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A question about truth

fortune

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Has any noted philosopher ever offered a proof that "truth" exists?
 
I like "There are truths which are not for all men, nor for all times."
 
Yeah...simple..."Things that aren't untrue."
 
real truth cannot be subjective. It is always objective, or it isn't truth.

What you see depends on where you stand. You can have different observers offer their own objective observations and yet they will still tend to contradict each other. It's called the Rashomon effect after the famous Kurosawa film.
 
thank you gentlemen... has been fun to read so far
 
What you see depends on where you stand. You can have different observers offer their own objective observations and yet they will still tend to contradict each other. It's called the Rashomon effect after the famous Kurosawa film.
That is correct but it does not mean they are observing truth, just different perspectives. In that case (where you stand) they may observe partial truth. To observe the entire truth they would have to view it from all possible angles. Like the story of viewing the elephant.
 
That is correct but it does not mean they are observing truth, just different perspectives. In that case (where you stand) they may observe partial truth. To observe the entire truth they would have to view it from all possible angles. Like the story of viewing the elephant.

But the ability to observe anything from all different angles is beyond human capacity. You can collate different eyewitness testimony from the same period in time, but even then you will find contradictions. Even if you're doing your observations in a scientific laboratory, the observer effect still has to be accounted for.

At the end of the day, we have to acknowledge there are no certainties in existence... it's all just varying levels of probability.
 
But the ability to observe anything from all different angles is beyond human capacity. You can collate different eyewitness testimony from the same period in time, but even then you will find contradictions. Even if you're doing your observations in a scientific laboratory, the observer effect still has to be accounted for.

At the end of the day, we have to acknowledge there are no certainties in existence... it's all just varying levels of probability.
Exactly. The "truth" is exceedingly difficult to discover. Mostly all we have is probability. And even when we do think we've discovered "truth", later we will find that we were mistaken. Accepting that fact of life is a humbling experience. It makes us simply smart monkeys. If there is a God, the irony is he made us just intelligent enough to realize truth is out there somewhere, but not intelligent enough to grasp it. God has a sense of humor. He's toying with us. But to the intellectually honest, it means we know that we do not know. That is a powerful incentive. Frustrating, but powerful.
 
This about sums it up for me. Some unknown scribe from the 19th century London slums wrote it I believe.

Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
 
Has any noted philosopher ever offered a proof that "truth" exists?

No. In fact, they have often pointed out how we may never really be able to get it. Such philosophers range from Kant (with his idea that we can never know the "thing-in-itself"), to Hume (with his idea of "mitigated skepticism"), to Nietzsche ("there is no truth, only interpretation"), to the current crop of postmodernists.

But so what? As Richard Rorty, the American neo-pragmatist has said, "what is the use of truth?".


How would we know once and for all that what we have is the ultimate truth? That would mean there could never be any other new observation, or new model, or new way of doing things, that would make us question it anymore. That sort of mindset is a surefire path to stagnation, closed-mindedness, and stagnation. We may be better off stopping talk of "truth", and talking about verification instead. It shifts the focus from the end result to the METHOD being used to make claims. That is how science works: no truth is ultimate in science. There are no sacred truths. The only thing sacred in science is the METHOD.

This neo-pragmatism mindset agrees with the postmodernists and Nietzsche that what we call truth is largely based on interpretation and can never escape our own current personal or community subjectivity. We can never get out from behind our own eyes and ears and see ultimate truth once and for all through what the philosopher Hilary Putnam calls a "God's-eye-view".

But following John Dewey's classical pragmatist mindset, these neopragmatists will argue that this is no license for complete nihilism or relativistic despair because some interpretations work much better in practice than others: they jibe well with the rest of our contingent web of beliefs, they empower us and allow us to do more, build more useful things, create more happiness and allow us to fulfill more of our potential as both individuals and societies, etc...

This is, after all, how science works, and it has been hugely successful. But no matter how good a model scientists have these days, and no matter how many mountains of evidence they have for a certain theory, they will blush if anyone calls their latest models and theories "ultimate truth". They always realize, rather humbly, that there can always be new observations, new more clever models, etc... which can come along and force them to rethink what they currently claim. This humility in science is not just a limitation, but rather ironically, is the foundation of its strength: because it always keeps their eyes and minds open to newer observations and models, and keeps them from sinking into closed-mindedness, and it is what keeps science so dynamic and quickly-growing.

In the next post, I will quote Richard Feynman, Nobel laureate in physics, on the importance of this sort of open-mindedness and humility. It seems to be the best compromise between the worst nihilism/despair of postmodernism and the narrow minded dogmatism of religion. But before that, I will quote the late Richard Rorty:

"As long as we try to project from the relative and conditioned to the absolute and unconditioned, we shall keep the pendulum swinging between dogmatism and skepticism. The only way to stop this increasingly tiresome pendulum swing is to change our conception of what philosophy is good for. But that is not something which will be accomplished by a few neat arguments. It will be accomplished, if it ever is, by a long, slow process of cultural change - that is to say, of change in common sense, changes in the intuitions available for being pumped up by philosophical arguments."
-Richard Rorty
 
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Richard Feynman on a scientist's delicate balance between skepticism and claims to knowledge:


Richard Feynman - Wikiquote
  • The scientist has a lot of experience with ignorance and doubt and uncertainty, and this experience is of very great importance, I think. When a scientist doesn’t know the answer to a problem, he is ignorant. When he has a hunch as to what the result is, he is uncertain. And when he is pretty darn sure of what the result is going to be, he is still in some doubt. We have found it of paramount importance that in order to progress we must recognize our ignorance and leave room for doubt. Scientific knowledge is a body of statements of varying degrees of certainty — some most unsure, some nearly sure, but none absolutely certain.
    Now, we scientists are used to this, and we take it for granted that it is perfectly consistent to be unsure, that it is possible to live and not know. But I don’t know whether everyone realizes this is true. Our freedom to doubt was born out of a struggle against authority in the early days of science. It was a very deep and strong struggle: permit us to question — to doubt — to not be sure. I think that it is important that we do not forget this struggle and thus perhaps lose what we have gained.
  • If we take everything into account — not only what the ancients knew, but all of what we know today that they didn't know — then I think that we must frankly admit that we do not know.
But, in admitting this, we have probably found the open channel.This is not a new idea; this is the idea of the age of reason. This is the philosophy that guided the men who made the democracy that we live under. The idea that no one really knew how to run a government led to the idea that we should arrange a system by which new ideas could be developed, tried out, and tossed out if necessary, with more new ideas brought in — a trial and error system.This method was a result of the fact that science was already showing itself to be a successful venture at the end of the eighteenth century. Even then it was clear to socially minded people that the openness of possibilities was an opportunity, and that doubt and discussion were essential to progress into the unknown. If we want to solve a problem that we have never solved before, we must leave the door to the unknown ajar.
  • We are at the very beginning of time for the human race. It is not unreasonable that we grapple with problems. But there are tens of thousands of years in the future. Our responsibility is to do what we can, learn what we can, improve the solutions, and pass them on.
    ...It is our responsibility to leave the people of the future a free hand. In the impetuous youth of humanity, we can make grave errors that can stunt our growth for a long time. This we will do if we say we have the answers now, so young and ignorant as we are. If we suppress all discussion, all criticism, proclaiming "This is the answer, my friends; man is saved!" we will doom humanity for a long time to the chains of authority, confined to the limits of our present imagination. It has been done so many times before.
    ...It is our responsibility as scientists, knowing the great progress which comes from a satisfactory philosophy of ignorance, the great progress which is the fruit of freedom of thought, to proclaim the value of this freedom; to teach how doubt is not to be feared but welcomed and discussed; and to demand this freedom as our duty to all coming generations.
 
Has any noted philosopher ever offered a proof that "truth" exists?

Depends on how far down the rabbit hole you're comfortable with.

Since reality is only received to us individually through the filter of our brains, and we don't understand the brain very well, it's all suspect in theory.

We could be 16 layers into a simulation, like an episode of Rick and Morty.

I find it quickly gets tiresome, and since no one can prove much I say pick the "truth" that suits you.

It doesn't matter in the slightest. That's the truth.
 
Define truth
 
real truth cannot be subjective. It is always objective, or it isn't truth.
How would you know you have achieved this real objective truth, and what you have is again not just your latest subjective understanding of it? People have tacked on that label of "objective truth" to all sorts of crazy things that later just turned out to be their latest, contingent, subjective understanding/misunderstanding/misperception. We may do better to get rid of appeals to "objective truth", and talk of "verification" instead.
 
How would you know you have achieved this real objective truth, and what you have is again not just your latest subjective understanding of it? People have tacked on that label of "objective truth" to all sorts of crazy things that later just turned out to be their latest, contingent, subjective understanding/misunderstanding/misperception. We may do better to get rid of appeals to "objective truth", and talk of "verification" instead.
You could never be sure, because reality changes. But in a practical way the idea of objective proof is useful as a comparison to subjective truth. It keeps reminding us that our "truths" are subjective, and therefore not truths at all. Like the old comparison; can beauty exist without ugliness? Probably not, because the concept of beauty is always a comparison. So any time we think we've bumped up against truth, we need to ask if this is real truth,(objective), or just our version of truth (subjective). Then we can laugh at ourselves for being so arrogant.
 
Exactly. The "truth" is exceedingly difficult to discover. Mostly all we have is probability. And even when we do think we've discovered "truth", later we will find that we were mistaken. Accepting that fact of life is a humbling experience. It makes us simply smart monkeys. If there is a God, the irony is he made us just intelligent enough to realize truth is out there somewhere, but not intelligent enough to grasp it. God has a sense of humor. He's toying with us. But to the intellectually honest, it means we know that we do not know. That is a powerful incentive. Frustrating, but powerful.

I don't know if there's any "toying"... the way I figure it, the fabric of the universe is the way it is.... our only choice is to accept that reality and try to understand it more fully... or to deny reality and pretend it's actually something we're more comfortable accepting. But either way - whatever we decide - it sure as hell isn't going to change the fabric of the universe, is it?
 
real truth cannot be subjective. It is always objective, or it isn't truth.
I suspect any truth that exists could be considered boring. It would just be physical phenomena

The rest is just interpretation
 
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