Is truth subjective or objective?

Foxfyre....the description of Plato's cave is
very literary.

the 'truth' while it does not exist, is both!



the truth, while it does not exist, is 'emotion' (prevaricated from wisdom), the arena of 'art'!

I agree with BoGoWo. The truth is not something existing "out there" in the world independent of human intentions and purposes. Before the emergence of our species there was nothing in the world that can be called "truth." Things happened in particular ways, reflecting what we call the "laws" of nature. This I would call "reality" and in our lives it represents the constraints we see in our everyday lives. My dead grandmother will not bake me cookies anymore, and that is an irrefutable and unchangeable condition of my reality. But my grandmother's death is not a "truth"; It's a reality. A truth is always a theoretical proposition at a fairly high level of abstraction. It is more than just a description of realities, like I saw my grandmother lowered into her grave. "Deadness" and "grandmother" are cultural/theoretical constructs. We know that about death; we even have a thread on the problematical issue of death. Indeed, as I said before facts are little theories and knowledge is a function of the knower. I recall discussions about societies with unilineal kinships systems. In a patrilineal system the "grandmother" has role relations (rights and duties) with a "grandchild" much different than would the "grandmother" in a matrilineal system (These unilineal systems consider an individual's kinship to be with people EITHER on the father's side of the family (patrilineality) OR the mother's side (matrilineality). It's far more complex and a product of cultural constructions than it would seem when we say "grandmother" as if it were a simple brute fact.

Maybe the truth is sooo subjective, we have to dig inside ourselves to find that truth. A little surrendering of the ego, and see it better. It's certainly an easier task to take on, than seeking an objective truth.....perhaps at the end, everyone will find it's pretty similar, ...or not
By truth, I am trying to explore the potentials in a concept, of the human condition.
Not truth, like the 'authentic nature' of something or anything like that....maybe they are the same, I am not sure.

Hmm, don't know about that one. We could interpret the truth subjectively, but the conclusion of it should be objective. Of course, that's like saying it's easier to believe in a subjective truth than an objective one, but they aren't necessarily the same. We used to have theoretical concepts of what is and what isn't, but because we are subjective and didn't realize other factors, it's not the same as reality. That's what happened to the ideal gas equation--they didn't consider the actual volume of the gas particles and the intermolecular forces, until Van der Waal came by. Objective truth would seem to be an absolute, while we're using subjective truth to find it because as imperfect human beings, that's the only way we can do it.

If truth is not objective, then what is?

When something is affected by absolutely no bias but only the facts, what do we have but objectivity?

100% agree SCoates. The problem comes in recognizing when that absolute has been reached.

I thought that was already answered--reality. But then again, as Oscar Wilde says, "The truth is rarely pure and never simple." I took this to mean the objective truth because humans are too subjective. The unbiased facts are there, it's only thinking that makes it so. It's because are minds always have to go, "but what about this, and what about that", and because it interferes with what's there, we tend to distort it, sometimes unintentionally. That's not to say it's a complete and totally disastrous flaw, since we often go on to new discoveries and other things, but it loses focus.

The concept of an 'objective truth' was concieved by humans after all.... our subjectivity is part of that objective truth, isn't it? Since we know, we'll never be able to have real objective knowledge of anything,.... I thought, surrendering one's subjectivity, is the way to get even close to it....hence looking inward.

The absolute can't be reached because it is infinite. There's an infinite amount of knowledge that's around, but we haven't found all of it, and we never will.

How would one wrap it up, in a couple of lines [conceptually]? something we are trying to guess? What is it like, if the 'human' component is removed from the experience, by using data we have been exposed to so far?

That doesn't sound natural, for some reason.

I don't know how you would attempt to remove the human component from experience because that part of it makes it an experience, but experience is subjective. The data is there, of course, but observing it and thinking about it makes it subjective because by observing something, we are experiencing it and using our own minds to interpret it. Of course we've been exposed to it, just that we haven't measured it. We see reactions happening all around us, yet if we don't measure it or consider it, we wouldn't know about it. If we did, it would be a subjective interpretation, but as much as possible, we would try to consider objectively, otherwise our conclusions wouldn't be logical. I'm not too sure why you think it sounds unatural.

Lucifer: I disagree that
There's only a finite amount of knowledge in the universe, even though that amount is gargantuan. We as humans might not be around long enough to know everything, but that doesn't mean there's an infinite amount of knowledge. once we dissect the laws of nature, and learn the intricacies of the human body in detail, there's only so much left to see, and what there is to see won't be more than a new example of an old paradigm.

Are you sure? Things can be infinitesmally small--so small that you don't know the details going on at that level. That's why you can't "accurately" measure a certain quantity (ie, distance with a ruler) because if you tried, your measurement would be off by maybe a nanometer. Of course, it doesn't stop there; the units get even smaller, and smaller from here.

Does it not seem that the concepts "objective" and "subjective" are subjective, and that this is an objective fact in the world?

I have thought that JLNobody, but I think I had a high fever at the time.

I honestly believe there is an absolute truth re anything. Take any object or entity--a man, a dog, a sparrow, a flower, a rock--at some point everything that can be known about the sparrow (or other) with all the history, prehistory, evolution, actualities, possibilities, nuances, thoughts, motives, impulses, desires, instincts, insights....everything that can be known can be known and that is the ultimate truth. And while we ever strive to reach it, I think no human has ever learned the complete truth about anything. The only possessor of ultimate truth is privy to a being I call God and, as I am a mere mortal, even that is speculation.

Maybe there is no measurement for any of the "history, prehistory, evolution, actualities, possibilities, nuances, thoughts, motives, impulses, desires, instincts, insights....", but a subjective measurement . These are still components of seeing, as a subjective being.
This is how we try to break it down. It doesn't mean, it is the method to figure out the universe and it's logic.

Foxfyre:
About sparrows. You say that is possible to know everything about a sparrow. That is false. You will never know what is to be a sparrow (unless you are a sparrow).
And all you can say about a sparrow is referring to the sparrow of your human experience.
Now, if a snail wanted to describe a sparrow, that would be the sparrow of its own experience. A sparrow in the experience of a snail is not the same as a sparrow in our human experience. And certainly not the same in the experience of the sparrow himself.

Lucifer: that's an interesting point. I don't know what the 'smallest' unit of measurement is, and although I would like it if there were only a finite number of them, we keep discovering more. So do you mean that since there will 'always' be a smaller level, we can never reach the end of knowledge? I'd like to disagree, but really have no concrete way of doing so. Thanks for bringing that up...something to think about.

Val wrote


I think you didn't read my post carefully as I explicitly said no human has ever obtained full knowledge about anything and, as I am human, despite what some say of me, I include myself in that thesis. I do believe there is a finality of knowledge or a complete knowledge of anything and everything. I thinkwe keep trying to get to that point but I do not believe we have yet done so about anything.