Philosophy Now Forum

a thought experiment....

what is the ''truth?"

now many consider the ''truth'' to be a relationship between
what one knows and what exists in the outside world....
In other words, I hold to ''true'' statements if they
are confirmed by the outside world..... my beliefs
and reality are one and the same... that is considered to
be the ''truth''... if I hold true statements about the world,
I am considered to be within the ''truth''....

but let us reconsider this.....

what if the ''truth'' is actually beliefs that we hold that are actually
our beliefs.... we are indoctrinated into a country's values and beliefs...
this is called education.... and we are indoctrinated with all kinds of values
and beliefs.... there is a god... is one value/belief we are indoctrinated with....
and that belief is considered to be true because it corresponds to some
outside reality....

again, a thought experiment: what if the ''truth'' wasn't some
correspondence from our thoughts to some outside reality....
what if the ''truth'' were actually found in our reexamination of
values...... not in some relationship with an outside reality.....

I hold ''true'' values/beliefs because I have examined those values/beliefs
and found them to be ''true'' for me.... it doesn't matter if those values/beliefs
are not readily apparent in the real world.... I might hold to their being a god,
not because a god might exist in the universe, but a god works for me as
a belief system....it creates values and beliefs that I hold to be true....
regardless, if there is a god or not..... my own beliefs and values create
the reality of the universe for me..... my own thoughts are what is real,
not what seems to exists out there in the universe...... again,
a thought experiment.....and nothing more......

a what if?

Kropotkin

Peter Kropotkin wrote: ↑Sat Jun 22, 2024 3:00 pm

Been caught up lately.....

the subject for me has been, for years really, has
been the Renaissance..... and what it signifies for us.....

to be Reborn......to uncover what it means to live fully.....
of all the renaissances of the last millennium, the Renaissance has
been, in my opinion... the most transformative.... reducing the Renaissance
vision down to a few sentences, has been tricky, but the
ideals most cherished in the ''Age of Rebirth'' have been twofold...
one has been artistic expression and the second has been scientific inquiry...
one must remember the Renaissance to keep the reason
behind those two ideals.... and the reason we must still engage in the Renaissance,
becomes clear in the times we live in......

So, let us dissect the two ideals.... first with artistic expression....
artistic expression to create or to imagine..... the freedom to express who you are....
the various art movements of the last century have been about
the exploration of self..... the various censorship laws in different countries were
about preventing artists from expressing... from obtaining the freedom
that others held.... the freedom to create what one envisioned, to display
as one wished, to challenge norms.... (remember that certain artworks
were banned within my lifetime in many places)

that the quest for scientific inquiry, to uncover truths about our world,
continues... the ongoing climate debate is just another ongoing attack
on the right to knowledge.... to understand our impact on the planet...

and the quest for digital freedom is just another struggle for expressing who one
is...... to have the same rights to information as others have.... to have the right
to access and share... as others have the same rights to access.....who they are....

the so-called Information wars of the last few decades are just a continuation
of the Renaissance......

next post we continue...