The truth shall set you free

Discussion in 'General Philosophy' started by Magical Realist, Jan 29, 2016.

  1. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

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    Or so it is claimed. Is there any value in knowing the truth besides that it's just the truth? Does the truth improve us or our condition? Is truth an absolute value, in the sense that it is always something that should be known by everyone? Truth is a property of sentences, as Rorty points out. How does this translate into a moral value?
     
    Last edited: Jan 29, 2016
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  3. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    Much hurt, hate and crime is associated with some form of falsehood, whether through willfulness or ignorance. Sticking to the truth as best as one can, more often than not results in less hurt, hate and crime.

    It is very rare to hear someone say "I hate you for telling me the truth."
     
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  5. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    I think one has to know the truth of things in order to progress. If you don't know where you are, how can you know where you are going?
     
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  7. cosmictraveler Be kind to yourself always. Valued Senior Member

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    But what is truth? Do we use science to show us what the truth is always? That seems preposterous for everyday science finds new things that many times contradict the old views. Look at the Big Bang theory, it wasn't the first theory about how the universe began and won't be the last. So we need to understand which truths we ACCEPT as true. So truth is based on what people will allow to be called truth.
     
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  8. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    For the most part, new science complements the old rather than replacing it. For example, Newton's laws of motion still work for many sorts of calculations, even though we now know they are incomplete. The Big Bang describes the expansion of the universe due to the evidence of a red shift. That's always likely to be true, even if we fill in some details.
     
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  9. cosmictraveler Be kind to yourself always. Valued Senior Member

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    3 people saw a murder and they each saw something a little different from where they were standing. Which one or are they all telling the truth. Look at those black people that were shot by police, what did they do other than run away? Was the police in the right and tell the truth about what they saw or were the photographs the truth which went against what they said?
     
  10. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    There is no doubt that in many scenarios, the truth has been lost. That does not refute the notion that vying for the truth where/when possible is still an effective philosophy.

    This is not truth. They are telling their perceptions and experiences.
     
  11. cosmictraveler Be kind to yourself always. Valued Senior Member

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    So there could be many "truths" about anything. Those who argue the best will usually have their truth upheld. But the bigger question, to me, is what should be done to those who only tell us their truth but are not doing so which can and does lead to many problems and even deaths. There are many doctors that are telling their patients they need this surgery or that they need to take meds for their problems but in actuality are only trying to make more money and their patients don't need anything. These people should be put in jail but many times are not due to other doctors lying for them.
     
  12. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    But you're not describing truth; you're describing belief, or assertion.
     
  13. C C Consular Corps - "the backbone of diplomacy" Valued Senior Member

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    Lots of historical and continuing warfare over what "truth" means which the brevity and naivete of a common dictionary can't encompass. But if we zoomed out to a blurred, generic distance -- well beyond the finer details of the fray, it seems that "truth" revolves around satisfying some standard of a system.

    For instance: Once decided as confirmed in court, a claim like "Kaypok Gunz robbed the Digon Market on August 9, 2014 at 8:42 in the morning" becomes what that judicial apparatus can accept as "true" according to its methodology and benchmark. Even if the knowledge is only partial and everything from the robber to the establishment he plundered might potentially be conceived / described differently from rival levels and contexts, and in relation to other disciplines / formal inventions than the legal one.

    Truth for that enterprise (that is, meeting the requirements of its standard for such) thus becomes important for all in terms of whatever purposes and value that applicable system has to the rest of society (especially as an authority). If astronomy and other space-related research determine it is "false" that a particular asteroid is going to impact Earth, then that has significance via avoiding unnecessary mass panic. And that practical interpretation of "what's going on" isn't crippled by a futile quest of waiting for a representation which non-described reality can correspond to perfectly.

    When _x_ satisfies a fixed standard or set of requirements, it may be designated "truth" within that system. Anyone can know about the results if the knowledge is distributed far enough. But that has little to do with causing everyone to be affected by that system's truth, if (for whatever reason) they do not respect or genuflect to that system's conclusions. A majority crowd does usually heed its most popular authorities, especially if backed by that society's laws.

    Absolute. . . . The sensible world is a realm of interdependent things, of objects taken to "exist" as external appearances (even our visual depictions of particles and fields are from the outside, surrounded by or extended in space). Nature as a whole could be an absolute that exists in itself without relation to anything else (thus lacking an outer and mutable appearance). But its contents certainly aren't immutable or resistant to relational variation. Again: There are abstract, invented systems that can sport fixed / absolute properties; but the empirical furniture of the cosmos itself -- those connected particulars filling it -- are not such a product of reflective thought (scheme-managed usage of words, symbols, and their functioning).

    A moral system can borrow the "truth" concept like any other and establish its set of requirements for it. In the end, it may do little more than vouch that a moral principle is indeed an accepted member of that specific orderly complex.

    Despite being considered an "ought" rather than a description, an ethical prescription still seems to fall out of both base descriptions and "understandings" of empirical social interactions. Ergo morality's extended attachment to perceived world events and situations, rather than just language or "floating on their own" intellectual processes. Which in turn generates secondary theories about how to regulate human interactions (as opposed to merely predicting them). To properly guide individual and collective behavior toward some desired goal or stability. Universal rules, generalizations can be injected which ignore the contingencies of the sensed life, but humans first struggle through the latter before developing / discerning the former.
     
    Last edited: Jan 30, 2016
  14. Yazata Valued Senior Member

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    In my life there is. It satisfies curiosity and curiosity is probably the strongest thing that drives me. I'm aware that isn't true for everyone else.

    It certainly has practical value. Technology, medicine, engineering and improved methods of agriculture all improve our material conditions and all come about as the result of knowledge. Knowledge of our surroundings helps us detect and neutralize possible threats.

    My own hypothesis is that our curiosity and our desire to expand our knowledge is instinctive. It's something that humans and the other higher animals possess because it increases our evolutionary fitness. That would put it in the same class as moral and ethical values in my opinion, since I trace them to social evolution as well. So knowledge and truth have just as much grounding as guiding values as goodness, compassion and love.

    I would argue that while truth is indeed a property of propositions, it is the property that holds when propositions correspond to reality (however that works). So truth isn't just a matter of sentences having some property, it's a matter of us (the language users) having some correct information about the rest of the universe.

    I wouldn't call the human desire to know a moral value exactly, but more of a cognitive value.
     
    Last edited: Jan 30, 2016
  15. Waiter_2001 Registered Senior Member

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  16. river

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    Truth is absolute ; uncorrupted by opinion; and is never able to be questioned ; ever
     
  17. zgmc Registered Senior Member

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    How do we know when we've found the truth? We first need to know the right questions to ask..
     
  18. river

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    The Truth in any field of investigation in and on any ology is all that is needed; to come to truth.
     
  19. zgmc Registered Senior Member

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    Name some absolute truths.
     
  20. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    You often question it.
    We know with near certainty that length contraction and time dilation are real and dependant on each frame of reference, with each being as real as the other.
     
  21. river

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    Which to the Universe ; as a whole ; is not a physical reality.
     
  22. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    Exercising your "right" to disagree again river? That's nice but you are still wrong.

    http://newt.phys.unsw.edu.au/einsteinlight/jw/module4_time_dilation.htm

    Time dilation, length contraction and the relativity of simultaneity are among the strange conclusions of special relativity. This page uses animations to explain them in more detail. There is a little mathematics: we use Pythagoras' theorem about the sides of a right angled triangle, but nothing beyond that.
    """"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
     
  23. river

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    You will always refer ...pad
     

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