Objective Truth

[Fido]

Originally Posted by Resha Caner

You guys need to work on being a little more concise. No matter the number of words you use, there will always be a hole somewhere.

I feel as if you keep talking around what I say rather than addressing it. Maybe you feel the same way about my replies. So, I'll say again that I think I understand your perspective. As such, let me phrase it in my own words: I can only know what I know. Therefore, as soon as I concede that I am finite, I concede there are things I will never know. Not only that, I will never touch them or experience them as "the thing in itself". Even if an absolute exists, if I never experience it, then from my perspective it doesn't exist. Suppose I do touch an absolute. I wouldn't know it. I can never find an objective frame of reference, which is the same as saying an objective frame of reference doesn't exist.



Am I close? Aside from arguing all the semantic issues, did I come near the essence of what you're saying?

I'll allow some time for replies. Maybe you should even try the flipside, and present the best argument you can for objective truth (even if you don't agree with it).

Then, I'll try again to communicate a very specific point.

You can only be slightly more certain of what you know. How many times in your life time were you proved wrong in what you thought you knew.

That is the wonderful thing about all knowledge, such as it is, that, if we know what we know, then we sense what we may not know, and between the two, ignorance is always the greater quantity, so we know we can never know enough to justify wrong, immorality, or injustice. When people justify wrong they justify ignorance, and ignorance justifies all.

Let me suggest that while you are correct in terms of absolutes, and infinites; that there is one quality close to an absolute, and an infinite that is also the one measure of objective truth; but we cannot see it because to us it appears as the most subjective of qualities, and that quality is life, which is a thingly thing if ever there was one. And considering that it is all we have, and so, it is the universal universal, equivalant in some senses to everything we might know, or experience as phenomenon, and as a whole, phenomenon itself, then what we can know all can know by the same book, by a common objective seeming thread with a infinite number of fibers. Life is our sole approach to objective truth. And, understanding that as fact puts me no closer than the next guy to proving it. So I don't, prove it. I just live it.

[boagie]

Hi Y'all!

Truth is the relation between subject and object, it is first experienced then understood, and what is understood is the experience of the relation between object and ones own biology. It is the same as Fido's description I believe, accept expressed differently. The main differnce would be, it is not the form/object which is truth in and of itself, it is the interpretation of the object/form through its relation to our biology, thus making it entirely subjective. Objective truth is the confirmation of our biological experience of the relaton between subject and object. The point to be made is this, truth is not a property of the object/form, but our experience of the relation between them. Hot is only hot but in relation to our biology.

[kennethamy]

Originally Posted by Fido

You can only be slightly more certain of what you know. How many times in your life time were you proved wrong in what you thought you knew.

But when you only thought you knew, but were proved wrong, you never knew it in the first place. Isn't that so? So that doesn't show you cannot feel certain when you know.

[kennethamy]

Originally Posted by boagie

Truth is the relation between subject and object, it is first experienced then understood, and what is understood is the experience of the relation between object and ones own biology. It is the same as Fido's description I believe, accept expressed differently. The main differnce would be, it is not the form/object which is truth in and of itself, it is the interpretation of the object/form through its relation to our biology, thus making it entirely subjective.

What is subjective is thinking something is true. What is objective is something being true.

[Holiday20310401]

But reality isn't independent of perception, is it?

[boagie]

Originally Posted by Holiday20310401

But reality isn't independent of perception, is it?

Holiday,

Good point, the truth is, we do not know reality, ultimate reality that is. We only know what apparent reality is, and that is relative to our own biology. It is both an interpretation, and a creation if you know what I mean. We intake of the stimulus which is through our biology and then processe it through our undestanding, the said truth of the understaning may or may not be a quality belonging to the object/form in and of itself, it is after all an interpretation. That which is independent, the physical world, it is certainly out there, but we can only know it as apparent reality. The easiest way one can remember this process of the formation of apparent reality is to realize, that apparent reality is a biological readout. If the world at large was independent there would be no way of cognitively knowing it. Subject and object stand or fall together----inseparable.

[de Silentio]

Originally Posted by Holiday20310401

But reality isn't independent of perception, is it?

Depends on what side of the fence you sit on.

[Zetetic11235]

You are missing the point. You can't consider a relaity that is divorced from your perception of it, you can't make claims about it because it doesn't exist for you. All of these claims about reality are nonsense, how can you honestly consider that which is beyond your consideration by definition? To consider outside of your perception is to consider outside of considerable space! You can't consider beyond what you can percieve, and you cannot percieve what is beyond perception, thus you cannot consider what is beyond perception.

[Fido]

Originally Posted by kennethamy

But when you only thought you knew, but were proved wrong, you never knew it in the first place. Isn't that so? So that doesn't show you cannot feel certain when you know.

If you didn't know it and you thought you knew it what would be the difference between that thinking you knew, and any unwarranted certainty? To know infinite truth we would have to be infinite. We are not.. What we are is certain because we feel the need to be certain. We don't usually have the courage to say we don't know, and seek a false certainty to justify action when inaction is justified. What did oedipus say: I did what I did not knowing what I did. But as a tyrant he was a man of action, and when it was revealed that he was no tyrant, but a king; then he understood the restraint of those who must hold ground that others have seized. What we do not knowing what we do is every tragedy on the planet. Can we be certain? We buy certainty with calamity. Why do we play with fire? Why do we play with chemicals? Why do we build nuclear bombs? Those people captured by the idea, who hide behind their certain conceptions of reality are God's own madmen. They strive to know more and do more, but the essential knowledge is missing from their lives. It is the consequences of the train of events they put into motion that they do not know. What will become of the messes and miseries we start in motion and cannot stop? To say we know, we must be able to chart all we don't know; the places in the oceans of our minds where sea serpents wreck their havok. Will we go there if we are certain? I think not. Certainty is the enemy of truth and of humanity. No one does any evil except out the certainty that it can be justified.The sooner reason fails us in the search for truth the sooner we will begin to rely on feeling, and there, in emotion is our common bond.

[kennethamy]

Originally Posted by Holiday20310401

But reality isn't independent of perception, is it?

If a drunk thinks he perceives pink elephants, that isn't reality. Whether there are really pink elephants is independent of perception.