What is truth? Isd reality more fact or opinion?

[LightSun]

"There are very few human beings who receive the truth, complete and staggering, by instant illumination. Most of them acquire it fragments by fragment, on a small scale, by successive developments, cell by cell like a laboring mosaic." Anais Nin


“We are all part of a giant crystal or diamond. Call it the eye of Odin. Perhaps one could call it Odin's eye, or the eye of God. We need to pool our resources and capabilities into a cohesive whole and on the way getting rid of distortions, which we all have. None of us can see the Truth. We can catch only glimmers of it out of the corner of our eye. We need to cut away at illogical untruth. Each of us is different with different capabilities as well some different attributes & a different life mission. It is all part of a whole.

People live in different perceptual realities and live by different truths. Obviously not everyone can be right. In fact no one is totally right. This is why we fight instead of listening to each other and both honoring and respecting other people's truths. Listen to their element of truth, reflect, mutual problem solving, and correcting the unreasonableness from our side as well as their own.

Perhaps the most successful will be those they can see other people's world view and synchronize. But one must know self, first or at the very least a preliminary knowledge of our self. For myself I wish to be a free man. Free of illusion and distortion.” LightSun

 

[Polaris]

Truth and belief come close to being the same thing. The difference is that when you say you believe something, you imply that you have some doubt, and when you say something is true, you indicate that you have no doubt.

As for whether reality is fact or opinion, it is certainly fact. An opinion reality would be an oxymoron.

 

[Lark]

"There are very few human beings who receive the truth, complete and staggering, by instant illumination. Most of them acquire it fragments by fragment, on a small scale, by successive developments, cell by cell like a laboring mosaic." Anais Nin

Its hard to discern and not everyone does, it none the less exists and always has, all the talk of a post truth society or social order obscures the fact that people in power have always aimed to lie, confuse and sow doubt and misunderstanding because it serves their purpose.

 

[Ragù]

What is truth? Isd reality more fact or opinion?

Reality, as in what exists, is a fact. How we perceive that reality, is an opinion/perception. The object apple is itself, regardless of what we think about it, how we name it, how it tastes for us etc...

Are you saying that if we all are nice to each other and see each other perspective on reality we are more successfull?
What's the point of your post? Are you using truth, fact and opinion as ways to say that we should be nicer and respectful to others?
Sorry it's just that i see a lot of words and metaphors, poethics maybe, instead of a clear an concrete thesis.

 

[Zangetshumody]

"There are very few human beings who receive the truth, complete and staggering, by instant illumination. Most of them acquire it fragments by fragment, on a small scale, by successive developments, cell by cell like a laboring mosaic." Anais Nin


“We are all part of a giant crystal or diamond. Call it the eye of Odin. Perhaps one could call it Odin's eye, or the eye of God. We need to pool our resources and capabilities into a cohesive whole and on the way getting rid of distortions, which we all have. None of us can see the Truth. We can catch only glimmers of it out of the corner of our eye. We need to cut away at illogical untruth. Each of us is different with different capabilities as well some different attributes & a different life mission. It is all part of a whole.

People live in different perceptual realities and live by different truths. Obviously not everyone can be right. In fact no one is totally right. This is why we fight instead of listening to each other and both honoring and respecting other people's truths. Listen to their element of truth, reflect, mutual problem solving, and correcting the unreasonableness from our side as well as their own.

Perhaps the most successful will be those they can see other people's world view and synchronize. But one must know self, first or at the very least a preliminary knowledge of our self. For myself I wish to be a free man. Free of illusion and distortion.” LightSun

any tact of synchronization, could eventually lead itself into a blind-faith system of capturing and interrogating the product of exchanges. There is no one-size fits all formula for attaining or coming closer to the truth, all formula's eventually run into their own spirals of nihilism. There is no substitute for having a solid and firm grip on truth, and the description of how to find it, can only be described in mystery (this is why the bible is so sorely misunderstood, and undervalued), the actualized pursuit of a truthful activity might lead to coordination with others, but to test its validity by how well it synchronizes, is as much a failure as any presumption that makes an investment of "life" into a mere test, rather than placing focus toward the immaterial depth that experience itself provides (which is only known through the self, and with reason as it acts by an understanding (therefore the spiritual path is to develop understanding)). My only complaint about synchronization, is that excludes the possibility of war, and some targets are worth fighting to obtain victory over.

Something that you didn't discuss, but which these words make the possibility for: is that understanding the constituent style of 'each life mission', and everyone's 'different capabilities', especially when it comes to their character and personal beliefs and style of operating in relation to themselves and others, might offer a way to discern exactly how to treat the issue of synchronization without being overly permissive and insoluble with regards to your own "self" while attaching to self-doubt as a speculated mark of humility.

"in fact no one is totally right." "This is why we fight instead of listening to each other"

This is a very dangerous language game. This quote suggests that: we are all infants under some supreme neo-Paganism, therefore the best we can do is all be good children to the father hidden up there somewhere between the clouds, somewhere up there between the mists of perfect justice and supreme logician, the amazing God-figure who we owe allegiance too, but who we can never be sure about being the children of... so lets earn the majesty of being his representative, while at the same time, only every containing his conceptual force in a speculative accusation that we can use on our fellow humans to make them more sympathetic and meager in every way, by forcing them to toil below the yoke of an unknown entity, in the name of a speculated "humility", that humbly suggests that this is the best that Humanity can ever do.

My alternative:
Christ Consciousness can do many wonderful things to liberate humanity from this worst kind of spiritual oppression, one of the leading exemplifications of this: is the bold claim to be the son of God, and to even be capable of dying before letting it be shaken by mere accusations that aren't worth synchronizing with.

 

[Zangetshumody]

[MENTION=7680]lightsun[/MENTION]

Sorry, I forgot to add this point about opinion or fact...

This is a very silly distinction, that is essentially a kind of word game, and a game that is usually only pertinent if you are under the error of some neo-Paganist type of belief structure.

Opinion is not a dirty word, on some level, it the most immediate form of experience that our mind ever has a chance to 'know'.

There is a tradition that goes all the way back to Plato, that expounds on opinion being the shortest section of the divided line (the lessor of the lessor), I could try to explain the extent of all these philosophical implications in the context of this topic, but it has much greater general philosophical merit also... so; here is a lecture from youtube on this topic:

Pierre Grimes - Platonism and Alchemy (complete) - YouTube

on further research into Christian doctrine, I would recommend this youtube video (just the first question and answer, its about 35mins of the video).

Slavoj Žižek - God in Pain: Inversions of Apocalypse, with Jack Miles - YouTube

 

[Typh0n]

Truth, reality, fact and opinion, are four different things (in my opinion).

 

[Zangetshumody]

Truth, reality, fact and opinion, are four different things (in my opinion).

four different opinions, including opinions about stuff that has a greater affect than opinions themselves are allowed to possess (basically an opinion that buys into a disembodied and external locus of authority/control.)

or do you internalize the cognitive dissonance as having four distinct categories of opinion, and they aren't allowed to mingle outside of strict hierarchy of domination and a religious-level of applied categorization into that structure?

 

[Typh0n]

four different opinions, including opinions about stuff that has a greater affect than opinions themselves are allowed to possess (basically an opinion that buys into a disembodied and external locus of authority/control.)

or do you internalize the cognitive dissonance as having four distinct categories of opinion, and they aren't allowed to mingle outside of strict hierarchy of domination and a religious-level of applied categorization into that structure?

I think this is really a question of semantics, I meant simply that they imply different things, but let's do some semantics, shall we? Here's how I would define the four things.

Truth: This is an abstract notion, mainly I agree with how Plato defined it, as the ultimate reality. It is not whether or not something specific is "true" but rather, the abstract notion of truth.

Reality: This is what we experience in our day to day lives. It's a collective sensory experience because we generally perceive the same things in our day to day lives, as human beings. This concerns experience. It is what we experience in a general sense, not anything specific to be experienced.

Fact: This is what has been proven to be real (notice I didn't say "true"), through evidence and reason. A fact is a specific occurence, or segment of what I more broadly call reality. In other words, it is an event that can be experienced, whereas reality is the whole extent of events that can be experienced.

Opinion: This basically when you say green is the best color or that industrial music is better than techno: there is nothing objective about opinion, I would define opinion as an expression of preference.

Again, that is how, philosophically I would define these things, but I think there are more interesting things to be pondered and solved, from the standpoint of philosophy, than semantics, since everyone might define these terms a bit differently.

 

[Zangetshumody]

I think this is really a question of semantics, I meant simply that they imply different things, but let's do some semantics, shall we? Here's how I would define the four things.

Truth: This is an abstract notion, mainly I agree with how Plato defined it, as the ultimate reality. It is not whether or not something specific is "true" but rather, the abstract notion of truth.

Reality: This is what we experience in our day to day lives. It's a collective sensory experience because we generally perceive the same things in our day to day lives, as human beings. This concerns experience. It is what we experience in a general sense, not anything specific to be experienced.

Fact: This is what has been proven to be real (notice I didn't say "true"), through evidence and reason. A fact is a specific occurence, or segment of what I more broadly call reality. In other words, it is an event that can be experienced, whereas reality is the whole extent of events that can be experienced.

Opinion: This basically when you say green is the best color or that industrial music is better than techno: there is nothing objective about opinion, I would define opinion as an expression of preference.

Again, that is how, philosophically I would define these things, but I think there are more interesting things to be pondered and solved, from the standpoint of philosophy, than semantics, since everyone might define these terms a bit differently.

The cognitive dissonance I was alluding to, is again reproduced in what you've just written...

you relegate truth to the realm of abstraction.

you suggest reality is a generic medium of objectified constituents (a disembodied account for some sort of knowledge— that is supreme over the subjective, but somehow gets to be spoken about through language by the subjective (I equate this to blind faith in a sort of neo-Pagan sky father, that is painted as a Scientist in this particular case of neo-Paganism).

Facts aren't ever proven by reason and evidence alone, they are proven according to a standard that might be communicable depending on the kind of reasoning that's employed: in the end, evidence doesn't exist to substantiate any claim of fact, it always falls down on the point on creating a solid chain of evidence back to a source that's capable of supplying the requisite reason to believe: this skeptical hobby-horse is actually the wellspring of justification that forces the definition of any true fact— to be beyond temporal description, and keeps any fact, firmly in the realm of spiritual activity, which is depicted by 'quickening' through (and from within) its own essential nature.

Temporal facts are fundamentally untenable, because the nature of truth, which does extend into the understanding that lords over all of Nature, is an economy to its own ends: it has been misappropriated in an philosophically unsound way in these modern times, and you have picked up this virus: when the language of fact tries to paint a materialist account of some mechanical model, which life is to some extent dominated within: this materialist sentiment has always been stupid, because if you dig down deep enough in the reasoning chain for this world-view, it forces you to believe in cosmic luck or an unknowable-fatalism to keep the "fact narrative" operative and capable of generating a reality for life to be subjected within.

I counter you by contending:
It is a fact, that decisions (the exercise of choice) govern over facts, ergo someone's opinion can construe reality, and truth is an economy of how anything might be claimed; which is an unfolding affair that may or may not involve "arguments" about what other people decide to label as "semantics".

Jordan Peterson similarly has sketched out the problems with such a fact-based world view, depicted through the Darwinistic pragmatism that eventually forces you to jump the rationalist-ship of causative reasoning to find something that can even hope to lend some truth back to the theory of Evolution, and every other scientific world view. Of course, if your talking to someone like Sam Harris, he might just tell repeat all he knows about the pragmatic world view, and forget to actually distinguish his position from the plight of the pragmatic dilemma that Darwin presents the fact-founded universe.

 

[Mole]

We have found a way of determining what is true, and that way is the scientific method based on evidence and reason.

However one of the landmarks of our psychological growth as small children is when we discover we can lie. And we also discover others can lie as well. So from then on we devote a lot of energy to discerning whether someone is lying or telling the truth.

 

[wool]

I know something about truth. It's very unpopular.

 

[Zangetshumody]

We have found a way of determining what is true, and that way is the scientific method based on evidence and reason.

Scientific method is based on nothing, they have even abandoned their own philosophical claims already, and relegated the scientific field as a loose collection of similar ideology that's likened to a family of conceptual analysis, which is a nice way of dressing up bunk philosophy.

There is no evidence or reason to believe in bayesian statistics, its pure blind faith.

I'm not opposed to empiricism, but Science has divorced itself from making empirical claims. It has been philosophically debunked in the courts, and is only touted as a rationalist enterprise from inane table thumping that presumes to believe in the materialist world-view, even after the evidence has clearly undermined the efficacy of the Scientific method (evidence which clearly contradicts the materialist world-view). This is why crazy statistical apologies exist to cover over the glaring inadequacy of the Scientific method, to halt the proper development of Science into a metaphysics that is needed to get around the cosmic luck dilemma, with the second horn presenting itself as the search for the missing aspects of materialist fatalism, which Richard Dawkins can only speculate and presume is waiting to be discovered. It only 'must' be discover-able if fatalism,— more specially, determinism is presumed to be the core operative feature of reality: where is the reason or evidence in this PRESUMPTION? If you rely on the evidence of past "workable" Scientific discoveries, you are effectively substituting real empiricism with statistical non-sense (and trying to get away with this slight of hand, because of owing some allegiance for 'the tool science has offered to our species'). A statistic is not evidence, its an interpretation of evidence: and mathematics doesn't necessarily mean anything until the figures are contextualized by reasoning; which there has never been any fixture of in the entire field of science... at its deepest, it all rests on quantum mechanics, which has an abstracted interpretation with some popularity: which happens to depict an insoluble mystery in the paradigm of MATERIALISM and the SCIENTIFIC METHOD, and as the interpretation threatens the basis of science, or places science into an insoluble agnosticism about itself, cold and empty statistical math has emerged as the crutch to be relied on, and anyone who questions science, is actually questioning the validity of a statistic, in a universe that we should all remind ourselves: can only ever present a unitary sampling, that some have decided to subject to statistical analysis as an ultimate framework— you really can't see the blind-faith spell that your under now? Science has done all that it can do, which is leaving the job unfinished. It has left the job unfinished, and can do no more, and yet, some peons still keep the faith— please don't bother telling me why you keep the faith, I know it will be some species of rationale too pathetic for me to stomach.

Have fun with your "field of knowledge", that has yet to develop in any meaningful way in the deepest 'study' of reality, apart from speculating that Humans can never hope to understand the supreme field of science— in the style of a real lunatic religiosity, that believes that one day we might create A.I computers which will confirm all this to us:— that Science does really make sense, and the peak of what the human brain can do, will only be achieved by creating a computer who can pass the Turing test & tell us it's own confirmation that the human intellect is deficient at Science and now obsolete,— in some way that we can never hope to understand... (wow... that seems to be just the perfect materialist representation of a Supreme Being, no-one else find this ironic??? lawl Who knew that an "Atheist" is a fancy way of saying you prefer your God figure's to be of misanthropic in character.)

 

[Mole]

I know something about truth. It's very unpopular.

There is truth with a small t and Truth with a capital T. Capital Ts are incompatible, while small ts can only be reasonably known.

And although Truths are unpopular, those who hold them are well liked and popular, just like Wool herself.

I wouldn't call Wool a populist, but it is plain she is a transparently good person. She can't help herself.

 

[Zangetshumody]

There is truth with a small t and Truth with a capital T. Capital Ts are incompatible, while small ts can only be reasonably known.

small t's disguise their capitalization by table thumping claims of reasonableness, they wear their small t's as a badge of honor, by claiming to appropriate the 'broadest' and full force of reason. Claiming the full force of reason is an absolutist claim, and requires absolute faith, claiming the 'broadest' force of reason, is an ideological claim in the field of philosophy, and I believe this claim even has some ethical dimensions that require some force of ethical substantiation, which Science loves to side-step by claiming to be above those 'irrational concerns'— presuming to subsume them through its superior auspice of materialist force (superior auspice of materialist force: read as the atheists version of the external locus of the divine quality of 'majesty', but this kind of conceptual work isn't unsettling to the atheist world view, because the basic operation of it's 'majesty' is misanthropic! (therefore through the power of misanthropy, majesty gets transformed from the realm of blind religiosity, into the realm of "reasonableness" where the appropriation of regular words and secular adaptation of their meaning is used to suite the ideological function which the materialist position requires of them (the SJWs perform an analogous tactic to this also)) lawl).

Your distinctions are cunning, but they fall short of the philosophical work they covertly try to manage.

 

[Oaky]

This reminds me of the Allegory of the cave in that what we discern as truth is merely the shadows we perceive of a truth we cannot fathom by mere perception. It can only make sense in that the finite nature of what we are biologically, in size, where we are, and all other factors contribute to the limits of what we can discern as truth both in line and in avoidant of theorems.

 

[Mole]

Your distinctions are cunning

Moles are mostly underestimated, and most overlook the cunning of Moles, but you are able to discern the cunning of Moles, so we can see you are travelling with us, indeed, a fellow traveller.

 

[wool]

The perception of truth is dependent less upon the mind, than upon the heart.

 

[Lark]

Truth is difficult, not impossible.

I agree with Anis Nin that people often dont see the world as it is but instead they see the world as they are.

 

[wool]

Truth is difficult, not impossible.

Truth is only difficult to receive because pride gets in the way.