Truth, Right, and Wrong: Are They Related?

[Ten oz]

46 minutes ago, Strange said:

If you (and everyone else around you) measures two events to be simultaneous, using the best and most precise instruments available, is that subjective? It seems an odd use of the word.

Yes, it would still be subjective. What is the "best" and most "precise" instrument is constantly changing as is the knowledge base of those performing the measurement. If you and I both measured something our result would only be to the best we (you and I) can measure.  

51 minutes ago, Strange said:

But the indefinite nature of quantum objects seems to be a fundamental part of the world, not a human invention.

 

We don't know what we don't know. We don't know enough to definitely address the nature of quantum objects.

[Strange]

5 minutes ago, Ten oz said:

Yes, it would still be subjective. What is the "best" and most "precise" instrument is constantly changing as is the knowledge base of those performing the measurement. If you and I both measured something our result would only be to the best we (you and I) can measure.  

So everything is subjective. There are no objective measurements. And yet you think there is objective truth. Odd...

[StringJunky]

5 minutes ago, Strange said:

So everything is subjective. There are no objective measurements. And yet you think there is objective truth. Odd...

The best we can do is measure separately and see if our results agree. That's why I said it's an intersubjective consensus. We can use the word 'measure' meaning ''to observe'.

Edited March 16, 2018 by StringJunky

[koti]

5 minutes ago, Ten oz said:

We don't know what we don't know. We don't know enough to definitely address the nature of quantum objects.

I agree. Plus the truth doesn’t care about any of that. The truth was there at the BB, when first bacteria started to form on earth, when Newton formulated laws of motion, when Einstein formulated GR and its there now - a universal truth. Newton had no idea about relativity yet relativity of simultaneity was happening all around when he was inventing infititesimal calculus to later formulate laws of motion. I can see the other view which Strange is presenting, its just not appealing to me. 

[StringJunky]

20 minutes ago, koti said:

I agree. Plus the truth doesn’t care about any of that. The truth was there at the BB, when first bacteria started to form on earth, when Newton formulated laws of motion, when Einstein formulated GR and its there now - a universal truth. Newton had no idea about relativity yet relativity of simultaneity was happening all around when he was inventing infititesimal calculus to later formulate laws of motion. I can see the other view which Strange is presenting, its just not appealing to me. 

The fidelity of our description of the universe improves with experience but we can never know it absolutely because we and it are constantly evolving.

Edited March 16, 2018 by StringJunky

[koti]

1 minute ago, StringJunky said:

The fidelity of our description of the universe improves with experience but we can never know it absolutely because we and it are constantly evolving.

Well said. But the truth is out there at every point in time regardless. How could it be otherwise? 

[StringJunky]

9 minutes ago, koti said:

Well said. But the truth is out there at every point in time regardless. How could it be otherwise? 

Yes, but there's no point in chasing rainbows.

[koti]

37 minutes ago, StringJunky said:

Yes, but there's no point in chasing rainbows.

I don't know if there is one in English but the translation goes like this: "It's not the catching of the rabbit which makes you happy, it's the chase" This proverb is primarily directed at sexual situations but it fits very well here too. 

[MigL]

I think Gees introduced the topic of an elephant.

Koty is the blind man holding the trunk, and trying to describe it.
Strange is the blind man holding the ears and trying to describe it.
Ten oz is the blind man holding a leg and trying to describe it.
And Dimreepr is the blind man holding the tail and trying to describe it.

Sorry Gees, but you've created a mess.
I think you're gonna have to re-state and clarify the OP.

Edited March 17, 2018 by MigL

[Tub]

14 hours ago, Area54 said:

In recent decades I've viewed truth as a colloquial expression, useful for conversations where the participants share common backgrounds and worldviews, but out of place in a serious conversation in science or philosophy. I prefer a world characterised by shades of reality and perception.

 

3 hours ago, MigL said:

I think Gees introduced the topic of an elephant.

Koty is the blind man holding the trunk, and trying to describe it.
Strange is the blind man holding the ears and trying to describe it.
Ten oz is the blind man holding a leg and trying to describe it.
And Dimreepr is the blind man holding the tail and trying to describe it.

Sorry Gees, but you've created a mess.
I think you're gonna have to re-state and clarify the OP.

I think these two quotes sum it up for me: the reality of the elephant is absolute, impersonal and objective; the perception of the elephant is relative, personal and subjective.  I'm reminded of a brilliant 80's Irish sitcom ( Father Ted ) where Ted was explaining to dumb Dougal that cows are normally the same size but the very small cows were " far away  ".

Regarding the OP, my perception was that Gees , in this case, was using truth to mean honesty, when asking if truth can be trusted, so i would say that absolute, objective Truth/Reality can be trusted, ( if we can recognize It as such ),  whereas relative, subjective truth obviously can't be completely trusted. That seems pure and simple but, as Oscar Wilde said: " The truth is rarely pure and never simple ". As for sticking to unwavering, absolute honesty, i would say that a benign expediency, or even silence, is sometimes the better course to follow.

Are right and wrong related? I would say no - if something is right, it's just right; it isn't right because something else is wrong: 2 + 2 = 4 isn't right because 2 + 2 = 86* is wrong.

 ( * That is wrong, right ? ). .

[Gees]

Koti;

+1 Because you have obviously spent some time considering truth as is evidenced by many of your posts in this thread.

On ‎3‎/‎14‎/‎2018 at 7:16 AM, koti said:

Funny, I was having a long conversation with myself yesterday on this while watching some insignificant movie. I agree with all the premises you layed out in your above post, I would add that however un-empathetic it sounds, the truth is also impractical in many life situations. It is the main reason that I get in trouble when I do when I should have lied or at least keep the truth to myself.

Yes. In my threads regarding consciousness, I have learned that people can only deal with so much truth, so it is often necessary to give them little pieces and let them stew on those ideas for a while. I am reminded of the movie, A Few Good Men, where Jack Nicholson states, "You can't handle the truth." (chuckle)

A few years back, in another forum, I wrote a thread entitled, A Measure of Truth. In that thread I tried to establish rules that would help me to define and understand what is true and what is not true and how I would determine and measure truth in order to create more valid premises. In this thread, I had noticed that many people seem to confuse right and wrong with truth, so I wanted to explore that idea. What I have learned is that there are social truths, political truths, emotional truths, and others that I had not previously considered. These truths are often related to right and wrong, so they can be confused with right and wrong; this thread has already given me much information and much to think about.

 

Quote

I don’t know how somebody can say that the truth is subjective, that is a dead end logic in my opinion, I can agree that it is unreliable though.

Well, knowledge is subjective and truth is knowledge. If you remove all of the people and all of the conscious life, can there be knowledge? Can there be truth? How could you possibly know or prove it? You can only know something if there is someone to know it. That makes it subjective because knowledge and truth both require a subject.

I don't agree that truth is unreliable, but will acknowledge that it can be elusive. This is why we need philosophers and scientists to help us find it. 

 

Quote

There is also so many shades of lying and tellig the truth, you can blatantly lie without remorse which is the sociopathic end of the scale or you can empathetically lie about something which saves someone pain which is at the other end of the scale - same with the truth. I think that this is one of those subjects which is so diversly subjective that its impossible to reach any decent consensus    when trying to find objectivity which everyone can agree on. The never ending quest of not being an a**hole is on for everybody. 

Truth is measured. This is why we can say that something is more true than not, or more or less true, or somewhat true. I don't remember anyone ever telling me that something is somewhat a fact; it either is or isn't a fact, so I think we can find a decent consensus in some things.

Gee

 

Strange;

+1 For understanding that truth is complex, and I think I owe you a point anyway.

On ‎3‎/‎14‎/‎2018 at 7:28 AM, Strange said:

I have never heard anyone else say that truth is as changeable as the wind or that it is subjective and unreliable. Your examples don't show that truth, or right and wrong are arbitrary and decided on a random basis. They show that, not surprisingly, these are complex ideas that have to be tuned to the specific situation. 

In the thread, Science is a Subfield of Philosophy, Itoero made it very clear that truth was subjective and therefore unreliable and unprovable. I think that this recent example is what brought it to my mind, but I have heard similar arguments before.

Truth is relative, so it also relates to time. What was true a moment ago may not be true now; what is true now may not be true in a moment. This makes some truth as changeable as the wind -- which may be blowing now, but not in an hour.

Regarding right and wrong, I am reminded of an old movie that I saw many years ago about Jim Thorpe. (I think I have that name right -- Burt Lancaster played the part of Thorpe) Anyway, he was an American Indian, who won a lot of medals in the Olympics and then had them taken away from him. In the story, he was in a "white man's school" with another boy and they were discussing their history books. One boy said, "Why is it that when the white man wins, it is a great victory, but when the red man wins, it is a terrible massacre?" He had a point.

For that matter, what were they doing in a "white man's" school? Well, that is easy to understand. When the Europeans "discovered" the new land, they did not seem to notice that more than 300 tribes and nations of people had already "discovered" it. What the Europeans did notice was that the red man was different. Being linear thinkers, the Europeans realized that because of this difference, one group had to be wrong, and the Europeans did not intend to be wrong. That made the red man wrong by virtue of his existence. Putting the children in a "white man's" school was just another way of trying to make the red man more right.

Which part of the above do you think is not arbitrary? Where is truth in this morass of right and wrong?

 

Quote

The fact that some  people think that truth is relative, not absolute (or, perhaps more accurately, it can be relative) does not necessarily imply that people don't trust truth.

The nature of truth is subjective and that makes it relative. It is relative to time, perspective, and circumstance, but more than that it is often measured and even balanced with other truths, so it is difficult to know. I think that when people do not trust truth it is because they do not know whether or not it is truth, or they don't recognize it.

Gee

 

Migl;

+1 For making a good point.

3 hours ago, MigL said:

I think Gees introduced the topic of an elephant.

Koty is the blind man holding the trunk, and trying to describe it.
Strange is the blind man holding the ears and trying to describe it.
Ten oz is the blind man holding a leg and trying to describe it.
And Dimreepr is the blind man holding the tail and trying to describe it.

Sorry Gees, but you've created a mess.
I think you're gonna have to re-state and clarify the OP.

Digging around in a mess does not often solve much, but it can bring things to light.

Although Koti, Strange, Ten oz, and Dimreepr are all blind in this scenario, they can still talk and type, so they can share their findings. Maybe we can learn something about the elephant by sharing our thoughts. That is what forums are for, aren't they?

Maybe we should hurry this up before Dimreepr gets wet.

Gee

 

There are other posts that I would like to address, but this is St. Patty's day and I have Murphys, Heffernans, O'Gradys, and O'Briens in the family tree, so I will be busy for a while.

[Strange]

2 hours ago, Gees said:

but this is St. Patty's day

Paddy. Saint Patricia's day is 25th August.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/st-paddys-day-vs-st-pattys-day

 

[Ten oz]

9 hours ago, MigL said:

I think Gees introduced the topic of an elephant.

Koty is the blind man holding the trunk, and trying to describe it.
Strange is the blind man holding the ears and trying to describe it.
Ten oz is the blind man holding a leg and trying to describe it.
And Dimreepr is the blind man holding the tail and trying to describe it.

Sorry Gees, but you've created a mess.
I think you're gonna have to re-state and clarify the OP.

The OP isn't distinguishing between what is true to a person vice physics. It sort of is presenting schrodinger's cat thought experiment paradox as something observable on all levels. It isn't

[MigL]

Truth is like reality.
We have no way of knowing what it really is.

We have models to describe reality, whether it be  particles of the standard model, fields on fields or geometry of co-ordinate systems, but we never actually know what is real.
Only what we can perceive and measure.
Truth is the same,;it is the concept on which we base good or bad, right and wrong, etc., but it is also a perception, and therefore subjective.
If there is an absolute truth as Koty is convinced, is irrelevant. Even the effect it has on us is filtered through our individual 'sense' of perception.
And of course that leads to what is right or good for one individual, can be very wrong or bad for another

[dimreepr]

12 minutes ago, MigL said:

Truth is like reality.
We have no way of knowing what it really is.

We have models to describe reality, whether it be  particles of the standard model, fields on fields or geometry of co-ordinate systems, but we never actually know what is real.
Only what we can perceive and measure.
Truth is the same,;it is the concept on which we base good or bad, right and wrong, etc., but it is also a perception, and therefore subjective.
If there is an absolute truth as Koty is convinced, is irrelevant. Even the effect it has on us is filtered through our individual 'sense' of perception.
And of course that leads to what is right or good for one individual, can be very wrong or bad for another

Since that's essentially what I've been saying, how come I get the shit end? 

[Strange]

9 hours ago, MigL said:

Strange is the blind man holding the ears and trying to describe it.

I prefer to think of myself as the one asking why Koti and TenOz perceive different things.

 

[Ten oz]

30 minutes ago, Strange said:

I prefer to think of myself as the one asking why Koti and TenOz perceive different things.

 

Perception and truth aren't the same. 

[dimreepr]

2 minutes ago, Ten oz said:

Perception and truth aren't the same. 

There are things that are axiomatic, 2+2=4, but what is the value of 4, a square has 4 equal sides, but how big is it? Perception and truth aren't the same but they are interdependent.

[Ten oz]

1 minute ago, dimreepr said:

There are things that are axiomatic, 2+2=4, but what is the value of 4, a square has 4 equal sides, but how big is it? Perception and truth aren't the same but they are interdependent.

Only within our perception. 

[dimreepr]

1 minute ago, Ten oz said:

Only within our perception. 

Yep.

[Tub]

4 minutes ago, Ten oz said:

Perception and truth aren't the same. 

In general i'd agree, but there may be some fortuitous incidents when perception and reality/truth do happen to coincide - even though we might not be able to be fully aware of it.

 

41 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

......how come I get the shit end? 

It could be worse dim: have you seen the film " Brothers Grimsby " ?  If you haven't, Google the elephant scene.

P. S. It's not suitable for anyone under 18 - or anyone over 18, to be honest - but it is very funny. Honestly!

[Strange]

I no longer know what is going on in this thread.

And that’s the truth. 

[StringJunky]

5 minutes ago, Strange said:

I no longer know what is going on in this thread.

And that’s the truth. 

But that's a subjective opinion. You need another person to confirm that you don't know that you don't know. One data point is not enough.

Edited March 17, 2018 by StringJunky

[Eise]

On 16.3.2018 at 4:55 PM, koti said:

This is getting dangerously close to the "light is visible or not" thread. 

Yes, you must distinguish between truth1 and truth2... Just kidding.

To be honest, I do not like the substantive 'truth', even less when written as 'Truth'.

I think the first thing is to look on which 'objects' the adjective 'true' applies: these are propositions, or complete systems of propositions, where I think about e.g. scientific theories. What it means is that they fit to what they describe. If they do not, they are false. (Or they are meaningless ('colourless green ideas sleep furiously'), or they do not describe a situation unambiguously ('One cannot see light' ))

So simply said, one can define 'truth' as the correspondence between a description and reality. So it characterises a relationship between propositions and facts. Which e.g. means the 'Truth' is not out there. We find out if a proposition is true, if we find out that the description corresponds to reality. It is an attribute of propositions ('in there') and reality ('out there'.)

I think this meaning of 'true' is simple. But that does not mean that it is easy to find out which propositions (or theories) are true. The two topics should not be confused: what 'true' means on side, and how we find out on the other.

I think that some of the examples given are wrong: e.g that about simultaneity in relativity. Are two events simultaneous or not? Well, we know exactly how this depends on from which inertial frame you are observing these events. So we have to amend it to 'for observer A the events are simultaneous, for observer B they are not'. If we know how the perspective has influence on what people observe, then we know that there is nothing to quarrel about. It is as if two people are facing each other, and quarrel about the question if the chair stands at the right or at the left. If you take the perspective in account, the whole problem has vanished. Same with what is true today is false tomorrow. If it was an 'eternal truth' (something like F = mv, like Aristotle thought), and today we know it is false, then it was false all the time. We erroneously took it for true. But truth hasn't changed, because reality did not change.

Same with the opposite: reality changes. It is drizzling. It is really true! I see it when I look out of the window! But of course this event is local: where I live, and am now, it is drizzling. It makes no sense to quarrel about the truth of 'it is drizzling', if I do not take the context in account. When I am going somewhere else tomorrow, then it is still true that 'in Switzerland at 17.03.2018 16:30 local time, it is drizzling'. Even if it is beautiful weather at the place where I am tomorrow.

Personally, I would prefer to separate some concept pairs:

• For factual knowledge, 'true' or 'false' apply, because there can be a kind of correspondence between factual propositions and reality
• For morality, I would use 'right' or 'wrong'. There is no way that science can find out what is morally right or wrong. It can help if facts play a role in a moral decision ('if you do this some people might be killed, if you do that, the risk is negligible'). But this already presupposes that both agree on the norm that killing people is wrong.
• For aesthetics it becomes more difficult: beauty, interesting, fascinating or ugly, boring, ...The difference with morality is that it has a very strong personal factor. The compulsion to come to an agreement is less than in morality, but do not underestimate the intersubjective character of these aesthetical norms. If these is a discussion on how to renovate the old city centre, it can become very important that people agree. 

 

On 14.3.2018 at 4:40 AM, Gees said:

Many people have told me that truth is subjective, so it is not reliable. 

Well, then they are wrong. Truth is not subjective. Beauty has a strong subjective side, morality less, but truth is definitely not subjective.

Edited March 17, 2018 by Eise

[Area54]

Should we really have moved onto this topic beofre agreeing on how many angels can fit on the head of a needle?