What is your difinition of truth?

[TB]

What is your definition of truth? And is there only one truth? Can we separate truth from the terms right and wrong? If not, then is the truth always the right way?

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=truth

[MaC]

there is only one truth.  Truth only has one side to it, something is either true or it's false.  There's nothing in between.

For example: it would be total bs if I said the phrase "I see yellow flowers" and you said that's true for you and not for me.

Why?  It has to do with the language.  I perceive the flowers to be yellow.  Now you may not percieve the flowers to be yellow, yourself, but you cannot deny the fact that I see them as yellow.

[Gabu]

Personally, I think that there is only one truth.  For me, it would not make sense for this not to be the case: if everything is not something, it would be nothing.  If something was two contradictory things at the same time, how could it exist?

I reject the notion that perception changes truth; to blatantly steal an idea from 1984, if all six billion people in the world tell you that 2 + 2 = 5, and you become so confused that you honestly believe that 2 + 2 does indeed equal 5, does this somehow magically make 2 + 2 equal 5?  No, because if you put two apples with two more apples, an outsider would plainly see that there are only four apples, even if you try your hardest to see five.

Conversely, suppose you have, say, some kind of sight defect.  You see four apples, but there actually are five apples there.  Here too, perception does not change the reality that five apples are present; the only difference from the above is that it's you who is the one who is wrong instead of everyone else.

Now, the above is not to say that we actually know the ultimate truth, or that we even can know the ultimate truth.  I don't really know the answer to that question.  It may be the case that the ultimate truth is, ultimately, inunderstandable by humans.

Suppose there are two children.  One of them is brought up to believe that a flower in a field is orange.  Another is brought up to believe that it's blue.  The two of them come together and meet, and soon find this disagreement.  The former maintains that the flower is orange, and the latter maintains that the flower is blue.  This brings up the obvious question: who is correct?  Is it orange?  Is it blue?  Is it either?  Is it even meaningful to ask?  Not at present, because we've never even been told what it means to say that something is "orange", or that something is "blue"; all we have been told is that a flower possesses one of those traits.  We know nothing about the qualities "orange" or "blue" themselves.

The only way that this difference could be reconcilable is if both could explain what the underlying nature of the flower was that made it orange to the first child and blue to the second, and through this, could show that the features that make the flower orange to the first and blue to the second are exactly the same, and thus, that what is orange to the first is blue to the second, proving that the two are indeed seeing and talking about the same thing - they're just giving it two different names.

The fact of the matter is that for us to understand the ultimate truth, we need to have solid, concrete, unwavering definitions, that are accepted by everyone in the universe, for absolutely everything, so that everything in the universe can be described and affirmed to be what it is.  We need to be able to talk about things without running into the snag of two people talking about the same thing without realizing it, merely because neither has the same name for it.

So, what is orange?  What is blue?  There are no easy ways to explain these concepts at a granularity any smaller than the terms "orange" and "blue".  Most simply take for granted that we all understand what "orange" and "blue" are.  It takes a bit of understanding of the electromagnetic spectrum to even be able to define these terms at a level lower than simply arbitrarily labling something as "orange" or "blue".

Once we have that understanding, however, then we can proceed.  For example, we could say that "orange" is defined to be light with wavelength λ = 590 nm, and that "blue" is defined to be light with wavelength λ = 475 nm.  If we can all agree on these definitions, then we can finally say definitively that something is orange, or that it is blue, by testing the wavelength of the light reflected off of the flower.  Note that this makes no mention of the fact that we need to be absolutely certain that the wavelength has been measured correctly and that we now need to be able to define "wavelength" - that is another snag that is another story.

Forget that snag for a second and suppose that it doesn't exist.  Even if we do accomplish our definitions of "orange" and "blue", that still may not be enough for us to entirely understand the ultimate truth.  In order to find an answer, first we must know what we're looking for.  In The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, there's a memorable segment in which the second greatest computer of all time and space, Deep Thought, is asked to find the answer to the "Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything".  After seven and a half million years of thinking, the answer is finally revealed in this passage:

    "Forty-two!" yelled Loonquawl. "Is that all you've got to show for seven and a half million years' work?"
    "I checked it very thoroughly," said the computer, "and that quite definitely is the answer. I think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you've never actually known what the question is."

So, will we ever be able to know what question to ask, in order to arrive at the answer of "forty-two", or whatever the real answer may be?  Will we even be able to understand the question itself, if we discover what it is?  Only time can tell.

[Lunar]

I think there can be mulitple truths.  Let's look at a physics/math problem, since they are easier to explain.

A women is riding on a train going quite fast and a man is standing by the tracks as the train is going by.  The women tosses up a ball straight up and catches it as it comes down.  She can factually say that the ball went straight up and then straight down.  However, the man can also factually say that the ball travelled in a parabola.  These two competing truths can coexist.  The women has to use a different formula than the man, but both of these formulas are correct.

[A18]

Truth is the degree to which our subjective preferences are limited.

[Schmitz in 1972]

Excellent post Frodo! The points you make are all truthful

As for the ultimate truth, here's a suggestion: Jesus said to him "I am the way, and the truth, and the life" (John 14:6)

[A18]

That's interesting, seeing as Frodo has yet to post in this topic.

[Schmitz in 1972]

That's interesting, seeing as Frodo has yet to post in this topic.

D'oh! Stupid Red Washington avatars

[Bono]

TB,
though epistemological relativism and moral relativism sometimes go hand in hand, that does not mean they are related.
the only similarity is that they are both BS.

[TB]

TB,
though epistemological relativism and moral relativism sometimes go hand in hand, that does not mean they are related.
the only similarity is that they are both BS.

For the first part well, yeah I can see where you are coming from. Whether or not they are BS is up to each one of us to decide. I guess this is a topic which relates to your religious belief as well.

[Bono]

TB,
though epistemological relativism and moral relativism sometimes go hand in hand, that does not mean they are related.
the only similarity is that they are both BS.

For the first part well, yeah I can see where you are coming from. Whether or not they are BS is up to each one of us to decide. I guess this is a topic which relates to your religious belief as well.

On the contrary, it's much easier to argue for some brands of epistemological relativism from a Christian perspective than fron an atheistic perspective.
You udnerstant an atheist must aknowledge the existence of truth in order to proclamate: "There is no God."

[TheWildCard]

"Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall set ye free"

[Gabu]

I think there can be mulitple truths.  Let's look at a physics/math problem, since they are easier to explain.

A women is riding on a train going quite fast and a man is standing by the tracks as the train is going by.  The women tosses up a ball straight up and catches it as it comes down.  She can factually say that the ball went straight up and then straight down.  However, the man can also factually say that the ball travelled in a parabola.  These two competing truths can coexist.  The women has to use a different formula than the man, but both of these formulas are correct.

I personally don't think that this shows that there are multiple contradictory truths.  The ball only travelled in one single path; it just happened to be the case that the woman's perception of the path was different than the man's perception of it.  The statements of "The man saw a parabola" and "The woman saw a line" are both truths, but they are not competing, because they deal with perception, instead of reality.

The statement of reality would be something like the following:

According to the reference frame in which the woman resides, if we define

r₀ = (x = 0, y = 0, z = 0)

to be the position where the ball initially rests, and if we define the x axis to correspond to displacement east and west, the y axis to correspond to displacement north and south, and the z axis to correspond to displacement up and down (defining "up" to be away from the center of the Earth and "down" to be towards the center of the Earth), then the ball travels along the path

r(t) = (0, 0, v₀ t - 1/2 g t²)

for 0 < t < 2 v₀ / g, outside of which time the ball is at rest at r₀

where

r(t) is the displacement of the ball from its initial position at elapsed time t.
t is the elapsed time.
v₀ is the ball's initial velocity.
g = 9.8 m/s is the acceleration of an object due to gravity at the surface of Earth.

This is now simply a statement of fact that does not depend on one's perception of the event.  To find out how people other than the women, one would simply need to apply a simple transformation to the above that corresponds to the new coordinate system.  From this we can see that there is actually only one truth with regards to the ball's path; there simply happen to be an infinite number of ways to perceive this truth.

[Gabu]

That's interesting, seeing as Frodo has yet to post in this topic.

D'oh! Stupid Red Washington avatars

Thank you for the compliment anyways, even if it was directed at someone else.

[A18]

The Truth is beyond our comprehension. We are only capable of knowing the shadow of Truth and the Artist's representation thereof, which is oftentimes taken for falsehood.

Does someone else want to point out the blatant contradiction here?

[12th Doctor]

The Soult Lexicon

Fact: 1) That which is undisputable. 2) That which can be proven through direct empirical analysis.

Truth: 1) A universal principle that can be derived at from philosophical reflection, but not proven by direct imperical evidence. 2) That which is derived at through the personal expiriences and thoughtful reflection of an individual or group of individuals.

[Bono]

I think there can be mulitple truths.  Let's look at a physics/math problem, since they are easier to explain.

A women is riding on a train going quite fast and a man is standing by the tracks as the train is going by.  The women tosses up a ball straight up and catches it as it comes down.  She can factually say that the ball went straight up and then straight down.  However, the man can also factually say that the ball travelled in a parabola.  These two competing truths can coexist.  The women has to use a different formula than the man, but both of these formulas are correct.

I personally don't think that this shows that there are multiple contradictory truths.  The ball only travelled in one single path; it just happened to be the case that the woman's perception of the path was different than the man's perception of it.  The statements of "The man saw a parabola" and "The woman saw a line" are both truths, but they are not competing, because they deal with perception, instead of reality.

The statement of reality would be something like the following:

According to the reference frame in which the woman resides, if we define

r₀ = (x = 0, y = 0, z = 0)

to be the position where the ball initially rests, and if we define the x axis to correspond to displacement east and west, the y axis to correspond to displacement north and south, and the z axis to correspond to displacement up and down (defining "up" to be away from the center of the Earth and "down" to be towards the center of the Earth), then the ball travels along the path

r(t) = (0, 0, v₀ t - 1/2 g t²)

for 0 < t < 2 v₀ / g, outside of which time the ball is at rest at r₀

where

r(t) is the displacement of the ball from its initial position at elapsed time t.
t is the elapsed time.
v₀ is the ball's initial velocity.
g = 9.8 m/s is the acceleration of an object due to gravity at the surface of Earth.

This is now simply a statement of fact that does not depend on one's perception of the event.  To find out how people other than the women, one would simply need to apply a simple transformation to the above that corresponds to the new coordinate system.  From this we can see that there is actually only one truth with regards to the ball's path; there simply happen to be an infinite number of ways to perceive this truth.

Why do mathematics always feel teh need to reduce everything to mathematics, when logic and thus philosophy has a completemly different way of thinking.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

Why do mathematics always feel teh need to reduce everything to mathematics, when logic and thus philosophy has a completemly different way of thinking.

Logic is a branch of mathematics.

[Gabu]

Why do mathematics always feel teh need to reduce everything to mathematics, when logic and thus philosophy has a completemly different way of thinking.

What's a more fundamental cornerstone to mathematics than logic?  He brought up physics, so I used physics in my response.  Seems like a logical thing to do to me.  If you have any questions about what I posted, I would be more than happy to answer them for you; I didn't post that to be confusing.

[Bono]

Why do mathematics always feel teh need to reduce everything to mathematics, when logic and thus philosophy has a completemly different way of thinking.

What's a more fundamental cornerstone to mathematics than logic?  He brought up physics, so I used physics in my response.  Seems like a logical thing to do to me.

I'll give ya an example:
   Which is most likely to occur to you: Being eaten by a shark, or being struck by lightning. Statistics show that a person is twice as likely to be bitten by a shark than stuck by lightening. It logically follows from the information given that it is more dangerous to swim in the ocean than walk out in the open where lightning could strike you.  The logical process we are talking about here involves only the variables presented on your computer screen. But, what is logical is not always reasonable particularly if I limit the number of variables to only what is on paper or a computer screen. In the proposition there is the word "you." If we do not consider the context of "you" in the proposition we might arrive at a faulty conclusion. Since I do not swim in the ocean I have no chance of being bitten by a shark Reasoning includes an interactive component—a relationship between the words in a sentence and the person reasoning.

[Gabu]

Why do mathematics always feel teh need to reduce everything to mathematics, when logic and thus philosophy has a completemly different way of thinking.

What's a more fundamental cornerstone to mathematics than logic?  He brought up physics, so I used physics in my response.  Seems like a logical thing to do to me.

I'll give ya an example:
   Which is most likely to occur to you: Being eaten by a shark, or being struck by lightning. Statistics show that a person is twice as likely to be bitten by a shark than stuck by lightening. It logically follows from the information given that it is more dangerous to swim in the ocean than walk out in the open where lightning could strike you.  The logical process we are talking about here involves only the variables presented on your computer screen. But, what is logical is not always reasonable particularly if I limit the number of variables to only what is on paper or a computer screen. In the proposition there is the word "you." If we do not consider the context of "you" in the proposition we might arrive at a faulty conclusion. Since I do not swim in the ocean I have no chance of being bitten by a shark Reasoning includes an interactive component—a relationship between the words in a sentence and the person reasoning.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say.  If a person is twice as likely to be bitten by a shark than struck by lightning, that only relates to the total (or perhaps average) number of occurances of shark bites and lightning strikes.  It says nothing about what will happen to you, personally, given that if you spend all of your days in a coal mine you obviously are going to have neither happen to you.  I think anyone who gives that statistic would know that fact and wouldn't attempt to say that someone living in a coal mine might be bitten by a shark or struck by lightning.

I don't see what this proves, though, as statistics is neither synonymous with mathematics nor part of the so-called "hard" sciences that deal with concrete facts and theories based around verifiable evidence.  This is not to demean statistics - it's certainly a legitimate and valuable field - it's just that statistics' goal is not to unravel and explain the mysteries of the universe.

I also don't see what this has to do with what I posted above.  Personally, I think that mathematics is among the most logical things on Earth: everything is completely well-defined, there are only set things you can do that correspond to the way nature works, and there is exactly no room whatsoever for ambiguity.  When you say something in math, that's what it is.  It's impossible to have differences of opinions when it comes to math (except for perhaps unproven conjectures); something is either true or it isn't.  I personally think that math is a very beautiful thing, as it's capable of reducing the universe, in its seemingly infinite complexity, to manageable and understandable parts that are explained in clear, unambiguous terms.  There are, of course, many people who would disagree with my evaluation of math, but my opinion of it is what it is.

For example, want to explain gravity?  You can write a long paragraph rife with possible misinterpretation, double meanings, or what have you, like this:

"Gravity is the attractive force between two bodies of mass.  The force exerted on either body of mass is equal to the gravitational constant of 6.67 x 10^-11 multiplied by the first mass, multiplied by the second mass, and divided by the square of the distance between the masses.  The direction of the force on one body is towards the center of mass of the other body."

Or... you can simply write this:

F = -(r / |r|) (G m₁ m₂ / |r|²)

Then define the quantities shown if the person on the other end is not a physicist, and be done with it, with no worries whatsoever that someone might misinterpret what you just said.

As an aside, I personally take a special case of Euler's equation, which reads as follows:

e^iπ + 1 = 0

...to be my personal proof of the existence of God.

[Mort from NewYawk]

As an aside, I personally take a special case of Euler's equation, which reads as follows:

e^iπ + 1 = 0

...to be my personal proof of the existence of God.

Gabu, I am impressed with your posts in this thread, especially since my career in mathematics ended after my first  course in college calculus.

Could you enlighten this layman on the above equation and your take on it? (Don't work too hard, please - I don't expect more than slight enlightenment.)

[John Dibble]

I believe there's only one truth. People can perceive things differently, however that does not change the actual nature of those things - that nature being the truth. That being said I don't think human beings can know the entire truth of things within their mortal lifetimes.

[David S]

I think there can be mulitple truths.  Let's look at a physics/math problem, since they are easier to explain.

A women is riding on a train going quite fast and a man is standing by the tracks as the train is going by.  The women tosses up a ball straight up and catches it as it comes down.  She can factually say that the ball went straight up and then straight down.  However, the man can also factually say that the ball travelled in a parabola.  These two competing truths can coexist.  The women has to use a different formula than the man, but both of these formulas are correct.

I believe there is only one truth. The difference you point out is only a matter of reference frames which can be easily corrected for as Gabu points out.

Our ability to determine the truth is a different matter. Sometimes we simply don't have enough information to know. As an example lets say a woman claims she was raped. The man she accuses admits they had sex but claims it was consensual. The woman has no bruises or marks of physical abuse. Possibly if there were witnesses they might have heard the woman screaming for help or begging her attacker to stop, but there were no witnesses. How can you determine the truth?

[Gabu]

Could you enlighten this layman on the above equation and your take on it? (Don't work too hard, please - I don't expect more than slight enlightenment.)

I'd be happy to, except I'm not 100% sure what you're asking for.  Do you want what I find amazing about the equation I listed?  What Euler's equation is?  Where it comes from?  What its relevance to reality is?

All of these I can probably answer to some extent, though some may be kind of tricky.