Is truth subjective or objective?

Kyle: Welcome.

You said:

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I firmly believe that the truth is 'something that the majorty agrees upon.' Do you remember the Heliocentric theory. Wasn't that theory deemed a fact. It was even written in the Bible that the Earth was the center of the universe. It was the truth, no lie... until Galelao proves that the Sun is, in fact, in the center. Now we deem that to be "the truth."

I think we have similar views, but there's a confusion here. As Galileo proved, the Earth wasn't the center of the universe...so the Bible, the people of the time, etc., were all wrong. The truth didn't change, just our lowly opinion of the truth.

If we find out in 20 years that there's another planet beyond Pluto that we haven't discovered yet, then this discovery makes the statement "there are only 9 planets" wrong. This hypothetical 10th planet didn't just appear...it was there all along.

Now, that being said, if you're ascribing to the Existential view of the world...I can see where you're coming from. However, as I (and many others) have asserted in the past, there is still an ultimate truth; in the case of the Existentialist: that there's only you.

Welcome again, and I look forward to debating this topic with you.

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Catquas, since your post is so long I only try to respond to a few of your points.
You say: "I think there are many ways to define objectivity. One is that a statement is objectively true if it is possible to prove or provide evidence for it." Of the "many ways" to define objectivity you may have chosen the weakest one. When we PROVE a proposition (and Karl Popper may have something to say about that--he says we can only falsify a proposition) we do so by providing "evidence" for the proposition, by coming up with some datum that convinces you or, as you imply later, (if it is objective truth) it convinces everyone. Are you referring to everyone in the world, ignoring profound cultural variations, or are you just thinking about consensual validation within a population of significant others?
Later, you seem to take a subjectivist position. You say: "how do we know if something is really true or just a creation of our minds? In other words, what is the standard we should use to determine whether something is true? The answer is simple: mine."

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No, I don't think that evidence as defined as something that convinces everyone else. Evidence is logical. You can convince someone using emotion. In that case, different cultures would be different. But there is only one logic. Sure, there are other ways of determining truth, but they are not logic.

I don't think the second part is necessarily subjectivist. I think there is one universal truth - if people have different opinions about what the truth is, one of them is wrong. What I am claiming is that I believe what I believe.

The standard by which I am going to determine what is true is my own. I am not being subjective when I say my standard is the right one. I think it is the right one for everyone to use. That is because I believe what I believe. I am not going to say that I find anyone else's system of equal value or something, because if I did I wouldn't really have trust in my own system. I am not certain my system is right, but I am more sure that it is right, and right for everyone, than I am sure about any other system.

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Catquas, I agree that evidence cannot be illogical. But a logical argument may be logically VALID, (following from a premise which may be true or untrue) but UNTRUE (not reflected in empirical experience). I understand your objection to my characterization of you as a subjectivist. But I do believe that all our efforts are subjective (and intersubjective).
I am left a bit wobbly, however, by your last statement: "I am not certain my system is right, but I am more sure that it is right, and right for everyone, as I am sure about any other system." Is there no contradiction here?

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JLNobody wrote:

Catquas, I agree that evidence cannot be illogical. But a logical argument may be logically VALID, (following from a premise which may be true or untrue) but UNTRUE (not reflected in empirical experience). I understand your objection to my characterization of you as a subjectivist. But I do believe that all our efforts are subjective (and intersubjective).
I am left a bit wobbly, however, by your last statement: "I am not certain my system is right, but I am more sure that it is right, and right for everyone, as I am sure about any other system." Is there no contradiction here?

I agree that it may be untrue, but I still don't see how that has anything to do with culture.

I don't know what you mean by, "I do believe tht all our efforts are subjective (and intersubjective)."

I used a wrong word in my last statement, let me correct it: "I am not certain my system is right, but I am more sure that it is right, and right for everyone, than I am sure about any other system."

In other words, while I am not 100% sure my system of determine what is true actually finds truth, I am more sure that my system works than I am that some other system works. Therefore I believe my system works. And if I believe my system works, then I must believe it works for everyone.

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Quote:

In other words, while I am not 100% sure my system of determine what is true actually finds truth, I am more sure that my system works than I am that some other system works. Therefore I believe my system works. And if I believe my system works, then I must believe it works for everyone.

My Sis and brother-in-law retired from the New Mexico schools and then went to Arizona to teach Native American children on the reservation. At the reservation school at Ganado AZ they had a mixed population of Hopi and Navajo children.

Their policy had always been to give a child praise and a little hug as reward or encouragement It had worked well for them in their 25-years experience as teachers and there was no reason to think it wouldn't work with anybody anywhere.

It did work with the Hopi children who were gregarious and physically affectionate. They found out to their dismay it was hugely upsetting to the Navajo children who were conditioned to be much more private and to view such physical contact as inappropriate and insulting.

With experience comes the realization that with people (also dogs, horses, etc.), the one-size-fits-all concept simply does not work in many, if not most, cases. So I think the expectation that my system works for me and will work for anybody is modified over time. We come to see it not as truth but as probability which is a different thing.

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Foxfrye, very good. If anthropology (and any intercultural effort) has taught us anything it is that behavioral generalizations are tricky and universalizations are very rarely valid. Culture is a critical parameter that is all too often ignored in our effort to generalize about mankind.

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Foxfyre wrote:

They found out to their dismay it was hugely upsetting to the Navajo children who were conditioned to be much more private and to view such physical contact as inappropriate and insulting.

With experience comes the realization that with people (also dogs, horses, etc.), the one-size-fits-all concept simply does not work in many, if not most, cases. So I think the expectation that my system works for me and will work for anybody is modified over time. We come to see it not as truth but as probability which is a different thing.

I don't mean that you should do the same things to everyone. I mean that there is only one truth. It is true that most children like hugs, and it is true that Navajo children don't like hugs. It is true that we should give hugs to most children, and we should not give them to Navajo children.

And probability is truth. I would challenge anyone who was absolutely certain of something. If from my perspective, something is over 50% likely to be true, I believe it. That is truth. There is no way to be 100% sure of anything, so to say that this is a requirement of truth is to say that truth doesn't exist.

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catquas

You have a curious perspective.
It is not far from Xenofanes and the Greek skeptics.
They would say:
1. There is no truth to be know.
2. But, even if that truth existed, we wouldn't be able to know it.
3. And, admitting that by chance, we saw that truth, we wouldn't be able to recognize it as truth.

This is the problem of skeptics: when they say that knowledge of truth is impossible, they sustain a knowledge of truth - the knowledge that knowledge of truth is impossible.

I could accept a definition of truth in the basis of your last reply.

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I will agree with the Greeks that in all probability the absolute truth about much can't be known by us at this time; however, I will not agree that there is no absolute truth about anything; I believe there is an ultimate truth about everything.

To illustrate, I agree with Catquas that it is an absolute truth that there is probability.

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val wrote:

catquas

You have a curious perspective.
It is not far from Xenofanes and the Greek skeptics.
They would say:
1. There is no truth to be know.
2. But, even if that truth existed, we wouldn't be able to know it.
3. And, admitting that by chance, we saw that truth, we wouldn't be able to recognize it as truth.

This is the problem of skeptics: when they say that knowledge of truth is impossible, they sustain a knowledge of truth - the knowledge that knowledge of truth is impossible.

I could accept a definition of truth in the basis of your last reply.

But I would say that there is a truth to be know, that we can know it, and we can recognise it. We just can't be 100% certain. We can't even be 100% certain of what I just said.

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Val, would you call Kant a "contextual skeptic". He says we CAN know about the observable world (phenomena), but that we CANNOT know about the unobservable world of "the thing in itself" (noumena). In one context he's a gnostic; in the other, an agnostic.
I am a skeptic regarding the cognitive understanding of absolute truth. I do not even know what that can possibly mean. I do believe that we can have pre-cognitive, intuitive, immediate awareness-realization-perception of immediate reality--indeed experience is itself reality, which is, I think, why a zen buddhist said "All things enlighten me." To me, "truth" (like illusion) is not a condition of Reality; it is a state of mind or awareness.
By the way, you say that when the skeptics say that knowledge of truth is impossible, they sustain a knowledge of truth - the knowledge that knowledge of truth is impossible." It has been argued that Kant's definition of the noumena as unknowable is wrong, because to know that it is unknowable is to know something about it. We can also note that the noumena or "thing in itself" is known by Kant to possess the property of "thingness" (Nietzsche). But "unknowabilitly" and "thingness" (what's left over when all observable properties are extracted) are very vacuous properties: if they are all that we know about something, that's just as bad as knowing nothing about it.

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Kant stated that the rationalists are right in saying that we can know about things in the world with certainty; and the empiricists are right in saying that such knowledge cannot be limited merely to truths by definition nor can it be provided by experience. In other words, by the limit of our earthly experience, we cannot know all there is to know. He never suggested there is no ultimate truth however.

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catquas

But then, how can you know there is a Truth? If you are never 100% certain, how can you measure the difference?
You see, if you say that you are not 100% certain, that means you know that there is a truth that is 100% true. If not, how could you have known that you didn't reach that truth?

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Nobody

Kant said that he was not a skeptic, altough he admited that he was using the skeptical method.
As you know, Kant sustained that our perceptions can only occur in space and time (dimensions). But we cannot experience space and time.Space and time are conditions of all human experience, but not objects of it.
And because we perceive things in space and time, we have the concepts of multiplicity, singularity, difference, similitary, causality.
Sometimes when I read the Critic of the Pure Reason I start thinking that Kant is describing a "thinking machine" not a living being. Almost if he was showing our "program" or our "software".
But I think that, if we read the Critic in the context of modern science, Kant's basic conclusions are more important today that in his time.

About the "thing in itself", my opinion is that Kant went too far. There is no reason to speak about a thing that is not a fenomena. All that is beyond our experience conditions cannot be known (because we cannot "go out" those experience conditions).

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Foxfyre

I disagree. Kant sustained that we can know about things in the world. The problem is that, by things we must understand fenomena, that means, reality in the conditions of our perception and reasoning. We cannot know what things are beyond those conditions. But within them knowledge is possible. Don't forget that Kant was a man of science, and the Critic of the Pure Reason is an answer to Hume's radical skepticism.
So, truth exists and can be known in the world of fenomena.

But, beyond our experience conditions nothing can be known or said.
Read the 2nd introduction to the Critic and the "Transcendental Dialetic" - the last part - and the "antinomies of reason", where Kant shows that concepts like God, infinity, eternity, since they cannot be objects of experience have no place in philosophy - in fact he was talking about all metaphysics of his time. There is no "pure reason", reason always refer to experience.

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val wrote:

But then, how can you know there is a Truth? If you are never 100% certain, how can you measure the difference?
You see, if you say that you are not 100% certain, that means you know that there is a truth that is 100% true. If not, how could you have known that you didn't reach that truth?

It just means that you are not declaring that you will never change your mind. You are sure enough to act on it, but open to new thoughts on the subject.

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And yet Kant believed in a concept of revelation and he believed in God.

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And yet Kant believed in a concept of revelation and he believed in God.

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Val, I bow to your greater philosophical knowledge. Your last three or four posts are "right on."

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Is truth subjective or objective?

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