If truth is something not really describable then why use the word?
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Is the Truth Relative? Why or Why Not?
- Thread starter xkatz
- Start date
Me Myself
Back to my username
Describe consciousness
The parts that are true and objective or the parts that are subjective and a matter of opinion? Objectivity allows us to know what is really there no matter how we perceive it. Example: If I say that the red light I see is between 400484 THz frequency, is that wrong, cause science tells us as much.
As it informs everything we learn from our first word, everyone cannot fail to know what it means.
YmirGF
Bodhisattva in Recovery
I tend to agree, but see "truth" as an evolving aspect of our interaction with physical reality. I think the way most folks use the word 'truth' it means something to which most other human animals will agree with. Objective or external truths are a bit of a no-brainer; while subjective "truths" are considerably fuzzier. Then again, to be fair, I don't focus much on "truth".
I see it as not capable of evolving at all, as something quintessentially axiomatic.
I think it is the first dharmic transmission.
It informs the truth of what you just said.
Ozzie
Well-Known Member
Are you saying truth isn't a real word that can actually describe reality. Well that may be true but it is the closest word to truth that we have.
She might be saying truth is what you make of it.
Then again, reality is relative.
Ozzie
Well-Known Member
Sunstone, if you mean "conditional" in the sense of conditioned, then truth is absolute/defined IMO. If you mean "conditional" in the a dictionary sense, eg,
"imposing, containing, subject to, or depending on a condition or conditions; not absolute; made or allowed on certain terms: conditional acceptance,"
then you could argue the other way. Or are you arguing that truth is a relative, but conditional, in this sense:
"something dependent upon external conditions for its specific nature, size, etc. ( opposed to absolute )?"
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Ouroboros
Coincidentia oppositorum
The great thing about any assertion that truth is relative is that it is necessarily as untrue as it is true. That is, if truth is relative, the assertion that truth is not relative is just as "true" as the assertion that it is. Which makes any claim that truth is relative self-defeating and pointless, but this does not hold for alternatives.Yes, because I say so.
How do you figure?
If truth is relative, then either it is relative to some absolute (the way that hot and cold are relative to an absolute 0 on the kelvin scale, or the ways in which physical measurements of any and all systems are relative to an absolute given by Planck's scale), or their is no absolute. In which case any truth has no validity (no "truthness") which can be compared to any other based on any scale other than one which is arbitrary. Truth reduces to the Sorites paradox: a "heap" is at some point declared arbitrarily to be no longer a heap. Hot is 101 degree Fahrenheit if one's temperature is taken, but a cool day in summer in places all over the world, and downright freezing compared to the heat of the sun.
Even in fuzzy logics in which degrees of truth can be intervals over the reals (and therefore any truth is always infinitely more or less true than any other, and this infinity possesses a cardinality greater than the set of natural numbers), truth is relative to an absolute (the real number line). Remove the absolute and all truths are false and vice versa.
Do you not also need an absolute to produce "false?"
Wouldn't removal of the absolute result in "nonverifiable" instead of "false?" (Use your agnosticism, young padawan)
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Either the answer is yes, in that we mean one cannot say anything is true or false such that this has any meaning at all, or the answer is no, in that one can say it but without any meaning at all.
The end result is the same. The assertion that truth is relative is necessarily false if it is true, and if true can be both false and true and therefore dismissed. There is no relative definition of truth such that any assertion truth is relative can be defended, because any assertions in such a system are relatively true, and simply changing what they are relative to makes them false. Whether you wish to see this as making "false" impossible to produce or making truth and false equal and meaningless is up to you. Again, the end is the same: one cannot defend relativism without admitting that the defense cannot be "true" or "false" and can be dismissed by anyone as can any statement made under the assumption of relativism.
No. For example, I can develop a calculus for a "relative" predicate logic, or many-valued logic, or pretty much add to any logical system "relativism" where true and false remain. They just lack any use, as such a system would require the attribution of any proposition, statement, etc., to be capable of being false or true arbitrarily. It would be pointless, but it's easily done. A more complicated system could be developed which involved starting assumptions (of the type used in Bayesian inference/analysis), such that depending on a particular starting point a statement is more true or more false, but there is no absolute starting point such that any statement can ever be necessarily true or false within that system.
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I see. I understand "relative" as being the unique case, and therefore relative truth as assessed on a case-by-case basis (i.e. there never is no absolute). I thought that's what you might have meant. But thanks for the explanation.
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This is a self-referential argument. You know these lead to paradoxes. Truth is the idealization (or idolization) of the adjective true.
LOL, such things happen when you transform an adjective into a noun.
Ahh, but true and false are not meaningless--they are adjectives. They become meaningless if you try to make them into nouns.
1) Grammatical categories are not so simply demarcated. If we get hung up on adjectives then relative truth obtains an entirely new level of being relative for active/stative or split ergative langugages.
2) The paradox is the point. If one assumes a framework in which truth is relative, then it is meaningless. There is nothing that can be asserted in such a framework which cannot be false and be true and have any rules for determining the conditions under which something is necessarily true or necessarily false or necessarily anything.
1) If truth is relative, then the statement you made is true or false depending on...?
2) There's a reason that truth and true are etymologically, phonetically, and orthographically related. It's because one refers to the attribution of the other to a specific instantiation. Simply put: "Truth" only matters if we can use it as an adjective. If "truth" itself is relative, than having the property of being true (a true statement is a truth, and nothing that is false can be the truth, nor can truth consist of things which are not true, etc.) is again meaningless. That's why there is no corresponding "false" to "truth" the way there is "false" and "true". As a noun, truth is a category or classification to which things belong. If truth is relative, whatever goes into that category is arbitrary. So it couldn't matter less if it is an "adjective" or a "noun". That's just taking old school grammar and improperly applying it to formal language (in which such ambiguities do not exist).
Ahh, but true and false are not meaningless--they are adjectives. They become meaningless if you try to make them into nouns.
"That which is true cannot be false". Adjectives modify, correct? What is "true" modifying? Is "false" a noun or an adjective here, and why?
"Truth cannot be false".
"That which is the truth cannot be false".
if you want to play games with grammar then you are going to have issues with logic which deliberately does not deal with these (why on earth would we invent cumbersome formal languages which make simple statements difficult to express if all we needed to do was rely on grammatical categories? Does "truth" fall apart when there is no corresponding noun/adjective distinction in Navajo or Greek?)
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Descriptors are still descriptors, no? They describe some thing.
One must remember that this is a construction, not necessarily the reality.
Truth {or that which is true} is conditional {or relative to} reality, no?
Whether or not that which is being claimed to happen actually happen.
Ahh, but there is: it is called "falsehood."
OK.
I disagree. The criteria for going into that category is being a faithful representation of reality within its environment. Is that meaningless, or does context not matter?
LOL, you just demonstrated the paradox yourself, then claim it does not exist? Priceless!
"False" is an adjective referring back to "That."
"Falsehood is untrue."
Legion, please forgive me for pointing out a flaw with formal language that results in a self-referencing paradox. It must be as embarrassing as wearing brown shoes with a black tuxedo. :sarcastic