"To some Parisian intellectuals, the proposition "(p) is true" equals "Jacques Lacan knows that (p)"
(Lacan was a hip philosopher-psychiatrist with a devoted following, From Dan Sperber, "On Symbolism", a quite illumninating book)
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"To some Parisian intellectuals, the proposition "(p) is true" equals "Jacques Lacan knows that (p)"
(Lacan was a hip philosopher-psychiatrist with a devoted following, From Dan Sperber, "On Symbolism", a quite illumninating book)
mabey if you actually told us what that life question is we could be more consiece
I was playing around on the web and I rediscovered Stephen Colbert's use of the word 'truthiness.' He used the term in his pilot for the 'Stephen Colbert Report' that airs on the Comedy Channel. He used the concept to mean the truth we want, in our gut, to exist, without regard to evidence, logic, intellectual examination, or facts. I'm not sure if this helps you, Tessa, answering your life's questions but it is pretty funny (and kind of scary).
Stephen Colbert on Truthiness
Wikipedia on Truthiness
I'm not looking to limit the scope of responses in any way. Besides, even in the wading, one can be enlightened.Quote:
Originally Posted by denuseri
It does help. ~hugs~ Thank you so much.Quote:
Originally Posted by Euryleia
IMO... all truth is subjective. It is strictly what a particular person interprets it to be. What is true to me, may be something very different to you or anyone else. Just as ones interpretation of cheating may be. (IE: is it cheating if it's on line?)
My thought is if it's what you believe to be true in your heart, that's all that matters. Then it is true. If someone else disagrees, it is their problem to cope with, not yours.
That's all well and good, as long as what you believe to be true doesn't fly in the face of reality. I once knew a man who firmly believed in the "truth" that the world was flat, simply because the Bible claimed there were four corners of the Earth! While that may have been "true" to him, it certainly didn't agree with reality!Quote:
Originally Posted by jaded_sub
Truth changes, constantly, because truth is just what we decide. At one time, people believed that kings and queens ruled by virtue of divine authority, that is, God's will. To them it was true and undeniable. I doubt that you would find too many "civilized" people nowadays who still believe this to be true.
So don't cling too tightly to the concept of "truth". Today's truth may be tomorrow's quaint superstition.
Here's a question. Let's take two people who both label themselves Christian and both believe God created the world. Christian 1 believes that whatever created the world is God no matter when or how, (pantheism) and Christian 2 and believes that God created the world right before the wheel was invented, (Creationism).Quote:
Originally Posted by jaded_sub
Both are Christian, both try to follow the example of Jesus in the Bible. Do they share the same faith?
Here's another question:
Two people look through a window.
1) Objective truth A can be seen.
2) Person one looks through the window and interprets objective truth A as a dog.
3) Person two looks through the window and interprets objective truth A as a pig.
What is A? Can it be both a pig and a dog at the same time?
You're reiterating what "just a girl" was saying that I refuted. It's politics, it's not a real opinion. Treating the abstract as the concrete doesn't give it meaning. It's stuff religious people in USA say, in order to wallpaper over the problems they have about being:
1) Religiously bigoted.
2) Having freedom of religion.
It doesn't make sense. You can't change what's really there by interpreting it differently. It's 100% bollocks.
Let's take your example. Cheating on-line. Let's take a couple. Mr and Mrs. Mrs has a slave on-line and loves showing her naked body in a web-cam. Mrs defines cheating as having them put their penis inside of her. Mr defines cheating as showing your naked body to someone.
The interesting thing here is the truth, not the definition of what can be considered cheating.
The truth is that one thing happened, and only one thing. It's both true that Mrs was and wasn't cheating at the same time. So much is subjective. But her performed acts weren't open to interpretation. If Mr had seen her he would without hesitation put her in one category, while Mrs would without hesitation put her in the other.
PS! I recommend anybody who wants a course in applied epistemology without any fancy terminology to see the film "Lars and the real girl".
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0805564/
It's absolutely hilarious, and very cleverly crafted.
What if I'm the one disagreeing with my own self? Talk about an endless debate.Quote:
Originally Posted by jaded_sub
If truth, in some way, has to conform to reality, how does truth stay truth when we decide something else should be the reality? Can we decide such a thing?Quote:
Originally Posted by Thorne
Your comments here made me stop and think, so that was me thinking out loud more than anything. But any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.
This thought you present here is a new perspective for me. I am trying to get beyond the acceptance of justified reasoning as truth, and this from you helps me trememdously.Quote:
Originally Posted by TomOfSweden
I must see this movie.Quote:
Originally Posted by TomOfSweden
Just so you know. It's one of those films best seen with your lover. It's very much a feel-good film.Quote:
Originally Posted by tessa
I never claimed that truth has to conform to reality. In fact, throughout history "truth" has quite often been in direct conflict with reality. Whenever science has come into conflict with those in control, truth is whatever those in control declare, and reality suffers.Because "truth" is only what we believe to be reality, not necessarily reality itself.Quote:
Originally Posted by tessa
A good example of this is the current global warming debate. The reality is that the planet is growing warmer, slowly but surely. The "truth" which is being propagated by certain people is that it's all mankind's fault, that we are responsible. Yet evidence shows that the Earth has undergone other periods of warming and cooling which rival the current period, before man ever became "civilized" enough to have a significant effect. So how much of an effect are we really having? Nobody knows for sure, but those with an agenda, one way or the other, will tell you the "truth" as they declare it to be.
Thorne. I suggest reading The Structure of Scientific Revolutions or just readers digest version in the wiki article below. I think you'll like it, because it sums up pretty much what I think you're trying to say.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Str...ic_Revolutions
It's a scathing critique of scientific truth being hammered into people, as if it is the only truth. And this book did create a revolution. Even though it wasn't written that long ago, it has already changed scientific terminology in its fundamentals.
Scientific truth changes every couple of weeks to fit the newest theories. The reality isn't changing, only the "truth". What does that tell us about scientific truth. I think this is the strength of science, and is why it is a superior method in finding the truth.
And here Richard Dawkins makes a case that we'll never know the truth, because we can't. We can only understand things that our brain is already hard-wired to accept.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=1APOxsp1VFw
So basically, we probably couldn't understand reality, even if we had all the required education and had it read out to us.
This makes things a tad more complex. We have to believe in a truth that is a simplified model. ie, not true. The trick is to pick the one that is as much like reality as possible, and just pretend like its the truth, for our own mental well being. I mean, demanding it from ourselves to only accept he absolute truth would drive anybody bonkers. This explains the total mess the world is in. How do you have an argument where everybody involved that no matter the outcome everybody will know they all are wrong.
I think that this is the real goal of science, as it has evolved. Very seldom do scientists declare something to be the absolute truth anymore. They now prefer to hedge their bets by saying something is true "to the best of our knowledge!" And our knowledge is, hopefully, still growing. So what is true today may not be quite so true tomorrow.Quote:
Originally Posted by TomOfSweden
So we should try to keep away from declaring things to be absolutely true. I suppose we can leave that exercise to religion.
... or politics
This really is a fascinating discussion.
A-freakin'-men to that.Quote:
Originally Posted by Thorne
I think, therefore I am. I am sure horses are real (unless the one I ride is a hallucination). Unicorns are drawn to look a lot like real horses (except for that horn and all). Therefore I am quite content to think that unicorns are real.Quote:
Originally Posted by TomOfSweden
Flawed logic makes me happy. :)
It won't set you free, but truth can help you decide to chew your own foot off to escape the bear trap.
"The truth is what we can't help but believe." That's my new "truth".
Well I would say that depends. Perhaps the particular apple in question IS neon blue. It could be owned by a po-mo artist, an undergrad in genetics, or possibly on a remote mountain top, as yet undiscovered by any except the mountain goats who enjoy Blue Apple pie on holidays:). The saying "All apples are neon blue" would be false because it does not accuratly describe reality. Saying "The red apple is neon blue" is self-contradictory and non-sensical and can be discarded.Quote:
Originally Posted by ObjectivistActivist
Truth is just a your own personal perspective on the universe. To use the so called 'fruit statement' one could argue that if the apple is headed away from you at near light speed it will appear blue, whereas to somebody standing where the apple is approaching at near light speed the apple appears red (I may have that ass-backwards), so at the same time, the same apple may be accuratly described as both blue and red depending on the position of the observer.
Hi again, I would just like to clarify something in my previous statement. The phenomenon where an object appears to be blue when headed in the opposite direction of the observer when traveling at near light speed is called "blue shifting". It occurs because blue light travels faster than red light, and as the object is moving farther away, the blue light begins to outpace the red light by an even greater degree. Usually viewed as galaxys zoom about the universe, but the same should hold true for apples as well.
I think you have this reversed. Objects which are approaching the observer appear bluer, while those receding appear redder. And this is caused by frequency shifting, not by velocity. The speed of blue and red light in a vacuum are the same. As an object approaches, the light waves are compressed and the light seems blue, just as when a train approaches the sound waves are compressed and the pitch of the whistle is higher. With light receding from you, the frequencies are "stretched", causing the light to appear redder (red-shifting, in astronomy), just as the train whistle's pitch gets lower as it recedes.Quote:
Originally Posted by lstsl
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doppler_effect for a fairly simple explanation.
What is truth?
In Vedas, (Atharvveda) in a chapter for political management (Vedas are spiritual books which deals with every aspect of life including science, physics, geology, mathematics, political science etc theology etc and Rigveda is considered to be the oldest scripture of the world)...I read about truth. It says the truth is that which informs the manager of a society about the actual conditions and problems and ways of progress towards the benefits of each and every individual of society in accordance with his individual liberty and his duties regarding the society. The truth is that which informs a citizen, the actual sense of right and wrong with respect to his abilities of rational faculty.
Truth is that which is backed by reason.
Almost similar ideas I read again in books of Ayn Rand, when she said, A is A!
I wonder but I understand, that no matters how old a book is, if it has got some reasonable explanation about its content, and if the reason is valid, it will itterate similar message. I find no difference between spiritual scriptures of Vedas and Atheistic views of Objectivism.