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  1. Truth is a moving target.
  2. Most people seem to think of truth as in some way being absolute, objective, immutable.
  3. And some people even suppose themselves to have definite knowledge of this 'objective truth'..
  4. The first thing I have to say is that truth applies only to propositions. There is no aspect of existence that can be qualified as 'true' without first conceiving of it as a proposition. (the earth is round.) If truth were to be a property of anything outside of one's consciousness then other things outside of consciousness would have to have falseness in order for the term to mean anything as applied to non-thoughts. (anything that, by definition, describes everything is useless.) But how would you call something that's not an idea 'false'? The earth is flat. That's a false statement, but if the idea existed externally to one's consciousness then it could only be true, being objecive. And that is even disregarding the fact that ideas presumeably don't exist outside of consciousness in the first place. If by some strange anomaly 'reality' were to assimilate an objective nontruth (i.e. inconsistency) then the entire universe would disappear in a puff of logic.
  5. Some people believe that there is objective truth while the best we can possibly do is aim for it in our subjective beliefs since we can never be absolutely sure of anything. However I am showing here that truth only applies to belief, being nothing but absolute assurance itself. So much for their truth.
  6. Why do I say that a nontruth is an inconsistency? Because the only means of separating the true from the false that you have is by cogency and priority. If one proposition is not cogent with respect to the rest of your beliefs and axioms that are placed at a higher consideration of absolute righteousness then you say that proposition is false. Snow is green. This is false because it doesn't agree with your preconception of snow being white, which you know by our perceptions of what white is agreed to be, what snow is agreed to be, and what it looks like when you see it. "But I've seen snow, and it is white" is essentially another idea, or proposition, within your mind that is considered of higher priority than me telling you that snow is green--particularly because anything considered to be perceived directly by the senses is considered indisputable.
  7. (a shortened log from #philosophy (dalnet) follows..)
  8.  
  9. <Pe_Sla> ok sven what is truth?
  10. <Svengali> Pes, truth is the correspondence of a proposition to
  11. reality.
  12. <Cryptic_Sermon> Sven--you can't correspond a proposition to
  13. "reality" until you convert "reality" to another proposition,
  14. i.e. until you cognize it and process it in the abstract.
  15. Therefore truth is a correspondence between propositions.
  16. <Svengali> Cryp, no, truth is correspondence to reality.
  17. <Svengali> "Snow is white" is true if and only if snow is white.
  18. <Cryptic_Sermon> "snow is white" is true if it doesn't disagree
  19. with what you know about snow, i.e. that it's white. if there
  20. were nobody to know about snow, then there would be nobody to
  21. say "snow is white" is true or even to understand the statement
  22. <Svengali> Cryp, it's true if it matches reality.
  23. <Svengali> Now, I don't claim we can perfectly ascertain the
  24. truth of a proposition, of course.
  25. <Cryptic_Sermon> BUt you dont know if it matches 'reality' until
  26. you perceive reality and process it in the same terms as the
  27. proposition to see whether it correlates.
  28. <Svengali> Cryp, we know of reality through our analyzed senses
  29. <Svengali> If you wish to deny this, you become a solipisit.
  30. <Svengali> solipsist
  31. <Cryptic_Sermon> Svengali---I dont deny that, but it doesnt
  32. become meaningful to compare "snow is white" to reality until
  33. that sensory data is processed on the level at which you can
  34. create the proposition, "snow is white," or, "I'm seeing snow,
  35. and it's white." .. so ultimately truth is a correspondence
  36. between proposotions.. you determine whether a proposition is
  37. true or not by juxtaposing it with a proposition that you hold
  38. to be of higher absolutenesss, such as any that you consider as
  39. being derrived directly from the senses.
  40. <Svengali> Cryp, we obtain truth through coherance, but it's
  41. defined in terms of correspondance.
  42.  
  43. I can't argue with that, but the fact that truth corresponds with objective reality doesn't make truth itself objective and existing in some platonic realm of cognitive archetypes. It's not like it's 'already there' and we may or may not stumble upon it, nor like once we 'obtain' it we will never decide that it is, in fact, false, in light of higher knowledge or understanding. Well some people necessarily won't, but that's their problem.
  44.  
  45. Truth only applies within the context of a person's psychonomy, and every person's psychonomy is different and subjective. We can agree that an idea is true insofar as our modus operandi correlate and our perceptions match. Language serves to conform our ways of looking at things to the point of sharing ideas of profound complexity (and of formulating them based on solid logic) and of course serves us in the act of sharing our perceptions and deductions as well. But language does not alter reality nor cause reality to be communal--only communicable. Reality is communal on its own, assuming I don't exist in a closed subjective reality containing you as a figment of my perception. But that it is communal is all we can really say about reality outside of personal consciousness (i.e. arbitrary and shared abstractions, hashing and differentiating from the same singularity).
  46.  
  47. Richard A. Nichols III
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