God and Truth

Originally posted by wolfgang59
Any truth (to be True, rather than just a belief) is surely objective.
It is True for all.

Aha, that is the million dollar question.

(Maybe Bbar could help us here)

Is it possible for an Objective Truth to exist, without it being "interpreted" by an observer?

Isn't this the terrain of epistemology? (Or some similar sounding word, which is the study of determining HOW we think).

PS: along that train of thought, if a man speaks in a forest, and there is no woman to hear him, is he still wrong?

Originally posted by CalJust
Aha, that is the million dollar question.

(Maybe Bbar could help us here)

Is it possible for an Objective Truth to exist, without it being "interpreted" by an observer?

Isn't this the terrain of epistemology? (Or some similar sounding word, which is the study of determining HOW we think).

PS: along that train of thought, if a man speaks in a forest, and there is no woman to hear him, is he still wrong?

Is it possible for an Objective Truth to exist, without it being "interpreted" by an observer?

I am not sure I really understand this question. But you can surely have objective truth even where there is subjective observer interpretation. Suppose I hold the belief that P about some matter. Then this belief is a subjective thing in that it is a mental representation that has formed in me, a subject. Notwithstanding, whether or not P is in fact true can still just be an objective matter. P is true (or not) just depending on whether or not it picks out an actual fact about the world. Whether or not this relation holds is just an objective matter: it does not depend on any observer attitudes whatsoever.

So, there's no problem with having objective truth even if we are ascribing the truth to a subjective thing, like a belief I hold (more strictly, the truth is an objective relational property of the propositional content of my subjective mental attitude).

Anyway, you are right: bbarr could explain it better. 😕

Originally posted by LemonJello
I am not sure I really understand this question. But you can surely have objective truth even where there is subjective observer interpretation.

Here is a very crude example.

I see a tree in front of me.

Is there really a tree in front of me?

Could it not be:
(a) a hologram
(b) a hallucination
(c) a reflection from a nearby mirror or window
(d) etc

How can I be absolutely sure? Just because you say so??

All I can positively say is that to the best of my knowledge and experience, I think that what I see before me is a tree.

Originally posted by CalJust
Aha, that is the million dollar question.

(Maybe Bbar could help us here)

Is it possible for an Objective Truth to exist, without it being "interpreted" by an observer?

Isn't this the terrain of epistemology? (Or some similar sounding word, which is the study of determining HOW we think).

PS: along that train of thought, if a man speaks in a forest, and there is no woman to hear him, is he still wrong?

I think LJ has it right.

There are different theoretical accounts of Truth (Correspondence, Coherence, Pragmatist, Verificationist, Deflationary, Nominal,...). There are problems with each, but the Correspondence theory will be most attractive to metaphysical realists.

Roughly, on the Correspondence theory, truth is a relation (e.g., representation, reflection, agreement) that holds between a truthbearer (e.g. beliefs, statements, propositions) and a truthmaker (e.g. facts, events, states of affairs). Depending on how you specify the relation and the relata, you get variations of the theory.

The crucial point is that even if you have a correspondence theory where the truthbearer is always some psychological state or propositional attitude of a subject, it is still an objective matter whether a correspondence relation obtains between the content of that state or attitude and the how the world is.

Originally posted by CalJust
All I can positively say is that to the best of my knowledge and experience, I think that what I see before me is a tree.

An alternative way to look at it that is popular amongst physicists, is to say that what you can positively say to the best of your knowledge and experience is a tree, is reality by definition.

For a person living in the Matrix, the Matrix is reality. And who are we to say that the world in which the computer that runs the simulation called the Matrix is more real than the world inside the Matrix?

Originally posted by josephw
The only similarities are in words. Hinduism and Christianity are worlds apart in every respect.

Thank you for that comment..................because without it everyone will think Christianity and Hinduism are similar. (they are not)

Christianity teaches falsehoods and Hinduism does not.

However Hinduism suffers from misguided devotion towards demigods / and with a dash of speculation.

Apart from Vaisnavas who worship Sri Krsna Bhagavan / Hindus are the most truthful religion on earth / in contrast with Christianity which teaches mostly falsehoods with a dash of truth.

Originally posted by Dasa
Thank you for that comment..................because without it everyone will think Christianity and Hinduism are similar. (they are not)

Christianity teaches falsehoods and Hinduism does not.

However Hinduism suffers from misguided devotion towards demigods / and with a dash of speculation.

Apart from Vaisnavas who worship Sri Krsna Bhagavan / Hindus a ...[text shortened]... n on earth / in contrast with Christianity which teaches mostly falsehoods with a dash of truth.

Sounds like upside down, downside up!

Could a misguided devotion and a dash of speculation be considered as a falsehood?

Are you Hindu?

Originally posted by CalJust
Here is a very crude example.

I see a tree in front of me.

Is there really a tree in front of me?

Could it not be:
(a) a hologram
(b) a hallucination
(c) a reflection from a nearby mirror or window
(d) etc

How can [b] I be absolutely sure? Just because you say so??

All I can positively say is that to the best of my knowledge and experience, I think that what I see before me is a tree.[/b]

I see a tree in front of me.

So in this example, CJ believes that P (P = "there is a tree in front of me" , or some such). Then, pursuant to what I already described, whether or not this belief is true is an objective matter. It only hinges on whether P picks out an actual fact about the world. If it does, then P is true; if not, then not. This is an objective relation, just having to do with how P relates to the world. So truth is an objective matter: it is an objective relational property, even if the truthbearer happens to be a subjective thing, such a perceptual belief belonging to CJ.

Is there really a tree in front of me?

Could it not be:
(a) a hologram
(b) a hallucination
(c) a reflection from a nearby mirror or window
(d) etc

How can I be absolutely sure? Just because you say so??

Agreed, you cannot be absolutely sure. That is, you cannot have epistemic certainty for such a perceptual belief, or virtually any other belief. No matter the strength or nature of your evidence, there will always be some live epistemic possibility that the belief is mistaken. After all, you could be a brain in a vat. Your (a)-(c) are generally valid possibilities too, etc.

But what does this have to do with anything? Per the discussion above, truth is still an objective matter, regardless of whether your evidence can be such that it guarantees truth.

All I can positively say is that to the best of my knowledge and experience, I think that what I see before me is a tree.

I disagree. Unless you have some nontrivial reasons to mistrust your sight in this particular instance (like you're distance challenged or it's foggy or crappy lighting or etc), you can positively say a whole bunch of things. To wit:

"What I see before me is a tree."
"I see a tree before me."
"There is a tree before me."
"I know there is a tree before me."
etc, etc, etc.

Knowledge does not require epistemic certainty. Neither does justifiable assertion regarding these types of statements.

By the way, as an aside, what exactly does "to the best of my knowledge and experience" add here? I would think that something like "I think that what I see before me is a tree" is already particularly insulated from error. After all, if you are genuinely thinking you see a tree, then it is hard to understand how such a statement could be false when uttered concurrently, even if there is, in fact, no such tree. In the literature, I have seen such statements referred to as "incorrigible" for this reason. Adding "to the best of my knowledge and experience" would add no further insulation from error, as far as I can tell. Of course, you're still needlessly jumping through hoops. You're justified in simply asserting that there is a tree before you, even if that turns out to be false. And, whether it turns out true or false is still an objective matter.

Thanks bbarr, twhitehead and LJ for your detailed answers.

The Matrix analogy is the simplest one that comes to mind (and very appropriately) when challenging (or investigating) " reality".

The key words in bbarr's post for me is the last sentence: ".... how the world is."

But by whose objective account?

I can also see LJ's point that if there EXISTS a proposition P, then it does not matter how various people perceive it, it still EXISTS.

Yet this does not solve the problem of how does anyone know the TRUTH.

Since this is a SF, allow me to refer to an example that I have used before.

If you put dedicated followers of all the religions (including atheists) in a row, and ask them a specific question as to the TRUTH, you will get widely diverging, and mutually exclusive answers. Yet everyone will base his/her finding on the best facts available to them. This forum has repeatedly shown this to be the case. (e.g. the Dasa/RJH posts, and don't dismiss this by saying both are idiots!)

Twhitehead (and many others) will say that Truth is what is verifyable physically to our sense. But then our senses can be deceived, as any First Year textbook in Psychology will show.

I like the various forms of Truth Verification in bbarr's post, and will investigate those some more....

Edit: just received this from my regular Richard Rohr blog:

If we are to speak of a spirituality of ripening, we need to recognize that it is always characterized by an increasing tolerance for ambiguity, a growing sense of subtlety, an ever-larger ability to include and allow, a capacity to live with contradictions and even to love them!

So maybe living wth ambiguity and rejecting dualism is the way to go!

Originally posted by CalJust
Thanks bbarr, twhitehead and LJ for your detailed answers.

The Matrix analogy is the simplest one that comes to mind (and very appropriately) when challenging (or investigating) " reality".

The key words in bbarr's post for me is the last sentence: ".... how the world is."

But by whose objective account?

I can also see LJ's point that if there EX ...[text shortened]... en to love them! [/quote]
So maybe living wth ambiguity and rejecting dualism is the way to go!

The key words in bbarr's post for me is the last sentence: ".... how the world is."

But by whose objective account?

But this seems question-begging. To presuppose that they are "by" or according to someone would seem also to presuppose that they are subjective. But that is sort of what is under debate here.

Myself, I am a proponent of some form of the correspondence theory that bbarr mentioned, in which truth is relational property of propositions, which in turn constitute the content of things like beliefs. In general, the correspondence theorist will be committed to some metaphysics of truthmakers (the facts, or states of affairs, or ways in which the world is, etc). I do not take it that such things are "by" or according to anyone.

Yet this does not solve the problem of how does anyone know the TRUTH.

Since this is a SF, allow me to refer to an example that I have used before.

If you put dedicated followers of all the religions (including atheists) in a row, and ask them a specific question as to the TRUTH, you will get widely diverging, and mutually exclusive answers.

Yes, but this is just a practical, anthropological issue. It's of no concern to my theoretical view of the nature of truth or in what truth consists in. In my view, truth is a property belonging to (some) propositions. That humans disagree over which propositions have it, especially in some areas of theoretical discourse, is no big whoop. Contrariety is also not surprising, given that different humans can have different degrees of cognitive capabilities; different degrees of impartiality on various subjects; different bodies of evidence under their attention; different milieu and inculcatory backgrounds; etc.

Originally posted by yoctobyte
Sounds like upside down, downside up!

Could a misguided devotion and a dash of speculation be considered as a falsehood?

Are you Hindu?

He would call himself a "Vedantist", or something like that, but yeah, he's a Hindu whether he admits it or not.

Christianity and Hinduism are very different although they share many truths.

Thing is that different denominations of Christianity are so different from each other that they may be from different planets. No need to look to other religions for major differences!

Originally posted by bbarr
I think LJ has it right.

There are different theoretical accounts of Truth (Correspondence, Coherence, Pragmatist, Verificationist, Deflationary, Nominal,...). There are problems with each, but the Correspondence theory will be most attractive to metaphysical realists.

Roughly, on the Correspondence theory, truth is a relation (e.g., represen ...[text shortened]... ondence relation obtains between the content of that state or attitude and the how the world is.

I disagree with this only to the following extent:

In “Western” discourse, the word “truth” is cognate with such as “troth”, “trust”, and even “tryst”. Therefore, it seems rather obvious how a “correspondence” theory of truth would develop out of that linguistics.

In another linguistic culture, however, “truth” (satya) is cognate with being/existence (sat). Thus, the response of the Buddhist to the question “What is truth?”—“The cypress tree [over there] in the garden.” [Even if there are several linguistic layers from the original epistemological concept to the particular koan.]

Although I generally follow the “correspondence theory”, I am wont to lapse into the “reality/existence” mode in context. I don’t see any inherent (i.e., de-contextualized) “superiority” of one over the other.

Originally posted by vistesd
I disagree with this only to the following extent:

In “Western” discourse, the word “truth” is cognate with such as “troth”, “trust”, and even “tryst”. Therefore, it seems rather obvious how a “correspondence” theory of truth would develop out of that linguistics.

In another linguistic culture, however, “truth” (satya) is cognate with being/exi ...[text shortened]... ontext. I don’t see any inherent (i.e., de-contextualized) “superiority” of one over the other.

Hi Vistesd, nice to hear from you.

I think the corresponding term here is not 'satya', but something like 'yatharthata'.

Originally posted by bbarr
Hi Vistesd, nice to hear from you.

I think the corresponding term here is not 'satya', but something like 'yatharthata'.

Hey, old friend!
I’ll defer to your knowledge of Sanskrit—though surely you would concede that the sat/satya “cognation” has been philosophically in play? (E.g., Ghandi?) But it does seem clear that a “reality” theory of truth is evident (and not, I would suggest, inferior) in certain “eastern” (Vedantist/Buddhist) formulations. My basic point would be that it is necessary to understand such different formulations—and that there is no intrinsic reason to dismiss such “reality-based” truth assertions that persistently occur in, say, Zen—simply because they do not conform to the more “Western” “correspondence theory”.

EDIT: By the way, this is really just my curmudgeonly way of saying "hello!"

Originally posted by vistesd
Hey, old friend!
I’ll defer to your knowledge of Sanskrit—though surely you would concede that the sat/satya “cognation” has been philosophically in play? (E.g., Ghandi?) But it does seem clear that a “reality” theory of truth is evident (and not, I would suggest, inferior) in certain “eastern” (Vedantist/Buddhist) formulations. My basic point ...[text shortened]... ndence theory”.

EDIT: By the way, this is really just my curmudgeonly way of saying "hello!"

Sure, that's right. As you mention above, 'satya' is conceptually very close to 'being' or 'reality'. That makes me think its function is to refer to what things like 'fact', 'event', 'state of affairs', etc. refer to; that is, those parts of the world that anchor the external side of the truth relation.

You're certainly right that the injunction "be in the world!" and its like can serve as an alternative or antidote to some typically western forms of philosophical or intellectual neuroses/paralyses.

Hello friend!