What is truth?

[SpheresOfBalance]

"Does one's untruthful statement about reality change reality? Of course not, because reality is the truth!"
Spheresofbalance
No, * but that the fact that you admit that there are " untruthful" statements about reality shows that somewhere deep down you know that there is a difference between truth and reality.
Incorrect, you are simply confused.

So you are saying that you can point at something ( without making a statement ) and simply say "truth" and that makes sense??? Suppose you point at a rock and say "truth" ( actually pointing is making a statement , this not that) . OK so the rock is truth???
Yes, it is true that there are rocks, but of course it goes much deeper than that. What a rock is, what it's made of, where it came from, etc, etc, etc, (almost ad infinitum). To speak the entire truth of reality, it would take more books than you could even imagine could ever exist. And then there would be many empty pages exemplifying what humans have yet to understand about reality. Truth can only ever agree with reality!

* Actually that is an argument that shows that truth does not equal reality.
Nope, but this statement of yours shows you are confused, as to the meanings of words.

If an untruthful statement could change reality ( like that new age Abraham Hicks nonsense) it would mean that our beliefs and reality are the same thing.
Man, are you confused!

It's 'truth' that someone can make a statement, but it's not 'truth' that every statement exemplifies 'truth.'
It's 'reality' that someone can make a statement, but it's not 'reality' that every statement exemplifies 'reality.'

[SpheresOfBalance]

We say "1+1=2 is the truth."
This first one is both the truth and the reality.

We say "2+5=23 is not the truth."
This second one is both the truth and the reality

In other words we determine if the equations match up to reality.
For any statement to contain either truth or to speak of reality, both reality and truth must agree.

[SpheresOfBalance]

No it does not, Your logic is flawed. It's 'reality' that humans can lie! It's 'reality' that humans can be wrong! And finally it's 'reality' that RT can attend a philosophy class and either misconstrue what it was that the professor meant, couldn't sense his jest, or couldn't see that the professor was wrong in his understanding.

You can feel it's misconceived, but the standard view in philosophy is that truth and facts are different. Truth is a property of propositions.

Use logic and prove for all of us to see, anything that is a fact yet not the truth, and anything that is the truth yet not a fact. You can't! Because it's impossible, because they are one in the same.

Fact, truth and reality must all agree for any one of them to exist!

[Terrapin Station]

Use logic and prove for all of us to see, anything that is a fact yet not the truth, and anything that is the truth yet not a fact. You can't! Because it's impossible, because they are one in the same.

Fact, truth and reality must all agree for any one of them to exist!

It's just a matter of understanding what the terms conventionally refer to (at least in an academic philosophical context).

Facts are states of affairs. In other words, they're things such as the Earth revolving around the sun, that there's a particular tree on a particular hill, and so on.

Truth is taken to be a property of propositions. Propositions are the meanings of declarative sentences. A declarative sentence is something like "There's an oak tree on Smith Hill." Well, the proposition is the meaning of that sentence. Truth, then, (and I'll stick to the correspondence theory of truth to keep this simple) is a relation of the meaning of a declarative sentence to a state of affairs. Truth obtains when there's a correspondence between the meaning of the declarative sentence "There's an oak tree on Smith Hill" and the state of affairs (in other words, the fact) that there's an oak tree on Smith Hill. That correspondence relation is a property of the proposition, "There's an oak tree on Smith Hill." That correspondence relation, that property of the proposition, is conventionally what truth is under the rubric of analytic philosophy.

So on this view, truth and facts are different types of things.

[SpheresOfBalance]

Use logic and prove for all of us to see, anything that is a fact yet not the truth, and anything that is the truth yet not a fact. You can't! Because it's impossible, because they are one in the same.

Fact, truth and reality must all agree for any one of them to exist!

It's just a matter of understanding what the terms conventionally refer to (at least in an academic philosophical context).

Facts are states of affairs. In other words, they're things such as the Earth revolving around the sun, that there's a particular tree on a particular hill, and so on.

Truth is taken to be a property of propositions. Propositions are the meanings of declarative sentences. A declarative sentence is something like "There's an oak tree on Smith Hill." Well, the proposition is the meaning of that sentence. Truth, then, (and I'll stick to the correspondence theory of truth to keep this simple) is a relation of the meaning of a declarative sentence to a state of affairs. Truth obtains when there's a correspondence between the meaning of the declarative sentence "There's an oak tree on Smith Hill" and the state of affairs (in other words, the fact) that there's an oak tree on Smith Hill. That correspondence relation is a property of the proposition, "There's an oak tree on Smith Hill." That correspondence relation, that property of the proposition, is conventionally what truth is under the rubric of analytic philosophy.

So on this view, truth and facts are different types of things.

All that you have mentioned above, I learned long ago while in college studying among other things, philosophy. But these days I dispense with meaningless distinctions, as I have come to know that there is far too much hair splitting going on, when in fact the distinctions are actually meaningless. Those you mention are procedural only, again, they are all about how one can find the truth, not about what truth is, and are often just a means of asserting ones superiority, so they can both believe and convince others of it. I know, elbows off the table, pinky extended, salad fork on the left and dinner fork on the right, but in fact it's all a bunch of self-aggrandizing hogwash. Big word usage is another ploy with the same intent!
These are usually all ways of patting oneself on the back, or what I have often called, "self sucking;" a crass phrase, for a crass human desire.

So I see that you consistently support your view, of course you would, most humans do, look at me. Yet you have failed to take my challenge, because you know that it's impossible for you to do so.

But I'll say it again:
'Use logic and prove for all of us to see, anything that is a fact yet not the truth, and anything that is the truth yet not a fact. You can't! Because it's impossible, because in the end, after all procedures are met, they are one in the same, requiring the same elements of thought to ensure their certainty.'

It's a fact that the Earth revolves around the sun;
It's true that the Earth revolves around the sun;
It's real that the Earth revolves around the sun.

It's a fact that there's a particular tree on a particular hill;
It's true that there's a particular tree on a particular hill;
It's real that there's a particular tree on a particular hill.

Must I go on? Show me otherwise. It's impossible!

[raw_thought]

"For any statement to contain either truth or to speak of reality, both reality and truth must agree. "
Spheresofbalance
Agreed! So you agree that truth and reality are not two words for the same thing. They must agree! That implies that they are two different things. To say that something agrees with itself is a tautology.
To say that truth = reality is like saying that all dogs are dogs. That doesn't help us understand what a dog is.

[raw_thought]

"Truth is taken to be a property of propositions."
Terrapin Station
Agreed! Spheres is not using the terms properly.

[raw_thought]

"We say "2+5=23 is not the truth."
This second one is both the truth and the reality"
Spheresofbalance
Please explain how 2+5=23.

[raw_thought]

"Truth can only ever agree with reality! "
Spheresofbalance
Agreed! A proposition must agree with reality for it to be truthful. However, that does not mean that a statement about reality and the actual reality are the same thing. The concept "dog" is different then an actual dog. The concept "dog" is an abstraction. An actual dog is a tangible reality.
What you are doing is self-aggrandizing hogwash. Taking an obvious and accepted ( by the entire philosophical community, remember this is a philosophy site) definition of truth and trying to show your superiority by making it into a pseudo-spiritual quest. Yes, we get it reality is real!
Which I find ironic because my current interest is Zen. The direct perception of reality without the intermediary of concepts and symbols. However, I keep my spiritual interests separate from philosophy. Spirituality is experience based. Philosophy is concept based.

[raw_thought]

BTW, Truth has a specific definition. For example in logic truth does not = validity.
Here is a valid argument that lacks truth.
1. All Martians eat snakes.
2. Bob is a Martian.
3. Therefore, Bob eats snakes.
Here is a true but invalid argument.
1. Carter was president.
2. Nixon was president.
3. therefore, W. Bush was president.

[Terrapin Station]

But these days I dispense with meaningless distinctions, as I have come to know that there is far too much hair splitting going on, when in fact the distinctions are actually meaningless.

What do you take to be the demarcation criterion for whether something is meaningful or meaningless?

Those you mention are procedural only,

It's actually an ontological difference. One of the primary reasons for it is that if facts are identical to truth, then what falsehoods are ontologically has to be a completely different sort of thing than what truths are ontologically, not just in modality, but in the type or category of thing we're talking about. The difference between truth and falsehood, in other words, would be akin to what we'd call a category error, but we'd have to say that it isn't a category error.

again, they are all about how one can find the truth, not about what truth is,

This makes no sense in light of me explaining just above that on the received view, truth IS a property of propositions, it IS a relation between propositions and something else.

and are often just a means of asserting ones superiority, so they can both believe and convince others of it.

Oy vey. It has nothing to do with that. It has to do with the ontological type problem I noted above.

Big word usage is another ploy with the same intent!

What philosophy did you take anyway? An intro class or something? Surely you didn't major in it and wind up with that opinion.

Yet you have failed to take my challenge, because you know that it's impossible for you to do so.

Three problems with your challenge are that (i) empirical claims are not provable period, (ii) if you understand the received view, every fact, aside from facts about (judgments about) the relation of propositions to other things, where the (judgment about the) relation amounts to "T," is different from truth, and (iii) what the received view is about is how we're going to employ terms and concepts so that they make logical sense (in this case with respect to the category problem I described above, so that truth and falsehood are modes of the same ontological category).

So for example:

It's a fact that the Earth revolves around the sun;
It's true that the Earth revolves around the sun;

That fact, and that truth, are different. Why? Well, because one is a state of affairs that obtains, and the other is (a judgment about) a relation of a proposition to the state of affairs. The state of affairs and the (judgment about the) relation of the proposition to the state of affairs are two different things. That goes for every fact and truth except for facts about (judgments about) the relation of propositions to states of affairs. (Using correspondence.)

It's maybe not easy to understand this if you don't have (memory of) an adequate background in philosophy, but if you're interested in philosophy, and hopefully you would be if you're frequenting this board, it's worth taking the time to understand (and I'm happy to explain any of it in more detail to aid understanding). It wouldn't make any sense to me to not want to be educated about a field one is supposedly interested in.

[Terrapin Station]

To say that truth = reality is like saying that all dogs are dogs. That doesn't help us understand what a dog is.

That part I have a problem with, in general, and this idea unfortunately comes up frequently on message boards.

The way that definitions work is that they give an identity, in other words, of a term. If the definition isn't an identity, then the term isn't actually being defined, because either the definition is leaving out some essential aspect of the thing named by the term or the definition is adding something to the thing named by the term, and thus is would be misleading in both cases. So definitions should function just like dog=dog, it's just that you don't use the same word again. You use a different set of words, like truth=reality (although of course I don't agree that that particular example captures the accepted, conventional usage ). You use other words that capture everything contained in "dog" but that don't add anything to "dog." The way this helps you understand what a term is is that hopefully you're more familiar with the other terms that are in the definition. If you're not, then you need to look some of those up, too, in order to obtain their identities in other terms, until you only encounter terms that you're familiar with.

For some reason, there's a popular idea floating around that definitions shouldn't be identities, as well as an idea that definitions are not ultimately circular (they necessarily are--every term in the language is defined by other terms in the language, until they're all exhausted; it's one big circle). Both of those ideas--that they shouldn't be identities and that definitions are not ultimately circular, are misconceived.

[henry quirk]

SoB,

I believe you (and me) are wasting time here. When 'philosophers' start pickin' at nits (futzin' around with details instead of addressin' the matter at hand), and 'lecturing', the conversation is over. I predict this thread can go on for another thirty or forty pages and not move one jot from where it is right now. Backnforth, backnforth, backnforth, and when the thread peters out, nuthin' will be decided, acknowledged, or conceded. You may have the time to piss away on such shenanigans, but I don't.

[raw_thought]

UMMM Spheres was picking at nits. We simply were discussing "truth" ( um this is a philosophy site) and spheres got in a tizzy fit because he wanted to change the definitions of words.

[raw_thought]

.

For some reason, there's a popular idea floating around that definitions shouldn't be identities, as well as an idea that definitions are not ultimately circular (they necessarily are--every term in the language is defined by other terms in the language, until they're all exhausted; it's one big circle). Both of those ideas--that they shouldn't be identities and that definitions are not ultimately circular, are misconceived.

I agree. Definitions are circular, they are tautologies.