Truth is a choice

@Cyracuz,

Thanks for sharing I will follow you around and see what I learn from you and others that interact with you! Smile

0 Replies

@Cyracuz,

Cyracuz wrote:

Even if you are forced to take someones life in defense of you own, it is my opinion that the experience will cause you suffering later in your life. I hold this to be true, but I cannot give any empirical facts or logical arguments to support it. It is true simply because I want it to be, because my experience, which also includes my observing and listening to others, seems to indicate that it is so.

But I wouldn't say that all information is correct. If I inform you that water boils at 10 degrees celcius in the atmospheric pressure of sea level, that is not correct information. It is a false claim. Or perhaps the two concepts are interchangable. That is not immediately clear to me.

But even if you are right, and killing in self-defense always causes the self-defender suffering, that does not show that it isn't better to kill in self-defense than to die yourself, does it? You had better want it to be true that if confronted with killing in self-defense or being killed yourself, that it would be better to die than to kill. I mean as long as you think that something is true because you want it to be true, you had better stick that one in too. Just wanting it to be true that you will suffer if you kill another in self-defense is not going to do the trick. Well, come to think of it, I suppose you can say that if you want it to do the trick it will do the trick. So, I guess you win anyway. In fact, you can short circuit the whole business and just say that since you want to win the argument, you do win the argument. Why don't you just try that? Then we need not even have the discussion at all. But I wonder, what happens it you want something to be true, and if the other person want what you want to be true to be false? I suppose you can just say that you want it to be true that he does not want what you want to be true to be false. And, you've got him! Congratulations! You have found the magic formula. It is, "I want to be right, and I want all opposing views to be wrong: Therefore, I am right, and they are wrong". Wow! They ought to try that at the General Assembly at the UN. In fact, I think they got there first.

1 Reply

@kennethamy,

Quote:

But even if you are right, and killing in self-defense always causes the self-defender suffering, that does not show that it isn't better to kill in self-defense than to die yourself, does it?

No. But that isn't even implied in the statement. It was never meant to show that, and if you see it there is something wrong with how you are looking. And that is not an attempt to insult you. If you scroll up to the last post I addressed to Reasoning Logic, it contains an explanation of what I mean.

0 Replies

@Cyracuz,

Cyracuz wrote:

I have not given an argument. You did, and your second premise, where did that come from? But you have created a fallacious argument that you can play with.

Please read your own post to see where I picked up the second premise.

Cyracuz wrote:

I said that I hold it to be true that killing another human being does psychological damage to me, making it harder for me to be happy in life.

But how do you know this? Have you ever killed someone? There very well may be a probability that you will in fact not suffer any psychological damage, and that you will be happy regardless of killing an individual.

It all depends on the field I suppose.

Cyracuz wrote:

I believe it is true because of the experience shared by those who have killed people. I have heard many say that it is not an experience you should seek out. I have heard none say that it is something that will make you a better human being. At least, none that I would considere good role models.

But what about the others who do think that it will make you a better person/role model? What about others who say that it is indeed an experience you should seek? I am sure there are people of that sort out there. How we would we then determine whether or not what you believe is true and what they believe is true if it is based on belief?

1 Reply

@Ding an Sich,

Quote:

But what about the others who do think that it will make you a better person/role model? What about others who say that it is indeed an experience you should seek? I am sure there are people of that sort out there. How we would we then determine whether or not what you believe is true and what they believe is true if it is based on belief?

By social negotiation. That is what I have been saying.
When there are no facts to directly determine the truth value, and when it cannot be done by means of logical argumentation, truth is negotiated by all who are affected by the issue at hand.

This is not to say that factual and logical truths are subject to the same negotiation. I have made no assertation either way on that point.

1 Reply

@Cyracuz,

In all aspects of life, fact and belief together decide what is truth. Fact independently confirms belief in finding it true or false, as much as belief independently confirms fact, in finding it good or bad. Truth as a true or false belief, is conditioned by truth as a good or bad fact. Belief confirms fact to be good from a more mystical source than fact confirms belief to be true from the state of affairs. That is not as much our and our ancestors' choice, at it is how any social unit constructively recollects all that their ancestors passed on to them, man and woman, for social unity.

1 Reply

@RonCdeWeijze,

Quote:

That is not as much our and our ancestors' choice, at it is how any social unit constructively recollects all that their ancestors passed on to them, man and woman, for social unity.

I object to your assertion that "constructively" is a given. That is an observation made without the understanding of the chosing that takes place continuously and which is the function by which new truths are named by combining old truths with new facts. But the process istelf isn't guaranteed to guide you through it in the most beneficial way that is possible. Since you are the one who has to decide for yourself what is the most beneficial, the choice lies with you. And with all who share the predicament. And between all these individuals the truth is decided by negotiation

1 Reply

@Cyracuz,

Construction is given by the fact, independently confirming or rejecting the belief, conditioning that belief into a construct. Choice is no more than seeking that confirmation until it is found and can be followed.

1 Reply

@RonCdeWeijze,

I am not sure I understand what you are saying here.

My objection to your statement is that if something is done constructively, that is, with the intention of improvement or advancement, we are faced with the issue of deciding what constitutes "constructive". Since a fact alone cannot show us how this knowledge can benefit us the most it seems to me that there is an arbitrary aspect to this if you want to rely on concepts like good or bad.

1 Reply

@Cyracuz,

Cyracuz wrote:

Quote:
But what about the others who do think that it will make you a better person/role model? What about others who say that it is indeed an experience you should seek? I am sure there are people of that sort out there. How we would we then determine whether or not what you believe is true and what they believe is true if it is based on belief?

By social negotiation. That is what I have been saying.
When there are no facts to directly determine the truth value, and when it cannot be done by means of logical argumentation, truth is negotiated by all who are affected by the issue at hand.

This is not to say that factual and logical truths are subject to the same negotiation. I have made no assertation either way on that point.

But say we have a society, X, that has come to an agreement on the statement, "Y society is inferior and must be destroyed." They claim, by noegotiation, that the statement is true. Then they proceed to destroy society Y. Does society Y have any say in this?

Then again, I am not really into ethical propositions saying much of anything; in fact, nothing at all. But I suppose that's what happens when you are a nihilist.

1 Reply

@Ding an Sich,

Yes, Y has a say in it. Negotiation isn't always friendly.

In the scenario you present, history would reflect what took place once it was all done, and whoever survived the conflict would be the writers of history.

That the nazis were evil and had to be stopped is only true because we were successful in stopping them.

0 Replies

@Cyracuz,

How knowledge can benefit us the most, comes after the fact; otherwise, we are not convinced. We hold on to that knowledge because it gets more and more conditioned into our thoughts. The fact of reality makes us feel that and then we know what we feel (realize). Then, the feeling that we have learned something and know it, or sensing that we know something (intuit), can lead us into certain behavior, covertly or overtly. I call that constructive recollection.

1 Reply

@RonCdeWeijze,

Thanks for the clarification.

But are you saying that the understanding of how to best use any particular piece of knowledge to benefit us comes automatically upon absorbing this knowledge? I do not know that I can agree with that. What constitutes beneficial is often, if not always, arbitrairy.

If you are saying that we cannot make this judgment until after the fact is presented, however, that may be true.

But few facts of science are known to us because we stumbled upon them. The undertaking of scientific inquiry to find new facts is guided by what the scientists chose to work on. Einsteins choice to work with physics led to general and special relativity. It led to tons of things that we see as beneficial, but also to things that are clearly not, things that may threaten to wipe us all out.

1 Reply

@Cyracuz,

Thanks for a fascinating rally.

No, I believe we do not absorb the knowledge but have a new node in our intuition independently confirmed by reality, as it is and where it is located.

0 Replies

@Cyracuz,

Cyracuz wrote:

In all aspects of life where fact alone does not satisfy the coherency of percpetion, belief is what decides what is truth.

And in all such aspects, truth is strictly a matter of choice. Ours and our ancestors' choice.

Does anyone care to dispute this claim?

I partially agree with your statment. Belief only decides personal truth and perceived truth. It, however, has no affect on absolute truth. Everything in this world is based on either our belief's and perceptions, or the belief's and perceptions of someone else. Because of this, we will never be able to actually grasp what the absolute truth is.

1 Reply

@Chights47,

Absolute truth is a belief, an ideal. Nothing is absolutely true without reservation or modification.

2 Replies

@Cyracuz,

Does "modification" modifies what it was in what it was ? Well there you have it...

1 Reply

@Fil Albuquerque,

First off, truth is an attribute of information. But there is no information that is absolutely true, meaning that it can be said simply so that there is no need to specify further or make amendments to the initial statement.

2 Replies

@Cyracuz,

Cyracuz wrote:

First off, truth is an attribute of information. But there is no information that is absolutely true, meaning that it can be said simply so that there is no need to specify further or make amendments to the initial statement.

But you see...Information is all that (absolutely) is...

1 Reply

@Fil Albuquerque,

Sometimes, if you skip from one conceptual level to another, it is easy to make errors and arrive at misconceptions.

2 Replies

Truth is a choice

Related Topics

Quick Links

My Account

able2know