Is it necessary to know the truth?
Philosophy is supposedly a search for truth. Philosophers go through great pains arguing for what they believe is true, But is necessary to spend so much time and energy advocating for what we perceive as true? Most people go on just fine not knowing the truth. There are people who believe that the earth is flat, that the earth is less than 6000 years old and that God created everything. And they go on with life just fine. How is knowing the truth about things going make a difference in your life? Especially those things that don't concern your daily life.
Right now I've convinced myself that I don't need to know the truth about anything. I'm dying to know what all the fuss is about. What so special about the truth?
Right now I've convinced myself that I don't need to know the truth about anything. I'm dying to know what all the fuss is about. What so special about the truth?
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The idea that philosophy is a search for the truth is nonsensical. Bertrand Russell put it best
"Science tells us what we can know, but what we can know is little, and if we forget how much we cannot know we become insensitive to many things of very great importance. Theology, on the other hand, induces a dogmatic belief that we have knowledge where in fact we have ignorance, and by doing so generates a kind of impertinent insolence towards the universe. Uncertainty, in the presence of vivid hopes and fears, is painful, but must be endured if we wish to live without the support of comforting fairy tales... To teach how to live without certainty, and yet without being paralyzed by hesitation, is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can still do for those who study it."
-Bertrand Russell.
There is a distinction between what you might know, and what you might think that you know. There is also a distinction between what you might actually know and what you could possibly know that you know. The whole idea of knowing is fraught once we make a move out of the realm of mundane facts and know-how.
Perhaps it is better to think in terms of belief, ability and familiarity, than in terms of certainty, perfection and omniscience.
I don’t think that’s true.
I use quantum mechanics as an example because it is a field we humans are not intuitively designed to understand and cracking it would represent an enormous leap in our technological, scientific and philosophical prowess. The more problems we solve, the better we get at solving problems.
Also, we should pursue "The Truth" simply because we are in a seemingly unique position to do so. The universe might not be around forever. Even if it is infinite, expansion will inevitably render "The Truth" unobtainable behind the cold, dark distances of space.
There’s Truth, there’s truth(s), there’s a multitude of sometimes inconsistent connotations to each, and there doubtless is an unlimited amount of both individual and communal imagination as to what these signs could be established to mean.
Nietzsche is a fun guy in his expressions of there not being any truth(s).
Yet there’s an underlying problem to any such wondering when addressed at a strictly rational plane of thought.
Is what one believes—and then furthermore claims—a falsity, i.e. an either consciously willed or unconsciously constructed deception regarding ontic facticity? We cannot even begin to cognize this question in manners devoid of a Kantian-like, a priori conviction that there is such thing as truth, i.e. non-falsity. The truth that there are no truths is itself either a truth worthy of being upheld or a falsity which, we all aprioristically intuit, ought not be believed princely because it is not true.
Upholding anything with a negation of truth’s presence or value rationally results in a catch-22, and in a logical contradiction: both X and not-X are at the same time and in the same way (this were X signifies “the presence of truth, i.e. non-falsity”).
For example, suppose one proposes a post-truth world as beneficial. This proposition will either correspond with the reality of what is beneficial—and then be true, i.e. a truth, in at least this one sense of “correspondence to what was, is, or will be factual”—or else it won’t so correspond … in which case the given proposition will at the very best only be a partial truth and, at worst, a complete falsity.
As to Nietzsche, given the total body of his works, I strongly feel that Nietzsche was implicitly equivocating in his assertions about there being no truth(s). Equivocations being something he was fond of doing, such as when addressing the issue of virtue.
All that stated, our knowledge may not ever be demonstrably absolute about anything, but this is no valid reason to then deny the presence of knowledge—maybe formally demarcated as “beliefs fully consistent with the non-contradictory reasoning by which they’re substantiated which we, furthermore, hold no valid reason to suspect being false”… or something along these lines. I, then, can’t find any valid reason to uphold that we do not hold knowledge of truths.
For instance, though I cannot demonstrate this to be absolute/infallible knowledge, I nevertheless know it to be true that this thread has an opening post. Also: though I might not be able to demonstrate my knowledge of this truth to be absolute under intense philosophical interrogation, this by no means contradicts, nor nullifies, the viable possibility that what I here know is, in fact, absolutely true and, in this sense, an absolute truth regarding what is ontic.
Then, how would our philosophical investigations be oriented at anything other than the discovery of deeper truths respective to those we are already knowledgeable of?
Otherwise expressed, to me it seems like when we hold curiosity we likewise hold a desire to know truth--something we more often than not obtain when we act upon our curiosity.
I'll second the others saying philosophy isn't about finding "the truth", but also say that you not finding philosophy interesting or engaging is just fine. I study philosophy because I have to. It's closer to a compulsion than to a voluntary endeavor. And it has never been about searching for truth for me--in fact my fascination with philosophy began when I started to realize that there is no truth.
As far as what philosophy actually is, I have to say that the Bertrand Russell quote posted by Inter Alia is probably the best explanation I've seen recently.
Except that science tells us that we can know anything we want to know about reality. There can be no epistemological barrier to our understanding.
What about our physical limitations? We are finite creatures in a seemingly infinite universe. We perceive only a small portion of reality. Our senses limit us severely. Based on observations we have made using science, it's beyond naive to think that what we perceive is all that there is. You can argue that will have the capabilities to discover everything that there is eventually, but there isn't a strong basis to make that argument on. True, history shows us that we have discovered, and will continue to discover, more and more about reality, but it's a ridiculous leap to imply that it follows from this that we will eventually be able to discover everything there is to know about reality.
Really? How about the Church-Turing-Deutsch Principle (please don't confuse it with the Church-Turing Thesis) which is proved to apply under known physics.
The CDT Principle guarantees we can know everything we want to know.
I'm not familiar with it, can you explain the principle?
That's actually a very legitimate question, with sound reasons for asking. It is clear that one can hold false belief about all sorts of things and yet still be quite successful, both financially and emotionally.
It quite simply does not follow from that that truth is not important. One reason that one can be wrong about all sorts of stuff and still succeed in life has to do with the way capitalism has affected/effected our ability to gather resources and avoid dangers.
Lastly though, the question itself is based upon your claim that you don't need to know the truth about anything in order to live life just fine. If that's true, then you do not need to know it.
We do not need to know the truth about everything. We most certainly need to know the truth about some or most things. We do not walk out in front of a bus, because we know that it's true that if we do we could get hurt... for example.
With that said, I think there are many truths that don't lead to our survival and some that can even make life more painful. Why we should continue to pursue those truths, I don't know.
Philosophy is about learning to navigate our lives and understanding our own meaning within this flux.
That's not true.
It wasn't intended to be. It is an observation. If you observe stagnation anywhere in the universe, let me know.
Perhaps 'know' is the wrong word, or maybe it's just not the only useful word
...face the truth, feel the truth, sense the truth, reveal the truth, experience the truth, and so on.
Does the word 'know' disallow falsity, but isn't that an idealization, and maybe there are no real necessary truths, only contingent ones.
Maybe contingency itself is the only necessity that can be rationally defended. Where does that leave truth, perhaps as our best de-facto effort, which seems to be working out quite well in some areas.
Quoting Rich
Well if it's not true, then you're wrong, because there are truths in a universe that is in constant flow.
Didn't you claim that there are no truths?
Now, if you want to really show how great you are at philosophy, tell me where you observe stagnation in the universe. I'm interested in learning something new, not being cute about the limits of language.
Why do you presuppose that truth requires that nothing change?
Simple observations are not truths. They are simply observations.
Truths were conjured up early on as a marketing gimmick. People pay money for truths. The practice continues today in all fields of endeavors. It is interesting what people pay money for.
By "a truth", I take it you mean a true statement?
There's this introductory book on logic I read. Per it knowing the truth is vital because not knowing the truth is dangerous - you lose touch with reality. As a simple example one must know the truth that a gun can kill for you to be careful around it.
Also what is your definition of a fool or insanity? Such people are prone to self-destruct because they lack knowledge of the truths of our world. I think the whole human enterprise, even life itself, is premised on 1) Truths existing and 2) An imperative to acquire knowledge of such truths
That said I've been thinking along the same lines as you for a while but couldn't develop a coherent thought I could present here. I wonder if a person could go in the opposite direction to philosophy i.e. seeking only falsehoods and denying truths entirely. We are free aren't we? With philosophy failing to ground our lives in objective meaning we may choose to travel along any path that we desire. What if someone tried to be the anti-philosopher?
Knowing the truth might be highly inconvenient, and because inconvenient, also disadvantageous.
What a funny truth. A gun can kill? I thought it was the bullet? Or was it the person who pulls the trigger. In anycase a gun without a bullet can still kill, or is it the person who uses it to hit someone with? For that matter, pretty much anything can kill including microbes in the water we drink. Soon we become paranoid from truths.
Lots of truths that are constantly changing. Pretty soon every observation becomes a truth which makes finding truths pretty easy and we don't have to make much about it.
Why is there such a sharp divide between truth and lies in our world? We value the honest and frown upon liars?
Smilansky created a view called illusionism as a response to the free will debate. Illusionism essentially says we should act as if we have free will even if we don't. Smilansky argues this because he believes a belief in free will is necessary for a functioning society. We need a belief in free will because people need to feel they are responsible for their actions in order to feel a sense of value and achievement in what they do. We also need to be able to hold others accountable when they do wrong.
I remember reading about this year ago when researching various ideas on free will, and this concept really bothered me because it assumes we have the free will to believe in what we choose. By saying we should believe in free will, it is implied that it is within our power to choose to believe in it, which doesn't make sense if there is no free will.
It's difficult to conceptualize, but basically if there is no free will then we have no control over our beliefs anyway, so what Smilansky is asserting is mostly pointless.