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This is a philosophical issue, and it's also an ineffable issue. What is truth? Something that is the same for everyone at the same time? How could you ever p
by ta1234567890 7y ago
This is a philosophical issue, and it's also an ineffable issue.
What is truth?
Something that is the same for everyone at the same time? How could you ever prove something is true if you are not omniscient? (ie. you can only experience reality from your own point of view, but can never experience it from someone else's).
To complicate things further, we are trying to use words and spoken language as a way to communicate meaning about something else (reality). How can you know for certain that the words you use have the same meaning for you and me? We can't even agree on the meaning of words for one language.
Every time you say something, you are essentially translating what you feel/understand "in your head" to words, which you hope the receiver/listener will decode to mean the same thing you understand. But we can never be certain of the effectiveness of that. And we can only find relief in apparent agreement (ie. When the other person(s) ascents to what we say)
In other words, what for you might not be true is your own perspective of reality, and it doesn't imply that the same thing is not true for someone else. Reality is subjective. If you can't force me to agree with you, then our realities will just be different, even if we can still share some aspects of it. And that's ok.
- chousuke 7y agoIn the philosophical sense, I'd say truth is what reality is. In the practical sense, truth is what the evidence indicates, and anything else either remains unknown or is false if it contradicts the evidence. We're limited to never knowing the complete truth of most things, which is why we have science so we can make our practical truth approximation ever closer to reality.
- ta1234567890 7y agoThat is a circular definition of truth. Which very well exemplifies the limitation of our spoken/written languages and the ineffability of reality. Any evidence needs to be interpreted. You need to assign some sort of meaning to evidence. That interpretation is subjective. And this has happened a million times in science. If science actually discovered "truth", then it would never need to be revised. Nevertheless science is constantly discovering that it was wrong and keeps updating itself (well, us humans keep doing that). Science (like religion), is just a system for humans to assign meaning to their experiences. Meanings will differ, just like our individual experiences. Hence these systems are built on collective agreement and continuous re-building of their own meanings. Also, if as you say, we're limited to never knowing the complete truth of most things, then how could we possibly ever know that science is actually getting us closer to that truth?
- pupe 7y agoI have no idea why this is getting downvoted so much. This is a great, well articulated comment that raises significant points by situating science as a human activity, and thereby subject to situated experienced. The often-overlooked fields of Science and Technology Studies and Sociology of Scientific Knowledge, which have been around for decades (and which, contrary to what many believe, treat Latour as an initiator of further discussion that has spun into much more robust work, rather than as a decisive figure). I wholeheartedly recommend any interested readers to look into it, particularly Andrew Pickering’s 1992 edited volume Science as Cultural Practice as an introductory jumping off point. My second recommendation is always Karin Knorr-Cetina’s 2001 book titled Epistemic Cultures (anything else by her is also superb!).
- mrmonkeyman 7y agoRicky Gervais said it quite eloquently: if you burn all religious fiction, in a thousand years none of it will return in the exact same form. If you burn all of science, all of it will be back in the exact same form. That is what reality is, it is not philosophical.