What Is Truth?

"Three things can not be long hidden: the sun, the moon and the truth."-The Buddha

The nature of truth is the beginning point of all authentic spiritual traditions, since without a solid concept of truth, anything proposed will simply be opinion. And if it is all just opinion, then we wouldn't have the Buddha's Four Noble Truths, but Four Subjective Opinions. What the Buddha says about truth is clearly fact, but some do their best to hide truth or simply ignore it. They do so in a variety of ways. The first and most common way is to redefine truth, such that instead of truth being an objective reality, it is considered a subjective abstract, morphing into whatever each individual wants it to be at any given moment. In this way, truth has no real meaning other than that which the individual chooses to give it. This is known as Relativism; the doctrine that there are no absolute truths whatsoever, and that truth claims are all relative to time, place, circumstance and individual. Thus, one cannot make moral or ethical judgments and cannot make any absolute truth claims. Of this, John Paul II wrote in Evangelium Vitae:

"Freedom negates and destroys itself and becomes a factor leading to the destruction of others, when it no longer recognizes and respects its essential link to the truth. When freedom, out of a desire to emancipate itself from all forms of tradition and authority, shuts out even the most obvious evidence of an objective and universal truth, which is the foundation of personal and social life, then the person ends up by no longer taking as the sole and indisputable point of reference for his own choices the truth about good and evil, but only his subjective and changeable opinion, or indeed, his selfish interest and whim."

Do we not see this today? How many times have you heard (or even repeated it yourself) that some proposition or other is "your truth" and I have "my truth". This is the error of Relativism. How do we know it is an error? Because we have a definition of truth that has been consistent in all places, at all times, and in every circumstance.

What is Truth?
Truth is "that which is in accordance with fact or reality." This simple definition undermines Relativism, since, if an idea or action must be predicated on fact or reality, then it cannot by definition be subjective. You can sincerely believe when you jump off the top of a skyscraper that gravity will have no effect on you, but the reality is, when you do, you're going to hit the concrete like a sack of mashed potatoes. Reality, the way things really are, doesn't conform to feelings, desires, beliefs or delusions. It often stands in stark contrast to these things. By way of demonstrating what truth is, allow me to share a few things that truth is not:

1. It isn't pragmatic, since some action that might be effective can still be wrong or based on a falsehood.

2. It doesn't care about your feelings. Truth can be saddening, angering, disconcerting and worrying.

3. It isn't your good intentions. Good intentions can, and have been, very wrong and do harm as a result.

4. It isn't your sincere belief, because you can be sincerely wrong. (see example above)

5. It isn't "yours" or "mine", it simply is. It is transcendent and impartial while being absolute and objective.

Relativism is, then, self-refuting. If indeed truth were relative, then the truth claim that truth is relative would itself be relative, which renders the very claim itself absolute rubbish, and only a fool would base their life on it. As the philosopher Nicolas Gomez-Davila wrote:

"Man speaks of the relativity of truth because he calls his innumerable errors truth."

This insistence on "my truth-your truth" is a fatal error and is one of the most powerful ways the mind is clouded over by maya-illusion.

It is the first trial of any spiritual seeker to confront his/her false notions held as truths, almost as if they were idols, and burn them in the fires of sacrifice, undoing their crippling influence on body, mind and soul. Be constantly vigilant to guard yourself from all that would keep you from realization of truth and remember that when someone says truth is relative (your truth-my truth), he's asking you not to believe him. I suggest you comply with that request. Truth will always conquer.

"Truth alone wins, not untruth."-Mundaka Upanishad 3.6

And don't fall into the trap of thinking you must go to India, or Nepal, or any place to find truth. Truth is available at all times and in all places. It is at the core of your life and all your experiences precisely because it isn't the possession of any culture, nation, people or religion. You simply need to open your mind, clear it of your illusions, and be receptive when it comes to you.

"If you are unable to find the truth right where you are, where else do you expect to find it?"-Dogen

 

Truth isn't at all relative. You've not demonstrated that truth is relative either, but rather that opinion, perception, & comprehension are often relative. Just because the deluded man has a different point of view regarding the law of gravity's ability to work on him if he jumps from the building doesn't somehow render the law of gravity itself relative. The deluded man's comprehension & opinion are the relative element in the equation.

 

The truth is both subjective and objective, relative and absolute, or someone would have copyrighted and patented the truth long ago. This is the uncomfortable fact of life academia and the mainstream prefer to ignore, for fun and for profit.

Humor is the key to comprehending the truth, because all the physical evidence indicates our universe is ruled by particle-wave duality and pattern matching. (Duh!)

In pursuit of the truth, academia has made humor and even the stupid dictionary taboo, and helped the Tea Party to censor half of reality. In order to comprehend the order of all things, merely requires acknowledging that logic doesn't always make sense. Certainly, not if you ever want to get laid! Note that academia has the lowest reproductive rates of any profession, yet claims they comprehend reality.

 

So, in your interpretation of all this. Are you sitting in the garden, while Trump is bouncing around on his rubber duck, on your garden pond.?

 

The Law of Non-Contradiction says otherwise.

 

The law of non-contradiction, contradicts itself. Information Theory has two categories that flat out contradict each other. Dualism demands that words and arithmetic are two different things, despite all the physical evidence indicating otherwise. In a Singularity, the principle of identity is demonstrably tautological, making the law of self-contradiction contradict the evidence of such things as fuzzy logic and quantum mechanics, which apply to everything known to exist, while classic logic and physics simply don't.

Unless you can base logic on the physical evidence, you are merely blowing it out your ass. All the evidence indicates logic is a special case, that doesn't always apply. In fact, its only good about a quarter of the time. Blame the lawyers.

 

When discussion becomes disrespectful, the discussion is over. Thanks for your input up to this point.

 

Claiming that everyone must respect your ideas, and not claim they are merely so much hot air, even if they include genocide, is the ultimate insult. Logic is for fucking lawyers, when a quarter of the world still insists the sun revolves around the earth, and academia has made even the stupid dictionary taboo.

My book covers all their contradictions, including those of physicists, and is written for an AI to read, because 10,000 years of this kind of bullshit is destroying the planet, and academia's response is to help them censor half of reality. Thankfully, AI and reality could not give a crap about academia demanding we be polite, according to their own legal standards.

 

Note that Socrates doesn't refute him, and his argument is actually a good one for Fuzzy Logic, which can treat anything as "Partially True" or "Partially False". The truth itself being both absolute and relative, means the truth is context dependent, explaining why we have emotions, as well as, logic, or we would quickly become self-defeating. Logic describes how you can make more sense out of just about anything, while humor describes how, sometimes, the truth makes way too much sense, and is context dependent.

Socrates is famous for changing the entire world, from a bar stool, using a handful of fuzzy logic jokes. Then, being killed by the lawyers, for having a sense of humor and teaching peasants how to avoid their nonsense. His particular routine is one he inherited from a popular tribal tradition at the time. Tribes are more used to dealing with smaller and more democratic organizations, but Athens was pushing the limits of their ability to avoid Three Stooges slapstick dominating their politics.

His tradition was kept alive by the poorest peasants, and is all but dead in the modern world. Once, the idea of censoring humor was anathema in American politics, while congress is now merely lawyers and bankers, and the Supreme Court will gladly kill Socrates all over again.

 

With regard to the boiling point of water; the absolute truth is that it has a boiling point. Environmental factors that influence at what temperature that boiling point is reached are, as you noted, conditional, which means the temperatures are not absolute truths, since the temperatures are only true under those specific conditions. Absolute truth is objective & necessary (the fact of a boiling point) always, while the specific temperature is contingent (dependent on conditions & an effect).

And you're correct that logical absolute truths are indeed absolute.

 

Great topic

 

There is no absolute universal truth.
what is true in South Bend Indiana, may not be truth in Pyongyang, North Korea.
A Person can walk down Hollywood Blvd, smoking a cigarette, slurping a soda and playing loud music and never have a problem. But a person doing the exact same thing in Kagoshima Japan is likely to get arrested for being a public nuisance.

 

Your example actually proved your assertion wrong, as the penalty or lack thereof aren't absolutes at all, but merely the prevailing opinions of those locations on a specific behavior.

 

All the evidence has progressively established, that pattern matching rules the universe, not causality or logic. Pattern matching ruling the universe can be considered the self-evident truth, which trumps any logical absolutes, and can easily be established in countless ways, in your own living room if you want, because it means information is more fundamental than energy. Without the love and courage in your heart, ya got nothing kid, so go contemplate your navel while the whole world goes down the tubes.

In a Singularity, absolute truth must transform into relative truth, and vice versa, which all the physical evidence supports, and the Monstrous Moonshine Conjecture in mathematics as well.

 

An opinion regarding truth isn't truth itself, which is why it is called opinion. Truth is by nature factual; it is reality. And again, claiming one man's truth is another man's lie is simply supporting the fact that opinion (what you've mistakenly called truth in this comment) isn't necessarily truth. An opinion can certainly be true, but it can just as easily be false on some level.

Truth is absolute and objective, regardless of what opinions we may hold to. Your argument is that of the deluded man in my example.