TRUTH:
I am the way the truth and the life. No man comes to the father except by me. - John 14:6
And you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free. - John 8:32
I don’t think you can manifest who you are without the truth. The truth will set you free, the problem is that it destroys everything that isn’t worthy in you as it sets you free. […] It’s painful because you cling to what you shouldn’t be, partly out of pride, partly out of ignorance, partly out of laziness. […] Everything about you that isn’t worthy is to be put into the flames.
— Jordan B. Peterson
The strength of a person's spirit would then be measured by how much 'truth' he could tolerate, or more precisely, to what extent he needs to have it diluted, disguised, sweetened, muted, falsified.
-Nietzsche
We are not born with maps; we have to make them, and the making requires effort. The more effort we make to appreciate and perceive reality, the larger and more accurate our maps will be. But many do not want to make this effort. Some stop making it by the end of adolescence. Their maps are small and sketchy, their world views narrow and misleading. By the end of middle age most people have given up the effort. They feel certain their maps are complete and the Weltanshauung is correct (indeed, even sacrosanct), and they are no longer interested in new information. It is as if they are tired. Only a relative and fortunate few continue until the moment of death exploring the mystery of reality, ever enlarging and refining their understanding of the world and what is true. […] If our maps are to be accurate we have to continually revise them. […] We are daily bombarded with new information as to the nature of reality. If we are to incorporate this information, we must continually revise our maps, and sometimes when enough new information has accumulated, we must make very major revisions. The process of making revisions, particularly major revisions, is painful, sometimes excruciatingly painful. And herein lies the major source of many of the ills of mankind.
— The Road Less Traveled (Peck)
When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. - 1 Corinthians 13:11
And when we had all fallen to the earth, I heard a voice speaking unto me, and saying in the Hebrew tongue, ‘Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me? It is hard for thee to kick against the goads. - Acts 26:14
Misc:
“Truth is what valid reasoning preserves”
Truth problems introduced by language?
Must truth, by definition, be non-contradictive? (Can one person’s “truth” directly contradict with another’s “truth” and their claims both still be considered “truth?” [relativistic truth/joint truth])
How can a proposition be true unless we know it to be true?
Can a theory of truth avoid paradox?
In 1931, Kurt Gödel (1906-1978), in his First Incompleteness Theorem, proved that any classical self-consistent formal language capable of expressing arithmetic must also contain sentences of arithmetic that cannot be derived within that system, and hence that the propositions expressed by those sentences could not be proven true (or false) within that system. Thus the concept of truth transcends the concept of proof in classical formal languages. This is a remarkable, precise insight into the nature of truth.
Other philosophers believe it’s a mistake to say the researchers’ goal is to achieve truth. These “scientific anti-realists” recommend saying that research in, for example, physics, economics, and meteorology, aims only for usefulness. When they aren’t overtly identifying truth with usefulness, the instrumentalists Peirce, James and Schlick take this anti-realist route, as does Kuhn. They would say atomic theory isn’t true or false but rather is useful for predicting outcomes of experiments and for explaining current data. Giere recommends saying science aims for the best available “representation”, in the same sense that maps are representations of the landscape. Maps aren’t true; rather, they fit to a better or worse degree. Similarly, scientific theories are designed to fit the world. Scientists should not aim to create true theories; they should aim to construct theories whose models are representations of the world.
User Interface to a “desktop” - real? Truth? Useful?
Neal Stephenson: “In the beginning was the command line”:
Car “interface” = stick shift and steering wheel. Effectively raw and connected to the “truth” of the necessities of the experience. A “software” interface for driving a car would be less-effective because it would map poorly onto the practical needs of driving.
Our perceptions/senses/sensory organs constitute an “evolved” interface for our environment, but do not, necessarily, represent the “reality” or “truth” of that environment. (Mantis shrimp perceptions vs. humans. The visible light spectrum. Dark Matter/Energy.)
Correspondence Theory:
What we believe or say is true if it corresponds to the way things actually are - to the “facts.”
This pre-supposes existence of “facts” and leads to another, deeper, question: “what is a fact?” And, additionally, how does one perceive a fact/know something is, indeed, a fact?
Coherence Theory:
Truth is one complete whole. Judgements and beliefs are not “truth” but can approach the wholistic truth by the degree of their resemblance to/coherence with the whole.
“A belief is true if and only if it is part of a coherent system of beliefs.” Internal logical consistency.
For example, when a drunk driver says, “There are pink elephants dancing on the highway in front of us”, we assess whether his assertion is true by considering what other beliefs we have already accepted as true, namely:
- Elephants are gray.
- This locale is not the habitat of elephants.
- There is neither a zoo nor a circus anywhere nearby.
- Severely intoxicated persons have been known to experience hallucinations.
But perhaps the most important reason for rejecting the drunk’s claim is this:
- Everyone else in the area claims not to see any pink elephants.
In short, the drunk’s claim fails to cohere with a great many other claims that we believe and have good reason not to abandon. We, then, reject the drunk’s claim as being false (and take away the car keys).
Specifically, a Coherence Theory of Truth will claim that a proposition is true if and only if it coheres with ___. For example, one Coherence Theory fills this blank with “the beliefs of the majority of persons in one’s society”. Another fills the blank with “one’s own beliefs”, and yet another fills it with “the beliefs of the intellectuals in one’s society”. The major coherence theories view coherence as requiring at least logical consistency.
Post-modern Coherence Theory:
To the extent that there is an objective reality it is nothing more nor less than what we say it is. We human beings are, then, the ultimate arbiters of what is true. Consensus is truth. The “subjective” and the “objective” are rolled into one inseparable compound.
Social scientists will more easily agree, for example, that the proposition that human beings have a superego is a “construction” of (certain) politically influential psychologists, and that as a result, it is (to be regarded as) true. In contrast, physical scientists are – for the most part – rather unwilling to regard propositions in their own field as somehow merely the product of consensus among eminent physical scientists. They are inclined to believe that the proposition that protons are composed of three quarks is true (or false) depending on whether (or not) it accurately describes an objective reality. They are disinclined to believe that the truth of such a proposition arises out of the pronouncements of eminent physical scientists. In short, physical scientists do not believe that prestige and social influence trump reality.
Pragmatic Theory:
A Pragmatic Theory of Truth holds (roughly) that a proposition is true if it is useful to believe. Utility is the essential mark of truth. Beliefs that lead to the best “payoff”, that are the best justification of our actions, that promote success, are truths.
Problems with pragmatic theory: It may be useful for someone to believe a proposition but also useful for someone else to disbelieve it. For example, Freud said that many people, in order to avoid despair, need to believe there is a god who keeps a watchful eye on everyone. According to one version of the Pragmatic Theory, that proposition is true. However, it may not be useful for other persons to believe that same proposition. They would be crushed if they believed that there is a god who keeps a watchful eye on everyone. Thus, by symmetry of argument, that proposition is false. In this way, the Pragmatic theory leads to a violation of the law of non-contradiction.
Redundancy Theory:
Truth is a redundant concept, in other words, "truth" is a mere word that is conventional to use in certain contexts of discourse but not a word that points to anything in reality.
Example: It is worthy of notice that the sentence “I smell the scent of violets” has the same content as the sentence “It is true that I smell the scent of violets.” So it seems, then, that nothing is added to the thought by my ascribing to it the property of truth. (Frege, 1918)
Performative Theory:
The Performative Theory of Truth argues that ascribing truth to a proposition is not really characterizing the proposition itself, nor is it saying something redundant. Rather, it is telling us something about the speaker’s intentions. The speaker – through his or her agreeing with it, endorsing it, praising it, accepting it, or perhaps conceding it – is licensing our adoption of (the belief in) the proposition. Instead of saying, “It is true that snow is white”, one could substitute “I embrace the claim that snow is white.” The key idea is that saying of some proposition, P, that it is true is to say in a disguised fashion “I commend P to you”, or “I endorse P”, or something of the sort.
When you say “It is true that Vancouver is north of Sacramento”, you are performing the act of giving your listener license to believe (and to act upon the belief) that Vancouver is north of Sacramento.
Criticism: Arguments have premises that are true or false, but we don’t consider premises to be actions.
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