What is truth?

1+1=2

(Though some people would disagree.)

Truth is Beauty.

I think there’s no such thing as truth, in the same way there’s no such thing as a fork… they are both human constructs. Once you get past that though, truth is whatever you want it to be, or told it is, depending on how independently minded you are.

If you don’t know what truth is how do you know if the answer I give is truthful or not?

@jamesnoon, So you believe truth is relative? If so, is ALL truth relative? Is “1+1=4” relative? (I sort of think it is.)

dharmakaya

@monsoon. I think of these sorts of questions in two ways… On the one hand I guess its nihilism, there’s certainly nothing such as absoloute anything but if you take that position you have to ask wether anything is real and that’s too much for some. On the other hand, yes, ALL truth is relative. If you were to, for example, torture a university maths professor for a prolonged period of time, you could make him or her really believe that 1+1 = 3.

truth is when you don’t lie

Pontious Pilot asked the same question to Jesus.

Pilate and Jesus had a fluther account?

aka concensus

@james, so all that it takes for something to be true is or some one to believe it?

Nothing and anything, whatever you make it…

It’s something that is factual, not made up, and has evidence of occurring/existing behind it.
Or in some cases doesn’t have any proof and faith is what makes it true.

Then again, I’m not sure.

@monsoon. Precisely… and this kinda responds to LottoWrett too, in that he mentions faith, if you believe something, its true to you. If something is believed in collectively by a large number, that’s reassuring and can strengthen your shared truth psychologically, but it doesn’t make it any more real. Truth now-a-days, in our scientific and “enlightened era”, does seem to have more strength though, because of empiricism, the scientific method that states that for something to be true it must be testable and observable, but that doesn’t always work, our senses can fool us… examples could include, and there are countless more…

The earth appears flat, but we know from alternative observation that this is not the case.

Work in quantum physics, where, annoyingly, mere observation of phenomena changes results of experiments.

Optical illusions, our senses are telling us one thing, its only higher reasoning that tells us otherwise.

We have to be very careful of truth… just look at the arab-Israeli conflict under this context.

Oh, and *AstroChuck, your right… Jesus said something like “its the truth” and Pilate replied “Quod est Veritas” – “what is truth?” Christians tend to think of that as Pilate asking Jesus a question he did not know the answer to… I prefer to think of it as irony, he was making a point… its one of my favourite passages in the Bible and always makes me smile.

I agree, first, about truth being relative, but I don’t think I would go so far as to say that everything any one believes is true.

How do I rationalize this… I think that there is a Truth. One way in that everything is. Nothing can exist in two different ways (though anything can be percieved in two different ways) at the same time, so this leads me to believe that there is a true everything, but most likely no human can be sure what those truths are.

What I mean to say is that, truth exists, but human have no way of knowing what is true, so we create these pseudo-truths, which are what I would call what you’re talking about. Subjective truth, to make up for an unatainable, but existent, objective truth.

I like that answer… subjective truths, and an unobtainable, or unknowable, objective truth. It sounds too much like a religious faith to me though, in so far as there being something out there which you can’t prove the existence of, but you believe is there. I’m sticking to my “belief” ... that truth is whatever we want it to be, and which we strengthen/back up through various means. External to the understanding we prescribe onto our universe there is no truth or meaning. I still love your answer though, and so have marked it accordingly :o) This has been fun, I like this website!

Haha, well I’m glad. :)