What is truth for…

I was recently watching a documentary on Discovery Channel about a man who found an infant cheetah alone in the veldt. It was obvious that Cat, our cheetah, could not survive under such circumstances. John, our man, took cat home and attempted to raise her until she could fend for herself in the wild.

After a short period John recognized that he must release Cat into the wild when she had grown sufficiently to fend for her self. Of course, it stuck him that the cat must receive some training before she would be able to kill prey and thus have food and survive.

John set about to train Cat how to stalk and kill prey. He was able to combine the innate ability of Cat with various training techniques to train the Cat to stalk, capture, and kill a running animal, at least in a rudimentary way.

However, training Cat to recognize friend from foe and prey from dangerous animal in the animal kingdom was another matter. It was obvious that John had little ability to ‘educate’ Cat in the subtleties of survival. This was the task that Cat’s mother would have done.

It makes sense to me to conclude that John could not readily teach Cat the truths of her world. Without her mother’s guidance Cat had little chance to survive in her wild world even though she had grown the strength and size necessary to do so. In Cat’s wild world truth is what is necessary for survival.

I would conclude that truth for any animal, including the human animal, is a matter of survivability. Evolution is a process for determining any creature’s ability to comprehend truth, i.e. survive in their particular world.

What is truth for humans? Cognitive science informs me that “truth depends on meaningfulness� and “truth is relative to understanding�. What is meaningful for humans? I would say that, just like Cat, survival is the ultimate meaning for humans just as for Cheetahs.

Cat is not a social animal to the extent that humans are. We can examine social animals such as wolves and apes and we can see that what the group decides is meaningful, i.e. true, determines truth for the individual as well as the group. Truth for humans becomes more complex because humans have created an artificial world of meaning that makes it more difficult to ascertain what is true and what will lead to the extinction of the species.

Isn’t scientific theory an example of truth for humans?

Quotes from “Philosophy in the Flesh� by Lakoff and Johnson

I think theory is an attempt to understand the truth, but not the actual truth itself. If it was the truth, then there would be no incompatibility between the micro and macro levels of theories like relativity.

The truth seems to be an innate goal of life. If you are being lied to, you will almost always make it a goal to find out the truth. If your a scientist, then its your goal to understand the truth of a situation and make theories to apply to it. It is a carrot dangling in front of humanity pulling us fowards into new understanding.

Take a multi-celled organism for instance. It evolves sensory cells (e.g. light/pressure sensitive), but what is the reason behind the evolution? Finding out about its external environment is imperative for successful survival. So finding the Truth becomes the source and pursuit of evolution, in a laymans nutshell.

I would say that theory is as close to truth as we can get.

I think experience of who we really are supersedes theoretical ideas of who we are.

Beyond the fear the drives us to fight for our survival mans greatest ambition is to satisfy desire.
If the addictions that predispose us to feed the body and keep it warm are satisfied the next course of action invariably is to satisfy the desires of the heart and intellect.
Often the intellect is somewhat removed from the heart.

Being that it is possible to sustain the body without food and water then the next reasonable assumption would be that man has a greater basic purpose other than survival and that would be the creative impulse that is often narrowed into ideas of attachments to sensory addictions and beliefs of limitation around the body and its environment.

If you remove the limitations driven by illusion and fear humans capacity for creativity then is to expand ones experience of themselves by serving humanity in all capacities to evolve both intellectually and spiritually.

Obviously on a gross level of reasoning it would be relevant to say we are not predisposed to just focus on our survival. The actions and accomplishments of the American Dream are rallied around much more than just survival and are more idealized around the abilities of spiritual endeavors such as Health, Wealth, and the Pursuit of Happiness in both spiritual belief and creativity in thought as was exemplified in the US Constitution, and fought for by humans who believed in the predisposition of human nature as given to them by God, rather than what is dictated by human ideals of personal or scientific belief.