Here are some of my beliefs on this matter :

1. All we ever have is beliefs.

2. We [ mostly ] use 'true' to say that we have or share a belief.

3. My belief is how the world is given to me ---reduced to its conceptual aspect, because I can't put the world in its sensual fullness in my talk.

4. The world is only given to individuals who experience it as meaningfully structured (who 'live' in those beliefs as simply the concept-aspect of world for them.)

5. All we can do is try to get better and better beliefs --- get a better 'view' on the one world we share -- often by discussing our beliefs with others to discover biases and inadequacy in those we currently have.

Note that truth doesn't matter. No one sees around their own perspective to some naked reality, because that reality would not be meaningfully/linguistically structured.

Belief is the intelligible structure [conceptual skeleton ] of the world as given to or grasped by a person.

What is truth (and what isn't?)

Is truth everything objective? Or can subjective things such as memories be truth as well?

Does truth have to be factual or could it be (partially) fictional as well? — Kevin Tan

Some think of truth as a predicate. It tells us something about a statement. It's troublesome to say exactly what it tells us because the concept is so basic. It seems you have to use the concept in the process of explaining what it is, so some would say we can just rest there.

For thousands of years, Aristotle's take has expressed what to some is intuitive: that to say that P is true is to say that P is the way things are.

Does truth have to be factual or could it be (partially) fictional as well? — Kevin Tan

A number of writers, Stephen King included, say that you can get closer to truth through fiction than you can by saying something straight out.

"What is truth? Is truth unchanging law? We both have truths. Are mine the same as yours?"

"Pilate crucify him! Crucify him! Remember Caesar, you'll be demoted, you'll be deported, crucify him!"

---

Sorry, the question always makes me think of Jesus Christ Superstar.

Per the question we have a few main options:

Correspondence - a proposition is true if it corresponds to the world. There is some sort of "truthmaker" that makes a statement true. E.g., "Theseus is standing," is true just in case there is a entity called Theseus and he is indeed standing.

Coherence - Truth is the explanation that best fits with all our other beliefs. That is, a proposition adequately explains phenomena and makes sense with everything else we know. Propositions are true when they cohere with our view of the world.

Axiomatic - finding an absolute truth is likely impossible. Truth has to do with propositions, something grasped with thought, often with language. Something is true just in a case it accords with the fundamental axioms we hold to be true. These tend to go along with a deflationary account of truth, where truth is not a property of being, relating to propositions as real abstract entities, but are linguistic or thought phenomena. Truth then relates to our beliefs and their formalization. For something to be absolutely true under this definition requires that there be essential axioms of being; I am not sure this makes sense to posit.

Pragmatism - truth is the end of inquiry. Truth is when the facts of some state of affairs have been so fully explained that we have no need to ask further questions. This doesn't mean we might not have questions in the future based on some later observations, but for now we are content. We can use the pragmatist view in concert with correspondence, axiomatic, and coherence definitions.

I do not totally buy into a deflationary account of truth. However, I do think our epistemology must necessarily be fallibilist (we may always be mistaken, even seemingly secure truths may look different when seen from another light) and circular (we must base our knowledge claims on other knowledge claims, there is no way to build an absolute foundation for knowledge).

I agree with Hegel that "the truth is the whole." There are many ways to explain my car. How it came to be, what it does, what it is for, etc. We could go into the history of the automobile, the natural history of the materials that make up my car, the personal history that led to me owning it. A mechanic, an engineer, a chemist, and a physicist could all give different true answers explaining how my car works. At some point, I won't have time for more information, and pragmatism wins out. No answer will be complete. For example, we can't create an accurate phase space map of my car showing where every last "fundamental" bit might be and what it is doing, and even if we made such a map, no human being has the cognitive capacities to truly fathom all that it says.

But I also think our pragmatic truths evolve through history based on an underlying truth. Does this imply a world of true noumena underlying appearances? I don't think so. This artificially truncates being into subject and object. Rather, truth is built from the ground up in the world. It progresses with our understanding.

Truth is in incoherent concept without the possibility of falsity, so it can not lie behind subjectivity, only above it, as a dialectical fusion of subjectivity and the nature from which it springs.

And a belief is merely a name for a kind of articulated feeling. I feel this sort of way and when I express myself about it this is my belief. I believe this because I feel believe-y about it. It is the same with certainty and knowledge, which are all biological acts of one sort or another, vaguely described.

What is truth (and what isn't?)

Is truth everything objective? Or can subjective things such as memories be truth as well?

Does truth have to be factual or could it be (partially) fictional as well? — Kevin Tan

Truth is that which persists beyond doubt. :grin:

Truth is reality. Reality is what exists regardless of what we believe. When we have beliefs that are not contradicted by reality, we seem concurrent with truth. When reality contradicts our beliefs, we know our beliefs aren't true.

1. All we ever have is beliefs.

2. We [ mostly ] use 'true' to say that we have or share a belief. — plaque flag

I find your approach interesting. I remember someone saying something like truth is subjectivity we share together. I guess that expresses the notion of the often maligned intersubjectivity.

Like many, I don't think we can ever arrive at an Archimedean point - a value free, prefect position of revealed reality.

How do you classify various types of truth claim? I guess truth is an abstraction and isn't a property which looks identical wherever it is said to exist. To say Jesus is the truth is one thing. To say technology via science provides working mobile phones is quite another type of claim.

I find your approach interesting. I remember someone saying something like truth is subjectivity we share together. I guess that expresses the notion of the often maligned intersubjectivity. — Tom Storm

To me it was a huge clarification to move from thinking of consciousness as a private dream-stuff to thinking of consciousness as a view on the world.

Consciousness is just the being of the world which is only given perspectively -- so far as I [can ] know --and I can't make sense of the 'round square' alternatives.

But why isn't it just private dreams ? Seems to me that rational discussion presupposes a shared world, or what are we talking about ?

Like many, I don't think we can ever arrive at an Archimedean point - a value free, prefect position of revealed reality. — Tom Storm

:up:

That tapwater fact that reality is given perspectively seems to imply this. What can we even mean by 'seeing around all perspectives' to get reality 'pure' ? It's like seeing a spatial object from no perspective at all, absurd.

How do you classify various types of truth claim? I guess truth is an abstraction and isn't a property which looks identical wherever it is said to exist. To say Jesus is the truth is one thing. To say technology via science provides working mobile phones is quite another type of claim. — Tom Storm

In my opinion, the cleanest way (ignoring secondary uses) is to think of 'P is true' as equivalent to the assertion of 'P.' Truth mostly gets mystified by those who forget our tapwater mundane perspectival situation. Their beliefs are true of course. And they speak to others in their agreeable peergroup about their 'truths' rather than their beliefs. We hold these truths to be selfevident. Mystification for a good cause. Sounds better than We hold these beliefs to require no justication.

And a belief is merely a name for a kind of articulated feeling. I feel this sort of way and when I express myself about it this is my belief. I believe this because I feel believe-y about it. It is the same with certainty and knowledge, which are all biological acts of one sort or another, vaguely described. — NOS4A2

If it's articulated, it's not just a feeling. If the world is given perspectively, then my beliefs about the world just are the world, for me. I think this claim might be offensive because we are so used to experiencing ourselves as 'we the sane people' who see obvious truths directly and don't therefore merely believe them. But I'm using belief as the meaningstructure of a world given perspectively. I'll readily grant that the world is given in a massive fullness of sensuality and feeling and meaningstructure, so that this meaningstructure, which we can put into words, is related to a kind of trust or feeling.

I'd say also that the world is given in modal intensities. We live in a field of possibility, with relatively solid actuality at its center. Actuality is what we are most certain about, the least blurry part of the world, the most well lit and stable.

Truth is reality. Reality is what exists regardless of what we believe. — Philosophim

How do you know when you are looking at it ?

:grimace:

Shouldn't we have a single, perpetual thread for this question?

@Jamal?

I like to suggest a different view on "What is Truth." Instead of appealing to Platonic Essences, psychologism, or analytical formulations, I like to take a roughly thought-out Naturalistic position. Truth is just a manifestation of the brain's interaction with its environment through language, to put it as general as I can. It is not a property of propositions, sentences, the world, the mind etc... The human brain has the ability to recognize stimuli "as true" because it has evolved over many eons the innate ability to condition itself to respond to environmental stimuli in ways that have proven valuable for the host. The brain recognizes its conditioning in particular ways, which in turn, we get a manifestation of this recognition in language by saying, "that's true." From this recognition, the host may act as it sees fit.

Let's look at the example, "1 + 1 = 2". All of us who have learned mathematics would say, yep this is a true statement. But not because we all have some strange ability to look into the Platonic realm of Ideas and see that it is true. But because we have conditioned ourselves to react to the symbols "as true". A child has no idea before learning mathematic what these symbols mean, but after proper conditioning, the recognition of it "as true" happens.

Could the brain mess-up, of course. Could the brain set-up conditionings that are not useful, of course. And that is what we exactly see in humanity.

The expression "Truth" may be as primitive as the expression "Ouch".

Truth in the context of an axiomatic system is that which follows logically from that system.

Truth is a word that comes straight from the heart of logic. Truth is the result of a logical operation and symbolically represents the realized condition of a thing, event, or concept; tantamount to saying 100% probability. Truth is arrived at through reason (ratio, part, fraction), and comparison of those parts, and is the essence of logic. To speak of truth without resorting to logic is false.

Humans are notoriously bad at processing logic correctly, we are ill equipped due to our present evolutionary larval state as a species. Digital computational systems will be more efficient and effective at this task, and that is where our future with truth lies. Until then human truth will be in a state of controlled confusion.

Hey everyone. Thanks for the many responds! A lot of food for thought. :) Please feel free to keep commenting and responding. In the mean time I will be pondering. :) Blessings to you.

Truth is reality. Reality is what exists regardless of what we believe.
— Philosophim

How do you know when you are looking at it ? — plaque flag

The fact that you are looking at something is truth. That exists despite what you believe.

Naive realism, also known as direct realism, is a philosophy of perception that suggests that our senses provide us with direct and unmediated access to the real world. In other words, it asserts that what we perceive through our senses is how the world truly is, without any need for mental representations or intermediaries.

According to naive realism, when we see, hear, touch, taste, or smell something, we are perceiving the actual objects as they are themselves, and our perception is a faithful representation of the objective reality. This perspective implies that there is a one-to-one correspondence between our sensory experiences and the external objects that cause them.

Challenges to naive realism point out that our perception can be influenced by various factors, such as cognitive processes, cultural and individual differences, and the limitations of our sensory organs. Illusions, hallucinations, and other perceptual phenomena also demonstrate that our senses can sometimes deceive us or misrepresent reality.

As a result of these critiques, critical theories of perception suggest that our sensory experiences are not direct reflections of the external world but rather involve complex processes of interpretation, integration of sensory data, and cognitive filtering. These theories take into account the role of the brain, neural processing, and the mind in shaping our perception of reality ~ adapted from chatgpt response.

I take a correspondence theory of truth, so I would say that truth is a relationship between subject (viz., mind-dependence) and object (viz., mind-independence) such that truth is the uncovering of what is.

As Aristotle put it, to say that which is is or that which is not is not, is true; and to say that which is not is or that which is is not, is false.

Truth, according to this view, is neither purely objective nor subjective, but is absolute.

How do you establish the truth of the correspondence theory of truth?

Some notes gathered from previous interactions on 'issues with correspondence theory of truth'.

According to (correspondence) theory, truth consists in the agreement of our thought with reality. This view ... seems to conform rather closely to our ordinary common sense usage when we speak of truth. The flaws in the definition arise when we ask what is meant by "agreement" or "correspondence" of ideas and objects, beliefs and facts, thought and reality. In order to test the truth of an idea or belief we must presumably compare it with the reality in some sense.

1- In order to make the comparison, we must know what it is that we are comparing, namely, the belief on the one hand and the reality on the other. But if we already know the reality, why do we need to make a comparison? And if we don't know the reality, how can we make a comparison?

2- The making of the comparison is itself a fact about which we have a belief. We have to believe that the belief about the comparison is true. How do we know that our belief in this agreement is "true"? This leads to an infinite regress, leaving us with no assurance of true belief. — Randall, J. & Buchler, J. - Philosophy: An Introduction, p133

Although it seems obvious to say, "Truth is correspondence of thought (belief, proposition) to what is actually the case", such an assertion nevertheless involves a metaphysical assumption - that there is a fact, object, or state of affairs, independent of our knowledge to which our knowledge corresponds.

"How, on your principles, could you know you have a true proposition?" ... or ... "How can you use your definition of truth, it being the correspondence between a judgment and its object, as a criterion of truth? How can you know when such correspondence actually holds?"

I cannot step outside my mind to compare a thought in it with something outside it. — Hospers, J. - An Introduction to Philosophical Analysis, p116.

Truth, it is said, consists in the agreement of cognition with its object. In consequence of this mere nominal definition, my cognition, to count as true, is supposed to agree with its object. Now I can compare the object with my cognition, however, only by cognising it. Hence my cognition is supposed to confirm itself, which is far short of being sufficient for truth. For since the object is outside me, the cognition in me, all I can ever pass judgement on is whether my cognition of the object agrees with my cognition of the object. — Kant, Lectures on Logic

Kant, Lectures on Logic — Quixodian

Gotta be careful here. The nominal definition of truth, indicating merely an example of what may be a truth, is not the same as the logical criteria indicating what truth itself must be. What is true is not the same as what is truth, insofar as the former presupposes the latter. This shouldn’t be, and probably isn’t, the least contentious.

The key here is “compare the object with my cognition”, which makes explicit the object being compared is the perceived object, re: the “object outside me”. On the other hand, the agreement of a cognition with its object, is a product of understanding, for as empirical cognition necessarily follows from the perceived object, it is never of it.

And what of principles, which are necessary truths proven post hoc by but not derivatives of, empirical cognitions?

The problem here is enormous for some monistic metaphysics, re: Leibniz, in that experience alone can never give the answer to what is truth, but logic alone can never give the answer to what is true, and any theoretical doctrine which attempts to dismiss the rational a priori/empirical a posteriori dualism must overcome this problem. Or, typically post-modern, pretend there isn’t one.

Not that important; just sayin’……

I fear replying you to you on occasions, your sophisticated way of expression could make it easy to misunderstand (or rather misstate) what you are saying, but, I will risk it.

Granted, what you point out I think is correct, we have to distinguish what is true, with truth as well as take into account what are the cognitive conditions such that we can establish such a category as "truth" and be somewhat confident it is correct.

What is all quite puzzling here, despite it being trivial as well, is that whatever truth is, is established by us, it's not as if we can measure "the world" with "the world" and say "Aha! Here it is, look at the world corresponding to itself."

Which brings out very complicated questions, why do we choose one specific theory over another one, when both can explain similar phenomena? Why are theories radically under-determined by the evidence, that is, why do we leave so much stuff out? We need to of course; we cannot explain everything in one theory.

But that we are able to establish truth (or an approximation) based on something within ourselves, is, as I said, very trivial (what's the coherent alternative?), but also flabbergasting...

take into account what are the cognitive conditions such that we can establish such a category as "truth" and be somewhat confident it is correct. — Manuel

That’s kinda the whole can of worms, innit? We’re going to bother with establishing a category, calling it “truth”, demand a certainty from it….then only be somewhat confident in it? Nahhhh….I want my truth indisputable, at least at the time I determine it, and from the same system from whence it came. If your truth is better than mine, on the other hand, then I got a whole different set of problems.

But that we are able to establish truth…..is…very trivial — Manuel

Absolutely. We do it all the time without ever granting to ourselves the very power by which it is done. Apparently, we’re satisfied understanding no truth from empirical conditions is at all possible, thereby no truth at all is possible. Which is catastrophic in itself, for in such case, there is no legitimate reason to attribute moral agency to humanity in general.

As for one theory over another….parsimony? Whichever has initial exposure? Whichever has prevalent exposure? And I agree no one theory can explain it all, but…ahem…..there is one theory that lays the groundwork for where to start.

Oh. And thanks for being so kind. Most of the time I get, or most of the time I’m more apt to get, you’re so full of shit there’s no way your eyes can’t be brown. (Chuckles to self…they’re not. Neither of ‘em)

I welcome your learned steerage.

Hello Tom Storm,

How do you establish the truth of the correspondence theory of truth?

One does not, under any theory of truth, establish truth of the theory of truth without any circular logic. I only claim that the evidence is stacked in favor of truth itself as being equivalent with this theory, which, of course, entails that I will interpret the truthity of a proposition via the lens of this theory. This is no different than epistemology: how does one know what it means to know, without divulging in circular logic? They don’t.

I think the realist response to this would be that our perceptions map to the world, that there are morphisms between them and the world. If the world is intelligible and rule-governed then the way in which our sense data comes to us is also intelligible and rule governed. We may not perceive those rules, but we can learn them through tools like the methods of science.

The world seems to be intelligible and behave in a rule-like way, so, barring radical skepticism, it seems fair for us to roll with the idea that studying nature can tell us about how we, as natural beings, come to experience the world. Presumably, our sensations do not spring up acausally, we aren't solipsists, and so there must be morphisms between the set of all our sensations and the states of affairs in the world (and this explains why different minds can agree about facts).

Obviously, our senses are quite fallible. When we stick a stick in water in looks bent, when we draw shapes on a 2D piece of paper a certain way they look three dimensional, etc. However, this doesn't mean we are forced into relativism. We don't think ships actually shrink as they sail further away from us; our friends and family don't cease to exist when we are separated. The entire project of cognitive science is to understand the causal processes at work in our perceptions, while evolutionary biology strives to tell us how we ended up with the sensory systems we have. Together, these paint a picture of how our senses map to the world, a picture verified via many ingenious experiments, the application of statistical techniques, etc.

The rational, the underlying rules that guide nature, the intelligible part of the world, this is our bridge between subject and object. Both subject and object are part of a larger whole governed by general principles.

The weakness I see with some of those quotes is that the seem to fall into the trap of thinking that objectivity = truth. That is, the truth of the world must be what it "looks like" when no one is watching, the view from nowhere/everywhere." It is a mistake to conflate this view with realism writ large. There is no reason to think that objectivity is actually equivalent with truth, nor a prerequisite for attaining it. For example, you can know that "I feel tired," is true without any need to seek an objective frame.

The view from nowhere just seems impossible. "What does an apple look like when it is unseen?" sounds more like a Zen koan then a legitimate question.

Re objectivity:

If we conceive of conceptual structuring as a universal feature of the mind, then there is no threat to objectivity, because questions of objectivity simply cannot arise. Sense organs and the brain do not just register the world. Our minds structure our experience and our thought in fundamental ways. To think that this in itself could compromise objectivity is to imagine that we could think without brains, see without eyes. To the extent to which this is Kant’s point about our perceiving the world only as phenomenal (as it is structured by our minds) and not as it is in itself (as it is in its unstructured form), then this is just to say that we cannot think without minds any more than we can see without eyes. Unmediated perception (and thought) is not objective perception: it is not perception at all...

So that we are not misled into simply associating objectivity and truth, it is worth highlighting one very important difference between them. Whereas truth is absolute and does not come in degrees, objectivity only comes in degrees. The idea of absolute objectivity is a misconception, encouraged by thinking of it as a view from nowhere. If there is no view from nowhere, there is no limiting case where, having progressively become more and more objective, a theory can finally attain absolute objectivity. Objectivity does not become like truth in the limiting case. Indeed, some of the deepest and most persistent problems for understanding objectivity arise when one tries to make it absolute, or at least inadvertently thinks of it in absolutist terms.

What we are seeking to do in imposing standards of objectivity in our judgements in modern science is to identify and separate the informative and the uninformative, with a view to producing reliable results. Objectivity is more mundane than ‘the search for truth’, and it is in its very mundaneness, by contrast with the ‘search for truth’, that its value lies.

Objectivity - A Very Brief Introduction

Basically: "I cannot step outside my mind to compare a thought in it with something outside it," is making the mistake of thinking that objectivity becomes equivalent to truth at the limit. This is an attack on the view from nowhere, not realism.

History is a great example of the falsity of this proposition. Is the truth of World War II something that is best expressed by stripping down the experiences of all those involved to only the elements that can be seen from anywhere? By no means. Personal experiences are all we have access to. They are part of nature and thus part of the truth. "I am unhappy," can be a true statement. The relativist errs by thinking only such radically subjective claims can be true while the positivists erred by thinking only the most objective statements, those boiled down into abstractions, could be true.

I cannot step outside my mind to compare a thought in it with something outside it," is making the mistake of thinking that objectivity becomes equivalent to truth at the limit. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Actually, it's not making the mistake, so much as pointing out the mistake. I think the same can be said with the other passages I mentioned (although of course to really verify that would mean going back and looking at them in context.) I agree with every word in your cited text, but then it does capture the critical Kantian point. (I also note how thoroughly the phrase 'the view from nowhere' has become part of the lexicon, thanks to Thomas Nagel, I think.)

So when you say 'there is no reason to think that objectivity is actually equivalent with truth', then you're articulating the critical attitude, not the attitude of those for whom there is no criterion of truth other than objectivity - that being the naive realist!

And what of principles, which are necessary truths proven post hoc by but not derivatives of, empirical cognitions? — Mww

And where are such principles to be sought? 'Sense organs and the brain do not just register the world. Our minds structure our experience and our thought in fundamental ways’ (op cit). Perhaps correspondence is to be sought when the order of things corresponds with the order of thoughts. Could it be said that that concordance is neither ‘in the mind’ nor ‘in the world’ but ‘in our experience-of-the-world’? Which points towards coherence, rather than correspondence.

That tapwater fact that reality is given perspectively seems to imply this. What can we even mean by 'seeing around all perspectives' to get reality 'pure' ? It's like seeing a spatial object from no perspective at all, absurd. — plaque flag

I agree that seeing something from no perspective is meaningless and absurd. I do find something interesting in the different claim that objectivity is seeing something from every perspective. Now I am not claiming that this the answer to finding an objective perspective, because i am not sure it is. But I think exploring this avenue is somewhat useful and may reveal something.

In another thread I was debating about how a stick that is partial submerged in water appears bent in one direction from a particular perspective. Is the stick actually bent? Well we could move around to the other side of the pool and now the stick appears bent in the other direction. Interesting. We could jump in the pool and look at the stick with one eye out of the water and one eye inside. We could feel the stick with our hands so that we are not only "seeing" with out eyes.

Is it not the case that the person who sees the stick from all those perspectives has in some way a better understanding of the stick than the person who only sees it from one perspective?

Extending this, I put forth the following bit of speculative thinking. If a person were able to see the stick from every possible perspective (humanly impossible I know), then the combination of all those views, is the objective view.

Extending this, I put forth the following bit of speculative thinking. If a person were able to see the stick from every possible perspective (humanly impossible I know), then the combination of all those views, is the objective view. — PhilosophyRunner

That's an enticing frame. It would seem, however that when it comes to a simple object like a stick this could make sense. But how does one apply this to more complex notions of truth in human life - morality, politics, art? Is it possible to see every possible perspective and how does one unify this, or not? How many possible perspectives are there and does truth become meaningless when it is prodigiously multifaceted? Thoughts?

That’s kinda the whole can of worms, innit? We’re going to bother with establishing a category, calling it “truth”, demand a certainty from it….then only be somewhat confident in it? Nahhhh….I want my truth indisputable, at least at the time I determine it, and from the same system from whence it came. If your truth is better than mine, on the other hand, then I got a whole different set of problems. — Mww

I see a problem, because I think Sellar's distinction between the Manifest Image and the Scientific Image to be quite right, yet the truth of a theory in physics, say, general relativity, is quite different from truths given from testimony, say, a witness describing a crime.

I will grant that they must share (the notion or category of truth that is) a resemblance. If there are several witnesses describing the same event, we might very well get different descriptions, how do we determine which one to take a true?

General Relativity is, once established, considerably easier to verify.

So we likely have different cognitive faculties working in different domains of life, with one that overlaps on both of them, the notion of "truth".

Absolutely. We do it all the time without ever granting to ourselves the very power by which it is done. Apparently, we’re satisfied understanding no truth from empirical conditions is at all possible, thereby no truth at all is possible. Which is catastrophic in itself, for in such case, there is no legitimate reason to attribute moral agency to humanity in general. — Mww

Sure, quite a catastrophe, but thankfully we don't go that far (denying truth).

It's obscure to me honestly. Some echoes of hints here and there, but no genuine insight as to how it is done (attain truth), even if we manage to reach it, some of the time.

What do you think of Meno's paradox?:

"If you know what you're looking for, inquiry is unnecessary. If you don't know what you're looking for, inquiry is impossible. Therefore, inquiry is either unnecessary or impossible."