What is truth ?

Yes, truth pertains to the quality of propositions about the state of things, and reality pertains to that state of things.
(Propositions about reality).

...and "propositions" are verbal and hence social. Which implies that "truth" is not about the status of an "independent reality" (which is never accessible), but about the negotiation of an "agreed reality". The word "true" is synonymous with the word "agreed" even when talking to oneself !

Exactly, and your statement attests to the importance of the concept of culture (an agreed reality).

Culture, all culture, (an agreed reality) is a manufactured system of predictability with emotional significance attached to it. It is a 'script' for living which 'culture' strongly requests (insists) you follow. Culture is about paying homage to what has come before you and expects you to sacrifice your 'living' ('Be'-ing) for it.

There are no predictable patterns for living. All there is is your 'next instant' to 'next instant' 'Be'-ing (absolutely unpredictable). Either you are uncovering your authentic 'self' and expressing your authenticity or you are subjugating your 'freedom to choose' (free will) to culture (tradition). When you subjugate your 'free will', you are choosing in the 'next instant' to have something live your life for you instead of shouldering the burden of uncovering your 'self' in the 'next instant'.

I'm not being stupid here and don't you be stupid either. Culture is bigger and badder than you or I will ever be. In the past, people would join a monastery to be able to think like this and have a safe place to 'be'. 'Culture' would have crucified them for saying this in public. From what I have observed, 'culture' hasn't changed much, it is still killing off those who would think for themselves.

Nobody is saying that your monastery has to have more than one monk.

Good points, Dasein. I havn't thought much about the phenomenon/concept of culture for years, but I do recall some regret over the emphasis in introductory anthropology lectures and textbooks on the sharedness and rather static nature of culture qua tradition.
Culture is, as you say, manufactured, a man-made complex system of understandings and practices (mostly but not completely shared by members of social systems)--I use the term "system" very loosely. All cultures have in them traditions toward which they pay homage in the form of rituals, myths, traditions, sacred values, etc. etc. . But they are much more complex than our Cinco de Mayos and St. Patrick Days. Much of the content referred to as shared understandings are less than conscious. At least we can say that culture exists a various levels of awareness.
And what we tend to forget is that cultures are DYNAMIC systems, always undergoing change, either slowly in the sense of drift or violently in the sense of revolution. The former is characteristic of all actions in daily life, even when people conform they are likely to produce micro-changes in the patterns they are trying to reproduce. And the sharing they presume to enjoy with their neighbors may be not as complete as they assume. Members of a society are continuously "negotiating" the definitions of situations they confront. Revolutions are, of course, less frequent, but it is pretty much why we read Heideggar, Nietzsche, and practice zen meditation. Moreover, we are continuously trying to transcend our cultural prescriptions for thought and action by generating our own original understandings, either in the forms of philosophy, ethics, art, and much else. This is where authenticity is central. The rest of the time we follow prescribed patterns with the support and approval of our neighbors. But I should emphasize that the locus of culture is just much the individuals as it is his society.
But as you remind me "Culture is bigger and badder than you or I will ever be." I see it almost as a soup in which I have been immersed my whole life, a soup of words and letters and ideas--not to mention conditioned feelings. Even our ideals of self-transcendence and authenticity are not totally without social grounding. We are just lucky to have much more freedom for experimentation and self-assertion than during the Middle Ages.
There's so much more to say on the subject isn't there?

You are a much kinder and gentler person when it comes to 'culture'. I view 'culture' as much more insidious. Culture assumes its role as a “false god” and expects you sacrifice your 'Be'-ing for the greater good of culture. Becoming 'immersed in the soup' is exactly what happens. From the moment you were born, the world has been barging in your existence and demanding that you set aside 'you'. “She has his mother's eyes”, “He has his father's chin” were the beginning of the labyrinth we call “culture”. 'Culture' then goes on to say whether you get a pink room or a blue room, etc., etc. 'You', 'Be'-ing, become so infused in the 'soup', you no longer can make the distinction between who you are and the 'soup'. 'Culture' doesn't allow humans, 'Be'-ing to stand away from the crowd and pursue excellence. It is culture's sole purpose to 'level' everything down to 'soup'. It is your purpose in life to uncover who you are and go against that flow with all your might.Notice the words which flowed from your lips without the distinctions being made ever being noticed. “I” is distinct from 'soup'. If you're going to be who you are in this world, you need to yank your ass out of the soup. That is our lot in this life.More like social 'watering-down'. Your 'ideals' are who you are. 'Ideals' is a concept that stops us from getting under 'ideals' to uncover the 'you' that resides there. You couldn't “have” ideals if there wasn't something under the surface reminding you of who you are.Not really. Once you recognize that 'Culture' is replacing 'you', 'Be'-ing, with its expectations of your existence, you may realize that you don't want want play anymore.

Let me leave you with a short story. I told this story to the CEO of a 400-employee company where I was working. Let’s call him John.

I was walking down a long corridor and all of a sudden John and I were walking along side of each other.

I glanced at him and said, “John, did you know that all organizations and social structures, including this company, are like monkeys in a tree?

“Howz zat?”

“Well,” I said, “If you look at the tree you will see monkeys in the top of the tree, monkeys in the middle and lower branches of the tree, and there are monkeys hanging out at the bottom of the tree.”

The monkeys at the bottom of the tree are foraging for food and keeping one eye open for any morsels of food that are dropped. The monkeys at the bottom of the tree try to gain an advantageous position around the tree by pushing each other aside, bullying each other by raising their arms and making loud noises, or fighting for the best position.

The monkeys in the middle of the tree don’t have to forage as much, the food is better, the view is a little bit better, and there’s not as much pushing and shoving.

The monkeys at the top of the tree get first choice of where to forage; they get the best food, have the best view, and instead of pushing and shoving each other, the other monkeys gracefully step aside when they come down out of the tree.

Like the monkeys in the top of the tree when the CEO is looking out from behind the podium he sees smiling faces looking up at him.

I asked John what he thought the monkeys at the bottom of the tree saw when they are looking up.

“What did they see?”

“Sphincters!!”

Culture is nothing more than “Monkey see, monkey do”. It is a game we play to guarantee our survival.

One last thing. I was speaking recently with the owner of a local bike (bicycle) shop and he mentioned something about going back to simpler times. “Simpler times” is you reminding you to get back to 'Be'-ing who you really are. It is not an invitation to go hide in a cave. Returning to 'simpler times' is you calling you back to your authentic 'self'. It is that simple.

Truth is "the will of the strongest". In a court of law the strongest is the one who is more successful in presenting his case.
In religion truth is whatever the authorities say it is, but only to those who accept those authorities as their superior force.
In physics truth, or what some refer to as "what is", is the outcome of negotiations between whichever forces are at play. The strongest force dictates, the weaker adjust.
But for any of this to make sense there has to be perspective. There has to be relationship. What's stronger, stone or water? Water erodes stone, but in turn mountains make rivers... We could ask the question "what is strength", and that is a whole debate all on it's own.
Truth is a tangle...

Dasein, my point about culture is that it is manufactured. It is all that you and I and our ancestors have invented that keeps us from being feral. I'm not saying that it is all good--I'm not equating it with civilization; some of it is bad, but bad only from the perspective of some cultural value. Your Thoreauean individualism is noble, and I hope to share some of it. But I think many of your ideals are characteristic of Western Culture, especially Heidegger's contributions to it. I don't think we will find many of your ideals in some non-western societies.
While some aspects of culture--you might say all, or culture itself--are oppressive, most of it enables you and me to sublimate many of our drives into forms of art not likely in a pre-cultural condition.
Culture is our ever-changing version of Reality. What you seem to be referring to are ideologies (subsets of culture) when you refer to its role as a false god." You and I are presently exercising culture even when we try to "transcend" it.
Aspects of our culture can be seen as either good or bad, but, as I said, always from the perspective of certain cultural values. If anything culture is both artificial (we study its artifacts) and comprehensive (we can't escape it). But cultures are also complex and open-ended. We are free to choose from the many values and rules applying to its complex structure. We are not so grossly programmed to robotically select one value or rule for one situation.
And so on...time for bed.

Negotiation of "truth" is not so much about "winning" as about "what happens next". Its an agreement about the basis of a common contextual purpose.

"Strongest" was perhaps an unfortunate choice of words. I was not thinking in terms of winning, though perhaps my choice of words insinuate it.
Also, I am thinking of truth as a "judgment value", that it relates only to what we know and believe and percieve.

Maybe there is no Truth, but mere perceptions.

Edit [Moderator]: Link removed

You keep you from being feral. The 'invention' doesn't do it to you.It doesn't matter if you don't "find many of your ideals" anywhere, it only matters if you and I choose how we're going to 'show up' in the world we live along side of. I dare say that if you introduced yourself to everybody on the planet, you wouldn't find another person with what you call my ideals. You also wouldn't find another like you. If the truth be known, most of the communication in this world (including this forum)is nothing more than an attempt to get other people to think like us. I'm trying to get you to think like you. Culture is not oppressive. Culture really doesn't exist. What you call "culture" is you agreeing to behave in a predictable way so the people around can find comfort in predicting your actions.Who you are, who you really are, 'transcends' culture and is not affected or determined by culture. You are the one who determines how you 'show up' in this world even if you are turning the responsibility for living over to culture. What I'm saying here is that you have the choice to 'show up' as your authentic 'self' (which 'transcends' the world as we know it) or you can go on being the 'victim' of the world you live along side of.You're right, culture is "bigger and badder" than we'll ever be. However, you can participate in culture without 'Be'-ing an entity overwhelmed by it. You can create a 'clearing' for your authentic 'self' to 'show up' in. You just have to disentangle your 'self' from the labyrinth of deception you identify with. As I said earlier, "Who you are, who you really are, 'transcends' culture and is not affected or determined by culture."You, who you really are, lives along side of this world, however, 'you', who you really are, is not an entity of this world. This is what transcendentalism has been alluding to. The problem is that transcendentalism has turned itself into a 'thing' to believe and has developed it's own culture that defeats the original purpose, which is to uncover 'Be'-ing.

Yes, Dasein, "I" keep me from being feral by using culture. Culture is not the agent of my actions. But this "I" is also a culturally constituted phenomenon. I see you as viewing the self as something entirely independent of its own conditioning, as something that lives along side of (viz.,separate from) its cultural conditioning. I do prefer that bias to the horrendous one of the self qua cultural robot. But what I find wanting in both models is their single-sided exaggeration. I try to see in myself both conditioning and freedom. I pursue better cultural ideas by reading philosophy and literature (and A2K discussions), and I pursue their transcendence by means of daily meditation.
You are right about culture being the means by which societies exist: the means by which people coordinate their actions by becoming reasonably predictable within an unacceptably broad range of physically possible responses to others' behavior (we could not live as societies without the ability to limit such "physically possible" responses).
Culture also permits us to find life meaningful. How can we deny that we live in symbolic worlds of our collective and individual making. Ultimately I agree that we must see into the essential nature of phenomena. That's what mysticism (properly defined) is about. I live as a range of artificial selves--what we call social identities and roles, but there is, I "believe" and to some extent "see" (realize but not perceive) a "true" (transcendent?) Self. This Self is not an "I" (the culturally constituted phenomenon referenced above); It is not self-conscious and it is indescribable. Here I believe we are in (I dare say profound) agreement.
We are cultural beings, but we are potentially more than that.
Viva la Realidad.

It is refreshing to discourse with a person who allows themselves negotiable boundaries instead of boundaries set in stone.Actually, it is the other way around. You keep you from being feral and you use culture to explain your choices. Otherwise you wouldn't use the particular cultural traits you have chosen. Culture doesn't choose you, you choose it.Very good! 'Self' has nothing to do with the world you live along side of. What you may fail to see is that your preferences are 'reminders' of choices you have already made. Those choices happened long before culture appeared on the scene.I suggest that that you don't 'pursue' anything. I suggest you 'remind' your 'self' of who you are through philosophy, literature, and meditation. The cognition of who you are must have already been there for you to be able to re-cognize.Again, I assert that you may have it backwards. You bring meaning to the world. You don't find it there. Culture is the social rituals we engage in which were brought about by people who brought meaning into the world.It would be ridiculously stupid to attempt to deny the existence of something so prevalent. I'm not speaking of denial here. I'm saying that if you stop playing patty-cake with it, it will leave you alone.Seriously, there is no “phenomena with an essential nature that we must see into”. All there is, is you 'Be'-ing. There are no “paths for you to walk”, no “rights” for you to earn, no “hoops” for you to jump through, and no crosses for you to bear. All of this other “stuff” is just the “stuff” we put in the way of 'Be'-ing who we are. You will never jump through enough “hoops” to “earn” the right to be you, (freedom). All that “stuff” has nothing to do with 'you', 'Be'-ing. Like everybody else on the planet, you're just afraid to put it down because you can't predict what will show up in its place.The “more than that” is who you are. The “potentially” is the “not yet” phenomenon we will carry with us until the end of our days. You will never outlive the “not yet” because it is who you are and it will end when you do. The only 'choice' you have is whether you let the “not yet” dictate your existence (inauthentic 'self') or you uncover your authentic “self”.

BTW – I'm not telling you something you don't already know.

Good, we expressed ourselves and listened to each other. I will continue to think about your position. That's what these threads should be about.

Does your lost-love ever 'get' to you?

I know it 'gets' to me all the time, have to say it's the worst 'feeling' I've ever experienced.

truth is a quality of a statement that is not false

Truth is what we believe to be the case.

Truth is what is known, what is known is only known to the one who knows.

The question is whether he knows he knows, or just 'believes' it.

Truth is what you know, you 'believe' what you know when you're afraid of someone else being able to 'call you out' on your lack-of-knowing.