The opposite of lie.

perception and faith

the truth can be a lie to the uninformed

I always thought this quote from Plato was pretty much dead on. "The philosopher is in love with truth, that is, not with the changing world of sensation, which is the object of opinion, but with the unchanging reality which is the object of knowledge."

Or, if you are a fan of the Boston Celtics like me, “The Truth” is Paul Pierce.

 

The only truths are physical facts such as the length of something, the weight of sometheng, etc.

Dave Grippo of the Giant Country Horns is also known as the "Truth"

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All of your rebuttals of truth are in fact rebuttals of perception of truth.  Truth is that that exists regardless of human perception but that we occasionally can articulate, i.e. the heliocentric solar system was not made "true" by human recognition, but did in fact exist despite our prior confusion.

I would argue that our inability to "know it" is irrelevant.  Truth exists regardless of our knowing it.  Truth doesn't give a damn about our perceptions.  Sure, the human experience is one of perception, and we are all alone in our perceptions, and so on.  But truth as human perception is nauseatingly anthropocentric.

I'm reminded of the Edward Abbey statement in Desert Solitaire, roughly paraphrased, if you throw a rock at a metaphysicist's head and he ducks, he's a liar.

Nice response monk.  I suspect down the path you are heading, one quickly approaches the topic of faith, which I would guess underlies James' question. 

Your take on truth reminds me of President Clinton: "It depends on what the definition of 'is' is."

And I suppose you are right, but in terms of human experience, I'm not sure it means anything.

And, irony of ironies, I'm an atheist!

Still, truth is truth whether it is known or not.

My arguments have become circular, in any two-dimensional plane at least.

I revise my initial statement to "Even though there are universal truths, independent of contexts, localities and time, perception trumps them every time."

To answer the question of what make a truth true, whether it is known to be true or not, let's consider the classic 3-4-5 triangle. Playing specifically in a 2D plane, and with the necessary precision, a triangle with sides measuring three units, four units and five units, the greatest interior angle will always be a right angle. This was true before anyone knew it. It will continue be true even if everyone stops believing it is is true. When I teach it to my kids, they will perhaps first accept it on faith, but then we'll go out to the garage and prove it by measuring a bunch of things, including what appear to right angles, but are actually off a bit because our builder messed up a bunch. In the beginning, they will have, perhaps, simply accepted it because I said it was so. At this point, they won't have known it was true. After experimenting, they will have learned the truth of it. Again, this was true before they ever heard of it, after they had been told, and still after they had actually learned it.

What makes it true, what distinguishes it from untruth, the fact that that it is equally true to all creatures, regardless of location, time, unit of measure, etc.

Regarding faith, I am a somewhat devout Christian (LDS a.k.a. Mormon), but I believe the following about any divine creator regardless of the religions surrounding him/her. There are laws (truths) of the universe that bind the creator just as they bind us. However, increased wisdom and insight allows such a creator greater flexibility under the laws to meet his/her ends. This is to say that we all are subject to the same laws, but we are all restricted by them according to our individual levels of understanding of them.

My battery is almost dead, so I'll have to stop there. This is a great discussion, and I look forward to everyone's further comments. I don't take offense, and am happy to go on, but really can't right now (the amber battery light is flashing).

Truth is relative to the person who wants to believe what is true at that moment. Everyone creates their own truth. Religious and government officials then create the truth they want us to believe. We are nothing but living computers and human cattle waiting for someone to tell us what the truth is and program us.

Bummer huh? That's life, whether you want to believe the truth or not.