Are Philosophers lost in the clouds?

@guigus,

guigus wrote:

kennethamy wrote:
You misunderstand. I was speculating that what you wrote might have something to do with the op (although that might have just been a wild guess). And I was addressing not you, but the issue of the thread. I hope that clears it up.

Oh, sure, that clears everything up. So let us try something meaningful to you:

1. Let us assume the statement “every truth must be true” means that no truth is contingent, by which it is false as long as there are true contingencies.

2. The statement “every truth must be true” means the same as the statement “every truth must be a truth,” since to be true is the same as to be a truth.

3. The statement “every truth must be a truth” means that every truth must be the same as itself, which is true as long as everything must be the same as itself.

Hence, if the statement “every truth must be true” is false, then it is false that everything must be the same as itself. Could you please show us the way out of this contradiction? And remember: saying it is meaningless does not count as a solution.

Reducing truth to comments on reality really misses the point... We cannot begin to make a true statement of affairs and objects in our existence...If you ran your mouth non stop from birth to death you could not possibly speak the truth if the truth is everything true that might be said... Consider what has been said about the reality of an unconceived or misconceived reality... Well; that is our reality... The best we have with all our forms/ideas/concept/notions is a misconceived reality... We know it in approximation, and by analogy... Of the most basic parts of reality, the atom, new discoveries are being made every day... Does that mean every comment made in regard to the atom is false??? Every comment was a fiction- a way of giving the sense of the thing that could not possibly be given in its entirety, and that is all of our knowledge, and all of our truth, -quasi- truth at best...

If anyone tries to point out how relative truth is to any subject under consideration they leave them selves open for attack because they demean the meaning so many find essential... The rich and the powerful make their wealth and power out of little bits of meaning they steal from the truth every single day; and they are correct, that they do not have to tell the truth since it is all an approximation... It is only that in the approximation of truth that no one should stray too far away from it because considered as an absolute it is a good, and good because it is essential, and to stray from truth is to stray from good, and to deny the essential...

When whole classes making their wealth and keeping their power on a lie see they can demean truth, the temptation from their perspective is to squeeze ever more meaning out of truth until there is nothing left to take... Then the poor are left with nothing of a quality every one needs enough of... When they are forced to find their own version of truth, to give meaning to what was totally demeaned, Which also requires their own remoralization then you can see why so many civilizations have been swept away, and why so few have revitalized themselves with revolution.... Truth is revolution... Truth is revolutionary, and until people can accept the revolutionary and revitalizing aspect of truth, they will not demand it, and they will not slay those who deny it to them...

1 Reply

@guigus,

guigus wrote:

To make things easier:

1. A truth must be true.
2. To be true is the same as to be a truth.
3. A truth must be a truth. (1, 2)
4. A truth is a truth.
5. A truth must be what it is. (3, 4)

Hence, if (1) is false, then (5) is false. However, (5) is an instance of the law of identity.

This is nonsense, and every linguistic definition of truth is... First of all, it is the second intention; and it entirely missess the point of Why humanity cares anything about truth to begin with... To try to understand the class or the catagory with a single example is stupid, and if one were talking about birds, or dogs or fish, then the stupidity of doing so would be obvious... Linguistic truth is one species of a genus... What does all truth have in common??? First, that it cannot be told, captured, expressed, or known... As life, truth is something we all get a version of, and we all need enough of it... Truth is not just the essence of the thing, the relationship of concept to object, but is the essence of our lives as well... Everything humanity does, and all we possess down to the soles of our shoes is built out of truth... Truth as knowledge is the whole of our technology and culture... Aristotle was wrong to reduce truth to a few line of linguistics, what we assert or deny because that is only one facet of our lives and being... But what do you expect from a person, Plato or Aristotle, whose whole life and livelyhood was built upon a lie???

You never begin to grasp what truth is until you think of how many have died for it... Galaleo scared the hell out of the church, but he got lucky compared to the many who were driven from their homes or burned for their version of truth... Why can't the rich and the powerful speak the truth???... Why do they tremble in fear of it??? The truth is not that there are rich and poor people... There is just people, and the lie is that there can be two or more kinds of people... Rich people are not just rich, and poor people not only poor... Each is what each is, suffering their fate because of the relative knowledge each possesses, which is truth, since truth is knowledge... But knowledge in the possession of a single class when it denies to another class one of the essentials of life has become a weapon of war, as it is in all proper wars...

So, try to get the whole picture, what knowledge/truth has been, and will always be to humanity... We can consider truth as an object, just as we can consider life as an object when each is more elusive than sand in an hour glass... Struggle with your concrete examples as idiots have always done, because the limits of truth are always the same as the limits of knowledge... Why not find the upwards limit to the thing rather than the lowest example??? Better yet; conceive if you can, of truth as the whole thing, everything, the whole truth.

3 Replies

@Fido,

Fido wrote:

guigus wrote:

This is nonsense, and every linguistic definition of truth is... First of all, it is the second intention; and it entirely missess the point of Why humanity cares anything about truth to begin with... To try to understand the class or the catagory with a single example is stupid, and if one were talking about birds, or dogs or fish, then the stupidity of doing so would be obvious... Linguistic truth is one species of a genus... What does all truth have in common??? First, that it cannot be told, captured, expressed, or known... As life, truth is something we all get a version of, and we all need enough of it... Truth is not just the essence of the thing, the relationship of concept to object, but is the essence of our lives as well... Everything humanity does, and all we possess down to the soles of our shoes is built out of truth... Truth as knowledge is the whole of our technology and culture... Aristotle was wrong to reduce truth to a few line of linguistics, what we assert or deny because that is only one facet of our lives and being... But what do you expect from a person, Plato or Aristotle, whose whole life and livelyhood was built upon a lie???

You never begin to grasp what truth is until you think of how many have died for it... Galaleo scared the hell out of the church, but he got lucky compared to the many who were driven from their homes or burned for their version of truth... Why can't the rich and the powerful speak the truth???... Why do they tremble in fear of it??? The truth is not that there are rich and poor people... There is just people, and the lie is that there can be two or more kinds of people... Rich people are not just rich, and poor people not only poor... Each is what each is, suffering their fate because of the relative knowledge each possesses, which is truth, since truth is knowledge... But knowledge in the possession of a single class when it denies to another class one of the essentials of life has become a weapon of war, as it is in all proper wars...

So, try to get the whole picture, what knowledge/truth has been, and will always be to humanity... We can consider truth as an object, just as we can consider life as an object when each is more elusive than sand in an hour glass... Struggle with your concrete examples as idiots have always done, because the limits of truth are always the same as the limits of knowledge... Why not find the upwards limit to the thing rather than the lowest example??? Better yet; conceive if you can, of truth as the whole thing, everything, the whole truth.

What is "linguistic truth"? Can we begin with that?

2 Replies

@kennethamy,

kennethamy wrote:

Fido wrote:

guigus wrote:

This is nonsense, and every linguistic definition of truth is... First of all, it is the second intention; and it entirely missess the point of Why humanity cares anything about truth to begin with... To try to understand the class or the catagory with a single example is stupid, and if one were talking about birds, or dogs or fish, then the stupidity of doing so would be obvious... Linguistic truth is one species of a genus... What does all truth have in common??? First, that it cannot be told, captured, expressed, or known... As life, truth is something we all get a version of, and we all need enough of it... Truth is not just the essence of the thing, the relationship of concept to object, but is the essence of our lives as well... Everything humanity does, and all we possess down to the soles of our shoes is built out of truth... Truth as knowledge is the whole of our technology and culture... Aristotle was wrong to reduce truth to a few line of linguistics, what we assert or deny because that is only one facet of our lives and being... But what do you expect from a person, Plato or Aristotle, whose whole life and livelyhood was built upon a lie???

You never begin to grasp what truth is until you think of how many have died for it... Galaleo scared the hell out of the church, but he got lucky compared to the many who were driven from their homes or burned for their version of truth... Why can't the rich and the powerful speak the truth???... Why do they tremble in fear of it??? The truth is not that there are rich and poor people... There is just people, and the lie is that there can be two or more kinds of people... Rich people are not just rich, and poor people not only poor... Each is what each is, suffering their fate because of the relative knowledge each possesses, which is truth, since truth is knowledge... But knowledge in the possession of a single class when it denies to another class one of the essentials of life has become a weapon of war, as it is in all proper wars...

So, try to get the whole picture, what knowledge/truth has been, and will always be to humanity... We can consider truth as an object, just as we can consider life as an object when each is more elusive than sand in an hour glass... Struggle with your concrete examples as idiots have always done, because the limits of truth are always the same as the limits of knowledge... Why not find the upwards limit to the thing rather than the lowest example??? Better yet; conceive if you can, of truth as the whole thing, everything, the whole truth.

What is "linguistic truth"? Can we begin with that?

No; we cannot begin with that... You yourself offered the quotation from Aristotle... I reject it, and he should have rejected it because it was a single example, and one does not get a sense of a genus from a single individual of a single species of anything, let alone truth... You must agree, for example that all Ungulates as a genus have something in common, and some do rather look alike... But, if one were not a scienttist and concerned with the correct catagory, or class, then some of the different element of the genus would go unrecognized for what they are: part of the same general family...

Truth is a family of human qualities, what we say, what we see, what we know, how we conceive of ourselves and of reality, and it is an element of every form and relationship while at the same time being only a moral form... There is no -thing- called truth, no absolute called truth, and no true living genus... Children know truth, and have to learn to lie, and everyone lies only with effort... To ask what is truth is daft, since it is to all obvious.... The proper question under the circumstances is why truth, and why does it matter...

1 Reply

@Fido,

Fido wrote:

kennethamy wrote:

Fido wrote:

guigus wrote:

This is nonsense, and every linguistic definition of truth is... First of all, it is the second intention; and it entirely missess the point of Why humanity cares anything about truth to begin with... To try to understand the class or the catagory with a single example is stupid, and if one were talking about birds, or dogs or fish, then the stupidity of doing so would be obvious... Linguistic truth is one species of a genus... What does all truth have in common??? First, that it cannot be told, captured, expressed, or known... As life, truth is something we all get a version of, and we all need enough of it... Truth is not just the essence of the thing, the relationship of concept to object, but is the essence of our lives as well... Everything humanity does, and all we possess down to the soles of our shoes is built out of truth... Truth as knowledge is the whole of our technology and culture... Aristotle was wrong to reduce truth to a few line of linguistics, what we assert or deny because that is only one facet of our lives and being... But what do you expect from a person, Plato or Aristotle, whose whole life and livelyhood was built upon a lie???

You never begin to grasp what truth is until you think of how many have died for it... Galaleo scared the hell out of the church, but he got lucky compared to the many who were driven from their homes or burned for their version of truth... Why can't the rich and the powerful speak the truth???... Why do they tremble in fear of it??? The truth is not that there are rich and poor people... There is just people, and the lie is that there can be two or more kinds of people... Rich people are not just rich, and poor people not only poor... Each is what each is, suffering their fate because of the relative knowledge each possesses, which is truth, since truth is knowledge... But knowledge in the possession of a single class when it denies to another class one of the essentials of life has become a weapon of war, as it is in all proper wars...

So, try to get the whole picture, what knowledge/truth has been, and will always be to humanity... We can consider truth as an object, just as we can consider life as an object when each is more elusive than sand in an hour glass... Struggle with your concrete examples as idiots have always done, because the limits of truth are always the same as the limits of knowledge... Why not find the upwards limit to the thing rather than the lowest example??? Better yet; conceive if you can, of truth as the whole thing, everything, the whole truth.

What is "linguistic truth"? Can we begin with that?

No; we cannot begin with that... You yourself offered the quotation from Aristotle... I reject it, and he should have rejected it because it was a single example, and one does not get a sense of a genus from a single individual of a single species of anything, let alone truth... You must agree, for example that all Ungulates as a genus have something in common, and some do rather look alike... But, if one were not a scienttist and concerned with the correct catagory, or class, then some of the different element of the genus would go unrecognized for what they are: part of the same general family...

Truth is a family of human qualities, what we say, what we see, what we know, how we conceive of ourselves and of reality, and it is an element of every form and relationship while at the same time being only a moral form... There is no -thing- called truth, no absolute called truth, and no true living genus... Children know truth, and have to learn to lie, and everyone lies only with effort... To ask what is truth is daft, since it is to all obvious.... The proper question under the circumstances is why truth, and why does it matter...

Well, even if we cannot begin with that (why not?) could you please just tell me what "linguistic truth" means? I have never heard the phrase before and I don't know what it means. The concept of truth refers to a property that beliefs ( or statements, or propositions, etc.) have in virtue of which they are true. What kind of property this is clearly needs analysis, but to start with, what Aristotle wrote seems to me exactly right: if, for instance a belief is true, that belief reflects how the world is. Thus, if I believe that there is a cat on the mat, and if that belief is true, then there is a cat on the mat. Now, what I have just done is to give an example of a true belief. I have not, let me emphasize to you, given a definition of "truth". But, what is true is that in order to begin to define the concept of truth, we do need to know what it is we are talking about. And a good way (perhaps the best way) of knowing what we are talking about when we try to define a concept is for us to have examples of the application of that concept. That gives us something to work with. If we are without examples of the the application of the concept, then we are in the world of abstraction, and we will then wonder whether we are even talking about the same thing. And that is why Socrates, who was ultimately after definitions of the concepts he was discussing, invariably began with examples of the use of those examples, the humbler, and the more down to earth, the better. It was not, as you seem to think, that Socrates was substituting examples for definitions. It was rather that he was using examples as an a necessary means to discuss those definitions.The examples were not an end in themselves, but a means to an end. I think you are confused about that. So, in order to get to what it is that "truth" means, we need examples to, as it were, hang our hats on.

Now another thing about which you appear to be confused in this: although it may be true that the notion of truth is not univocal, and that there are several kinds of truth (although not nearly as many as you seem to think there are), each one of those kinds of truth has its own definition. Thus, if the notion of truth is ambiguous, it would be fruitless to search for some unitary meaning which unites the various kinds of truth, for there is no such unitary meaning. As an example consider two meanings of the term,"bank". There is the meaning that refers to a financial institution, and there is, in addition, a separate meaning that refers to the side of a river (a river bank). Now to ask what concept it is that unites these two very different meanings of "bank" is a futile question since there is no such meaning that unites the different meanings of "bank". And, the same is true of "truth".

1 Reply

@Fido,

Fido wrote:

guigus wrote:

To make things easier:

1. A truth must be true.
2. To be true is the same as to be a truth.
3. A truth must be a truth. (1, 2)
4. A truth is a truth.
5. A truth must be what it is. (3, 4)

Hence, if (1) is false, then (5) is false. However, (5) is an instance of the law of identity.

This is nonsense, and every linguistic definition of truth is... First of all, it is the second intention; and it entirely missess the point of Why humanity cares anything about truth to begin with... To try to understand the class or the catagory with a single example is stupid, and if one were talking about birds, or dogs or fish, then the stupidity of doing so would be obvious... Linguistic truth is one species of a genus... What does all truth have in common??? First, that it cannot be told, captured, expressed, or known... As life, truth is something we all get a version of, and we all need enough of it... Truth is not just the essence of the thing, the relationship of concept to object, but is the essence of our lives as well... Everything humanity does, and all we possess down to the soles of our shoes is built out of truth... Truth as knowledge is the whole of our technology and culture... Aristotle was wrong to reduce truth to a few line of linguistics, what we assert or deny because that is only one facet of our lives and being... But what do you expect from a person, Plato or Aristotle, whose whole life and livelyhood was built upon a lie???

You never begin to grasp what truth is until you think of how many have died for it... Galaleo scared the hell out of the church, but he got lucky compared to the many who were driven from their homes or burned for their version of truth... Why can't the rich and the powerful speak the truth???... Why do they tremble in fear of it??? The truth is not that there are rich and poor people... There is just people, and the lie is that there can be two or more kinds of people... Rich people are not just rich, and poor people not only poor... Each is what each is, suffering their fate because of the relative knowledge each possesses, which is truth, since truth is knowledge... But knowledge in the possession of a single class when it denies to another class one of the essentials of life has become a weapon of war, as it is in all proper wars...

So, try to get the whole picture, what knowledge/truth has been, and will always be to humanity... We can consider truth as an object, just as we can consider life as an object when each is more elusive than sand in an hour glass... Struggle with your concrete examples as idiots have always done, because the limits of truth are always the same as the limits of knowledge... Why not find the upwards limit to the thing rather than the lowest example??? Better yet; conceive if you can, of truth as the whole thing, everything, the whole truth.

Please tell me: why only what I say is nonsense, and not what you say? I am very curious about that. Anyway, I would just like to notice that I gave no definition of truth so far. I am just pointing out a contradiction between the falsehood of the statement "every truth must be true" (supposedly a "modal fallacy") and the law of identity. Which, by the way, was olimpicly ignored by you.

0 Replies

@Fido,

Fido wrote:

Reducing truth to comments on reality really misses the point... We cannot begin to make a true statement of affairs and objects in our existence...If you ran your mouth non stop from birth to death you could not possibly speak the truth if the truth is everything true that might be said... Consider what has been said about the reality of an unconceived or misconceived reality... Well; that is our reality... The best we have with all our forms/ideas/concept/notions is a misconceived reality... We know it in approximation, and by analogy... Of the most basic parts of reality, the atom, new discoveries are being made every day... Does that mean every comment made in regard to the atom is false??? Every comment was a fiction- a way of giving the sense of the thing that could not possibly be given in its entirety, and that is all of our knowledge, and all of our truth, -quasi- truth at best...

Your problem is that you cannot free yourself from the absurd idea of a reality that is capable of being true without you. And the worst consequence of this slavery is that you end up destroying truth itself in the name of such an absurdity. It would be better if you gave some concrete answer to the contradiction pointed out in my post http://able2know.org/topic/153710-18#post-4281658, to which so far nobody answered. Is anybody there?

1 Reply

@Fido,

Fido wrote:

guigus wrote:

To make things easier:

1. A truth must be true.
2. To be true is the same as to be a truth.
3. A truth must be a truth. (1, 2)
4. A truth is a truth.
5. A truth must be what it is. (3, 4)

Hence, if (1) is false, then (5) is false. However, (5) is an instance of the law of identity.

This is nonsense, and every linguistic definition of truth is...

Where do you see a "definition" of truth in my post? I see none. There is only a statement about a truth being necessarily true, which is no "definition" of anything, let alone of truth itself. Isn't you that is being nonsensical? Why don't you simply read what I wrote, grasp what I am saying and answer to it? What is so difficult about doing that? Otherwise it will be very difficult to continue. Each one saying that what the other says is "nonsense" is not exactly a productive dialog. Especially when one does not provide a single argument regarding the point made by the other.

0 Replies

@kennethamy,

kennethamy wrote:

What is "linguistic truth"? Can we begin with that?

You could begin by addressing my post http://able2know.org/topic/153710-18#post-4281658, which addresses your own objection that "every truth must be true" is false for being an instance of the "modal fallacy." If it is false that every truth must be true, how can you escape the resulting contradiction?

0 Replies

@kennethamy,

kennethamy wrote:

Fido wrote:

kennethamy wrote:

Fido wrote:

guigus wrote:

This is nonsense, and every linguistic definition of truth is... First of all, it is the second intention; and it entirely missess the point of Why humanity cares anything about truth to begin with... To try to understand the class or the catagory with a single example is stupid, and if one were talking about birds, or dogs or fish, then the stupidity of doing so would be obvious... Linguistic truth is one species of a genus... What does all truth have in common??? First, that it cannot be told, captured, expressed, or known... As life, truth is something we all get a version of, and we all need enough of it... Truth is not just the essence of the thing, the relationship of concept to object, but is the essence of our lives as well... Everything humanity does, and all we possess down to the soles of our shoes is built out of truth... Truth as knowledge is the whole of our technology and culture... Aristotle was wrong to reduce truth to a few line of linguistics, what we assert or deny because that is only one facet of our lives and being... But what do you expect from a person, Plato or Aristotle, whose whole life and livelyhood was built upon a lie???

You never begin to grasp what truth is until you think of how many have died for it... Galaleo scared the hell out of the church, but he got lucky compared to the many who were driven from their homes or burned for their version of truth... Why can't the rich and the powerful speak the truth???... Why do they tremble in fear of it??? The truth is not that there are rich and poor people... There is just people, and the lie is that there can be two or more kinds of people... Rich people are not just rich, and poor people not only poor... Each is what each is, suffering their fate because of the relative knowledge each possesses, which is truth, since truth is knowledge... But knowledge in the possession of a single class when it denies to another class one of the essentials of life has become a weapon of war, as it is in all proper wars...

So, try to get the whole picture, what knowledge/truth has been, and will always be to humanity... We can consider truth as an object, just as we can consider life as an object when each is more elusive than sand in an hour glass... Struggle with your concrete examples as idiots have always done, because the limits of truth are always the same as the limits of knowledge... Why not find the upwards limit to the thing rather than the lowest example??? Better yet; conceive if you can, of truth as the whole thing, everything, the whole truth.

What is "linguistic truth"? Can we begin with that?

No; we cannot begin with that... You yourself offered the quotation from Aristotle... I reject it, and he should have rejected it because it was a single example, and one does not get a sense of a genus from a single individual of a single species of anything, let alone truth... You must agree, for example that all Ungulates as a genus have something in common, and some do rather look alike... But, if one were not a scienttist and concerned with the correct catagory, or class, then some of the different element of the genus would go unrecognized for what they are: part of the same general family...

Truth is a family of human qualities, what we say, what we see, what we know, how we conceive of ourselves and of reality, and it is an element of every form and relationship while at the same time being only a moral form... There is no -thing- called truth, no absolute called truth, and no true living genus... Children know truth, and have to learn to lie, and everyone lies only with effort... To ask what is truth is daft, since it is to all obvious.... The proper question under the circumstances is why truth, and why does it matter...

Well, even if we cannot begin with that (why not?) could you please just tell me what "linguistic truth" means? I have never heard the phrase before and I don't know what it means. The concept of truth refers to a property that beliefs ( or statements, or propositions, etc.) have in virtue of which they are true. What kind of property this is clearly needs analysis, but to start with, what Aristotle wrote seems to me exactly right: if, for instance a belief is true, that belief reflects how the world is. Thus, if I believe that there is a cat on the mat, and if that belief is true, then there is a cat on the mat. Now, what I have just done is to give an example of a true belief. I have not, let me emphasize to you, given a definition of "truth". But, what is true is that in order to begin to define the concept of truth, we do need to know what it is we are talking about. And a good way (perhaps the best way) of knowing what we are talking about when we try to define a concept is for us to have examples of the application of that concept. That gives us something to work with. If we are without examples of the the application of the concept, then we are in the world of abstraction, and we will then wonder whether we are even talking about the same thing. And that is why Socrates, who was ultimately after definitions of the concepts he was discussing, invariably began with examples of the use of those examples, the humbler, and the more down to earth, the better. It was not, as you seem to think, that Socrates was substituting examples for definitions. It was rather that he was using examples as an a necessary means to discuss those definitions.The examples were not an end in themselves, but a means to an end. I think you are confused about that. So, in order to get to what it is that "truth" means, we need examples to, as it were, hang our hats on.

Now another thing about which you appear to be confused in this: although it may be true that the notion of truth is not univocal, and that there are several kinds of truth (although not nearly as many as you seem to think there are), each one of those kinds of truth has its own definition. Thus, if the notion of truth is ambiguous, it would be fruitless to search for some unitary meaning which unites the various kinds of truth, for there is no such unitary meaning. As an example consider two meanings of the term,"bank". There is the meaning that refers to a financial institution, and there is, in addition, a separate meaning that refers to the side of a river (a river bank). Now to ask what concept it is that unites these two very different meanings of "bank" is a futile question since there is no such meaning that unites the different meanings of "bank". And, the same is true of "truth".

I think you are incorrect here... First let me define my term, which would more accurately be rendered rhetorical truth, or semantical truth, but meaning truth conveyed through language... I do not think that is a part of truth when truth is considered as a thing in itself, which of course, it is not, but as though it were an object, and a thing in itself.... As a meaning without being, we can look for elements of truth in language.... It is like the tracks of aa turkey which is an elusive and secretive animal which would prefer to walk were it goes, and flies out of fear or necessity... You do not normally see them before they see you, and in looking for truth we see evidence...

Now; let me unconfuse you... There are no different kinds of truth... As the name suggests, there is one kind of truth, one tuth... What we have is different sorts of evidence of truth, or perspectives on truth... Underlying all is the epistimological questions of how we know, and how we know we know, because what we know is truth, for ignorance is not known but suffered because we are confirmed in it, thinking it is true, and knowledge...

Naturally I look for a single meaning to the word because it is a morphem, a form... It would be stupid to try to attach some prefix to it, like scientific truth, or republican truth... The truth is the truth, and what we have are differning perspectives upon it... Just as with Bank... You really need to buy a good dictionary if you are always going to trot out the dictionary definition every time a dispute arises... The origen of the word is among the Nordic/Germanic peoples, and it refers to a change in elevation whether one is talking about a river or a bank of earth, or counting table... I can tell you without looking that bunk, as in bunk house or bunk bed is closely related, as is the word bench....The place bank gets its name from the table common to all of them upon which money is counted out... It reminds me of the answer of the Irish monk to Charlemange's question of what separate (literally) a wise man from a fool; to which the monk answered: A Table... Today a computer serves the same purpose...

Truth is knowledge, which of course can be expressed by words or numbers... It is also the relationship of the concept to the conceived, and for this reason people of intelligence drift toward Mathematics, since unlike words, numbers are a true concept, where the one of reality is abstracted to the one of math... Here you can see the problem with language: Since every word is a concept, an identity, to verify the truth of any statement one must compare so many subjective senses of things with the things, if that is possible... If we say: The Sky is Blue, suddenly we are struck by the ambiguity of language, and of the inability of language to suggest ontological objectivity... Would it be better to say: The sky is blue to me, subjectively, which we could truthfully say??? It is that -to me- subjective quality of language and truth which makes truth seem so impossible to reach...So, instead we should look to the common factor in all truth... Truth is truth whatever it is in any situation because it is essential to our well being... Truth as knowledge is the sinequanon of life... Truth is not many meaningss, but is experienced by all differently...The truth is a single meaning which we cannot reach by simplistic definitions and a few odd examples...

0 Replies

@guigus,

guigus wrote:

Fido wrote:
Reducing truth to comments on reality really misses the point... We cannot begin to make a true statement of affairs and objects in our existence...If you ran your mouth non stop from birth to death you could not possibly speak the truth if the truth is everything true that might be said... Consider what has been said about the reality of an unconceived or misconceived reality... Well; that is our reality... The best we have with all our forms/ideas/concept/notions is a misconceived reality... We know it in approximation, and by analogy... Of the most basic parts of reality, the atom, new discoveries are being made every day... Does that mean every comment made in regard to the atom is false??? Every comment was a fiction- a way of giving the sense of the thing that could not possibly be given in its entirety, and that is all of our knowledge, and all of our truth, -quasi- truth at best...

Your problem is that you cannot free yourself from the absurd idea of a reality that is capable of being true without you. And the worst consequence of this slavery is that you end up destroying truth itself in the name of such an absurdity. It would be better if you gave some concrete answer to the contradiction pointed out in my post http://able2know.org/topic/153710-18#post-4281658, to which so far nobody answered. Is anybody there?

I will concede that my reality is nothing without me, since through forms like truth, reality is made real, that is, given the meaning of reality until such time as i die, when it will mean nothing... But until I die, I too am material, and real, and the reality of my life, my meaning is share with all of you as the truth of truth and the meaning of meanings... Well, my life is highly dependent upon knowledge which is truth, and yours is too... If you want to deny what ontology has established, then be my guest...I am not suggesting we should not question reality... I know reality only because it is so obvious that I do not need to... My life is real, and it hurts... Master kicked the **** out of me last night, and out of respect, I let him...

It is not reality that is true... Reality is real... What is true is our concept of reality, if it is true...And since all our concepts, even moral forms express a certain truth of reality, they also serve to express truth by language, as we see it, subjectively...

3 Replies

@Fido,

Fido wrote:

I will concede that my reality is nothing without me, since through forms like truth, reality is made real, that is, given the meaning of reality until such time as i die, when it will mean nothing... But until I die, I too am material, and real, and the reality of my life, my meaning is share with all of you as the truth of truth and the meaning of meanings... Well, my life is highly dependent upon knowledge which is truth, and yours is too... If you want to deny what ontology has established, then be my guest...I am not suggesting we should not question reality... I know reality only because it is so obvious that I do not need to... My life is real, and it hurts... Master kicked the **** out of me last night, and out of respect, I let him...

It is not reality that is true... Reality is real... What is true is our concept of reality, if it is true...And since all our concepts, even moral forms express a certain truth of reality, they also serve to express truth by language, as we see it, subjectively...

Sorry, but from now on I will ignore what you say until you stop ignoring what I say. So could you please address my post http://able2know.org/topic/153710-18#post-4281658? It was:

1. A truth must be true.
2. To be true is the same as to be a truth.
3. A truth must be a truth. (1, 2)
4. A truth is a truth.
5. A truth must be what it is. (3, 4)

Hence, if (1) is false, then (5) is false. However, (5) is an instance of the law of identity. Now a few questions:

1. Do you recognize that as a contradiction?
2. If not, where (in which step of that reasoning) is the mistake?

1 Reply

@Fido,

Fido wrote:

It is not reality that is true... Reality is real... What is true is our concept of reality, if it is true...And since all our concepts, even moral forms express a certain truth of reality, they also serve to express truth by language, as we see it, subjectively...

Perhaps I can help you to address my post. You said "it is not reality that is true," but what is true is our concept of reality. But you finished by saying that those concepts "also serve to express truth by language, as we see it, subjectively." That is, our concepts, which were, according to you, "what is true," in the end only "serve to express truth [...] as we see it, subjectively." You begin by saying that truth is in our concepts, and finish by saying that it is in what we see, which we can only "express." You start by giving truth entirely to our concepts, and finish by taking it entirely from them and giving it entirely to what "we see," that is, to the objectivity we see "subjectively." Whatever you assert as true must have a truth. However, when you go saying what precisely that truth happens to be you start saying something else, which not only does not provide a truth to what you said before, but also makes it false. Now take the statement "every truth must be true." It says precisely that if you say something, and if it is to be true, then it must have a truth, whatever a truth is and whatever you happen to be saying. So the statement "every truth must be true" is neither a tautology nor a falsehood, and the following reasoning shows that its being a falsehood contradicts the law of identity:

1. A truth must be true.
2. To be true is the same as to be a truth.
3. A truth must be a truth. (1, 2)
4. A truth is a truth.
5. A truth must be what it is. (3, 4)

If you assume (1) is false, then (5) becomes false too. That five-step reasoning does not pretend do say what truth is: it is meant only to show that "every truth must be true" being false contradicts the law of identity.

0 Replies

@Fido,

Fido wrote:

It is not reality that is true... Reality is real... What is true is our concept of reality, if it is true...And since all our concepts, even moral forms express a certain truth of reality, they also serve to express truth by language, as we see it, subjectively...

If you consider carefully the above, you just gave the way out of that contradiction: as concepts "also serve to express truth by language, as we see it, subjectively," and if they are also themselves "what is true," then truth is in both sides, which is the full meaning of the statement "every truth must be true." Our concepts, as truths, must "express truth by language, as we see it, subjectively," otherwise they cease to be truths. It is this "two-faced" nature of truth that is difficult to grasp or, for some, to accept: truth is neither only here nor only there, and not even in between - truth is here by expressing what is there, and it simply does not exist without expressing what is there.

0 Replies

@guigus,

guigus wrote:

1. A truth must be true.
2. To be true is the same as to be a truth.
3. A truth must be a truth. (1, 2)
4. A truth is a truth.
5. A truth must be what it is. (3, 4)

Hence, if (1) is false, then (5) is false. However, (5) is an instance of the law of identity.

Further to your above argument (which was also mine):

It could perhaps be argued that "must be" in (3) is ambiguous. If it is regarded as equivalent to the "must be" in "A dog must be a dog", i.e. as signifying the necessity of identity, then (3) is correct. However, if "must be a truth" is taken to mean "is a necessary truth", then (3) is obviously false, since not all truths are necessary.

One has to bear in mind that "X must be...." and "It must be that X is...." are used interchangeably in everyday English, but they have distinct meanings in logic.

2 Replies

@ACB,

ACB wrote:

guigus wrote:
1. A truth must be true.
2. To be true is the same as to be a truth.
3. A truth must be a truth. (1, 2)
4. A truth is a truth.
5. A truth must be what it is. (3, 4)

Hence, if (1) is false, then (5) is false. However, (5) is an instance of the law of identity.

Further to your above argument (which was also mine):

It could perhaps be argued that "must be" in (3) is ambiguous. If it is regarded as equivalent to the "must be" in "A dog must be a dog", i.e. as signifying the necessity of identity, then (3) is correct. However, if "must be a truth" is taken to mean "is a necessary truth", then (3) is obviously false, since not all truths are necessary.

One has to bear in mind that "X must be...." and "It must be that X is...." are used interchangeably in everyday English, but they have distinct meanings in logic.

There are two kinds of ambiguity. 1. semantic ambiguity. 2. syntactic ambiguity. A sentence if semantically ambiguous when the source of the ambiguity is the meaning of a word or phrase in the sentence. Here is an example: "Florence is going to the bank" Since the word, "bank" is ambiguous (financial institution or side of the river) we do not know just from the sentence alone where Florence is going. Now here is an example of syntactic ambiguity. "Florence sat next to the old men and women". That sentence may mean either that Florence sat next to the old men and old women, or it may mean that Florence sat next to old men, and women of any age at all (not necessarily old women). The ambiguity does not stem from any particular word or phrase in the sentence bu from the structure of the entire sentence. More technically, it stems from the scope of the adjective, "old". Does the scope of "old" range over "women" as well as over "men", or does it range over only "men". It is not the term "old" that is ambiguous, for it means the same on both constructions. It is the scope of the adjective "old" that causes the ambiguity.

Now, if we turn to the sentence at issue, "All truths must be true", we have an ambiguity. But it is not the term "must" that is ambiguous. It is not a semantic ambiguity. Instead, it is a syntactic (structural) ambiguity of the entire sentence. And here the issue is once more "scopic". What is the scope of the term "must"? Is the range of that scope over the entire sentence, thus: "It must be that all truths are true"? Or, is the scope of "must" more narrow, and does it range only over a part of the sentence, thus: "All truths must be true"? Depending on this question of the scope of "must" depends whether the sentence is true or false. If the scope of "must" ranges over the entire sentence, then the sentence is true. If the scope of "must" is more limited, and ranges only over part of the sentence, then the sentence is false. As it stands, the sentence is ambiguous.

But talking about ambiguity to someone who has no idea of the importance of language to philosophical questions is like talking to a congenitally blind person about the color scarlet. In fact, worse.

2 Replies

@ACB,

ACB wrote:

guigus wrote:
1. A truth must be true.
2. To be true is the same as to be a truth.
3. A truth must be a truth. (1, 2)
4. A truth is a truth.
5. A truth must be what it is. (3, 4)

Hence, if (1) is false, then (5) is false. However, (5) is an instance of the law of identity.

Further to your above argument (which was also mine):

It could perhaps be argued that "must be" in (3) is ambiguous. If it is regarded as equivalent to the "must be" in "A dog must be a dog", i.e. as signifying the necessity of identity, then (3) is correct. However, if "must be a truth" is taken to mean "is a necessary truth", then (3) is obviously false, since not all truths are necessary.

One has to bear in mind that "X must be...." and "It must be that X is...." are used interchangeably in everyday English, but they have distinct meanings in logic.

You are missing a third meaning, which is the meaning I have been referring to since the beginning of this discussion. Let me show you the three possible meanings of the sentence "every truth must be true":

1) It possibly means that every truth object is necessarily true, that is, that whatever a truth refers to is in itself necessarily true. It is like if a true statement were already whatever it refers to.
2) It possibly means that every truth is necessarily what it is, namely, a truth. It is like if a truth were only a statement without referring to anything.
3) It possibly means that every subjective truth, like a true statement, necessarily corresponds to an objective truth, by referring to which it is true.

The two first meanings are compatible with symbolic logic, while the third is not, since symbolic logic reduces the subjective dimension of truth to its objective dimension by fusing them into a symbol.

1 Reply

@kennethamy,

kennethamy wrote:

ACB wrote:

guigus wrote:
1. A truth must be true.
2. To be true is the same as to be a truth.
3. A truth must be a truth. (1, 2)
4. A truth is a truth.
5. A truth must be what it is. (3, 4)

Hence, if (1) is false, then (5) is false. However, (5) is an instance of the law of identity.

Further to your above argument (which was also mine):

It could perhaps be argued that "must be" in (3) is ambiguous. If it is regarded as equivalent to the "must be" in "A dog must be a dog", i.e. as signifying the necessity of identity, then (3) is correct. However, if "must be a truth" is taken to mean "is a necessary truth", then (3) is obviously false, since not all truths are necessary.

One has to bear in mind that "X must be...." and "It must be that X is...." are used interchangeably in everyday English, but they have distinct meanings in logic.

There are two kinds of ambiguity. 1. semantic ambiguity. 2. syntactic ambiguity. A sentence if semantically ambiguous when the source of the ambiguity is the meaning of a word or phrase in the sentence. Here is an example: "Florence is going to the bank" Since the word, "bank" is ambiguous (financial institution or side of the river) we do not know just from the sentence alone where Florence is going. Now here is an example of syntactic ambiguity. "Florence sat next to the old men and women". That sentence may mean either that Florence sat next to the old men and old women, or it may mean that Florence sat next to old men, and women of any age at all (not necessarily old women). The ambiguity does not stem from any particular word or phrase in the sentence bu from the structure of the entire sentence. More technically, it stems from the scope of the adjective, "old". Does the scope of "old" range over "women" as well as over "men", or does it range over only "men". It is not the term "old" that is ambiguous, for it means the same on both constructions. It is the scope of the adjective "old" that causes the ambiguity.

Now, if we turn to the sentence at issue, "All truths must be true", we have an ambiguity. But it is not the term "must" that is ambiguous. It is not a semantic ambiguity. Instead, it is a syntactic (structural) ambiguity of the entire sentence. And here the issue is once more "scopic". What is the scope of the term "must"? Is the range of that scope over the entire sentence, thus: "It must be that all truths are true"? Or, is the scope of "must" more narrow, and does it range only over a part of the sentence, thus: "All truths must be true"? Depending on this question of the scope of "must" depends whether the sentence is true or false. If the scope of "must" ranges over the entire sentence, then the sentence is true. If the scope of "must" is more limited, and ranges only over part of the sentence, then the sentence is false. As it stands, the sentence is ambiguous.

But talking about ambiguity to someone who has no idea of the importance of language to philosophical questions is like talking to a congenitally blind person about the color scarlet. In fact, worse.

The ambiguity of the sentence "every truth must be true" is a problem of symbolic logic, not mine: the difference in how I read that sentence and how you do it has nothing to do with syntactic ambiguity, it has to do with the meaning of the word "truth," as I already explained again and again. To symbolic logic "truth" means a statement reduced to a symbol, hence to the state of affairs it represents: a symbol is an object, by which symbolic logic alienates truth from its own (of symbolic logic and of truth - ambiguity can be your friend) subjectivity. Hence the ambiguity: symbolic logic simply cannot decide if truth is just objective or just subjective, since 1) it cannot see the difference and 2) truth is neither just one nor just the other. To me "truth" means a subjective truth as much as it refers to an objective one: if you deny (as I already know you do) the subjective dimension of truth, just pay attention to the "refers" part. It takes something to refer to objectivity, in which you will find subjectivity. So, once again, to see the third meaning of "every truth must be true," which you have ignored so far, you must go beyond your dear symbolic logic and accept that it does not hold the final philosophical truth, which for you is very hard indeed.

0 Replies

@kennethamy,

kennethamy wrote:

But talking about ambiguity to someone who has no idea of the importance of language to philosophical questions is like talking to a congenitally blind person about the color scarlet. In fact, worse.

For someone who hates ambiguity you seem surprisingly sympathetic to it.

2 Replies

@guigus,

guigus wrote:

kennethamy wrote:
But talking about ambiguity to someone who has no idea of the importance of language to philosophical questions is like talking to a congenitally blind person about the color scarlet. In fact, worse.

For someone who hates ambiguity you seem surprisingly sympathetic to it.

More hit-and-run philosophy. You make a quick attack, don't explain it, and run away. What ambiguity are you talking about, supposing you are talking about anything at all.

Actually, ambiguity has its place, for instance in poetry. Just not in philosophy.

Why don't you try arguing about an issue, and even thinking about it, rather than just lashing out mindlessly?

1 Reply

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