dostf

What is truth? It is my contention that words cannot convey the truth. That is not to say they are not valuable, as they help us clarify for ourselves what is not true(with what we know believe, understand etc.)They are used to express our thoughts, experiences etc. The negative side of this is it is from our own "self" perspective involving what we know, have learned, experienced etc.
Firsly, in order for new information to be processed or heard correctly, i contend we must be "cleaned" of our past beliefs, ideas, misconceptions of what we now hold as true(for ourselves). Only then can something new be processed correctly. Otherwise we most often compare this new information to something we already know. That being said...
It is my contention that the HUMAN BEING is the truth itself. There is no "me" and "truth" somewhere, and someday I hope to find it. Our difficulty is we always think of ourselves as something or other and often define ourselves as such (by race, gender, profession, beliefs, etc.)This is a collection of "attributes " we may decribe as "self". If we are able to go beyond this "self" I contend we LIVE the truth that we are.
Logical mind or reasonable mind cannot understand this as it is not made for this. It always compares, organizes, and is subject to space time constaints. This is the failure of philosophy. Again, reasonable mind is a very valuable tool, but cannot solve what we call truth.
However, when 2 humans who love truth(have a sincere desire to find it) come together in discussion, a affection (friendship) grows between them. This eventually turns to love and creates what I will describe as a "loving mind"
It is in this position one "forgets their self" and something new is possible.
Again the key is the human being. There is no god, truth, wisdom, "outside" of us. There is no final or one truth. Truth progresses as does the human being. This one of the major faults of relgious thought who would fix the truth with this or that prophet or code of living. I will not detail this as I hope most people here have reasonably and knowledgably dismissed relgious doctrine as "the way".
If you have made it this far in this post "well done"! I know its long but really I put it as short as I could without detailing many of the points, as those that find some interest in them can make more specific comments or observations.
Thanks

Jayhawker Soule

White space might help.

Bill

In this statement you seemingly reject the idea of an external ("objective") truth which humans can only imperfectly perceive. This is, of course, my own idea of "truth."

Since humans are a very recent addition to our "Big Bang" universe, you would seem to assert that no "truth" existed prior to the existence of humans. This is extremely counter-intuitive. In rebuttal, I would assert that certain true facts have always existed for as long as there has been time within which they might exist. Humans might attempt to describe those facts (imperfectly, it would seem) in various ways, but the facts themselves do not change by changes in descriptions. Instead, what is actually changing is our human understanding of those facts. This is the idea then that humans can only imperfectly grasp the "real truth" of the universe.

But I would contend that the "real truth" exists whether or not any humans are around to interact with said "real truth."

== Bill

jpbrooks

I think I understand what you are attempting to say here, but stating it in this manner is self-defeating.

For instance, it could be argued that truth is an aspect of "propositions", which are communicated in words.

So, how can we "transcend" having a personal perspective on things? Whatever we learn is what we, as individual subjects, personally have learned. Subjectivity is unavoidable.

We can't just get rid of all of our acquired knowledge. So how can we selectively "clean" ourselves of the limiting beliefs and ideas that you are alluding to?

But again, how is this to be accomplished? How can we attain such a state of mind where we are processing our experiential information in such a manner that it avoids perspective bias?

It is just that logic and reasoning serve a different, though no less important, purpose. Logic is important for testing our beliefs and truth claims.

I don't think that the discipline of philosophy is a failure simply because of its emphasis on logic and reasoning.
So, once again, how do we overcome the limitations of the "reasonable mind" while retaining our ability to recognize truth?

I'll be back later.

[ March 24, 2002: Message edited by: jpbrooks ]</p>

John Page

Truth is a word that represents an abstract value attained when two or more entities are deemed to be identical.

No, an instance of something defined as a human being is exactly that and nothing else. That you suppose something exists does not mean that it is "logically true".

You can talk about the truth of an entity's existence, although I suggest you think of this as "existential fact" to avoid confusion with "logical truth".

This is consistent with the life/death cycle of succesful beings and arguably necessary for human knowledge to progress.

This is not a logically true conclusion!

Because we don't know:

a) how the mind works.
b) what it was "made for".

Hope this helps.
Cheers!

dostf

Bill:

Perhaps a different way (although not entirely correct way) of saying it is that it is my contention that the human is the highest expression of truth. All that is known about "certain true facts" as you might put it, is known by humans. This truth is progressive as the human progresses. There is no "real truth" that is final or unchanging as this negates the idea of growth and progression at some point. Truth is not a "known", ie. there is me and elsewhere is something called "truth" which is as of yet not known or understood. Before humans, it is my contention that "real Truth" did not exist as you or i might describe it to ourselves. The universe itself is nothing without humans to give it meaning. If truth did exist before humans as you contend, it would still have no meaning without the human being to express that truth and therefore is of what value?

dostf

jp brooks:

What is Truth....-you are right in stating that how I phrased this statement is not entirely correct. However, the assertion here is truth is lived and is not fully expressed through language.But it is the tool we use as humans to communicate.

How can we trancend........
It is my assertion that in order to "transcend" our personal"self" perspective, we must lose our idea of what we think of as "ourselves". I assert this can occur when 2 humans who develop a fiendship leading to affection leading to love, lose their idea of "themselves", and therefore their own subjectivity. This "love" based on our love of truth, allows something new to be experienced. Again this is a living so words here are difficult. If you have ever been in what I will call ordinary biological love, you know that when you are with that other person and look in their eyes,"you" disappear and only "they exist" for that time. This is a crude way of stating what i am trying to convey here.

Cleaning beliefs knowledge etc.....
At the logic stage reasoning stage we are able to "clean" ourselves to a great extent-this is where logic and reasoning communicated by language is a great asset! For example-lets say i am a christian and state god would never hurt anybody. You then proceed to show me reasonably using the bible all the passages that contadict my assertion. If I am at all interested in what is true and trust you are not trying to "sell" me anything,I am "cleaned" of this incorrect belief. And so it goes with all our ideas.

Philosophy not a failure for its emphasis on reason and logic....
Philosophy is useful for exercising our logical reasoning faculties. However, I assert it has failed in that it being a product of our logical reasoning mind, cannot and will not ever understand or solve truth. Truth is lived not known.

dostf

John Page:

Truth is.....
Perhaps you can clarify your definition for me or give me an example of what I think is an empiracal definiton of truth- ie. these two objects are exactly the same in every manner therefore it is true to say they are this. As opposed to a third object which is dissimilar and therefore it is not true in relation to the first 2 identical objects.

Something defined as human being....
Is it your contention that what we may define as a human being does not exist?
The intent here was to state that what is true and what is human are not 2 separate things ie. "me" and some "truth" "outside" of me.

Logical mind.....

We don't know how the mind works. From a physical perspective, you are correct. However I use the term to describe our reasoning and logical faculties that are limited in their ability to comprehend "truth". It is coloured by our experiences, perceptions, knowledge etc.

"what it is made for"............

Perhaps a poor choice of words here on my part. I assert that "mind" is the reasoning, logical part of us that is limited in its ability to "understand truth" (see above) ("understand" is not the correct word here, as I contend the truth is lived not known. I use it for the sake of the conversation.)

jpbrooks

Experiences, in principle, can convey more information than can be expressed in words.
But how can this help us to comprehend all of the factual information that is present in each of our experiences?

But doesn't this just substitute a wider, but still limited, conception of "self" (as two "selves" rather than one) for the original one? If so, how can this wider concept of "self" be "transcended"? Are there other methods of "transcending" available?

Is there an alternative method that doesn't require having to have someone else around to point out one's incorrect beliefs?

But it does us no good to live truth without ever coming to know it. In that case, we could just keep repeating the same mistakes in our thinking over and over again without ever coming to a conscious awareness that this is the case.

[ March 25, 2002: Message edited by: jpbrooks ]</p>

Bill

Once again, I think you are confusing the idea of "objective truth" with the idea of "understanding truth." Using the word "truth" by itself only exacerbates the confusion inherent in this discussion (one of the reasons that true philosophers spend so much time struggling with issues of language and meaning).

If you are asserting that human beings currently here on Earth have the highest grasp (or "understanding") of what is objectively true, then I could agree with your assertion. But I cannot agree with your contention "that the human is the highest expression of truth." Among the errors inherent in your assertion would be the error of hubris, asserting that nothing higher ever has or will have existed at any other time or place (that is what you assert with the word "highest"). Another error is to assert that, in some way, humans are an "expression of truth." No, humans are animals, and truth is an idea. Humans can express truth by expressing the idea of truth in some linguistic sense. But it is not inherent within the nature of homo sapiens that we have that sort of linguistic sense of what truth is. Instead, that is a culturally supplied "acquired characteristic." If I could wave my magic wand and the idea of true or false would disappear from all minds now alive on the planet, there would still be homo sapiens alive here on Earth. Humans would continue to exist without any idea at all of what is true or false.

So, you must see that the idea of truth is something that we humans acquire through interactions with other humans. That is what I mean when I said, above, that the idea of truth "is a culturally supplied 'acquired characteristic.'"

Third, while there may well be "certain facts" that are only known to humans, those would be only "locally useful facts" rather than any sort of universally useful fact (such as the Theory of Relativity). An alien race on an alien planet at an equivalent stage of development would know "certain other facts" that humans would not, but those facts would again only be locally useful (such as how to survive and reproduce as members of that alien race). Such an alien race could, however, invent for itself its own local expression of the universal truth embodied within Einstein's Theory of Relativity. That sort of theory of relationships should be universally ascertainable by any properly developed thinking organism.

Fourth, there is no real justification to set humans up as "privileged." Having mentioned Einstein's Theory of Relativity, it turns on the idea that no observer is "privileged" with respect to any other observer. One broader implication of this is that, even of God exists, we have no reason to believe that humans are "privileged" in the eyes of God. So, just about any assertion that humans are "privileged" in some way or another is all but certain to be erroneous. It is, accordingly, clearly erroneous for you to make this extremely broad claim: "The universe itself is nothing without humans to give it meaning." ABSOLUTELY FALSE! Again, you are claiming that humans are somehow "privileged" with respect to the universe as a whole, and the record of the past 500 years of scientific investigation continues to build to the contrary conclusion. All we need is to discover one single extra-terrestrial intelligent life form and we will totally destroy the idea that humans are in some way "privileged" with respect to the universe as a whole.

== Bill