What is a true statement?

If not something that can't possibly be disproved?

Nothing absolutely true can ever be proven false. Some would say there are no absolute truths. I say we share an objective reality and to some extent majority rules. "The sky is blue" could never be proven false. But could the existence of fairies?

Could it possibly be proven false, by any stretch of the imagination?

I suppose so...like if you set to record every point on earth I suppose you would have to rule them out if they did not appear on tape. Unless you give them the power of invisibility. (I don't know if there's a feasible way to record every point on Earth.) I also don't know what fairies are supposed to be capable of, exactly, or what it is they do. In the movies with Tinkerbell they change the seasons.

I wonder if you can name a few things that can't possibly be proven false. "I have feet." That's one. I suppose you could get into an argument about whether that's true based on, like, if someone "stole" your feet and you said it a moment before they were cut off. I would err on the side that it's always absolutely true that I have feet, regardless of where they are.

"There is a God." That's one. I don't know. There are lots of them, some more interesting than others.

 

That hurt

 

Hard to say. If i say "the sky is blue" or "i have feet," those are facts carried down to me by other human beings. And its not inclusive to other living things that experience life differently. So those maybe true statements just to educated human beings.

 

sky is black here

 

Same here to me. But perhaps not to a person who is color blind.

 

i always think that things only make sense and remain true because that's all we know. like colors especially.

 

Is saying there are no absolute truths, an absolute truth?

 

The Neo paradox

 

That's interesting. You can't even say "The sky is blue" and have it be a factual statement. What is true? Maybe you'd have to specify that sky meant when the sun is shining on your atmosphere.

I don't think so, Noserider. I believe that there are things which are absolutely true. If you said there is sand in the sandbox and there really was sand in the sandbox, that would be an absolute truth. It could never be disproven, because it did in fact happen. All truths share that similarity, that they can't be disproven.

 

'The World is all that is the case.' - Ludwig Wittgenstein.

 

The Ultimate truth doesn't need to be revealed in order to be true. But that's not saying it can't be revealed either. Just that it's not really dependent upon anything we humans think. Human belief only ever coincides with the truth.

I don't believe that more than one truth exists. Why complicate things by positing different ways for something to be true? There is no "true for you" as far as I'm concerned (unless what you believe to be true actually is absolutely true, of course.)

 

So fundamentally dishonest, even the thread title sounds like a crooked sales pitch. What is a "fact" anyway, what is "quality" really, what are "statistics"? "You can't prove fairies don't exist. Preponderance of evidence is not a thing"...

 

Descartes sought to find the one truth he could not deny. He denied objective knowledge, what we can perceive with our senses, God, everything, until he came upon the one thing he could not deny, which became his First Principle: I think therefore I am.

From this he revalidated all the objective things he denied and thus thrust philosohy into a new age. This kicked off the Modern Age of Western Man. Though he took a radically subjective point and used it to validate objective realities---which presented problems later, his First Principle is hard to deny. Numerous philosophers have tried, but their arguments became overly abstract, or problematic in their own right.

 

This is a very significant philosophical problem. For example, if we try to disprove the existence of God, or Gods, we commit a logical fallacy, because the question ultimately has to resort to lack of evidence, yet lack of evidence cannot disprove the existence of a thing. So we cannot disprove the existence of God or gods. Likewise, we cannot prove that God or Gods exist for the same fallacy, lack of evidence does not prove a thing does exist.

We cannot disprove the existential reality of certain things---a priori things (meaning things that we automatically know without definition, or understanding, it is simply a natural awareness we were born with) Primarily space, time, and self. Space and time are expressed or implied in every statement and thought we have. 'The book is there,' for example refers to space---there----but not time, but time is implied to be that the book is there at the present time the sentence refers to. If you demand to someone, 'The book, now!' time is referenced but space is not, however it is implied that the whereabouts of the book (space) is already known by the listener, or that they are looking for it assuming that it is somewhere.

But this does not prove that space and time exist, it only proves that our experience of it is understood as an a priori. Therefore it is existential---it is a part of our human experience. But our experience of reality does not prove that reality actually exists as such.

The most fundamental and difficult philosophical question of all is that of being. What is being, and why does anything exist at all rather than nothing...?

 

First of all, kind of, what the fuck are you talking about? I find the question of truth interesting, how lines become blurred and grayed, so I'm trying to sell you something?

Second of all, preponderance of evidence isn't a thing? Are you saying I'm saying that? Because I'm of the opinion that you could prove fairies don't exist (if they don't.)

What, are you mad at me because I believe in fairies or are you mad at me because I think if they don't exist it could be proven?

At the current there are plenty of places fairies could hide. Maybe they have tiny TVs too and know what we humans are up to.

"I think therefore I am" doesn't necessarily seem like a true statement to me. You are because you think? I would think you were because your parents conceived you.

 

I often think that certain sentences should be prefaced "From a human perspective..." because otherwise it's not essentially true. "From a human perspective, grass is green" for example.

 

But can you truly say that your parent's conceived you? What if, for example, they adopted a baby that looked like the boy they lost, and then convinced you that you were him? Or to follow Descartes' reasoning as he disproved the objective reality around him----what if you are really a mentally insane person in a bed in a mental hospital and your whole life is nothing more than a schizophrenic hallucination that you believe to be true, but it is only illusion.

I think therefore I am, on the other hand, does not refer to how you came to be, or the exisrtence of anything else other than, that because you think, i.e., you are aware----that you currently exist in some form.

 

Of course you could. As long as everyone else beliefs it to be factual.