• ovdtogt
    667
    https://owlcation.com/humanities/The-Philosophy-of-Truth

    Science has taken away many of the mysteries that governed our ancestors’ lives. The scientific method is used to solve puzzles. It works this way:

    A question is asked;
    A possible answer is proposed;
    An experiment is set up to test the answer; and,
    The experiment is repeated many times and the results noted.

    Over time, it will emerge that the proposed answer is right or wrong; it is true or false. However, philosophers view truth differently. For them, exact results to questions can’t be delivered through repeated experiments.

    One person’s truth might well be another person’s untruth. What is true today might not be true tomorrow. So, how can we know what is true?

    I believe in everything until it’s disproved. So I believe in fairies, the myths, dragons. It all exists, even if it’s in your mind. Who’s to say that dreams and nightmares aren’t as real as the here and now?
    John Lennon

    Interesting article on the nature of truth, which seems to be a hot topic on this forum.
  • Gus Lamarch
    924
    One person’s truth might well be another person’s untruth. What is true today might not be true tomorrow.ovdtogt

    This phrase describes very well what I though of being the most correct way of perceiving the concept of "Truth" in reality. - Truth is projected only by the individual's belief -.
  • ovdtogt
    667
    "Truth" in reality. - Truth is projected only by the individual's beliefGus Lamarch

    Yes, I would agree with that. In general what we hold to be true is seldom more that a conveniently adopted belief.

    BTW all the above has been copy pasted from the article and are not my ideas. Interesting article you might like to read.
  • Siti
    73

    "The correspondence theory seems to be easy to understand – on the surface. It says that something is true if it corresponds to known facts. So, “Grass is green” is a true statement. But, what if you live on the Arctic tundra or the Sahara Desert? Is grass green if you’ve never seen it?"

    Is that right? "Known" facts? I would have thought that something would be true if it corresponds to facts (known or unknown)...wouldn't it? Or is the article making a statement about what we might be forgiven for believing to be true?

    Anyway, I also think "what is true" is a question of both accuracy AND precision...

    For example, to say "grass is green" is a true (accurate) statement IFF we assume an observer with the ability to distinguish green things, but it is an insufficiently precise statement for the general case (for example where there is no non-colour-blind observer see the "green" grass. A more precise statement would be to say that grass contains chlorophyll which absorbs the relatively higher and lower energy radiation in the visible region of the e-m spectrum so that it appears or would appear "green" to an observer capable of colour perception...(mind you even that might not be true in Japan - or Kentucky).

    Anyway, my point is that "truth" is also a graininess thing - what's "true" on a microscopic, reductionist scientific view, might appear very different if one were adopting a more expansive and holistic vantage point and vice versa.
  • Harry Hindu
    4.9k
    One person’s truth might well be another person’s untruth. What is true today might not be true tomorrow. So, how can we know what is true?ovdtogt
    Were the first two sentences truths? Doesn't it seem strange to use truths to show that we can't know what is true?

    I believe in everything until it’s disproved. So I believe in fairies, the myths, dragons. It all exists, even if it’s in your mind. Who’s to say that dreams and nightmares aren’t as real as the here and now?
    John Lennon
    ovdtogt
    No one is denying that dreams and nightmares exist. They have causal power. They exist. The question is what is the nature of their existence?
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