Fido wrote:Everything is a lie... Every statement is fiction, an approximation, a fabrication... All our concepts are analogy, and all our words are concepts, and the lives we try to live objectively through all of our forms can only be expressed subjectively...
If everything is a lie, then it is a lie about something, right? As also it is a lie because it does not tell the truth about something, right? All you are saying presupposes truth as a concept. If all my concepts are analogy, then they are an analogy to something, which must have a truth. But it is your last sentence that interests me the most: "the lives we try to live objectively through all of our forms can only be expressed subjectively." With that I agree, but it does no harm to the concept of truth. On the contrary, it is a way of correctly understanding that every truth must be true, by understanding that every truth must be a subjective expression of something objective, by which, precisely, it is true, so it must be true in the sense that it must express an objectivity, otherwise it is false.
Truth is a quasi concept, a moral form, a certain meaning objective to all, and subjective seeming to all others.... The best guage of truth is the relationship between the concept and the object... Does blue as a concept really express the blue of sky, or does dog as a concept describe dogs... Forget the emphatic conditions we all try to express which cannot and never will be verified...Consider truth as what a person says, or people say about a verifiable condition of physical reality... To be honest, unless we are so general as to be pointless, repeating common knowledge about Paris, or Quito, -we cannot tell truth.. Even math does not have foundation, so words, given to express the emotions and colors of our lives can hardly be handy at expressing an exact condition... But why is it necessary... If we understand the failure of words to express exact truth, we do not need exact truth, and no statement aimed at truth is final... It is like a blind man's bluff with one person telling another: You are getting colder, or you are getting warmer...
Communication is a dynamic process in which truth has a high priority... No single statement can be expected to stand any objective seeming measure of truth... On the other hand, our concepts, at least of the physical world, true concepts must be true... No concept has ever fully defined the thing in itself, and yet no concept is deliberately false... We need our concepts to tell truth because we use them to communicate an approximation of truth... Yet, people cannot tell truth, and still, truth is a shade that is layered on, one layer over the next until the sense of the reality is communicated... Communication is always truth....
Think of it... What is communication besides truth??? Communication is a form of relationship where one person gives to another a value: truth, that they have, and they think the other person needs.... Truth is a necessity of life, so what evil is it to express a deliberate false hood for some view of self service??? People pay a great deal for the truth in time and treasure... It is not to have, but to share... Truth is currency in the economy of life... It is nonsense to talk of truth as a certain statement made of a certain condition because a single example tells us nothing of the thing, the moral form of truth...
So, in the general sense, truth is what the concept tells of the object; and in the specific sense, truth is a form of relationship in which an essential necessity of life is shared out to those we find worthy, in what ever method we find effective....We do not tell truth, exactly, but share truth, except where our desire is to injury.
Can you please clarify the following for me:
1. "Every truth must be true" is false.
2. "To be true" means "to be a truth" (although perhaps guigus would dispute that).
3. Therefore (from 1 and 2) ""Every truth must be a truth" is false.
4. Therefore "Every truth must be what it is (namely a truth)" is false.
5. Therefore "Everything must be what it is" is false.
6. Therefore "A must be A" is false.
But surely A must be A (i.e. A is necessarily A) by the law of identity? Where has my argument gone wrong?
"Every truth must be either necessarily or contingently true." Discuss.
ACB wrote:
"Every truth must be either necessarily or contingently true." Discuss.
This is just taking "truth" for a non-actual possibility. If truth is a placeholder for truth - rather than truth itself - it is either necessary, in the sense of what it represents being necessarily true, or contingent, in the sense of what it represents being contingent. But if it is taken for an actuality, then it is necessarily true and contingent: necessity refers in this case to the need a truth has of its own truth, which it gets from a contingent state of affairs.
guigus wrote:
ACB wrote:
"Every truth must be either necessarily or contingently true." Discuss.
This is just taking "truth" for a non-actual possibility. If truth is a placeholder for truth - rather than truth itself - it is either necessary, in the sense of what it represents being necessarily true, or contingent, in the sense of what it represents being contingent. But if it is taken for an actuality, then it is necessarily true and contingent: necessity refers in this case to the need a truth has of its own truth, which it gets from a contingent state of affairs.
So there! Anything to say about that, ACB? Especially that truth is a place holder for truth rather than truth itself. A revelation a day!
kennethamy wrote:
guigus wrote:
ACB wrote:
"Every truth must be either necessarily or contingently true." Discuss.
This is just taking "truth" for a non-actual possibility. If truth is a placeholder for truth - rather than truth itself - it is either necessary, in the sense of what it represents being necessarily true, or contingent, in the sense of what it represents being contingent. But if it is taken for an actuality, then it is necessarily true and contingent: necessity refers in this case to the need a truth has of its own truth, which it gets from a contingent state of affairs.
So there! Anything to say about that, ACB? Especially that truth is a place holder for truth rather than truth itself. A revelation a day!
Please pay a little more attention: truth as a placeholder is the way symbolic logic reads the word "truth" in the sentence "every truth must be true." I am not holding that view: I am criticizing it.
guigus wrote:
kennethamy wrote:
guigus wrote:
ACB wrote:
"Every truth must be either necessarily or contingently true." Discuss.
This is just taking "truth" for a non-actual possibility. If truth is a placeholder for truth - rather than truth itself - it is either necessary, in the sense of what it represents being necessarily true, or contingent, in the sense of what it represents being contingent. But if it is taken for an actuality, then it is necessarily true and contingent: necessity refers in this case to the need a truth has of its own truth, which it gets from a contingent state of affairs.
So there! Anything to say about that, ACB? Especially that truth is a place holder for truth rather than truth itself. A revelation a day!
Please pay a little more attention: truth as a placeholder is the way symbolic logic reads the word "truth" in the sentence "every truth must be true." I am not holding that view: I am criticizing it.
It really makes no difference, since it makes absolutely no sense.
"Every truth must be either necessarily or contingently true." Discuss.
I would never say every truth must be true.... As a moral form, the truth does not necessarily have to be true to any reality... If everyone accept the same dogma, then that has the quality of truth because it truth as good, and truth as life are an a'priori definition demands that we always act in a politically expediant manor... No one tells a giant he is stupid... The judgement of stupidity may correspond with the facts, but the result of expressing the truth calls into question the whole classification of truth as a virtue... Galileo may have been correct enough in his assessments of reality, but certainly faulty in his assessment of humanity... People always try to hang onto their power.... That truth, and the truth as a social form deny a simple definition of truth... The truth is a complex game we play where hopefully, everyone ends up with enough truth..
The truth can often seem simple, but as a moral form, truth is life, and it is living people who say what truth is, so any view of truth which costs its owner his life is not truth, but false...
Fido wrote:I would never say every truth must be true.... As a moral form, the truth does not necessarily have to be true to any reality... If everyone accept the same dogma, then that has the quality of truth because it truth as good, and truth as life are an a'priori definition demands that we always act in a politically expediant manor... No one tells a giant he is stupid... The judgement of stupidity may correspond with the facts, but the result of expressing the truth calls into question the whole classification of truth as a virtue... Galileo may have been correct enough in his assessments of reality, but certainly faulty in his assessment of humanity... People always try to hang onto their power.... That truth, and the truth as a social form deny a simple definition of truth... The truth is a complex game we play where hopefully, everyone ends up with enough truth..
Your argument, if you didn't notice, depends on the very notion you are trying to combat: "that truth, and the truth as a social form deny a simple definition of truth." Please notice how "that truth" means exactly the "simple definition of truth" you are challenging. There is no escape: whenever you say something, you are also asserting that what you say is a truth according to that "simple definition of truth." In the case of the giant, you sacrifice one truth (his stupidity) in favor of another truth (he is much stronger than you), and that sacrifice hurts you. If you repute this concept of truth as false, you cannot even formulate that situation anymore.
Fido wrote:The truth can often seem simple, but as a moral form, truth is life, and it is living people who say what truth is, so any view of truth which costs its owner his life is not truth, but false...
So is it false that you will die someday? Or, if a lightning strikes you and you die (sorry, I am not wishing you that), was that lightning false? Unfortunately, truth is not always on our side: sometimes it kills us: if "truth is life" (which seems to me like an advertising of a new soft drink called "truth"), then it is also, and at least as much, death.
guigus wrote:
Fido wrote:I would never say every truth must be true.... As a moral form, the truth does not necessarily have to be true to any reality... If everyone accept the same dogma, then that has the quality of truth because it truth as good, and truth as life are an a'priori definition demands that we always act in a politically expediant manor... No one tells a giant he is stupid... The judgement of stupidity may correspond with the facts, but the result of expressing the truth calls into question the whole classification of truth as a virtue... Galileo may have been correct enough in his assessments of reality, but certainly faulty in his assessment of humanity... People always try to hang onto their power.... That truth, and the truth as a social form deny a simple definition of truth... The truth is a complex game we play where hopefully, everyone ends up with enough truth..
Your argument, if you didn't notice, depends on the very notion you are trying to combat: "that truth, and the truth as a social form deny a simple definition of truth." Please notice how "that truth" means exactly the "simple definition of truth" you are challenging. There is no escape: whenever you say something, you are also asserting that what you say is a truth according to that "simple definition of truth." In the case of the giant, you sacrifice one truth (his stupidity) in favor of another truth (he is much stronger than you), and that sacrifice hurts you. If you repute this concept of truth as false, you cannot even formulate that situation anymore.
I realize that it is a gross simplification of reality to say that truth is a moral form, or that out of such moral forms, social forms are made.... What we can say of every individual thing or moral form is also true and simple, that every form is a form of relationship... This is true of math, true of identities which are forms, or tautologies which are identities which are forms...Instead of asking what is truth -which is a question a person could wittle away at for a life time and not make a dent; Ask: Why is truth???.... Because it is obvious that it is a part of all we do, every success and failure we enjoy or suffer... If I jump on my motor cycle and ride, it is because of truth, for the motor, the transmission, the wheels and everything in between down to the oil and gas has enough truth, enough true understanding of reality in it, representing myriade relationships, calculations, technologies, experiments, and on and on... Just as the motorcycle would not run without truth, the whole society runs on truth, but as a social form, it represents our greatest failings...
Ho Chi Minh once pointed out that the traditional situation vis a vis the West was reversed in Vietnam, that he represented a Western Ideology: Materialism, Communism, and that America was fighting for spiritual values like Freedom, which one usually associates with the East... Do you see the danger of truth, that it puts whole nations in conflict and costs many lives when at the base of it is some notion, some moral form, like freedom... What good is freedom to the dead??? This question aside for a moment, consider: Every example of truth, verbal truth, symbolic truth, mathematical truth, scientific truth, social truth, moral truth, and etc. ought to have some common element to it....And; can we determine what is truth in a moral sense from physical examples, like my Motorcycle??? The common element to truth as I see it is humanity, that we need truth and depend upon truth, and that truth is no less than our lives which would not exist without knowledge, which is truth... But if it is impossible to say with finality that 1+1 is 2, how much more difficult is it to be certain of moral truths out of which social truths are made when these social and moral truths are more dangerous to thought than a viper???
If we can recognize that basically, truth is life, and that is the point where the moral form meets the physical, in our lives; then we can say that truth should not conflict at that point, that moral forms should not kill people, or that people should not kill for moral forms.... We could bicker all day about what truth is in some specific example and not learn anything of truth in the general.... It is in looking at a great number of specifics that a general catagory is found... Taken by itself, an example of lingusitic truth is meaningless... Look at something that actually works as intended and see it as an example of truth in action, living truth, and try to complile every true fact that makes its working possible, and you will discover that the notion of truth is not simple at all, and that even the simple statements I make, of truth being a moral form are so simple as to have no use...
If you look at the Constitution of the United States, and the Declaration of Independence you can see moral forms being made into social forms... It should have been obvious that the whole process had failed when we fought our Civil War over the contradictions embodied there...The constitution states the goals, truths, which it was formed to realize, but they are forgotten... We only have to ask: Does this social form work??? Motors do not work without truth, and neither to social forms... But, realize the danger, because in those moral forms which are beyond proof or substance are the very thing people are inclined to die for or kill over... We all need enough truth to survive... More than is fine, but less than and humanity wilts... That is where we are now, with all of humanity suffering a want of moral truth, unable to control istself or its destiny, striking out in pain and madness, and all because others want to make a monopoly of truth...
So, understand that i know how useless it is to couch truth in such general terms, as a moral form of relationship.... It is just as useless to consider the whole from the perspective of a single disputable example...
So, understand that i know how useless it is to couch truth in such general terms, as a moral form of relationship.... It is just as useless to consider the whole from the perspective of a single disputable example...
Fido wrote:So, understand that i know how useless it is to couch truth in such general terms, as a moral form of relationship.... It is just as useless to consider the whole from the perspective of a single disputable example...
This is why the way of knowing what truth is is by examining its internal structure. And the first step in doing that is recognizing the only thing we already know about it. Which is that, whatever truth is, if any truth were untrue, then it would not be a truth: every truth must be true. This is the first step in the long road that leads us to understand what truth is. And believe me, it is possible. Or, like Obama would say it, "yes we can!" Sorry.
Everybody knows what the truth is, or they could not tell it... They simply do not know all that truth is; nor do we.... My point is, that all relationships and social forms are built out of a view of truth; and in addition, and this goes for all forms; that we do not learn much of the form from a single example, but forms are founded on every example... A single dog with a characteristics of a cat might be enough to mess up every well worn understanding of the formal dog... Considering that our knowledge of reality is pretty thin, so must our sense of truth be thin since truth is knowledge...
