Truth?
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Category: General
Forum Name: Chit Chat
Forum Discription: Non Boating Related Discussions
URL: http://www.professorpaddle.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=9105
Printed Date: 17 Sep 2025 at 1:11pm
Topic: Truth?
Posted By: James
Subject: Truth?
Date Posted: 13 Jan 2010 at 7:48am
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I am going through a class right now and one of our assignments is to ask people what the definition of Truth is, or simply what Truth is. I know the internet is a bad place to pose this type of question since you can just google or yahoo your way to someone elses answer, but I am curious to hear responses from boaters. What is Truth? |
Replies:
Posted By: Courtney
Date Posted: 13 Jan 2010 at 8:11am
| The opposite of lie. |
Posted By: water wacko
Date Posted: 13 Jan 2010 at 8:50am
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many kinds of truth: personal truth, relative truth, universal truth, PP truth!!!
truth - 1. the true or actual state of a matter: He tried to find out the truth. 2. a verified or indisputable fact, proposition, principle, or the like: mathematical truths. 3. actuality or actual existence. 4. an obvious or accepted fact; truism; platitude. 5. ideal or fundamental reality apart from and transcending perceived experience: the basic truths of life. I like 5 the best. |
Posted By: rokmnky
Date Posted: 13 Jan 2010 at 9:20am
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perception and faith the truth can be a lie to the uninformed |
Posted By: Jed Hawkes
Date Posted: 13 Jan 2010 at 9:21am
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Truth is being able to tell an individual information and having confidence in your answer, and know that answer will not be contradicted. I also think truth is limited by how much you know, for instance; if I have a bit of information that to my knowledge is true but in reality can be contradicted it still maintains it's truthfulness, it only becomes a lie if there is intent to give misinformation. ------------- The line will become apparent 978-273-7723 |
Posted By: Sisu
Date Posted: 13 Jan 2010 at 9:35am
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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.
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Posted By: chipmaney
Date Posted: 13 Jan 2010 at 10:08am
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Originally posted by water wacko many kinds of truth: personal truth, relative truth, universal truth, PP truth!!! truth - 1. the true or actual state of a matter: He tried to find out the truth. 2. a verified or indisputable fact, proposition, principle, or the like: mathematical truths. 3. actuality or actual existence. 4. an obvious or accepted fact; truism; platitude. 5. ideal or fundamental reality apart from and transcending perceived experience: the basic truths of life. I like 5 the best. i think james meant was truth means to you, not what the dictionary says.... in any case, these definiitions you provided seem to be grounded in "reality", whatever the f**k that is....in any case, seems like a pretty narrow scope for defining truth in the context in which i believe james to be asking this question. truth is relative.....the "actual state of a matter" may be interpreted uniquely by individuals....perception is reality....it's a cliche, but it's true....everybody has his/her own truth, and opposing views may not necessarily make one of them untrue eg, that truck is green...to a colorblind person, however, that truck is a shade of gray.... in fact (haha), green is just a word constructed by us humans to represent a state. therefore, it's open to personal interpretation by each human. therefore, there is not truth in words.... truth comes from within....only a very few desire to or are capable of reaching into that place....the place inside where "god" lives....truth lies in the soul ------------- sitting all alone on a mountain by a river that has no end |
Posted By: Jimmy
Date Posted: 13 Jan 2010 at 10:09am
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The only truths are physical facts such as the length of something, the weight of sometheng, etc.
The truth about more general things is really more honest opinion than truth. Five people can see the same thing but all 5 will recall seeing something slightly different, and time goes on the difference will grow.
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Posted By: septimus prime
Date Posted: 13 Jan 2010 at 10:20am
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Originally posted by Jimmy The only truths are physical facts such as the length of something, the weight of sometheng, etc. The truth about more general things is really more honest opinion than truth. Five people can see the same thing but all 5 will recall seeing something slightly different, and time goes on the difference will grow. Not sure about that, Jimmy. I mean how accurate are your measuring instruments? What about fractals. Look at a coast line. It is 1000 km, but really it approaches infinite length if you were to actually measure around every bay, delta or even grain of sand. ------------- Jon Shell Bee |
Posted By: franzhorner
Date Posted: 13 Jan 2010 at 10:33am
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Dave Grippo of the Giant Country Horns is also known as the "Truth"
------------- MORE RAIN PLEASE |
Posted By: dblanchard
Date Posted: 13 Jan 2010 at 1:15pm
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There is no truth, only perception.
It is hard to qualify this, but equally hard to disqualify it. Thus the verity of the statement. I perceive this to be true, and since it can't be sufficiently contradicted, it remains true until such sufficient contradiction is provided. This echos a little of the coastline argument, as well as chipmaney's comment. I usually apply this statement to "real life" where one person is convinced of one thing, and another person is convinced of something contradictory, in part or in whole, and the two views cannot be reconciled, except to agree that there is no truth, just perception. Still, I think this does apply to the hard world at large. Clearly, discovering that the earth orbits the sun didn't create the truthfulness of it; the geocentrics were dead wrong on that. But, until it was proven, that was the truth as we knew it. Fortunately, some inspiring minds did not accept that "truth" and took it upon themselves to discover a newer, brighter truth, an even truer truth. Can we all agree on a heliocentric solar system? I think so, but even then, we don't all agree about how it actually works. The arguments for dark matter are more than sufficiently compelling for me, but not everyone is on board with it. For me, it is the truth, and I won't be dissuaded until some other sufficiently qualified argument proves it to be wrong. For the here and now, dark matter exists for me. If it doesn't for you, I hope you are hard at work disproving it for me. In the meantime, I'm busy disproving the "truths" that I don't accept. If there is any honest truth, it is in the striving to find truths, not in the truths themselves. D |
Posted By: Monk
Date Posted: 13 Jan 2010 at 1:32pm
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D 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. |
Posted By: slickhorn
Date Posted: 13 Jan 2010 at 2:10pm
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Originally posted by Monk 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. Is it truth if it can't be perceived? Or can't be perceived to be true? I once a had a class in which we spent a week dedicated to trying to find consensus on definitions of "true" "just" "moral" and "right" - one word per week, a serious effort. No consensus was ever achieved, even on "moral" which was perhaps the easiest of these. Probably one of the most seminal moments in my education, and an experience I think about quite a bit. dblanchard and monk's statemates above indicate the difficulty here. What good is a truth if we can't agree that it is a truth? And how true can it be, if it's inherent accuracy is so difficult to discern? Being a lefty flake, I enjoy reading carlos casteneda. Not because I think what he says is literally true, but because I see in his narrative a fundamental truth: each of us experiences a reality no one else can ever absolutely know. And thus the world presents different facets to us all, and quite literally, we do not all live in the same world, in a very real sense. That's why the statement that dlbanchard's points are about perception misses the point in my opinion. Because, as humans, at the most fundamental level, we are instruments of perception. We perceive. We can know nothing beyond what we can base on perception. And so this platonic notion of absolute inviolable external truth becomes moot, because unless we can perceive it, we cannot know it or know that it is indeed the truth. And that's the truth son. ------------- |
Posted By: Monk
Date Posted: 13 Jan 2010 at 2:27pm
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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. |
Posted By: dblanchard
Date Posted: 13 Jan 2010 at 2:28pm
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Sure, I'll accept that there are states or conditions that exist whether we know that they do or not, and that they are true, and even that they impact our lives whether we recognize it or not, but is that really any more true to us as individuals than our perceptions are?
Many of the mathematical truths that we accept, are only true within our common frames of reference. As an example, exiting into the non-Euclidean universe, the notion of parallelism is redefined to local conditions. The non-Euclidean geometries are no more or less true than Euclidean geometry, given a suitable context. The validity of non-Euclidian geometries wasn't widely accepted until the 1800s, but they have always been true, within their respective contexts. I'm nearly out of my depth here, but I remember/understand enough to stand by what I've said. I love that this topic got posted, and that it has been productive. Monk, I welcome your comment, and agree with it, but I think that unless a "truth" can be articulated (by someone, not necessarily me), it remains dubious. Such may be the case with my initial statement, so maybe someone else can better articulate its truthfulness. D |
Posted By: slickhorn
Date Posted: 13 Jan 2010 at 2:32pm
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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. ------------- |
Posted By: Monk
Date Posted: 13 Jan 2010 at 2:33pm
| Foam boating = truth. |
Posted By: Monk
Date Posted: 13 Jan 2010 at 2:34pm
| And, irony of ironies, I'm an atheist! |
Posted By: dblanchard
Date Posted: 13 Jan 2010 at 2:42pm
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I was slow submitting my last comment, which I intended to fit in between Monk's 6:32 post and Slickhorn's 7:10 post.
Monk, I agree that not knowing something doesn't make if false. I was trying to cover that with the geo/heliocentric discussion. I was also thinking that in the case where someone simply guesses that something is a certain way, and that it actually is that way, he/she doesn't necessarily have the truth. To have the truth of something, you have to know it in some way that goes beyond coincidentally guessing it correctly. |
Posted By: dblanchard
Date Posted: 13 Jan 2010 at 2:44pm
| Still, truth is truth whether it is known or not. |
Posted By: slickhorn
Date Posted: 13 Jan 2010 at 2:48pm
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Originally posted by dblanchard Still, truth is truth whether it is known or not. what makes it so? what distinguishes it from untruth? ------------- |
Posted By: dblanchard
Date Posted: 13 Jan 2010 at 7:39pm
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). |
Posted By: water wacko
Date Posted: 13 Jan 2010 at 9:10pm
| I love it. Kayakers argueing about what truth is. Yaaaay!!! |
Posted By: dave
Date Posted: 13 Jan 2010 at 10:05pm
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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. ------------- Nomad |
Posted By: jondufay
Date Posted: 14 Jan 2010 at 7:01am
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Dave,
You have truth (objectivity) confused with subjectivity. I am guessing that Decartes would like to take a sh*t on your head right about now. ------------- ahh, f--- it dude, lets go boating... |
Posted By: James
Date Posted: 14 Jan 2010 at 10:54am
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As I have discussed this with people in person, and reading through this thread there seems to be a common response around "religion or lack of" and "faith vs experience". This might be less of a question people care to answer but it is on my list to ask. If two religions have completely conflicting views can they both be true? Again I am not looking for a specific answer or understanding but rather to see what the array of responses looks like. |
Posted By: dblanchard
Date Posted: 14 Jan 2010 at 12:03pm
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Several quick thoughts on the whole topic:
This discussion reminded me of < http://www.simulation-argument.com/simulation.html - this paper > describing, among other things, why we are probably living in some multi-agent computer simulation. < http://www.simulation-argument.com/ - This site > has more, better written, detail. If that is the case, truth is highly localized, and James' most recent question can be argued either way to equal degrees. From a Mormon view, there are things that I genuinely believe to be true, and in a sense know to be true through personal revelation, however, I could never convince someone that I don't just think these have been revealed to me. So, again, we are at perception, though I admit to believing that there exists truth independent of perception. A thing can be true whether I believe it is or not. Regarding the two opposing religions, it depends on the conflicting views, and how they conflict. On the surface, I say no, two *completely* conflicting religions cannot both be true. However, two opposing religions which do not conflict could be true. The distinction is perhaps best made with a Venn diagram for two simplistic religions. Say one worships water and the other worships fire. The Waterites worship in their way according to what they think the waters demand of them. The water gives them what they need/desire. Not necessarily in the amounts, or at the times, they need/want, but Water provides for them. The Pyrites, not to be confused with Pyritites or pirates, or worse, pyrite stealing pirates, worship fire in their way, and get what they want/need. Again, not necessarily in the degree or time they wish. Each religion could have beliefs about Fire and Water that are true, and both sets of beliefs could be correct. However, either could also hold beliefs that are not true, for instance it is probably true, though I cannot prove it, that neither Fire nor Water cares for human sacrifice. I think any religion of any substantial complexity is in some way in irreconcilable opposition to the others. It comes down to what constitutes a religion. Is Zen a religion, or only a style of practicing a religion. Can Zen practitioners be Muslim or Christian, or Sikh, or Vodunist, or only Buddhist? I would argue that Zen is a philosophy, and that it can be applied to any religion, or to atheism. LDS folk believe in an eternal soul, eternal progression, consequences for actions applying to the individual, an apocalypse or an Armageddon, and a renewal of the earth. This might be analogous to Hindu beliefs of Atman, Samsara, Karma, and the end of days (I can't remember or find the Hindu term). There is no LDS analogy for Moksha, an exit from the cycle, or an end to progression. So, in the large, I think these two can be fairly well reconciled, but in the small, I don't think they can be. I know there are other LDS boaters here, so if you think I've misportrayed something, please let us know. D |
Posted By: chipmaney
Date Posted: 14 Jan 2010 at 2:07pm
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Originally posted by Monk D 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. Truth is a word created by humans, so how can it exist outside human consciousness....you conclusion that truth somehow exists in its own reality is an oxymoron....outside of human consciousness, there is no truth or mendacity, only Being..... ------------- sitting all alone on a mountain by a river that has no end |
Posted By: chipmaney
Date Posted: 14 Jan 2010 at 2:10pm
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Originally posted by dblanchard Several quick thoughts on the whole topic: This discussion reminded me of < http://www.simulation-argument.com/simulation.html - this paper > describing, among other things, why we are probably living in some multi-agent computer simulation. < http://www.simulation-argument.com/ - This site > has more, better written, detail. If that is the case, truth is highly localized, and James' most recent question can be argued either way to equal degrees. From a Mormon view, there are things that I genuinely believe to be true, and in a sense know to be true through personal revelation, however, I could never convince someone that I don't just think these have been revealed to me. So, again, we are at perception, though I admit to believing that there exists truth independent of perception. A thing can be true whether I believe it is or not. Regarding the two opposing religions, it depends on the conflicting views, and how they conflict. On the surface, I say no, two *completely* conflicting religions cannot both be true. However, two opposing religions which do not conflict could be true. The distinction is perhaps best made with a Venn diagram for two simplistic religions. Say one worships water and the other worships fire. The Waterites worship in their way according to what they think the waters demand of them. The water gives them what they need/desire. Not necessarily in the amounts, or at the times, they need/want, but Water provides for them. The Pyrites, not to be confused with Pyritites or pirates, or worse, pyrite stealing pirates, worship fire in their way, and get what they want/need. Again, not necessarily in the degree or time they wish. Each religion could have beliefs about Fire and Water that are true, and both sets of beliefs could be correct. However, either could also hold beliefs that are not true, for instance it is probably true, though I cannot prove it, that neither Fire nor Water cares for human sacrifice. I think any religion of any substantial complexity is in some way in irreconcilable opposition to the others. It comes down to what constitutes a religion. Is Zen a religion, or only a style of practicing a religion. Can Zen practitioners be Muslim or Christian, or Sikh, or Vodunist, or only Buddhist? I would argue that Zen is a philosophy, and that it can be applied to any religion, or to atheism. LDS folk believe in an eternal soul, eternal progression, consequences for actions applying to the individual, an apocalypse or an Armageddon, and a renewal of the earth. This might be analogous to Hindu beliefs of Atman, Samsara, Karma, and the end of days (I can't remember or find the Hindu term). There is no LDS analogy for Moksha, an exit from the cycle, or an end to progression. So, in the large, I think these two can be fairly well reconciled, but in the small, I don't think they can be. I know there are other LDS boaters here, so if you think I've misportrayed something, please let us know. D Everybody know the Pyrites pollute the Earth with their damned machines, particularly those with 4-stroke engines. Pyrites suck, and that's the truth. Power to the Hydrites! ------------- sitting all alone on a mountain by a river that has no end |
Posted By: slickhorn
Date Posted: 14 Jan 2010 at 2:15pm
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Originally posted by chipmaney Truth is a word created by humans, so how can it exist outside human consciousness....you conclusion that truth somehow exists in its own reality is an oxymoron....outside of human consciousness, there is no truth or mendacity, only Being..... Now we are getting somewhere. Yes, the moon orbits the earth whether there are humans here to perceive it or not. But is it true? How can it be, given chip's apt point above? A quote from whatistruth.org.uk: Plato said that we can know truth if we 'sublimate our minds to their original purity'. Arcesilaus said that our understanding is not capable of knowing what truth is. Carneades stated that we can never comprehend truth; and not only that, but even our senses are inadequate in assisting us in the investigation of truth. Gorgias said, 'What is right but what we prove to be right? and what is truth but what we believe to be truth?' ... truth appears to be a hazy concept, or a philosopher's subjective interpretation; or perhaps, very little at all. To me, this is the difference between "is" and "truth" -- "is" simply exists, without judgment of accuracy. "Truth" is a human valuation of the accuracy of something that may or may not be. For example, what is a fact? It might simply be (literally, "it is") or it might be true. ------------- |
Posted By: dblanchard
Date Posted: 14 Jan 2010 at 4:12pm
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chipmany and slickhorn, you both raise good points. Truth is more than just a word though. The word "truth" is used to denote some concept, or some characteristic of being, which exists independent of being called truth or la vérité, or la veracidad, or bull pucky, etc. The moon orbits the earth. Whether we call this a truth or a fact is an issue of semantics, which by no means dismisses the argument, but this characteristic of the moon exists even if we don't call it anything.
If I'd had time last night before my lappy died, I had planned to point out that predicate logic is often used to determine truthfulness, but that even this mathematical language is an artificial construct created by humans, and still relies on observation, or perception. It has been years since I've worked in predicate logic, something along the following lines should prove to be true, given all the current observations of the Universe, and for that matter, the universe also. For all planets Earth in the Universe, there exists some mass, Luna, such that Luna is a satellite of Earth. I've used words here because I don't think the forum supports logical symbols, and I'm too lazy to test whether that is true. I hadn't seen the whatistruth.org.uk site before, but it seems, in places, to confuse truth with morality through relativism. Perhaps James will soon ask "What is morality?" but for the time being I think we can just agree that truth is independent of morality. If someone punches me in the head, whether or not I deserved it, or even if I could possibly deserve it, has nothing to do with the truth of whether I was punched in the head or not. It may have, should have, a lot to do with the reason I was, or wasn't, punched in the head. But, the truth of it is distinct from the morality of it. |
Posted By: slickhorn
Date Posted: 14 Jan 2010 at 4:36pm
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we may have take qp deeper down the rabbit hole than intended, but it is interesting to see where it goes. I'm in over my head with you two, but I'll try for fun anyhow. Perhaps the simplest formulation for all of this is simply: Truth is. I think for myself, I fall fairly firmly into the relativist camp, because while I agree that the moon orbits the earth regardless of what we call that event, I have a hard time calling it "truth" in the sense that it is "truth" in the absence of a perceiver. How can it be truth, if there is no one to know its veracity? The semantics are fairly critical here, to me. But then I'm not one to buy into absolutes, mostly because my reading of history demonstrates so many absolutes later proven ridiculous. Again, the "absoluteness" is a matter of perception, and none of these sematic terms is proper to deal with the reality that the moon orbits the earth whether we know it or are here to see it or not. That is something else altogether, and perhaps this is what Plato's "forms" invoke. To delve into James' question of differing theologies, my relativist self thinks that, in the sense that truth is subjective and a function of personal belief and perception, of course they are both equally true -- to the believer of each faith. Once again, I'm confronted with lacking a way to talk about what is "true" outside the reach of perception or awareness. In any case, given one either has faith, or dies to confirm one's belief, we're not likely to have an answer anytime soon. I think we may be debating differing definitions of the word anyway. Originally posted by water wacko truth - 1. the true or actual state of a matter: He tried to find out the truth. 2. a verified or indisputable fact, proposition, principle, or the like: mathematical truths. 3. actuality or actual existence. 4. an obvious or accepted fact; truism; platitude. 5. ideal or fundamental reality apart from and transcending perceived experience: the basic truths of life. I think I'm referring to 2 and 4, and dblanchard is talking about 3 and 5. 1 is rather vague and could go either way. -b ------------- |
Posted By: dave
Date Posted: 15 Jan 2010 at 10:00pm
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Actually I want to know the truth about James. Is he a kayaker anymore or just a post poser?
------------- Nomad |
Posted By: dave
Date Posted: 15 Jan 2010 at 10:00pm
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Prove me wrong James and go Kayaking with the crew tomorrow.
------------- Nomad |