Does truth exist? Heres what I think.

the truth is. the line is not straight, it is curved..

 

Main Entry: truth
Websters definition:

1 a): archaic : fidelity, constancy b): sincerity in action, character, and utterance

2 a): (1) the state of being the case : fact
(2) the body of real things, events, and facts : actuality
(3) often capitalized : a transcendent fundamental or spiritual reality
b): a judgment, proposition, or idea that is true or accepted as true <truths of thermodynamics>
c) : the body of true statements and propositions

3 a : the property (as of a statement) of being in accord with fact or reality b chiefly British : true 2 c : fidelity to an original or to a standard



All the above definitions of "truth" are readily testable and verifiable when applied to the subject in question except the part in bold: a transcendent fundamental or spiritual reality .

That is something nobody really knows and can verify, yet it is that definition of the word that most often is the subject of such "discussions "as this thread. But as nobody knows if such "truth" exists because said definition of truth is considered to exist outside of and not Dependant on human experience or existence, than all these type of discussions, while interesting to a degree amount to nothing more than mental masturbation.
We can hypothesize and conjecture all we want about "ultimate absolute truth" but the truth as in the factual reality that we CAN experience is that nobody really friggin knows.
To say that you have experienced this "truth" through religious ecstasy, mystic revelation, or drugs experiences or any other means still fails because it is experienced and interpreted by and through your nervous system.
It is futile to try to state that such a "truth" exists or that it can be known by us because at the very best the only thing a person can attest to with any degree of certainty is their BELIEF that such a thing as "absolute truth" exists.

So do I think or believe in such a thing as an "absolute truth", to a degree I like to think there is some driving principle behind existence, but that is just a belief, not a'priori reality.

Do I "know" such absolute truth exists? Nope and neither does anyone else.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJMKupYF14I"]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJMKupYF14I

 

It is interesting that the word truth derives from a root meaning "faithfulness".
Are we real PB?

 

It really depends on what aspect or criteria we want to use to define ourselves doesn't it?
As far as daily survival of the organic creature is concerned, yes we are real.
Is all ultimately an illusion, don't know and neither do you.

How "real" is "reality" anyway?
All I know is what has been relayed to "me" by this nervous system that pervades this biological thing we call a body, but "I" never actually experience the things I perceive, just chemicals and joules as you are fond of saying.

Won't know until I die, and neither will you my friend, and if there is no "ultimate Truth" or afterlife, heaven, soul or ________(fill in the blank) then it doesn't really matter then does it?

 

PB, the statements you make in the above posts are also just beliefs. no different from anyone who makes statements of other types, regarding Truth.

what i'm saying is, anything is possible.

 

Yeah, and I was pretty clear in distinguishing what are my "beliefs" as opposed to what are able to be verified to be "fact" concerning the different definitions of truth.

If you notice the only thing I stated with any type of conviction is that none of us can know for a certainty that such an "absolute spiritual type truth" actually exists outside of human experience. In that statement is the same sentiment of your statement that "anything is possible".
The lack of being able to know something with certainty carries with it the implication that anything is possible concerning that which can not be truly "known".
True, anything is possible, but not everything is probable.

What part of what I said is in error?

 

If we are real then how can we be illusion? I don't speculate that something is not real. I do know that I can misapprehend things.

This is a meaningless question.

Chemicals and joules are not real things? That your body is calibrated to a limited range does not mean we are not present to real things. We know that there are phenomena outside of our range of perception through the use of magnifying devices. That we at any moment do not perceive every corner of the universe does not mean we cannot perceive what is in front of us.

My statement on this matter is that I am personally unaware of a time when I did not exist, but any one who talks about existence after death does not know what they are talking about. The question posed in this thread is does truth exist, not is there an "ultimate truth". In my mind there are no degrees of truth.

 

Funny, but if you look at it again, I think you and I are really on the same page here. I think you may have misread some of my statements.
My main point is that there are some definitions of the word "truth" that do lend themselves to observational proofs and the other definition;
a transcendent fundamental or spiritual reality
is a quantity that in our present state of existence is not knowable to the same degree as the other definitions of truth.
To say that this thread is flatly about "does truth exists" is a little weak mainly because the answer is yes, truth does exist, given the definitions of the word. The main theme of this and most other discussions of the topic of truth are about the transcendent fundamental or spiritual reality and not about what constitutes truth from a strictly scientific or legal standing.

How real is reality?
There you go pulling things out of context again.
If you read the remainder of the thought;
All I know is what has been relayed to "me" by this nervous system that pervades this biological thing we call a body, but "I" never actually experience the things I perceive, just chemicals and joules as you are fond of saying. It should be apparent that I was referring to the way our nervous systems work and the TRUTH that we only experience what our senses and nervous system present to us. Like you said about using instruments to expand the range of our senses, when we do that then our "reality" is altered by the new information being perceived and conveyed by our nervous systems and our "truth" changes accordingly.

The reason I quoted the definitions of the word truth is because it can be so subjective. As I said I feel that all the definitions of the word "truth" are rather apparent except the one I chose to focus on, that is why I focused on it. If that definition of truth were not a main thought in this thread, the thread would be dead already.

 

We do indeed know that there are transcendent aspects to reality, transcendent being beyond perception. The term spiritual has no meaning for me as a distinct form of reality. The degree to which these things can become knowable, is the degree to which we can refine our data collection techniques.

It is our comprehension of reality that is affected, I wouldn't think that reality or truth can be made into something other than what they are.

I appreciate the use of definitions and I understand the reason for using them, which is why I made the point that truth can be most accurately inclusive of what is, if we regard it as synonymous to the word reality. "Truth" without the base metric, "reality", becomes as you say a wholly subjective affair.

 

If transcendent is beyond our perception than how can we "know" that transcendent aspects to reality actually exist. catch-22 situation as are most all these type of areas of investigation.

Which is exactly why I said "our" reality and "our" truth, signifying how our paradigm changes and reshapes "truth" as we discover and learn more. The shift from Newtonian physics to Einsteinian physics is a good example of this paradigm change brought about by a furtherance of knowledge.

:cheers2:

 

theres a slow, slow, slow train coming.. ;p

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1xSt7iganA"]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1xSt7iganA