truth, addendum

[mamajoan]

One other thing I've been wanting to say about truth, apropos of my post last week in response to jrosehale....

The other thing about truth is that it's subjective, not universal. One person's truth is another person's speculation, wishful thinking, opinion, or just plain outright lie. In almost any situation there are as many different truths as there are involved parties -- possibly more. This is the difference between truth and fact -- facts are objectively provable, such as "2+2=4" or "Earth is larger than the moon" (although I'm also not ruling out the possibility that some things we consider fact are actually not; remember, at one point in history it was "fact" that the Earth is flat).

So what's the difference between truth and opinion? Tough one. A lot of people call things truths that are clearly just opinions -- political beliefs, for example. "George W. Bush is a moron" is an opinion, much though I personally believe it's also fact. ;) Some things are too strongly felt/believed/experienced to be "just" opinions; some people's religious beliefs, for example, qualify as truth in my judgment. But *personal* truth, again; that Jesus Christ is the saviour of humanity may be one person's (okay, millions of people's) truth, but that Allah/Buddha/Elvis is the supreme high power in the universe may be another person's (or millions') truth. The point being that two completely contradictory, mutually-exclusive things can both be truth. (In fact they can both be truth *to the same person* -- this is, IMO, one of the things that make us uniquely human, the ability to fully believe contradictory things.)

But I digress. I'm having trouble putting my finger on the difference between opinion and personal truth, except to say that I know it when I see it -- and that the majority of things we call personal truths are actually opinions. (My statements of which things are truth and which are opinion, are opinions, of course!)

And obviously this leads me to the salient point: Many of the problems that we get into, both interpersonally and within ourselves, stem from considering something truth which is actually opinion. I think this is unavoidable in many cases. The human psyche is a wondrous thing, and sometimes denial is a necessary way for it to protect itself against pain of various sorts.

All of this sounded a lot more coherent in my head, so I guess I need to think about it a bit more before I can continue to post about it.

Comments

Re: Totally disagree.

[munoz.livejournal.com]

Seems to me it might be best to add a third category:

1) truth
2) opinion
3) belief

The religious (mainly Western) discussion of "truth" and "Truth" and "objective reality" tends to wedge #3 in there so as to assist in making these distinctions...because to say that belief can be truth sort of expands the definition of truth to be almost unhelpful. But then, there is no a priori philosophical language with which to discuss these things, anyway.

[mamajoan.livejournal.com]

Hmm, okay, maybe belief should be in there separately too. I'll have to think about it. I'm not really concerned about the accepted philosophical language, myself; just trying to muddle through it on my own.

So why is this called "totally disagree", eh?

[munoz.livejournal.com]

Because my browser decided to have a laugh and auto-filled the Subject: field. :D


What I mean by "philosophical language" is that it's impossible to come up with perfect definitions to things like "truth" and "belief" and "opinion" because these very definitions themselves depend on the definitions to "truth" and "belief" and "opinion" - they are horrendously recursive.

[mamajoan.livejournal.com]

Okay, I can see that. But I still think it's possible, and valuable, to discuss these issues, if all parties agree to tolerate a certain degree of recursiveness and begging-the-question. Probably also helpful if all parties agree that they're not necessarily going to definitively solve/prove/answer anything, no matter how much they discuss. ;)