothing short of ignorance.

Truth is correspondence to fact/reality.

Period.

There is no different 'kind'.

Experience is not truth.

That is necessarily notion of Analytical Truth. Attempting to analyze whether a 'claim' (which is necessarily a description of some sort) correctly correspondence with the state of affairs the 'claim' (or description) is claiming to describe.

If you take the stance that

1. Making truth contingent upon omniscience
2. Setting an impossible criterion

Is a meaningless definition for truth.

When what are you attempting to suggest?

That we should indeed be able to determine whether or not a claim (a description) does indeed correctly describe a correspondence with fact/reality.

~~~~~

Or if you are claiming that we can't ever make this determination an that it is an impossible thing to determine, then what was your objection with Tommo's definition again?

1. Making truth contingent upon omniscience
2. Setting an impossible criterion

It seems to me that you are indeed holding up this very notion of truth.

That it does not even make any sense to speak of 'knowing' truth because we can never have omniscient knowledge that a particular correspondence is indeed correct.

~~~~~

In other words, it's utterly senseless to even speak of any claim as being 'true' or 'false' since we can never make that determination.

By your definition it most certainly is!



To experience reality is to become intimately immersed in a direct correspondence with it.

Therefore, by your definition of truth, experience is living truth.

It is the ultimate truth recognized by the Buddhists.

Your definition of truth is grossly ill-defined.

You seem to want to place extreme restrictions on what correspondence you are addressing, yet you stubbornly refuse to lay out the details of this correspondence in your definition of truth.

If you are attempting to correspond 'claims' (which are descriptions of some sort) to fact/reality, then you need to specify that in your definition.

It makes no sense for you to speak about 'verifying' this correspondence, when you haven't even described in detail what you are attempting to correspond or verify.

If you are attempting to correspond a linguistic description with fact/reality then you must state that.

If you are attempting to correspond some prelinguistic notion of correspondence with fact/reality, then you need to describe that as well, and perhaps show how it differs from direct experience which you claim does not qualify as a correspondence.

Your definition of truth, as it stands, is so totally incomplete and vague that it doesn't even make any sense to discuss it until you've clarified specifically what correspondence you are attempting to verify.

How can you verify a correspondence that you haven't even defined in a clear and meaningful way?

What would it take to verify such an ill-defined correspondence?

You're STILL repeating the same mistake, over and over again.



You do not know what you're talking about. You're setting truth out in the wrong way. As a result, you're objecting to your own misconception/misunderstanding of how truth works.

I'll rewrite the claims below in proper correspondence terms, which ought show yourself, along with the keen reader 1. how you're conflating between verification and truth, 2. how you're conflating between a description and truth, 3. how you're still objectifying truth, 4. how you're still using redundant language, and last but not least, 5. how when setting truth out in the right way, the objections dissolve into irrelevancy, because they are a product of setting truth out in the wrong way to begin with. They do not apply. They are the logical consequence of not making and holding to the necessary distinction between a claim and truth, between verification and truth. That will be shown throughout this post as the source of mental confusion.

--



As it is written, the above conflates between thought, belief, claims and truth and is redundant/meaningless. It is to say "you seem to want to place restrictions on what truth you are addressing, yet you refuse to lay out the details of this truth in your definition of truth."

Redundant and meaningless, as written. In proper correspondence terms(absent the conflation), that would say...

'You seem to want to place extreme restrictions on what thought, belief, and/or claim you are addressing, yet you stubbornly refuse to lay out the details of those thought, belief, claims in your definition of truth.'

There is no need.





As it is written, the above conflates between verification and truth. We do not "correspond claims to fact/reality". Claims either correspond or not. We check. There is a big difference. That is to say "if you are attempting to truth claims to fact/reality, then you need to specify that in your definition."

Utter nonsense. In proper correspondence terms(absent the conflation), that would say...

'If you are attempting to verify claims, then you need to specify that in your definition.'

There is no need to.





I don't talk about "verifing correspondence". Talking about "verifying correspondence" is nonsense. That would be to say"it makes no sense for you to speak about verifying this truth, when you haven't even described in detail what you are attempting to truth or verify".

That is an absurd logical consequence of your own conflation. We cannot verify truth. I talk about verifying claims. We can do that. In proper correspondence terms, that would say...

'It makes no sense for you to speak about verifying this claim, when you haven't even described in detail what you're attempting to verify.'

We verify positive claims.





As it is written, the above conflates between verification and truth... yet again. We do not "correspond a linguistic description with fact/reality." That would be to say "you are attempting to truth a linguistic description with fact/reality".

That constitutes utter nonsense. In proper correspondence terms, that would say...

'If you are attempting to verify a linguistic description, then you must state that.'

I have... several times over.





This conflates, once again, verification and truth and also sets truth out in the wrong way by objectifying it. That is to talk of "attempting to truth some prelinguistic notion of truth with fact/reality".

Utter nonsense. In proper correspondence terms, that would say...

'If you are attempting to verify some preliguistic notion of truth, then you need to describe that as well, and perhaps show how it differs from direct experience which you claim does not qualify as truth.'

Preliguistic notions of truth are directly shown in the behavior putting truth/reality presupposition to use.





This conflates claims with truth, and as a result sets out talking about verifying truth. We do not verify truth. We verify claims. You're repeatedly setting truth out in the wrong way. In proper correspondence terms, that would say...

'Your definition of truth, as it stands, is so totally incomplete and vague that it doesn't even make any sense to discuss it until you've clarified specifically what claims you are attempting to verify.'

The specific claim that is being verified has no bearing whatsoever on truth. A claim is true if, and only if it corresponds to fact/reality.





This conflates a claim with truth and objectifies truth. We do not verify a correspondence. That would be to verify a truth. That would be to say, "How can you verify a truth that you haven't even defined in a clear and meaningful way?"

We verify claims, not truth. In proper correspondence terms, that would say...

'How can you verify a claim that you haven't defined in a clear meaningful way?'

The claims have already been clearly defined. That is not a task for the definition of truth. That is a task for the language used to construct the claim.





Again, conflating between claims and truth. We do not verify truth. We verify claims. In proper correspondence terms, that would say...

'What would it take to verify such an ill-defined claim?'

I don't know. I'm not talking about the verification of an ill-defined claim, I'm talking about how truth works.

So, we see that that problem is clearly one of conflating between a positive claim and truth. Correcting that conflation results in the 'problems' dissolving into irrelevancy.



Thus, we can see the importance of setting truth out in the right way.

I refuse to conflate a true claim and truth. Doing that results in calling a verified claim, or a logically consistent conclusion, an 'analytical truth'.

Truth is not a logically consistent conclusion. Truth is not a verified claim. Truth is correspondence to fact/reality. Period.



So, you admit that "Zen Truth" is just a term that you use to refer to "direct experience of a state of affairs." Experience, for it to have any meaningful value, requires a subject capable of connecting the events that they are engaged in with/to themself. During the experience, the subject must be capable of forming thought/belief about the experience as it happens. Therefore, subject must be capable of thought/belief about the way things are.

Thought/belief formation about the way things are necessarily presupposes truth/reality correspondence.

Why not just acknowledge that experience is not truth?



Different perspectives of direct experience do not equal truth. They equal personal perspective. Personal perspective necessitates pre-existing thought/belief which necessarily presupposes truth. The presupposition of truth/reality correspondence within thought/belief about experience necessarily pre-dates the perspective that is a product of thought/belief about the experience.

Why not acknowledge that perspective is not truth?

This hints upon what I suspect is where you and I will agree. That being, as wux pointed out way back on page 2 or 3, that we cannot be absolutely certain that a verified claim is true. That we cannot know for sure, if we got it right. That is only a problem for those who think that absolute certainty, or omniscience is necessary for warranting sufficient reason to believe that any given positive claim is worthy of being called "true".

Well, I have no problem with this at all. In the pragmatic way that I lay out what we refer to as "truth" all of this is taken into account and acknowledge, through all of the postulates, premises, axioms, and domain of applicability.

Doing it in this way there is no confusion. Just look at the postulates, premises, axioms, and domain of applicability for anything that is proclaimed to be 'truth' and you will quickly see what limitations and presumptions are required for this 'truth' to be meaningful.

It is indeed a 'truth' with respect to that 'state of affairs'. However, that particular state of affairs, may not exist in reality.

That's the whole point.

I think this is where you make a grave error. You assume that the state of affairs must have objective existence.

Therefore you speak in terms of whether or not we've gotten it 'right' in some idealized imagined absolute sense.

In that situation they only way that you can ever know whether you've gotten it 'right' would indeed to be have omniscience of the state of affairs itself.

And impossible criterion as you point out.

So why even bother going there?

Why not just stay within the realm of what can be known and define things that way, taking into account all of the assumptions (i.e. postulates, premises and axioms) that are being assumed. And also paying attention to the domain of applicably of what is being described and/or claimed.

That's how it's down in the mathematics and sciences.

All you are basically doing is proclaiming that the actual state of affairs has objective reality that, in theory, could be known if we had omniscience. However, since we don't have omniscience we can never know whether we've gotten it 'right'.

In Classical physics and Classical philosophy that assumption that there exists a precise state of affairs that could be gotten 'right' or 'wrong' is already an unknowable premise.

So that whole approach is already standing on quicksand.

I've just been re-watching a lecture I have on Quantum Mechanics to see how this instructor presents the laws of Quantum Mechanics. I wanted to see if he is paying attention to all of these premises postulated and domains of applicability. And he does so quite well, actually.

You once stated something along the lines that in Quantum Mechanics superposition is true if and only iff superposition is the state of affairs.

Well, of course that's true. Everyone is well aware of that.

Quantum Mechanics does not claim that superposition is the 'truth' of reality.

Oh no,... not at all!

Quantum Mechanics simply claims that superposition is a postulate that is necessarily in the mathematical description of reality in order to make things work out correctly.

Whether superposition actually exists in reality is anyone's guess.

This is what I mean about paying attention to the details, the postulates, premises, axioms, and domain of applicability.

Many times what you think that the sciences and mathematics are proclaiming to be 'truth' is really nothing more than a postulate.

They are simply saying, "If you accept this postulate as being true, then the following calculations will indeed produce the correct results". Because the calculations themselves depend upon this postulate as being at least "mathematically true".

In fact, when Einstein logically concluded that time dilation must be a consequence of postulating that the speed of light is constant for all observers, he wasn't proclaiming this to be a 'truth' of reality, but rather simply a postulate that makes things work out mathematically.

He did however passionately believe that if we actually look at reality we will observe that time does indeed dilate. In other words, he believed that his postulate did indeed correctly describe the actual state of affairs. He believed that his postulate did indeed correctly describe a truth. (a correct correspondence with fact/reality)

The scientists when into the lab and observed that Einstein's postulate was indeed a measurable and observable property of our physical reality.

It wasn't accepted as "truth" until it had been experienced via observation in the lab. Prior to that it was simply considered to be an unproven postulate.

Only when we were able to actually experience this phenomenon via direct observations did we proclaim it to be a 'truth' of the universe.

Thus it certainly appears that in the physical sciences the 'truth' of something is indeed intimately associated with the experience of it.

Thus Zen Truth plays a major role in the physical sciences.



Not only do I admit this, but this is precisely how I had initially laid out this term at the onset. It's far easier to just type "Zen Truth" than it is to type out, "direct experience of a state of affairs."

So I stated early on that I was going to be using the term "Zen Truth" to mean precisely "direct experience of a state of affairs."

So yes, that's precisely what I mean by that term.

~~~~~

Perhaps I'll just offer this.

Truth as I have laid it out, and as it has been used by the scientific and mathematical communities for centuries, works just fine precisely the way it is.

There are no logical failings in their approach to truth.

What appears to have failed is some people's ability to understand this approach in detail. All of the limitations and uncertainties concerning 'truth' have been accounted for. They are taken care of via postulates, premises, axioms, and by limited domains of applicability.

Pay attention to the details and it works just fine.

Ignore the details, and of course you're going to be confused.

You're going to misunderstand what scientists and mathematicians mean when they speak of 'truth'.

You do realize, I hope, that all of "Mathematical Truths" are entirely dependent upon the axioms used in the mathematical formalism.

It's makes no sense at all to suggest that they should hold true outside of the domain of those axioms. They may or may not. If they do then that's a pure coincidence.

So mathematicians and scientists already have a workable concept of truth covered in detail.

I see where their usage of the this concept works just fine without any problem at all. At least it's not a problem within these disciplines.

The only place it appears to be a problem is outside of these disciplines where people have some esoteric idea that 'truth' should apply to some imagined objective reality that can only be completely known by an omniscient being (assuming that reality even has an objective state of affairs to be known by such imagined being)

In other words, the philosophical notion of truth is a pink unicorn, that no philosopher yet has been able to define in a meaningful way.

Much less in a way that would justify claiming that scientists and mathematicians have the concept of truth "all wrong".

All you keep stating like a broken record is the following:



Fine, you can object to this all you want. That doesn't change the fact that this is a very useful and practical way of defining truth in both the sciences and the mathematics.



And that is a totally meaningless position IMHO.

It has no meaning because it has no practical application.

It doesn't address the nature of this "correspondence" that you speak of.

When I speak of Zen Truth, or the truth of directly experiencing a state of affair you scream that his does not constitute a correspondence!

Yet, in the sciences this type of correspondence is the only type of correspondence that they will accept as 'truth'.

When Einstein predicted that time dilation is a 'true' property of the universe, the scientists said, "We'll have to go into the lab and see if we can actually experience this to be the 'truth'"

And so that's what the did.

After they had experienced time dilation themselves by observing it, they came back out and proclaimed that Time Dilation is indeed a 'truth' of the universe.

That's how science works.

It's like only Zen Truth counts in the end.

What you refer to as truth is not.

I've applied it throughout this thread and the last. That application has shown falsehood where it existed, has shown conflation where it existed, and has clearly shown the absurdity/circularity that are a logical consequence of the conflation itself.

It doesn't get anymore useful than that.



It does not follow from the fact that our verification methods are inherently fallible, that truth is equal to a verified claim. It does not follow from the fact that our verification methods are inherently fallible that truth is equal to verification. It is by virtue of the fact that we know that our verification methods are fallible, that we know that truth is not equal to a verified claim.

Verified claims can still be false. Truth cannot.



Truth is correspondence to fact/reality.

Truth is a man made concept to begin with. It is whatever we define it to be.



Truth is a man made concept to begin with. It is whatever we define it to be.



You are attempting to objectify truth into a philosophical pink unicorn.



You've just objectified truth in this statement.



Then experience is truth. But you deny this.

Experience is really the only thing we have that actually corresponds to fact/reality.

If I tell you that you are in a warm, dry, and comfortable place, yet your experience is that you are freezing, soaking wet, and totally uncomfortable which are you going to believe best corresponed to fact/reality?

You say, "Truth is correspondence to fact/reality. Period!"

Experience is as close to truth as we can get then.

You are basically demanding that Zen Truth is the closest we can come to knowing truth. The closest we can come know knowing correspondence to fact/reality.

So you are supporting Zen Truth far and above any other form of Analytical or Logical concepts of 'truth'.

Yet you deny that experience equates to truth.

But by your definition of truth, it's as close as we can get to knowing truth. To knowing correspondence to fact/reality.

So you are being totally inconsistent and nonsensical in your position.