I know many of you here believe that one way or another, there is this thing called truth.  But what is it and how do we arrive at it?  To this end I dedicate this thread.  In order to recognize a given claim as truth or falsity, there must be some means, some criteria, by which we discriminate between the two categories.

Please answer all of the following questions as clearly and unambiguously as you are able.

1) Is there such a thing as truth?
2) Is there such a thing as falsity?
3) Are truth and falsity ultimately disjoint, that is, is falsity something that is not true, or is it something that is less true, or is it nothing at all?
4) By what means do you decide that any given claim is true, or alternatively, by what means do you decide that any given claim is more true than any other given claim?

As I see it, there is no point in discussion anything unless there can be some understanding about the nature of truth.  I'm tired of dealing with individuals that benefit from hiding behind equivocal definitions of truth in order to promote their systems of belief.

I will get this started.

1) Yes

2) Yes

3) Truth and falsity, with respect to logic, are fundamentally disjoint.  A conclusion that is absolutely true, cannot at the same be absolutely false; and conversly that which is absolutely false cannot at the same time be absolutely true.  The laws of non-contradiction, identity, and excluded middle apply universally.  Every conclusion is either true or false, or if it is not, then it is resolvable into discrete propositions which in turn are either true or false.

4) The set of all true conclusions can be resolved into a smaller set of axioms.  These axioms are held to be self-evident and 'true' by virtue of their nature.  They cannot be verified, infered, or deduced.  They must be presupposed.  Sometimes new discoveries will invalidate a presupposed axioms.  When this occurs it is necessary to re-derive, as it were, the collective body of knowledge so that our conclusions are consistent with our axioms.  This is called a paradigm shift.

Truth then, is not is the validity of our axioms; it is, rather, the validity of those conclusions which are derivative of the body of recognized axioms.  Any true statement can be evaluated according to a rationalistic criteria; however, since axioms cannot be 'proven' and must be accepted 'on faith' as it were, there are as many 'truths' as there are axiomatic permutations.  If I am not mistaken, this is called epistemic relativism.  The most that can be said about truth, if we are to accept this theory, is that it is what an individual or collection of individuals commend to their own approach to reality.  Truth is that system of belief which best obtains the values that I hold.  The scientist holds as an axiom that reality is objective, not because it can be 'proven' to be, but because he or she holds that this belief is better than any other possible belief.  The Christian believes in God, not because there actually is irrefutable evidence for God's existence, but because that person's life experiences have taught them to value spirituality.  The difference between any two systems of belief is this: the adherents of system A commend their beliefs as best with respect to system A's values, while the adherents of system B commend their beliefs as best with respect to system B's values.  This is the nature of truth as I see it, and the only means of reconciling truth and falsity is to come to some agreement about what is best.

No comments at all?

this is such a difficult topic to broach, though I'm glad you started this thread, and I will contribute something to this soon.   Perhaps Godel's Incompleteness Theorems are of relevance here if we're talking about 'axiomatizing' truth, since they point out the limitations of more or less any sort of axiomatic approach.  

For me, truth is a direct experience.   Maybe Spinoza's concept of 'intuition' may be of some use here, and maybe not.   Or how about this?  Truth is Self-knowledge.    This would seem to be in accord with Socrates 'know thy Self', though I don't think he had the Hindu notion of 'Self' (or Atman) in mind here, though the coincidence is rather striking.

For me, Truth is that which has happened in reality,  irrespective of whether Man has any concept [truth or falsity] of what happened.

All human conclusions of what has actually happened are suspect.

Interpretation of information input to our systems [ears, eyes, noses, touch, ESP etc] is suspect.
Memory is suspect.
Bias and prejudice affect our decisions and conclusions.
Our integration of experience with a new observation, affect our conclusions.
The above are all valid reasons to require proof of claims made by individuals.
Proofs are not of course always available.
I have felt for some time now that our Legal systems prove what can be proved rather than ascertaining the Truth.
And of course, I agree fully with the topic originator, in that I believe too many of us [I do it too] claim as Truths our Beliefs, around which our lives and very existence spins.

Truth lives in the heart. The heart being the center of life and the seat of the soul.
Manifest reality is just a mirror of the self, the self being the foundation of beliefs that create the construct from desire to experience the belief. Any construct can be built to support a myriad of manifest realities and experiences. Truth, the one truth exists in the many manifest truths.
Until one unites all truths in manifestation into the one truth then truths are basic to individual interpretation and individual experiences.
You may find consensus in a few but not in all until one common element is introduced.
That common element can be experienced and from the foundation of that all truths dissolve back into the one Truth.
Conscious truth is real it exists in all indivdual manifest truths which are but projections, or illusions built from limited interpretations that try to contain the infinite into individual form and experience.

off the cuff, I would equate 'truth' with reality.  But this seems to negate the meaning of 'falsity' as 'falsity' would be not-real and thus be irrelevant with respect to reality.  Since we consider both 'truth' and 'falsity' as meaningful, we are likely talking about a relationship between intelligence and reality.  A 'true' idea is meaningful insofar as through it we successfully interact with reality, while a 'false' idea is meaningful insofar as through it we unsuccessfully interact with reality.  

in this sense, intelligence is the 'subject' who feels 'meaning', while 'reality' is unavoidable constraint

  Ohhh boy... here we go, my penultimate answer.
 
   1,2,3,4) There are such things as truth and falsity. These are human concepts based on beliefs of how things are and will stay, that are seperate for every individual person and can never be truly relied upon. All things are subject to change, but are also subject to staying the same.
 
    Following me? Let me put it in simpler terms.

    What's the probability of pigs flying? Something astronomical, right? Well, the probability of all events in the past, no matter how miniscule, leading to the exact present, is impossible to calculate, as it is constantly growing and extremely unweildy. But it is happening. Therefore, all things, no mater what their probability or situation, are subject to happening. Thus, you may say that truth is reality. But the only reality you experience is experienced through your senses. You can only see in three dimensions, when there may be a largely finite or even infinite amount of them to experience. If truth is reality, than mankind will never know the truth, because he is unable to experience these things. Unable to see the true reality of anything makes truth impossible to perceive.

QUOTE

If truth is reality, than mankind will never know the truth, because he is unable to experience these things. Unable to see the true reality of anything makes truth impossible to perceive.

I take it this is just your personal experience that you wish to project on the rest of humanity.
Whos reality would be the basis for the truth that cannot ever be experienced? Yours? Humanity? What is humanity other than a projection and even as a projection it comes from somewhere and if Truth underlies humanity in its experience, what separates the truth from humanity other than ignorance?
What then is impossible to percieve other than possibility? What keeps possibility from being experienced other than limitation and what could possibly be the foundation for that other than choice?

QUOTE

But the only reality you experience is experienced through your senses.

so you experience no 'reality' when you close off your senses?    What about when you're asleep and lucidly dreaming?   What about your experience of 'self', which is independent of the senses?   Are you just a naive materialist or do you not acknowledge the reality of that of which you experience most directly, your own self?

when I was put 'under' in surgery (general anaesthesia) I was totally and unequivocally GONE.  I went under and then I woke up, in the 'subjective' blink of an eye.  And many 'objective' hours had passed.  Where was the 'astral' plane then?  where was anything at all? ???

Don't you dream Dan? I hear there are a few that say they don't.
Just because you don't remember anything during surgery doesn't mean nothing happened.
Often the waking state mind cannot grasp the infinite mind and any dreams or experiences are forgotten or missed.
I often had many dreams before my awakening and a few hallucinogenic trips to give me a taste of alternate realities, but the day came when I was looking and I was ripe for the experience of more and my mind was able to grasp and maintain the awareness of greater realities. You know the nuthouse variety.
There are many people who have had greater experiences and have shared them only to be diagnosed by the medical system as being mentally unstable. The paradigms of narrow vision complicate life with all its reasoning to keep the world in little boxes so that change is manageble and under control.
There is a lot out there that is unknown to many and its more common than not to ward of the unknown with ideas of demonic apparitions or nuthouse versions of interpretation than the idea of exploring them and integrating them into expanding consciousness.
You would need to know how they fit tho, otherwise it would be like giving a complex puzzle to a 2 year old. They would probably chew on the pieces of throw them about without any idea of what it was or what it was for, and later on have no memory of it.

 Dan, you's my brotha on this one.

 When you sleep, your mind is still working, because oxygen is still being supplied to your brain, to put it scientifically. When you pass out, not enough oxygen is getting to your brain, just as when you die, and there is no oxygen for your brain to use. therefore, there is no sensation, and your brain has nothing to sense or experience. Sorry to have to break it to you.

 So what's your body running on? The divine spark? Booga booga booga!

In other words, the form of our conscious experience is very likely dependent (or identical to) a special type of neural activity.    But who really knows the exact relation between consciousness and neural activity?   For all we know, there are types or modes of consciousness that are not necessarily dependent on neural activity, but perhaps depend on a more general form of activity.   For example, you can't prove panpsychism wrong, and in fact, there are quite a few scientists who are drawn to this idea since it easily reconciles the relation between 'mind' and 'mass-energy' (or 'action') by stipulating they're, more or less, one and the same.   At a very fundamental level, mind must co-exist with mass-energy, or else you must stipulate mechanisms by which consciousness and mind suddenly 'emerge' out of complex physical (or neural) interactions, which must be something akin to magic.  

Consciousness is not dependant on the senses but the senses are dependant on consciousness.
The brain is only an instrument for a much more subtle conscious energy.
It is popular belief that you are born and die and there is nothing before or after that exists that is connected to the consciousness of the person that lives but it is a rather primitive belief.

hi Joe,

I think there are ties between what you say concerning the dependence of the senses on consciousness, and the notion from Searle, a philosopher of mind, concerning a 'unified field theory' of consciousness, where it's postulated that consciousness is a field (call it 'basal consciousness') and that everything we experience, the form of our consciousness, is nothing more than modifications of the 'basal consciousness'.   'Basal consciousness' in this context may be interpreted as the 'self', whereby it follows that the senses produce our conscious percepts and concepts by way of an interaction with the 'self' or 'basal consciousness'.

It's an intriguing theory, I think, and one that can be made consonant with Hindu notions of the universality of Self and consciousness.

namaste.

understanding language or the perceptions of semantics often get in the way of different expressions.
What we have discussed of Ego is the mechanical object that the subjective consciousness creates when it becomes active. In its pure still state there is seemingly nothing, but there is awareness of awareness.
When active in desire creativity and manifestation the tools that give the ability to percieve and this is generalizing in loose terms have been given names such as ego, mind, senses etc. We often mistake the literal meanings of these things but at different levels they can be experienced.
I think were on a similar page and if there is any separation it is only the color of the experience that separates mine from yours, and possibly our understandings of the foundations of consciousness and manifest experience.