THE TRUTH

That gets thrown around a lot around here. Trouble is, what people are usually referring to is a very subjective mode of interpreting a given verbal construct. Or at best, a collective subjective perception of the world and events.

At DU the coherency theory of truth is often at play. That's the theory that truth is a collective agreed upon construct, not necessarily grounded in facts. And facts and the truth aren't always closely linked.

So when I hear "it's the truth" or "speaking truth to power", I'm often tempted to remind people that truth is less often a fact than a particular way of viewing, through a subjective lens.

I can agree with someone- like Pete Stark- without having to label what he said as some overarching eternal truth.

Because when all is said and done, truth is an abstract subjective/collective value, and not a concrete value.

The TRUTH is what "we" believe, and damned lies are what "those others" believe!

You put it much better than I did.

With the right sort of bullshit lingo wrapped around numbers, you can make them say pretty much anything you want!

That is the problem with our party right now. We are condemning those who speak passionately.

happen to agree with, then it must be "the truth". I've seen that asserted here after the "Betrayus" blowup--MoveOn defenders would say "It's the truth", as if it's a proven fact that Petraeus is a traitor or whatever. Or, they would point to MoveOn's donations, or the number of people that agree in polls, to establish the ad as "truth"--it seems some people are simply not equipped to sort out fact from opinion. I suppose in Freeperland, it's the "truth" that Dems are traitors who want Americans to succumb to Sharia law, because William Kristol says so. It's no more truth than any of OUR opinions.

And personally, I think it's important (at least for me) to recognize that personal truth is really opinion, and collective truth is an agreed upon opinion.

that we're entitled to our own opinion AND our own facts?

Gandhi

from Yeats to Gandhi and then some.

There are many who don't believe in "God", as defined by Ghandi or millions of others. The existence of any "God" is not a fact. Water, air, fire & earth are facts.

making a statement that describes truth, which should offend only those who do not believe in truth.

univerals truths, but I also believe that there are lots and lots of "truths" that are personal or held in the collective.

agree. Though it is entirely speculation on my part, I assume that Gandhi would, also. (Now there's an example of both.)

If they tried to steal anything, they failed miserably. If I recall, we didn't lose an incumbent and picked up seats pretty much everywhere.

The Democrats crushed the Republicans in an historic election, re-taking control of both houses of Congress, protecting every single one of their incumbents, and vastly increasing their hold over governorships and states houses. Democrats won in every region of the country outside of the Deep South.

Source: http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/08/06/rove/

What exactly do you think was stolen?

Truth will only be what will be stated as such, but dubious at best. We are more inconsequential than we want to admit but our egos have bloviated some otherness greater than we can fathom that politics and religion seem to apply. Truth need not apply.

On DU, the "truth" is that no one likes her, a "truth" based on the personal observation and opinions of perhaps a couple hundred DUers.

In the real world, the polls indicate that about 80% of "liberal Democrats" have a favorable opinion of her.

Is one true and the other the "truth"? :)

as factual?

"You don't have money to fund the war or children," Stark declared. "But you're going to spend it to blow up innocent people if we can get enough kids to grow old enough for you to send to Iraq to get their heads blown off for the President's amusement."

The only possible part of the statement that one could question the "truth" about is the term "amusement". But even that has a factual basis. His childhood friend claims he and * blew up frogs for amusement for one. His mimicking (and laughter at) of Karla's pleas to be spared the death penalty for another. His smirking alone is plenty of evidence for me.

Truth is almost the opposite of a particular way of viewing, and is a concrete value, too. If something is not a concrete value (even if the value itself is unknown) there's no reason to call it true. Granted, my idea of truth is best approximated through a particular way of arriving at conclusions, but the scientific method and logical thinking are tools and methods more than perspectives. (As you've no doubt noted, I'm a political liberal, but an intellectual and artistic conservative.)

I know what you're saying, but when we degrade (or more charitably, expand) truth to include particular ways of viewing then what word shall we use for truth?

The fact that the Declaration of Independence refers to the rights of man as "truths" notwithstanding. There were vastly fewer known scientific truths in 1776, so the word wasn't so over-taxed back then. Similarly, "truth beauty and beauty truth" refers to an almost spiritual concept of truth. (A dictionary lists many different definitions of truth beyond what I'm suggesting.)

Take the five blind men and the elephant... the truth of the elephant, seen from all sides, must be a higher level truth than the five different opinions/conclusions of the blind men. So why call them truths when we have so many good words for those lower level 'truths': opinion, conviction, impression, hypothesis, theory, fancy, faith, gut-feeling, hallucination, prejudice...

If we reserve the T word for the real thing, that means that we cannot use "truth" to describe things like equity and beauty. And why would we want to? Statements like "It is True that the tax code is fair," or "It is false that the Mona Lisa is beautiful," are almost without meaning.

Most personal truths are equally meaningless if we misapply the T word. To say, "My truth is that the Mona Lisa is beautiful" is merely combative, while containing no information not contained in the statement, "I think the Mona Lisa is beautiful."

There is an educated consensus as to the beauty of the Mona Lisa, but why would anyone call that truth? Would we call someone who says it's ugly a liar? I wouldn't.

(I know none of this is news to you or anything you haven't considered a zillion times. My verbosity is not meant to imply there's anything novel or challenging in my comments.)