What is the nature of truth? This is a question often asked of Philosophers, Scientists and Religious Leaders.
All that is true is communication.
Communication of one person’s mental state to another person.
Say I have a rock 0
And I add another rock 00
What is it that tells you that there are two rocks? Where in the rocks is this “truth”? Imagine if you will, that you didn’t know that one rock plus one rock is two rocks. Imagine hearing that for the first time. It is an easy idea to communicate is it not? Two rocks. This is two rocks. I have one rock, add another and I have two rocks. Even as you read these words you know them to be true. Why? Because it is demonstrable and a consistent outcome. It is a customary outcome that you can repeat as long as you want. More importantly though it is now an idea inside you head. A neural connection that will always fire when in the presence of two rocks. It is your ability to communicate this outcome and others to your children that will give them this idea too. We hand over further development to teachers. Teachers of mental ideas. They start off easy. The time. The date. A dog. A cat. Easy ideas that lay a foundation path work in our minds. It makes us receptive to certain ideas. Very receptive in some cases. Mother. Father. These are ideas in our minds only. A shared idea is communication. Essentially personal. We both have mothers, but our surrounding ideas will be different. It is in this way that what we take as true is built up. Our brains can think very fast. Once you have accepted an idea as true, many more ideas can be built upon it like bricks.
000 three rocks
Ten rocks ten rocks
The communication of ideas is the primary accomplishment of mankind.
This is often referred to as languages. These are shared frameworks of ideas that like building block we accept each as true and like Tetris build lines that stand solid together. It doesn’t matter what the language is only that the people both use it to share the ideas, to get the mental picture in my head into yours in the same (or similar way) to how I see it.
Digression – art.
Art is also a communication of ideas. All communication requires at least two people. When I paint something, say the last painting I did of my grandfather. I have an idea of him in my head. I am trying to use the paint to put down that idea on paper. This idea has to be capsulated and fed out through my hand. It is very hard to do. The idea that I have of say a particular day will always sit in my mind until I put it down. To put it on the paper I have to destroy the idea. Why? Because whenever I think of that idea again I will see the painting. The idea is no longer just that day. I have tried to communicate more than just the strokes. I have tried to communicate the “truth” of my idea of my grandfather. It doesn’t need to be measured mathematically. You cannot plot such things on a graph. This is why many artists feel bad about their paintings. They know it can never live up to their mental idea and now it has been forever altered. They take reassurance from the fact that the painting perhaps communicates it to others, but it is a price many artists cannot take.
It is for all that a language. It speaks to you in ideas, you just have to listen. Experimentation in this field has unfortunately led to the creation of meaningless art that the view imposes their own ideas upon, it has no idea of its own that it is speaking. This is a pity.
/end digression
The horrible truth. The horrible truth isn’t taught in schools. It isn’t taught by many parents and it certainly isn’t taught by our leaders. It is this:
There is no such thing as a triangle.
Should man all die tomorrow. There will be no more triangles. Our ideas die with us. (So many original thoughts that everyone has all the time. If only one could write them down man would be living in the stars by now). A triangle is our idea only. It is a shared idea that we have about the universe and the way it works. One many use it to manipulate other ideas. One many even communicate it using language or the results of its mental manipulation, but this doesn’t change the fact that it is only an idea.
To use the rocks analogy. There is nothing in the rocks that contains the word “rocks” or the idea that that word communicates. When the idea dies with us, the rocks no longer have that name. The go back to the darkness. The idea of a rock is entirely in our perception, not with in the rock itself. And more importantly, the use of the idea (or word) rocks is also within our perception.
So it holds for math. We use the language of math to carve out our ideas about the universe. Such things can be logically proven, such as quarks that have never even been seen. Scientists call this prediction. A logical proposition that has no verifiable conclusion.
In ethics, we are dealing with so many ideas that it becomes impossible to agree on them. The communication of the idea is given over to Lawyers, who use their mental building blocks (that they developed in law school) to re communicate the idea along an agreed legal language. A framework that is agreed upon. Why else would what is legal in one country be illegal in another?
It is all perception my friend all of it. There is nothing else.
Even your list of types of truth bears this out, as do your motives for posting them. You wish to communicate an idea to use in such a way that we will agree with it (naturally). After which you can increase you own value of its “truth”. More than this I suspect you wish to use the board to apply a crucible and have use help you come to some refined version of you ideas with which you will digest and generate further.
This is a very good aim and the purpose of this board in the first place.
Man will one day reach the stars and our communication and building of shared ideas will take us there. Just don’t think they are true beyond shadows on the wall in a cave.
Regards,
Basho
