Sigh. Trees exist because I can see them. Neither God nor Lucifer actually exist. Is that good enough?

I suppose so, otto, but is not really in the spirit of the post

Some shirts are red.

I find it to be true that there exists a subset of shirts which are red, and this subset is not empty - or to put it another way, this subset is not identical to the null/empty set.

Of course i also find that a purely set based description of reality is lacking.

The first step to understanding everything is the acceptance of nothing?

Are you trying to start a debate with your thread or do you truely believe you can accept two things as both totally true and totally contradictory at once? To me as a scientifically minded person it sounds irrational and almost disturbing. I feel I could take two things and treat them *as if* they were true, but only one at a time, and to switch to the other would require dropping the assumption that the first was correct.

I find that in my head I accept on an academic level that humans can not have free will, yet also believe murderers ad other criminals should be punished.
This is double think... I do believe it is fully possible to believe two contradictory truths... we are not computers

A lie believe by a million people is still a lie. The truth is not always found. The truth is rarely found. Truth is what we all strive for. When people find out the truth, they discard it and don't believe it. Truth is truth. Truth can't not be truth. This is truth.

I don't always know what the truth is.
Should I be bothered?

Red shirts are not red. They are cannon fodder ;)

Red shirts are guaranteed to die in every Star Trek episode.
Truth is one of those words that have no definition, just like trying to define love, or any other emotion. You cannot do it

Shirts that are red aren't Seen as red to color blind people but then agian that is red to them so it's debatable. And because there is no way to describe a color then we could all be seeing one mans blue as red

Reality is perception.
In some Star Treks, an minority I admit, no red shirts die.

Sunzi is correct in that reality is perception. ergo zaza is wrong in stating there is some absolute truth.

I'm InSaNE!! hahahahaha....zebra

Reality is not preception. The precieved worlds we concieve as our reality are models which (in most cases) help us to live useful lives.

The Truth is more complex and too difficult for a mere human mind to comprehend, which i suppose is a bit of a cop out. I'm stating that you can't possibly know that what i'm saying is correct, but that doesn't mean i can't know that what you're saying is absolute bollox.

USEFUL IS RELATIIVE TO INTERPRETATION. TRUTH IS FALSE!

I exist. That is all you get. That is the only truth that is known to me. The rest is conjecture.

On a different subject we definitely have free, dave bishop. I can't prove it, but it's utterly ridiculous to live your life believing otherwise

If every speaks for a proposition and nothing against it - then we may say it is true.

There is no proof of g in Principia Mathematica.

Truth is what I believe at any moment in time. I'm pretty sure that at some time I believed if someone pointed to a 'b'. I would sound out '/b/' as in 'bat'. I did this because I believed that was the only sound I thought it made. Later on I leant that 'b' doesn't always say '/b/' - sometimes it doesn't say much at all, like in comb or tomb, it propably says many other things in different languages.

The point is when I was 3 or 4, 'b' said '/b/' and when I gave that answer I was telling the truth, because that is what I believed at that particular moment in time.

That is not what truth is.

Perhaps there is a difference between "truth" and "telling the truth"?

Truth and belief are two different aspects of knowledge.

Yes of course, truth and belief are not the same. But when we ask if someone is "telling the truth", for example, when giving evidence in court, we if that person is saying what they believe to be true (as opposed to lying). I think this is what Maniac is talking about.

tyop.. we *are asking if that person is saying what they believe to be true...

That's because "telling the truth" is shorthand for "telling what one honestly believes is the truth." It's not as if truth is dependent on a person's subjective assent to it.

Conversely, someone could be saying a true thing but believe it to be false. Is that person telling the truth?

I would contend that truth is what you believe in a moment of time. If, in my previous example after telling an adult that 'b' said '/b/' I was asked, 'are you telling the truth?', I would of course say yes. Therefore, in my mind, in that moment of time 'b' saying '/b/' was true.

The fact that 'b' says other things. and sometimes nothing at all, doesn't mean that what I believed to be true when I was 3 wasn't the truth. In the same way our understanding of more complex things changes overtime, maybe stoneage man thought the smallest thing in the universe was a spec of duct, later mankind could have thought bacteria was the smallest thing, after that a molecule or an atom. Then they start spilting an atom!

Just becuase something isn't real. (a dust particul isn't the smallest thing in the universe) doesn't stop it being 'true' to some people at some moment in time.

I restate my case - truth is what I believe at a moment in time.

No, what you believe in a moment of time is what you believe in a moment of time. The truth-value of a judgment is an aspect of the reality that is judged, not of the subject making the judgment.

You're using "truth" equivocally. Once you recognize that fallacy, you'll understand why you're wrong.

Acosmist what you have failed to realize is that Maniac is actually God. Whatever he believes at any give moment in time is in fact objectively true. Reality comforms to his whims. :P

Maniac can you please create a rock so heavy that you cannot lift it

just to confirm this theory

Truth: Pi as an irrational number that represents the ratio of the diameter of a circle to its circumference.

what Draugnar fails to realize is that the circle is socially constructed by the phallocratic masters of our fallen age

Truth: Pie may not be the same as Pi, but both involve circles in one form or another.

@Acosmist, rocks already exist that I can't lift. Therefore I suppose I must be god. On the other hand the rock which I can't lift today I may have been able to lift yesterday or maybe tomorrow, who knows.

Earlier you asked.."Conversely, someone could be saying a true thing but believe it to be false. Is that person telling the truth?" No.

Consider a flat earth believer being tortured to accept that the earth is round. He may say that the earth is round to stop the tirture but if he doesn't believe it at the point in time then it isn't true.

If All Truths are knowable, then we are Gods.

Really!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitch%27s_paradox

Surely that leads to more of a question on what is a God than a paradox?

@Draugnar - I've eaten plenty of pies that arn't circles.

Truth- Before you begin to know anything, you must admit to knowing nothing.

Women are bloody ridiculous and if it weren't for the whole sex and reproduction thing, we would be better off to do away with the lot of them.

Yes. To head of those who would have inferred it I currently have troubles with women... or woman... or girl... she's only 17. (so am I so it's not creepy)

That and how many philosophy majors/existensialist stoners do we have on this site?

I have a BA in philosophy, bro.

That's a cute blanket statement there, LJ. Really shows how your so much less ridiculous than the fairer sex...

He's Tyler Durden- you expected him to NOT be ridiculous? ;)

haha that is a very valid point

@ Acosmist - I know, we had a game together. We had discussions about how your company sells lighting fixtures or something to mine and how moving to rural Pennsylvania sucks.

@abgemacht - I am definitely less ridiculous than women. Who, besides philosophy majors spends large amounts of time in pointless, ostensibly deep debate? Stoners.