Truth.. and what you know

[Brian37]

So the best way to determine what the "truth" is is to simply swallow this woo and throw our hands up and say "This is wordy, sounds intellectual, so Allah is the one true god"?

Now take this same argument you typed here and ask yourself if you would become a Christian or a Jew if they made this same argument to you.

Now a dose of reality for all of you.

The best way to determine the most accurate description of the nature of reality is, when you have multiple competing claims, is to take those claims into a neutral setting, put the claims under an established test with control groups, be able to test and falsify those claims, and then subject the claim to peer review to insure your starting data, methodology and formula and output data are correct. If your claim gets through all that, you are onto something. If it does not, you start over or you scrap it.

Bottom line what you typed was meaningless drivel.

Did I somehow miss that this was about Allah? Damn I have to start paying more attention.

Didn't have to mention Allah, but when you play chess for 13 years you know the bait used to draw you in. This is to prevent him from making it evidence of his particular god. Preventative strike consider it.

I've seen this "how do you know" and "what is truth" woo from all sorts of religious people over the past 13 years.

I find it absurd for someone to come onto an atheist website anywhere and put their position next to where it says "belief" then avoid talking about it when it is glaringly obvious by that alone they think they are right. I don't post the word "atheist" because I think I am wrong and I am not afraid at all to defend my position.

Many of the theists who debate us at least try to argue their position. If all he wants to be is a spectator then he should not have started this thread.

[Losty]

Makes sense. I don't really know him or his posts so that's my defense for not noticing.

[KichigaiNeko]

[Dragonetti]

You stated you are from Qatar? Are you still living there? Because this website is blocked by their filters.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Hello everyone.

I’ve always liked to discuss terms and meanings..

what I want to discuss today is the difference between "The Truth" and "What you know"


The truth is always there but no one can say this is it!! If someone did .. then that means that he is in deep ignorance.

Can you count on what you know to define the truth?!

And you're absilutely right in saying that the true test of mental strength is the willingness to accept one's own error as a possibility.


How can you be close to the truth as much as you can??

I think being truthful and trying to know the truth depends on how tolerant you are with other ideas and opinions.. how strong you are to change your mind if discovered that you are wrong .. how brave you are to say I don’t know .. and how deep you are to open your mind for others and hear their opinions with the possibility that they can be right..

So now.. what is truth? how attached are you with what you know?

and the big question is .. if you knew that the truth is with your enemy.. are you brave enough to admit?

There are different kinds of "truths". Some truths are emotional, some are objective and real, and some are lgocial and abstract.

As far as how attached I am to what I think I know, I grade it in terms of evidence and reasonability. Much of physics seems terribly esoteric to me -- say, for instance, that the flow of time changes with the speed of the observer -- but the evidence is very solid that it happens.

In other matters. they hypothesis may seem very reasonable, but be contravened by the evidence (say, geocentricism).

In short, knowledge for me is a mixture of what seems reasonable combined with how much evidence is at hand. A reasonable hypothesis without evidence is not knowledge, but not excluded from possibility; and something as nutty as QM must be accepted if the evidence says so.

[bennyboy]

You can have truth, but you can only know whether your ideas are true in a given context.

In the context of eating an apple, it is true that I am enjoying it. Whether the apple and I "really" exist, or whether I'm just an illusion, or a figment of the Mind of God, or a character in the Matrix, is not knowable. That transcendent context is not accessible to us. But eating an apple will always just be eating an apple. And that's truth.

You seem to be confusing existence with a particular type of existence. After all, it was never in question that Neo existed in the Matrix, only what the nature of that existence was (virtual).

I'm pretty sure that's what I just said.

The problem comes when people have ideas that they think represent a truth of a level that is inaccessible to humans-- for example, if they claim to know why the universe exists rather than not existing. That is delusion, and possibly pride as well.

If they claim to know - especially if they claim no possibility of error - I'd agree. However, I think one can have a reasonable, defensible belief on this matter, given certain philosophical views.

"given certain philosophical views" establishes a context. For example, given the philosophical view of physical monism, it is necessarily true that mind is a physical property.


The problem occurs when a thick layer of reasoning is founded on a philosophical assumption, so that people lose sight of that original root. Then, inevitably, that massive construction is taken as sufficient proof to justify the assumption. But circles never work. NEVER, I say.

[MindForgedManacle]

You seem to be confusing existence with a particular type of existence. After all, it was never in question that Neo existed in the Matrix, only what the nature of that existence was (virtual).

I'm pretty sure that's what I just said.

The part where you said "Whether or not the apple and I 'really' exist...' threw me off I guess.

"given certain philosophical views" establishes a context. For example, given the philosophical view of physical monism, it is necessarily true that mind is a physical property.

Of course it does, I never denied it did.
However, that strictly speaking is not necessarily true. Property dualism is a physicalist-monist position, and yet it treats the mind as not being a physical property. :p

The problem occurs when a thick layer of reasoning is founded on a philosophical assumption, so that people lose sight of that original root. Then, inevitably, that massive construction is taken as sufficient proof to justify the assumption. But circles never work. NEVER, I say.

I think you're confused here. We all make certain assumptions on any number of topics. Outside of properly basic beliefs (stuff like reasoning's validity, generally our senses, existence of other minds, etc.), we take the pragmatic, coherent and evidenced beliefs which corroborate with our assumptions as supporting them. And that's because they do support them, and they are not circular. I believe the mind is basically an emergent property of the brain. The destruction or damaging of certain areas of the brain removing the agent's capacity to do some previously hekd ability is consistent and supportive of this type of view alone. Substance dualists have to contrive an entirely separate ontology to try and get in. Idealists' response basically devolves into solipsism.

So in other words, aside from a few beliefs, the basic ones, one's assumptions can generally be validated, and calling that circular is confusing.

[ska88]

Hello everyone.

I’ve always liked to discuss terms and meanings..

what I want to discuss today is the difference between "The Truth" and "What you know"


The truth is always there but no one can say this is it!! If someone did .. then that means that he is in deep ignorance.

Can you count on what you know to define the truth?!


How can you be close to the truth as much as you can??

I think being truthful and trying to know the truth depends on how tolerant you are with other ideas and opinions.. how strong you are to change your mind if discovered that you are wrong .. how brave you are to say I don’t know .. and how deep you are to open your mind for others and hear their opinions with the possibility that they can be right..

So now.. what is truth? how attached are you with what you know?

and the big question is .. if you knew that the truth is with your enemy.. are you brave enough to admit?

I'm not entirely sure what you're asking. Are you asking what the difference between "truth" and "knowledge" is, asking how we know if anything is true, or what?

Nothing is true... everything is permitted.

Is it true that "Nothing is true."? If so, then the statement is false. If not, then it's meaningless.

This is we shouldn't go post-modernist! xD

You can have truth, but you can only know whether your ideas are true in a given context.

In the context of eating an apple, it is true that I am enjoying it. Whether the apple and I "really" exist, or whether I'm just an illusion, or a figment of the Mind of God, or a character in the Matrix, is not knowable. That transcendent context is not accessible to us. But eating an apple will always just be eating an apple. And that's truth.

You seem to be confusing existence with a particular type of existence. After all, it was never in question that Neo existed in the Matrix, only what the nature of that existence was (virtual).

The problem comes when people have ideas that they think represent a truth of a level that is inaccessible to humans-- for example, if they claim to know why the universe exists rather than not existing. That is delusion, and possibly pride as well.

If they claim to know - especially if they claim no possibility of error - I'd agree. However, I think one can have a reasonable, defensible belief on this matter, given certain philosophical views.

what I mean is.. talk about your view on truth .. thats it

and it seems that you are doing just fine

---

I think most truth is subjective. I can know thing to be true, but every time I learn something new my perception of truth is slightly altered. Maybe it doesn't mean my original idea of truth wasn't true, but more like my new idea of truth is even more true. And maybe my idea of truth is only true for me. In any case I think education is the most important thing (not necessarily formal education), the more you learn the closer you are to truth.

Great !

you mentioned many interesting ideas.

You actually become closer to the truth as long as you grow and learn and experience new things... and the truth you knew may not change but become more true.!

There has to be a measurement for how true this or that information is, or at least thats how we see it as human beings .. cuz we love to measure things .. we love counting .. we are more comfortable with things we can touch and see ..

But what about imaginations and thoughts .. fictions.. dreams.. future tales!

Are they true? what makes fiction .. fiction! ?

I've always thought that their might be a possibility that we are living the dream and dreaming the real life! What makes dreams only happen in our minds? why are we so sure!!?

why not assuming that we are actually transferring into another parallel world? at least partially ..

Why do some people believe on souls? and others don't!

Oh my God this is driving me crazy.. and I like it.

About formal education.. I think it obstructs our minds from seeking the real truth.. since it provide information as a fact! while they should give us the possibility to find the truth some where else!

I still remember my physics teacher when I told her "what makes you so sure that atoms and electrons are real? scientists have changed their opinions many times around this matter"

she said .. Thats been proven my experiments..

and just in years ago.. some scientists discovered that everything is wave .. even what they used to call "matter, atoms, electrons"

they are still trying to find out wether this is true or not!

thanx a lot

---

Hello everyone.

I’ve always liked to discuss terms and meanings..

what I want to discuss today is the difference between "The Truth" and "What you know"


The truth is always there but no one can say this is it!! If someone did .. then that means that he is in deep ignorance.

Can you count on what you know to define the truth?!


How can you be close to the truth as much as you can??

I think being truthful and trying to know the truth depends on how tolerant you are with other ideas and opinions.. how strong you are to change your mind if discovered that you are wrong .. how brave you are to say I don’t know .. and how deep you are to open your mind for others and hear their opinions with the possibility that they can be right..

So now.. what is truth? how attached are you with what you know?

and the big question is .. if you knew that the truth is with your enemy.. are you brave enough to admit?

So the best way to determine what the "truth" is is to simply swallow this woo and throw our hands up and say "This is wordy, sounds intellectual, so Allah is the one true god"?

Now take this same argument you typed here and ask yourself if you would become a Christian or a Jew if they made this same argument to you.

Now a dose of reality for all of you.

The best way to determine the most accurate description of the nature of reality is, when you have multiple competing claims, is to take those claims into a neutral setting, put the claims under an established test with control groups, be able to test and falsify those claims, and then subject the claim to peer review to insure your starting data, methodology and formula and output data are correct. If your claim gets through all that, you are onto something. If it does not, you start over or you scrap it.

Bottom line what you typed was meaningless drivel.

Or.. that is what you think is true.

---

Did I somehow miss that this was about Allah? Damn I have to start paying more attention.

I don't know why when I write anything it directly means that I'm talking about Islam and my belief and my God!!

Why can't we just discuss things without looking at the religion?!

I replied on you guys and I didn't even look at your profiles

that's segregation don't you think?

[bennyboy]

I think you're confused here. We all make certain assumptions on any number of topics. Outside of properly basic beliefs (stuff like reasoning's validity, generally our senses, existence of other minds, etc.), we take the pragmatic, coherent and evidenced beliefs which corroborate with our assumptions as supporting them. And that's because they do support them, and they are not circular. I believe the mind is basically an emergent property of the brain. The destruction or damaging of certain areas of the brain removing the agent's capacity to do some previously hekd ability is consistent and supportive of this type of view alone.

Why call "basic" those philosophical positions on which all other ideas rest, and from which many of our other beliefs unfold? Here you are doing exactly what I said people should not do. You've called and important philosophical belief, like that about the nature of sensation, "basic," and then unfolded a system of ideas that not only depend on, but follow from, that assumption.

Substance dualists have to contrive an entirely separate ontology to try and get in. Idealists' response basically devolves into solipsism.

You keep saying this about idealism, but you need to explain why you say this. Believing that all experiences are intrinsically mental has nothing to do with whether there are other minds, also experiencing, or with whether or not they are related to each other in a larger framework.

So in other words, aside from a few beliefs, the basic ones, one's assumptions can generally be validated, and calling that circular is confusing.

There are no basic assumptions, except for those you want taken as true without having to provide evidence for them. When one of those assumptions is in fact about the NATURE of evidence, that is most certainly a circle.

[Rampant.A.I.]

I think you're confused here. We all make certain assumptions on any number of topics. Outside of properly basic beliefs (stuff like reasoning's validity, generally our senses, existence of other minds, etc.), we take the pragmatic, coherent and evidenced beliefs which corroborate with our assumptions as supporting them. And that's because they do support them, and they are not circular. I believe the mind is basically an emergent property of the brain. The destruction or damaging of certain areas of the brain removing the agent's capacity to do some previously hekd ability is consistent and supportive of this type of view alone.

Why call "basic" those philosophical positions on which all other ideas rest, and from which many of our other beliefs unfold? Here you are doing exactly what I said people should not do. You've called and important philosophical belief, like that about the nature of sensation, "basic," and then unfolded a system of ideas that not only depend on, but follow from, that assumption.

Because the entire "properly basic" foundational system is a bullshit charade to backdoor complex irrational beliefs such as "God" in as fundamental, when they aren't.

Substance dualists have to contrive an entirely separate ontology to try and get in. Idealists' response basically devolves into solipsism.

You keep saying this about idealism, but you need to explain why you say this. Believing that all experiences are intrinsically mental has nothing to do with whether there are other minds, also experiencing, or with whether or not they are related to each other in a larger framework.

So in other words, aside from a few beliefs, the basic ones, one's assumptions can generally be validated, and calling that circular is confusing.

There are no basic assumptions, except for those you want taken as true without having to provide evidence for them. When one of those assumptions is in fact about the NATURE of evidence, that is most certainly a circle.

What both of you are describing is really a non issue in coherentism and reliablism.