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| Topic: Is Truth Subjective? - part 2 | |
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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. Facts are objective states of affairs James. It's a scientific term for Pete's sake. I talk of getting things right regarding several aspects of this discussion. One being how we set truth out. Another being whether or not we get it right when we call a positive asssertion a "true claim/conclusion". Sometimes we get that wrong. Therefore, we ought know better than to call a verified claim "truth". Verified claims can still be false, and truth cannot. It is not a matter of getting truth right anywhere other than how we set it out. Truth is not subject to our thought/belief on matters. A claim either corresponds or it does not. It also does not matter if we check to see if a claim corresponds. 'The dog has fleas' IFF the dog has fleas. It does not matter if we check. Verification does not effect/affect truth. It affects our own confidence/certainty in calling something "true", or at least it ought. The claim is true if, and only if the dog has fleas. We just would not know about it unless we do look. Sometimes we cannot know even when we do. There are limits to our ability to access reality. It does not follow that we have no access. It does not follow from the fact that it is highly unlikely that we can know everything about a state of affairs that we can know nothing about a state of affairs. |
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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. Facts are objective states of affairs James. It's a scientific term for Pete's sake. I talk of getting things right regarding several aspects of this discussion. One being how we set truth out. Another being whether or not we get it right when we call a positive asssertion a "true claim/conclusion". Sometimes we get that wrong. Therefore, we ought know better than to call a verified claim "truth". Verified claims can still be false, and truth cannot. It is not a matter of getting truth right anywhere other than how we set it out. Truth is not subject to our thought/belief on matters. A claim either corresponds or it does not. It also does not matter if we check to see if a claim corresponds. 'The dog has fleas' IFF the dog has fleas. It does not matter if we check. Verification does not effect/affect truth. It affects our own confidence/certainty in calling something "true", or at least it ought. The claim is true if, and only if the dog has fleas. We just would not know about it unless we do look. Sometimes we cannot know even when we do. There are limits to our ability to access reality. It does not follow that we have no access. It does not follow from the fact that it is highly unlikely that we can know everything about a state of affairs that we can know nothing about a state of affairs. But what you are stating is trivial and utterly meaningless. It has no value. All you are saying is this: The state of affairs is the state of affairs IFF The state of affairs is the state of affairs No kidding?  It's an utterly useless tautology. ~~~~~ Besides that can't possibly be what we mean by 'truth'. Because if that's what we meant by 'truth' then everything would be TRUE and nothing would be FALSE. Every state of affairs would be what it is. The only way we can speak of something being TRUE or FALSE is if we are comparing something with the state of affairs. It is then this comparison that we give a "TRUTH" value to. Why is that such a hard concept for you to grasp? Is it the comparison between things that we give a "TRUTH" value to. Not the state of affairs itself. Therefore the thing that we are comparing with the state of affairs is every bit important to the definition of what we mean by "TRUTH" as is the state of affairs itself. And in Analytical Truth, the thing that is being compared with the state of affairs is indeed a description of the state of affairs. It is that description that we assign a "TRUTH" value to. We assign either a "TRUTH" value of "True" or a "TRUTH" value of 'False'. And that is what we mean by our man-made concept of "TRUTH". It's a really simple practical concept that is easy to use and apply. |
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Truth is a man made concept to begin with. It is whatever we define it to be. Truth is a tree.  Nonsense. |
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Edited by
creativesoul
on
Wed 08/10/11 03:28 PM
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But what you are stating is trivial and utterly meaningless. It has no value. All you are saying is this: The state of affairs is the state of affairs IFF The state of affairs is the state of affairs No kidding? It's an utterly useless tautology. It is not a tautology Abra, you just do not comprehend it. It lays out the only condition that makes a claim true. 'The dog has fleas' is a true claim if, and only if, the dog has fleas. The antecedent(subject) is the claim about the way things are. The conditional sets out correspondence to the predicate, which is merely a meta-language placemark for the states of affairs. It does not say "the state of affairs is the state of affairs if and only if the state of affairs is the state of affairs. You just do not understand the language tool being put to use. Read some Tarski. |
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Truth is a man made concept to begin with. It is whatever we define it to be. Truth is a tree. Nonsense. Sure. That definition for 'truth' would be nonsense. It is whatever we define it to be. Fortunately we haven't defined truth to be a tree. I didn't say that truth is whatever YOU personally define it to be. I said that truth is whatever 'we' as humans have defined it to be. It's a man-made concept. Not a Michael-made concept. I'm not saying that you can arbitrarily define it yourself personally however you personally choose. |
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I'd be interested in seeing you justify the claim that truth is a concept.
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'The dog has fleas' is a true claim if, and only if, the dog has fleas. And what did you just do right there? You compared a "description" with a "state of affairs". Precisely what I have been saying ALL ALONG! And you proclaim that "this description" is true if and only if it matches the state of affairs. That's precisely how I have defined a "truth" value. Here you are indeed assigning a value of 'truth' to a description. Any esoteric objections you have to the way that I have defined and discussed the nature of what we mean by truth, can be nothing other than your own personal misunderstanding of what I have attempted to communicate to you. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the way that I have defined truth. In fact, this is precisely how the concept of truth is used in the science and mathematics everyday. You are arguing just for the sake of arguing.  In the end, you have no choice but to come back to the very concepts that I have ultimately laid out. You have no choice but to recognize that what we are defining 'truth' as a correspondence between a description and a state of affairs. In fact, that's precisely what you just did above. You just do not understand the language tool being put to use. Read some Tarski. I understand perfectly. You just corresponded a description with a state of affairs and proclaimed the description to be a true IFF it matches the state of affairs. That's what I've been stating all along. |
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Edited by
creativesoul
on
Wed 08/10/11 04:01 PM
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But by your definition of truth, it's as close as we can get to knowing truth. To knowing correspondence to fact/reality. More redundant and therefore self-defeating and meaningless use of perfectly good language. In proper correspondence terms, the above is to say... 'But your definition of truth, it's as close as we can get to possessing justified true belief about truth. To possessing justified true belief about truth to fact/reality.' Gibberish. So you are being totally inconsistent and nonsensical in your position. Nope, you're just extremely consistent in wrongly setting truth out, consistently wrong when intepreting a perfectly simple definition. It comes as a result of grossly misunderstanding what truth is. It comes as a result of conflating a true claim with that which makes it so. It comes as a result of conflating descriptions and truth. It comes as a result of conflating verification and truth. It comes as a result of perpetuating the dogma of empiricism. It comes as a result of you're being sorely mistaken. I don't know what else to say. If you haven't grasped the error of your ways by now... after a solid month of being shewn in every imaginable way. If there are any keen readers, the arguments ought be sufficient for clearly establishing that truth is not subjective, nor is it a man-made concept. To those who do not, or cannot, or will not allow themselves to understand. I've done what I can.  Aloha. |
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I'd be interested in seeing you justify the claim that truth is a concept. I may not be able to that if I am limited to your extremely narrow views on the semantics of the term 'concept'. These kind of semantic arguments are your hallmark. My thesaurus offers the following words as synonyms for the term 'concept'. idea notion thought perception impression conception theory model hypothesis view Truth is a man-made notion, or model, or idea, or conception of corresponding descriptions with states of affairs. We came up with this whole concept in our minds. In fact, I would challenge you to justify that such an idea or concept could even exist outside of the human imagination. If our notion of truth is the idea of correspondence between a description of a state of affairs and the actual state of affairs itself, then truth cannot have any existence independent of mankind's descriptions of states of affairs. Therefore the whole notion, or idea, of 'truth' existing outside of mankind's imagination is meaningless. All that could exist outside of our descriptions is the state of affairs itself. But even you confess that we are not referring to the actual state of affairs itself as being 'truth'. Truth is a correspondence to the state of affairs. And what is being corresponded to the state of affairs? Man-made descriptions. Therefore, truth cannot even exist outside of the context of being a man-made idea. Thus truth is indeed a man-made concept. Q.E.D. |
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Edited by
creativesoul
on
Wed 08/10/11 04:18 PM
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..
Not worth it .. |
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Aloha. Bye bye. 
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I gotta question...
What, on you view, is the difference between calling a claim "true" and a claim being true? |
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What, on your view, is the difference between verification and truth?
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Edited by
creativesoul
on
Thu 08/11/11 09:42 AM
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Truth is a man-made notion, or model, or idea, or conception of corresponding descriptions with states of affairs. I know that is what you believe truth is, however, that is the process of verification, not truth. That is checking to see if a claim is true. We came up with this whole concept in our minds. In fact, I would challenge you to justify that such an idea or concept could even exist outside of the human imagination. Ideas and concepts cannot. Truth is not an idea, nor a concept. If our notion of truth is the idea of correspondence between a description of a state of affairs and the actual state of affairs itself, then truth cannot have any existence independent of mankind's descriptions of states of affairs. This is wrong. Truth is correspondence to fact/reality. Descriptions are not the only things that can correspond or not. Therefore the whole notion, or idea, of 'truth' existing outside of mankind's imagination is meaningless. Truth necessitates a thinking subject for it's being engaged. That does not make truth subject to the mind for anything other than it's being put to use. Truth is a correspondence to the state of affairs. And what is being corresponded to the state of affairs? Man-made descriptions. Wrong again. Truth is not "a" correspondence. Correspondence is not an object. It is a matching up between thought/belief and reality. Therefore, truth cannot even exist outside of the context of being a man-made idea. Doesn't follow. Ideas are the product of thought/belief. Truth is necessarily presupposed within thought/belief formation. Therefore, truth presupposition pre-dates ideas. Thus truth is indeed a man-made concept. Q.E.D. What you're calling "truth" is verification, and it is a man-made concept, I agree. |
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What is the difference between calling a claim "true" and a claim being true?
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Edited by
creativesoul
on
Thu 08/11/11 12:45 PM
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Shewing the absurdity...
Truth is a man made concept to begin with. It is whatever we define it to be. So as far as I can see it's a misguided question to ask: Is Truth Subjective? That already takes a very narrow assumption that all truths are either objective or all truths are subjective. Trying to put all truths into one basket seems truly trivial to me. That's the view of a radical absolutist IMHO. There's no way that I would entertain such a shallow view of the world. So with that observation it appears to be crystal clear to me that truth is indeed subjective. Thus we create truth by how we perceive it to be - even in concept and definition. So from that perspective all truths are indeed subjective ...there are no "logical flaws" in anything that I'm saying. Therefore we have actually shown without any ambiguity that all truth must ultimately be subjective. I'm telling you that my thoughts are better conveyed using the words that I choose to convey them with. I simply think in terms of accepting that some things are more reasonable than others. That doesn't mean that I necessarily 'believe' them to be true. A hallucination can only be said to exist if it actually happened, and if it happened then it's truth... Truth is nothing more than assignments we give... If we simply accept that truth is nothing other than a correct description... Truth is a correct description of a "State of Affairs". As is a fact. I'm not calling descriptions, idea, and states of affairs 'truths'. My ideas do not contradict each other. Truth is a subjective human assessment of a description of a state of affairs. Truth is nothing more than a correct correspondence between a description and a state of affairs. truth is the subjective act of assigning a truth value to a particular statement or description of a state of affairs. My description of truth works... it is a logically sound definition! Humans invented truth. It's a human idea. A human concept. Truth is correspondence to fact/reality. Period. And that's precisely the definition that I've been giving! Truth is correspondence to fact/reality. Truth is a correspondence between a man-made description and fact/reality. Truth is a correct description... I'm not calling descriptions, idea, and states of affairs 'truths'. My ideas do not contradict each other. It is a truth that the Earth orbits around the sun... My definition of truth works perfectly. I keep things SIMPLE. Kind of like Occam's Razor. Why make things unnecessarily complicated? truth is the recognition that the description correctly describes the state of affairs Truth is whatever we define it to be. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ There are good books for beginning logic. You might want to check some out.
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We wake up and get busy going about our day. Doing this and doing that. Going here and going there. We prioritize our activities in an order of importance, based upon what we believe we need to do, based upon what we believe will come of it if we do or if we don't.
All of this necessarily presupposes truth/reality correspondence within our thought/belief about the way things are. |
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It is a universal engagement, if by that I mean that all humans engage the universe via truth/reality presupposition.
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