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Which is possibly very bad, but if we didn't base knowledge on something society would never evolve (I think I'm linking to another thread). Truth is relative to a situation and we can create truth but that doesn't mean that truth is wholely from human perspective. Yes I know I'm making no sense. I think I'm kinda agreeing with faye and myself (don't ask) If one is saying truth is relative does that make facts relative as true is agreeing with fact?
<I think we may have worked ourselves around to Rene Descartes. A man who at some point in his life realized that almost everything he had been taught was false. He became so skeptical and questioning that he even questioned his own existence.>
Unfortunately, Descartes chickened out. Rather than let his reasonings follow their logical course, he came up with the idea that God wouldn't fool him into believing in a world that was an illusion. He also stole the ontological argument from St Anselm, to provide himself with a rational starting point for reality. However, the argument is flawed.
<Of course he finally decided that he did exist. Famously: “Cogito ergo sum” - “I think therefore I am”>
The usual translation of Descartes' famous dictum does not really work very well. As Bertrand Russell said, the start does not bode well, as he is already presupposing the conclusion. Then there is the problem that RD is making a big leap from the idea of a process (thinking) to the idea of a processor (I). In its purest sense, it should really read: thinking therefore existence. This however tells us nothing of what it is that exists, other than thinking. And what is thinking?
Rene Descartes was generally much better at asking questions than answering them.
Cassandra, tell me, what would truth mean outside a mind? When does something become true?
man AP you ask the tuffies!
And the rotten person expects me to compete with ancient philosophers and answer them! :(
I'm personally better at confusing points than answering questions.
I guess I'm acctually agreeing with plato (never thought I'd say that) and his idea of forms. People are often arrogant enough to believe that truth revolves around humanity and that we are the only things that matter, and that therefore we invent truth. Even if there were no people there would still be truth therefore truth must exist outside the mind. If truth only exists in the mind then truth does not exist for minds are so diverse and complicated that truth would be so different it would contradict itself and ceese to be truth.
I'm not saying this very well. I will come back to it later when I've had time to think.
but people have no way of knowing outside of what they think-my original point. In which case, couldn't there be no absolute truth? Since how would you know?Quote:
Originally posted by Cassandra
But it wouldn't be an absolute truth, the moon would not therefore be cheese for you and something elese for everyone else. Absolute truths should be true regardless of what peole think.
As for facts... well, 75% of people know that 68% of statistics are totally made up.
You wouldn't know. Just cus I don't know something doesn't mean it is not true. People didn't know the world was round hundreds of years ago but that does not make it any less true. (and before some smart mouth says so I know its not 'round' I meant it in general aproximation terms)
No, I'm just saying how would you know if it is true? Since everything is relative to what you know, if something is 'true' to you, you must know it. You wouldn't think the world being round WAS true, if you lived hundreds of years ago. And this is drifting dangerously into that 'and how do you really know it's round today' kind of territory. MAYYYYBBEEE it's not, and all those satellite photos are fake. [stupid idea, but you get my point]
Yup, again trusting and faith is half of the 'truth' we know. Just cus you don't think somethings true doesn't mean its not otherwise opposites would have to be true simulataneously which is logically impossible. You cannot know truth. Truth is in belief.
Sometimes I believe in fate and sometimes not. Well, its not like we could stop making choises just becuse our fate already was desided, because our fate is to make choises!!!
You can catch 'glimpses' of the paths you are next to. Everything seems to lead up to a 'peak' or the'fork-in-the road'. There always seems to be a choice for the occassion. What choice will bring you further along? As for sweating over it I have No idea for I am in the same predicament. I am sweating over it but you really shouldnt have to. Good Topic:)!
I think we make fate by the decisions we make. Only we don't know where these decisions will take us, as they're influenced by other people's decisions too. So, we all make destiny, but this doesn't men we can make things go the way we want, as it's a collective and not totally controllable creation. That's what I think.
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I believe in both the power of fate and the power of choice.
Considering that your very personal Fate leads your life, I must be a real cursed boy ! No, seriously, I think things do not happened only because we acted to make them happened. Sometimes you met someone because you had to and that's what 's magic about living here.
If it do exist, fate is for small events. You decide about big stuffs and fate about the rest. This way, fate is not irreversible- not at all at least-.
I think the world is determined. There are no real choices. We have developed the idea of choice and freewill in order to maintain sanity in a pre-determined world. Our brains follow certain patterns and microseconds later our consciousness creates the idea that we have made a choice, when in fact we have been fooled into this belief: our brains have merely responded in an unconscious way to physical stimuli and then generated the conscious experience of freewill.
Fate is an excuse given by people who finally have to accept things as they are and not how they wish them to be...