The Elusive Truth (round 1) By: Da1
Is truth relative... Or are there some concrete facts that don't change? 'What may be true for you, may not be true for me!', is a common mantra heard today. We have so many different religions and so many different faiths within each religion. Don't get me wrong... I'm not against relativism as a concept, and I'm definitely no advocate of forcing morals and beliefs on each other. However I do think that some things are true no matter what we think or believe about them. Establishing a fact as a fact is actually not the problem, but how we interpret the fact is where the differences, disagreements and confusion come in. Yet how do we account for so many variations in our perceptions of the facts? I guess our education, background and experiences play a large role in how we see and accept things. We are either helped or hindered by them (our education, background and/or experiences). Although there is no formula for any amount of each (or the lack thereof), to help figure out what is beneficial for determining truth. Granted more times than not it seems as though more education or experience can help, but I also know of those who get even more lost, discouraged and/or disappointed after receiving more education or experience. Sometimes your background can bias or predispose you negatively to facing the truth or certain facts.
We live in such a polarized society where no one wants to say anyone else is wrong or (on the opposite end of the spectrum), you get those who persecute and/or ostracize anyone who does not agree with their worldview. It would appear that due to this polarization we (as a society) have lost the value of logic, reason, debate and proof. We also seem to have gotten very lazy. Instead of taking the time to push past our comfort zone, we prefer to chuck truth for a lie merely draped in sheep's clothing. Instead of digging for the truth we settle for the comfort that comes in numbers or small (support) groups. Groups... that have been formed due to both sides of any argument not taking the time to seek unbiased perspectives. Those who feel persecuted and oppressed by the other usually rely on emotional support, commonality, empathy and familial-type gatherings to compensate for truth, logic and reason! They want their ears tickled or to receive the missing love in their life. Those who do the persecuting and oppressing rely on the sheer quantity of numbers, hypocrisy (which is a legalistic refusal to admit commonality; elitism), a misunderstanding and abuse of authority, power, influence and the fear of loss (of authority, power and influence) to compensate for truth, logic and reason.
Truth is not naturally within us. It is only obtainable through extrinsic research, a willingness to learn and an openness to admitting wrong. The vulnerability required to discover truth is what is actually elusive. Again, only through research, reason and logic can we even begin on the road to seeing the difference between fiction, fantasy and truth. Why can most major fields of scholarly study define ways to determine legitimacy, but we, as the common masses, merely use our feelings and thoughts. Is there a middle ground or are there only extremes?
Truth is tangible, is it not?
We live in such a polarized society where no one wants to say anyone else is wrong or (on the opposite end of the spectrum), you get those who persecute and/or ostracize anyone who does not agree with their worldview. It would appear that due to this polarization we (as a society) have lost the value of logic, reason, debate and proof. We also seem to have gotten very lazy. Instead of taking the time to push past our comfort zone, we prefer to chuck truth for a lie merely draped in sheep's clothing. Instead of digging for the truth we settle for the comfort that comes in numbers or small (support) groups. Groups... that have been formed due to both sides of any argument not taking the time to seek unbiased perspectives. Those who feel persecuted and oppressed by the other usually rely on emotional support, commonality, empathy and familial-type gatherings to compensate for truth, logic and reason! They want their ears tickled or to receive the missing love in their life. Those who do the persecuting and oppressing rely on the sheer quantity of numbers, hypocrisy (which is a legalistic refusal to admit commonality; elitism), a misunderstanding and abuse of authority, power, influence and the fear of loss (of authority, power and influence) to compensate for truth, logic and reason.
Truth is not naturally within us. It is only obtainable through extrinsic research, a willingness to learn and an openness to admitting wrong. The vulnerability required to discover truth is what is actually elusive. Again, only through research, reason and logic can we even begin on the road to seeing the difference between fiction, fantasy and truth. Why can most major fields of scholarly study define ways to determine legitimacy, but we, as the common masses, merely use our feelings and thoughts. Is there a middle ground or are there only extremes?
Truth is tangible, is it not?
posted by Found at 11:12 PM
5 Comments:
those are very provocative comments. i agree with virtually all the blogger has written under this topic. it is very true that everyone is promoting a personal brand of truth and there's no hope for reconciling them all. we all must form our own personal truths in the absence of an authoritative and universal source of knowledge. this lack of a universal source of affirmable knowledge means that truth, in respect to humans, is necessarily subjective and cannot be fully known. all assertions are partial guesses and each accepted fact is thus by virtue of broadly accepted conventions of epistemology. the only hope for reconciliation would be a global epistemology. there has never been such as evidenced by the various strains of religious and spiritual thought, most of which derives from intangible and unprovable human experiences.
'...truth, in respect to humans, is necessarily subjective and cannot be fully known.'
Is this an absolute statement? I'm sure you can see the dilenma in the above perspective or at least in the answer you give to the question. As much as I agree that there are varying beliefs out there, that still (in and of itself) does not prove, necessarily, whether truth can be known or not.
because intellectually conscious beings must draw knowledge from the physical world around them, variations in the landscape will often yield conflicting answers to even the most fundamental questions. humans exist within a fixed spectrum of space and time. no two humans can occupy the same exact space at once, thus every moment offers a singular and exclusive perspective to each individual. until time travel is effectuated, a being's singular and exclusive perspective in time can never be revisited by another being. this reality precludes the existence of mutually identical perspectives and the identical truths that would have otherwise been derived from such perspectives.
Your analysis is correct, but only in relation to any one person's perspective. Einstein proved that with his theory of relativity and gravity in as much as he debunked Newton's theory. That being said it does not take away from something's relationship to truth or evidence. A fact does not change just because we can't agree on our conclusions about a fact. We need to learn to separate our opinions, theories, perspectives and/or conclusions from the truth, fact and/or evidence itself. It sounds like you have already done this and that is the reason we have an apparent disagreement. However I think we would both agree that as humans the problem we have is lack of access, information and education. These are the primary causes behind these differences and not a change in facts (truth/evidence). For example, 'His trembling voice was evidence of his fear .' However if you learn more, you may find that he has the stage of Parkinson's that causes his voice to tremble. My point is that the fact that his voice trembled is indisputable, but what caused or lead it to tremble could easily change based on our perspective or knowledge. True facts and evidences remain the same... only our thoughts and beliefs (hypotheses and theories) change. That failure to distinguish between conclusions and facts is what causes differences of opinions to appear as differences of truth. People don't apply enough information to get close enough to see the truth. Sometimes we find ourselves predisposed to believe things to be a certain way. It could be because of how we were raised, our experience or even lack thereof. Digging beyond what we are used to or our own limited perspective can help us to reach the truth, but if we continue in our comfortable laziness and not challenge ourselves to take risks, be bold and courageous... we will never know the truth. I also think some fear the truth. They cannot stomach the thought of being wrong or having a bad or flawed perspective, so they form their own realities, in their own world. That is why we have so many different beliefs, not because no one is wrong or everyone is right. Have the courage to seek the truth. Knock on doors... kick them down if you have to! Just please stop settling for less!
when you say that there is some correlation between truth and evidence, you're proposing that aggregated data will reveal a generalization that we can label as the truth. however, the label is unstable because the available evidence in never exhaustive, which leaves the null hypothesis ripe for assertion through a divergent data set. some would say that the lack of evidence proving the null will serve to preclude the null's veracity. i would refute that statement by acknowledging that humanly accessible evidence is delimited by our best collection methods, which are extremely limited within the vast realm of time and space that we collectively occupy. our methods are even less developed, as i think you've asserted, on an individual basis. i will agree that if you limit the range of data that can be considered, a derivative truth can be constructed that is coextensive with the range of those accepted data. but a truth derived from such a method loses authenticity outside of that preferred range. thus, our hypotheses are perpetually haunted by the outward sphere, which could contain evidence of the null.
in agreement with you, i believe that viewing individual and collective limitations on data collection is useful in understanding why individuals develop their own personal truths. these personal truths begin to develop at some time after a society gives us a basic orientation as to what are acceptable data, and gives us acceptable premises to extend, modify, reject, or embrace for assessing against future data. your proposal that we, as individuals, should marshall truths through more rigorous collection methods is exactly what humans are psychologically engaged in. we vet information at every turn to make the snap judgments that lead to localized human behavior (communciation, emotion, industry, etc.). however, those individual snap judgments are not appropriately evaluated against universal truth because, as i've previously asserted, we have no access to such an authority. also, we our limited by the necessities of time and survival, which require us to use approximations instead of waiting to act based upon certainties. waiting for certainty is under-incentivised because learning the truth about things is, as you've pointed out, very disturbing and disappointing. it is also very time-consuming and expensive to learn exhaustively in any particular discipline, let alone a multi-disciplined analysis necessary for deriving a universal truth. our reluctance is also selfish, in that we'd rather overlook, let's say, the suffering of others than to recognize our own immense fortunes. we disclaim data that does not come from sources sympathetic to our preferred conclusions. and we are instinctively biased in favor of whatever tends to promote the survival of our genes and ideas - even though a very strong argument can often be made that we have contributed less to humankind than we have drawn from it. thus, the truth is elusive and caustic to our sensibilities. we hate it as a matter of course and we momentarily pity the martyr, who will give his life to make a statement that the majority has little incentive or capacity to embrace.
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