The universe is presently defined as everything that exists [dictionary definition].
Humans think [a personal observation which most humans reach].
Their thoughts exist within their heads.
Their thoughts really exist inside their heads, so their thoughts are real, though they may not represent the truth or reality of the internal or external world. [It is possible to really think about an impossibility].
Thoughts can be written down or spoken using the words of a language.
Such words are only meaningful for communication purposes if the words have the same meaning for anybody who may read them.

Humans exist within the universe.
If all humans were to be wiped out by a virus next year, everything except humans will still exist. [except maybe that virus if it finds no suitable host].
Humans try to perceive the universe, to comprehend it and to control it [for survival and to recognise and take advantage of opportunites].
Humans create within their minds models of what they think the universe is, and the behaviour and interactions of objects within it.

Truth [or fact] is presently defined as information which is verifiable [dictionary definition].
Some humans seek the truth.
They only know they have a truth when they can verify the truth they have found.
Until then they only have beliefs of the truth.
Since I am human and what I have written here is my thoughts, these thoughts are my beliefs. They may happen also to be truths, but they may not. I cannot verify them.
In the absence of having an ability to prove my beliefs, the next best indication of their being the truth is a consensus of opinion. It is not possible to obtain a consensus of sufficient people to have reasonable weight for acceptance of my beliefs as truths.

So, I cannot know that I know the truth!

Well said

There are different types of truth: 1) scientific truth, which adopts a third-person perspective and which can be verified by others, and 2) experiental truth, which adopts a first-person perspective and which cannot be verified by others unless they have the same experience or state of consciousness. Experiental truth is not so much something to talk about as it is something to experience. On the other, the converse is true regarding scientific truth. Thus, scientific and experiental truths appear complementary to each other. In both cases, truth is known and experienced. Thus, I would deny your contention that you cannot know that you know the truth.

The fact [for the individual] that something has been experienceded does not mean that that experience was a representation of a real truth [rather than a thought which truly occurred]. Experiential truth, therefore, does not exist as defined by unknown.

The declared need to include definitions of every word used to make a definition precludes the ability to define anything. Unknown is, therefore, effectively implying that there is no point in saying anything, since there can be no definition of what has been said!

I guess one can know many things but not often is there a black and white truth. Here is one evidence of the gray that reality confronts us with.


KOREA:
“With Josef Stalin still leading the Soviet Union and Harry Truman still president of the United States, nothing short of a miracle had occurred in international relations. Despite the Cold War, the U.N. security machinery had functioned as intended. Numerous member states had united to resist armed aggression in the organization’s first ‘peace enforcement,’ or collective security action.
Korea, however, was the exception, which would nevertheless help write the rule for the more than forty years to come. The circumstances were unusual. Seven months before the invasion, the Soviet delegate, Ambassador Yakov Malik, walked out of the Security Council to protest the U. N.’s refusal to seat the delegate representing the recently victorious communist Chinese in place of the ambassador of the nationalistic Chinese government, now forced into exile on the island of Formosa. Malik, a longtime Soviet diplomat, would eventually return to cast the Security Council’s forty-sixth veto on behalf of the USSR in early September—too late to stop the peace enforcement operation in Korea.� (1)
The UN forces were reporting to a Russian general who reported up the echelon or hierarchy within his own country as well. I suppose you might think this is OK if it weren’t for the fact that Russia was supporting North Korea. I think someone likes to play both ends against the middle and yet I am told I must be some kind of ‘conspiracy theorist’ by those who cannot answer the questions I have with any factual explanations.
The Armaments Manufacturers – Eisenhower’s Speech:
EXCERPTS from President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s exit speech, also known as the Military-Industrial Complex Speech, 1961 (Public Papers of the Presidents, Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1960, p. 1035- 1040).

“My fellow Americans:
Three days from now, after half a century in the service of our country, I shall lay down the responsibilities of office as, in traditional and solemn ceremony, the authority of the Presidency is vested in my successor.
This evening I come to you with a message of leave-taking and farewell, and to share a few final thoughts with you, my countrymen…
A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction…
Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.
Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well…
But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.
This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.
In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.
Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.
The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific technological elite.
It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system -- ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.
Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element of time. As we peer into society's future, we -- you and I, and our government -- must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.
Down the long lane of the history yet to be written America knows that this world of ours, ever growing smaller, must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect.
Such a confederation must be one of equals. The weakest must come to the conference table with the same confidence as do we, protected as we are by our moral, economic, and military strength. That table, though scarred by many past frustrations, cannot be abandoned for the certain agony of the battlefield.
Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative yet today it seems the arms race and military expansion are more alive than ever before. Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose. Because this need is so sharp and apparent I confess that I lay down my official responsibilities in this field with a definite sense of disappointment. As one who has witnessed the horror and the lingering sadness of war -- as one who knows that another war could utterly destroy this civilization which has been so slowly and painfully built over thousands of years -- I wish I could say tonight that a lasting peace is in sight…
…As a private citizen, I shall never cease to do what little I can to help the world advance along that road.�

We believe the Truth we perceive, but we only perceive the Truth we believe.

If you think yourself a fixed point human in time then you can never know the truth for your begin on a false permise.
We have thought of ourselves as fixed point human in curved space time for a long while now and so our realization is messed up.
Think about the wrong physics in this determination of ourselves.
We need to correct this and then truth will flow.

truth is not knowable, then what is it?

There was a passage in Simone Weil's book 'Gateway to God' that we read together and that she was able to see my favorite author’s meaning through. Krishnamurti and Teilhard de Chardin say it in fewer words but Simone does a great job on page 39 of her book:
"To anyone who does actually consent to directing his attention and love beyond the world, towards the reality that exists outside the reach of all human faculties, it is given to succeed in doing so. In that case sooner or later, there descends upon him a part of the good, which shines through him upon all that surrounds him.
The combination of these two facts - the longing in the depth of the heart for absolute good, and the power, though only latent, of directing attention and love to a reality beyond the world and of receiving good from it - constitutes a link which attaches every man without exception to that other reality.
Whoever recognizes that reality recognizes also that link. Because of it, he holds every human being without any exception as something sacred to which he is bound to show respect... Whoever in fact does not feel this respect is alien to that other reality also."

Dear Rick

I think my response to Lindsey is almost exactly what you said except that I can agree with those good people like Simone Weil and the person I was referring to in that excerpt from a book - that there is a design which has elements of consciousness.

Now - I will confess at the time I wrote or discussed that issue about Simone Weil with a Doctor of Psychology who I lived with in your part of the world (Who if you have lived there most of your life you would know about or actually know.) - that I was less inclined to give in to the design aspect to any great extent at all.

I have design and I have consciousness.

All I know, is that I know nothing.

Ah. i signed up, there that was my quote above " all i know, is that I know nothing"

try reading Sophies world... by Jostein Gaarder... you will learn a lot.

Did you read a translation or did Jostein write in English? Did you learn from it? Do you still know nothing? Did you know that Robert Persig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance also has a healthy dose of philosophical pedagogy? Why am I asking so many questions of one who knows nothing? Did you know that was also the statement of Socrates whenever he was asked?

Once you find out someone's a skeptic who denies we can know anything, it's safe to tune them out as not knowing anything worth listening to. Agree?

Rhymer here,

I am skeptical about some things but not about others.

Am I a skeptic, or does a skeptic have to "denies we can know anything"?

A skeptic, in the philosophical sense, is someone who believes that it is impossible to really know the truth about anything. True skeptics are very rare. One might almost classify them as insane.

Collapse the wave!

the philosophical definition of 'skeptic' is inconsistent, because one must hold as true that truth cannot be held

believing the truth is fine. finding the truth is the problem. and when you have found it, think again, as YOUR interpretation might not my own. this issue is a serious problem even for scientists, never mind the Godists. for, with our current analytical apparatus (brain, mind) we are limited by what it is fed (data, all limited or corrupted in some way) and how it interprets (demonstration of oner of the brain's limitations: analogy- try rubbing your stomach at the same time as patting your head. Then add to this - standing on one leg reciting poetry)