Why truth?

My definition is the second and the only consistently meaningful one. Language is the use of symbols which can be interpreted in many ways and logic is the orderly arrangement of those symbols. You can come to logical conclusions based on erroneous information, but reality doesn't change.

 

This is a fact you can count on. Reality is in no danger of becoming unreal. If you experience anxiety in any form, then there is something not true about the narrative you are using to describe events.

 

Reality.

It has to change, has to become what it is.

It really could become a point of departure for us ( the danger I spoke of ) unless we were to have it change with us rather than agreeing to change by it. Thrill beyond threat to our being. - Everything changes itself to distraction, and the abstractions we hold to be unchanging pass with us regardless of their reflection in external relation.... but I feel, ( and this is where the truth of the thing must bear itself or not at all in the same, a feeling ) that we needn't pass. That we needn't dash ourselves upon reality if we create it. Feeling would be the right. Its sharing, its height. The thought our only consensual compass point at sea in the senses...

Existence can't cease, why should life?

 

Reality is emergent as we emerge, however as you can see there is some question in peoples minds as to whether they are real at all.

 

How not to dispel the questioning mind but allay the misgiving that has it seek its answer elsewhere?!

To formally invite the world to get high is as ineffective as tricking it into doing so!
: D

How to let it know there's no hangover when it's wholly engaged in emerging once and for all!?

( And I might stop speaking of what I don't know, mightn't I? )

 

In my puny mind, there is no discernible difference between reality and truth. If something is real, it must be true. If it is true, it must be real.

The last few posts seem to be an attempt at making a distinction [between reality and truth] without a difference.

We humans can be wrong about what is true about reality but that does not alter what is true about reality.

 

To what degree does there seem to be an attempt to? lol

Not one on their own in any case! : D

In my little eye, what's real is true too! And can stay so!

 

As a social species, we require communication. Untruth is a subversion of communication. And before you argue that untruth is as much communication as truth is, I am well aware of that. That is how it is able to subvert it.

An example may make it clearer. If I want to know whether you like a particular piece of music, I might ask you. If you like it but say you don't, or dislike if but say you do, you have subverted the intended communication, prevented it from functioning.

 

Word symbols can be confused but they do not loose their function. If you ask the question, how do like it and he considers, although he may report that he does when in fact he does not, the inquiry had the effect of adequate response to the question. The appearance of deception is based on the premise that it occurs, If it does then your only meaningful question in each instance is, are you honest.

 

Interesting. Socrates would have said the opposite - that reason and logic are the only basis for truth, and the senses and the body deceive us.

I'm sure I can come to conclusions about reality based on erroneous sensual information too - imagining the table in front of me isn't there while on drugs. That implies that what we experience sober is reality, or defining it as such.

 

Is imagining a table while on drugs or any other time, erroneous sensual information? The senses don't give us information about the world but our relationship to it.

 

I mostly agree with what you say, but would add intuition and faith as additional tools, as well as our sense experience. Our confidence in reason and logic is essentially intuitive. We can't prove them. They seem self evident, although it's possible that 's just another illusion. Deductive logic is only as good as its premises, and inductive logic depends on a relationship with an external reality that is always in doubt. Science provides us with a plausible rigorous methodology for developing and testing hypotheses based on an assumed external reality, and has a achieved a high degree of predictive and explanatory reliability--provided we can rely on the assumptions. Faith, as I understand it, is simply a willingness to rely on a view of reality that seems plausible, be it science or religion. It doesn't give us any certainty at all, but it helps us get through life with a justifiable sense of confidence that we've done our best in trying to figure it out--provided the faith is grounded on science and reason.

 

What are you adding these tools to, our capacity to apprehend? Intuition is our sense to make sense of. Faith could be inversely thought of as an absence of unreasoned caution, self confidence.

 

Sobriety is the most effective subversion of reality known to us! That is, if we understand existence as only having itself to imbibe ---- it's drunk!

lol

 

How do you make it that that is an addequate response? to the question?

If I ask whether he likes it, I am seeking specific information. A dishonest answer prevents me from getting that information. To extract any information from the answer given requires a presumption of truth.

When I ask a question, I don't consider it to be an adequate response if the person merely considers. An adequate response imparts the requested information back to me.

 

Sorry, that's nonsense. If I ask, "Do you like that?", I am presuming that he will tell me whether or not he likes that. I am not presuming either a yes or a no. I am presuming truth.

If he likes it and says "Yes" or if he dislikes it and says "No", then I have the information I sought. If he likes it and says "No" or dislikes it and says "Yes", I do not have the information I wanted. Unfortunately, I have no way to distinguish the two situations. Therein lies the problem with untruth. The possibility of untruth damages the value of even truthful information.

Information exchange is only possible because, fortunately, the majority of people are truthful most of the time. Therefore the presumption of truth is workable, though not perfect.

 

That you have no way of knowing if the correct answer is yes or no, is my point about asking for subjective information, any answer will do. Subjective information is transient at best and can hardly be compared to truth saying.
I hope I have made myself clearer.

If a person is in a subjective frame of mind, that is self indulgent and effluent in trying to communicate sensation, then there, is not where you would be looking to hear the truth. Such talk is gibberish, not deceitful. You will hear all kinds of claims about what people are going to do, what their dreams are,
what they had for dinner, where they ate, and on and on. They might as well be blowing smoke up their own ass and telling us that they brushed their teeth and how long it took.

So, considering as you say, that the words used to relay accurate information and inaccurate information look and sound the same, we need a different criteria for ascertaining what a person is trying to, or is, communicating, than relying only on the word symbols themselves. Knowledge is being shared and a persons words accurately reflect the processes going on inside of them, even to the point of displaying that they are mentally dissociated from the world around them.

The criteria we use is do we recognize the truth of what someone is saying, within ourselves. If not, then it is unbelievable and you can take it with a grain of salt, so to speak.

 

I'm with KeithBC, this is nonsense. My reason for saying that is the same as I've said before - that words aren't always used to "communicate what is inside", a discussion that we did not conclude. You incorrectly assume not only that, but that me saying a sentence to you is for the purpose of sharing knowledge. There are so many examples where this is not so.

 

I think you are confusing the form in which something is said, with it's content. When you speak, it is always for communication, you are communicating something. I said our words accurately reflect the processes going on inside us.
Perhaps you make monkey noises, reflecting frivolous mood. Or perhaps you find yourself in close quarters with someone you don't know and they comment on the weather, whereas it is not at all the weather they are concerned about but the awkwardness they feel standing next to someone in silence. Whereas the words themselves in these examples were not significant in form, they told of a state of being that went unspoken in detail.
If you are sufficiently familiar with your own states of being you can recognize those states in others. You can, see all the punch lines.