So why would anyone ever change their mind about what they believe? Certainly, if there is no objective truth, there would never be any reason to even listen to anyone else’s position, go to school, or ask anyone any questions about anything. For there will never be any reason to reject what I believe now unless I am open to the possibility of being wrong. Why ever contradict anyone if you believe your truth is yours and theirs is theirs. Why even respond to this post? (I bet you will - this proves that whoever you are, you really DO believe in truth no matter what you say.)
And yet you seem determined to change my mind on this matter. If truth is truly different for each person, then why are you insinuating that I’m wrong in this matter?
The mere act of trying to convince met that “truth is different for each person” is eminently self-refuting! It does not hold water, for it contradicts itself fatally!
If so, then the truth of your own claim is not absolute, and we have no particular reason to adopt it.
Just listen to yourself. In order to claim that truth is not absolute, you are forced to postulate a world where there is no truth – with absolutely NO evidence that such as world exists, or can ever exist!
In fact, such as world is self-contradictory, and logically incoherent. If there is not truth in that world, then it is not true that there is no truth. In fact, you can say absolutely nothing that is true about such a place; after all, truth has no meaning there!
It’s like saying, “Oh yeah? Well, let’s postulate the existence of a married bachelor!” You can postulate all you want, but not with any semblance of logic. The term “married bachelor” is nothing but an arrangement of words, for it can have no logical meaning.
Similarly, all your talk about a world with no truth or logic – the lynchpin of your “no absolute truth” claim – is pointless. Such worlds are inherently self-contradictory and self-refuting. As I said earlier, such worlds can never exist, except within the lunatic ramblings of a raving madman.
To prove that the statement “There are no absolute truths” is a contradiction and thus come to the conclusion that there are absolute truths, one must already have assumed an ultimate truth (namely, the law of non-contradiction) and has thus begged the question.
Of course, saying “There are aboslute truths” does not mean all truth must therefore be absolute, a principle I tend to agree with.
Does anyone seriously deny the law of non-contradiction? Even those who argue against the existence of absolute truth accept this tenet, since they regard non-existence as the complement (i.e. the negation) of existence.
I do not accept a priori claims. This does not mean I find them false; rather, I simply find a claim of absolute truth to be empty since truth, to me, involves a conception of proof, and there is no proof for axioms.
The law of non-contradiction is as “true” to me as the statement, “In standard chess, the king may move one square’s distance in any of the eight directions.”
I needn’t doubt it, I just don’t have to accept it as universally true. No?
I’m sorry, I said something that, when analyzed, did not have the meaning intended. I meant to say that “I find it as true as the statement ‘The king may move one square’s distance in any of the eight directions.’”
Truth is not fact. Truth is dependent on an understanding of facts and if facts are misunderstood or misinterpreted, one person’s concept of truth will be different from anothers. Coming to a new understanding of facts can lead to a change in the notion of truth.
I still say we are arguing semantics. I don’t claim facts are not absolute, or can be contradictory. I simply regard truth as a matter of belief that one is correct. If one person demonstrates to another that facts are other than the second person believes them, then that person’s idea of what is true should shift, but it doesn’t deny the fact that previously held beliefs were earnest and not intended to deceive. Not lies, therefore truths. Truths based on errors or misinformation, but yes “personal” truths.
There are lots of theories of truth. I think what Photopat is arguing is pretty much the Tarskian Biconditional: T("[symbol]f[/symbol]") [symbol]Û f[/symbol], where [symbol]f[/symbol] is a sentence and “[symbol]f[/symbol]” is a term.
Yeah, Lib, thanks :)… I took a week’s vacation to play Morrowind and shunned the world. [still haven’t beaten the game grumble over 100 hours of play]
photopat, [complaining about?] arguing semantics and then throws us a semantic distinction between “fact” and “truth”. But, so, “truth” is not “fact”. Ok. What role do these words play in our language? Is “truth” a quality that “facts” have? Can facts be true? Are there facts that can only be true?
No one doubts that we can make mistakes. But some of us doubt that we can always be mistaken (like me). If we cannot always be mistaken, then I think it follows that there must be absolute truth (sort of).
Please note that it is not necessary to assign the same truth-value to the statement “There are absolute truths” as one would to an absolute truth. Consider that the first order predicate logic, for example, is complete and consistent. Yet it cannot say, “I am complete and consistent,” and anything which can say that is automatically incomplete or inconsistent. So, varying truth values that we all consider as “true” and not “probable” or “likely” or whatever.
I don’t think it’s fair to say that Photopat was using a semantic trick. As I showed just above your post, Tarskian makes the exact same distinction: the truth of a term implies a fact, and vice versa.
No, Lib, I wasn’t thinking there was any trickery involved. I was just saying… I think the subject is more ontological than semantic. I’ll never say semantics is a problem; on the contrary, I think they are the source of almost all problems. But I don’t think a distinction between “fact” and “truth” gets us close to absolute statements.
Every time I read statements linking truth to facts, I can’t help but hear Wittgenstein’s ghost from the Tractutus Logico-philosophicus whispering: “The world is the totality of facts” and such, along with his breathtaking (and I think misunderstood) destruction of such talk (only later worked out in the Investigations… while some see two periods to Wittgenstein’s writing I see a subtle thread that was developed throughout).
Yes, an RPG. Quite addictive. XBox and PC, though I hear one needs a mighty machine for the PC version, which otherwise plays the same (storywise).
