Truth and Belief

@Billy phil,

Billy wrote:

Some have higher standards for establishing truth. Suppose she says: I love you very much. It isn't you, it's me. I'm not leaving you because I don't love you, it's just that I need my freedom.

Do we accept it as truth because she said it? If you define love behaviorally (hugs me, feeds me, hangs on my every word when I speak), you can determine the truth of the statement.

If we define in the deeper, inner meaning the word love generally connotes, we cannot. We cannot prove inner states.

My neighbor never gets angry, and insists there is no such thing.
Another neighbor has never experienced GOD, and insists there is no such thing.
Another neighbor has never experienced alien abduction, and insists there is no such thing.
And a cynical neighbor has never experienced love, and insists there is no such thing. Can you prove him wrong?

Quito is the capital of Ecuador, and Germany is in Europe are generally accepted truths, and they are demonstrable. Even if we were to speculate, we could soon confirm the truth of these statements.

We use words like axiomatic, established fact, etc, for generally accepted truths which, hopefully you believe. we use words like speculate, hypothesize, etc for yet-to-be-proven truths.

I can set high standards for establishing whether a person is tall. The standard I set for whether a person is tall is that the person has to be at least 10 feet tall. By that standard no living person is tall. But, so what? If my wife tells me she hates me, seeks to divorce me, and failing that, tries to have me murdered, I think it is reasonable to explain her behavior by the hypothesis that she hates me. Don't you? Or, if a person has just had his arm torn off by a machine he is working on, and is screaming, it is reasonable to explain his behavior by the hypothesis that he is in pain. Don't you think so?

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@Aristoddler,

No one has ever chosen to believe anything. All belief is involuntary

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@Swiven,

Swiven wrote:

No one has ever chosen to believe anything. All belief is involuntary

Exactly.

Belief is the recognition that something is true, and we cannot consciously make something true.

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@Swiven,

Plato,

reality is truth,

all knowledge is less than a definitive account of reality,

therefore, to know truth is impossible,

knowledge is a more or less justified account of reality - never entirely justified.

belief is the consequence of this inadequacy.

iconoclast.

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@de Silentio,

Since only thinking beings have beliefs, it seems simple enough to distinguish the difference.

Truth constitutes all that actually is, has ever been, or ever will be.

Belief is simply what is thought about truth. Sometimes it is true; sometimes it is not.

1 Reply

@beyond123,

beyond123 wrote:

Truth constitutes all that actually is, has ever been, or ever will be.

This is circular.

1 Reply

@Mr Fight the Power,

So?

And since existence is infinite and eternal, please explain, to yourself.

1 Reply

@beyond123,

How do we know that existence is infinite? I mean sure, the matter we are made of endures, and then matter can be turned into energy. But then what is existence essentially? We are bound to something more intrinsic that is eternal but form isn't.

1 Reply

@Holiday20310401,

i already said: "
Since only thinking beings have beliefs, it seems simple enough to distinguish the difference.
Truth constitutes all that actually is, has ever been, or ever will be.
Belief is simply what is thought about truth. Sometimes it is true; sometimes it is not."

that should explain how i know anything that i think.

simply put, i do not. but since an absolute nothing can not exist, space must be infinite.

how do i know that an absolute nothing can not exist?

since something dose exist, and since something could not arise from an absolute nothing, something must exist everwhere.

1 Reply

@beyond123,

beyond123,

Quote:

Belief is simply what is thought about truth. Sometimes it is true; sometimes it is not."

I don't agree.

Because truth is reality - (and reality the only truth) and because all formulations of knowledge are expressed in language that identifies - and thus seperates an aspect of reality from the whole, all formulations of knowledge are less than truth.

Belief is what's thought about a formaulation of knowledge - that because of it's derivitive character must be less that true.

Therefore all belief is false.

p.s. the logic you apply to 'know' that nothing cannot exist is the logic of the existing universe. ultimately the argument is cause and effect - but cause and effect require time and space in which to occur. Time - allowing for a before/after temporal-logic framework, only came into being at the big bang. 'before that' there was no before, because time itself did not exist.

this is just another way in which our understanding is ill-equipped to yeild truth in the non-trivial, absolute sense.

iconoclast.

2 Replies

@iconoclast,

iconoclast wrote:

beyond123,

Therefore all belief is false.

iconoclast.

Even my belief that iconoclast wrote the post I am answering? Then who did write it?

1 Reply

@kennethamy,

The established belief that that the speed of light is a constant 186,000 miles per second, may or may not be true.

The established belief that the big bang exploded from a basketball-size ball of light that instantly arose from absolute nothing, may or may not be true.

I see it as more likely that neither are true, nor are any of the calculations that are based upon them true.

But that is irrelevant here.

My only point is that what ever actually is, of course, is true; and a belief thereof may represent that truth or it may not.

1 Reply

@beyond123,

kennethamy,

'iconoclast' is some letters strung together to make a word, an avatar for a person of another name who contributes to a philosophy site, but even his real name is not who he is - which is a far more complex conscious bio-physical reality, and even that is to identify him as an individual, seperate from the physical reality he is in and made up of.

thus, the relation between 'iconoclast' and the fact of these letters appearing on your screen is quite distant - the vast majority of it assumed in your belief:

Quote:

that iconoclast wrote the post I am answering

the point is, it's as true to say that stardust is the cause of these letters appearing on your screen - it's just a different path through the infinite library of information that is reality.

iconoclast - or stardust!

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@iconoclast,

beyond123,

You can never measure anything precisely.

You can never define anything - and any attempt to do so abstracts that aspect of reality from the whole.

If you can never measure anything, or define anything precisely you cannot 'carve nature at the joints' - but impose subjective categorizations upon the object, like a child drawing a big black line round everything they paint.

Quote:

My only point is that what ever actually is, of course, is true; and a belief thereof may represent that truth or it may not.

The problem is one of representation - knowledge cannot represent reality, and cannot therefore be true.

iconoclast.

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@iconoclast,

While humans may never truly know with absolute certainty if any of their beliefs are true or not true

What actually is, of course, is true

And if one of their beliefs truly represents, or even just reflects, what actually is, then that belief is necessarily true, even if all humans still do not know with absolute certainty that it is indeed true.

1 Reply

@beyond123,

beyond123,

That sounds about right. I think the problem is not with human knowledge as such - we have a pretty good understanding of things, but with the concept 'truth' - it's too ill-defined to be entirely uselful in this sort of philosophical discussion. Maybe we need some new terms.

iconoclast.

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@iconoclast,

Truly, I believe that truth is an idea, not reality, except in that, as an idea, it is a part of reality, just like ping pong paddles, the theory of calculus, the city of Calcutta or anything existent. In other words, there is no truth. Therefore, belief is the same as "truth"; all supposed truths are beliefs renamed as such and given prominence for some reason. Of course, I cannot relly object to this renaming; semantics are arbitrary, but I think you can understand my point.

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@iconoclast,

iconoclast wrote:

beyond123,

That sounds about right. I think the problem is not with human knowledge as such - we have a pretty good understanding of things, but with the concept 'truth' - it's too ill-defined to be entirely uselful in this sort of philosophical discussion. Maybe we need some new terms.

iconoclast.

Aristotle wrote:

To say of what is that it is, and to say of what is not, that it is not is to say what is true.

That seems to be pretty good, don't you think?

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@de Silentio,

de Silentio wrote:

Plato was deeply concerned with the difference between belief and truth.

What are some of your thoughts?

Truth should be based upon knowledge. Knowledge is factual.
Belief is not knowledgeable. Religion for example is not knowledgeable because it is not factual. Unless someone can back that up but I doubt it. What I've never understood is that there are millions of people who are religious but they think that the belief in god is a fact. How can it be when there is no knowledgeable proof to that.Therefore religion is a belief and why are we so concerned about the belief in god when it isn't knowledgeable. Nobody could claim that the belief in god is logical because logic has to be based upon facts.Religion just isn't

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@iconoclast,

wow!

am i the only one getting lost here?

1 Reply

Truth and Belief

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