Difference between revisions of "Truth"

Revision as of 15:25, 4 December 2023

Full Title or Meme

Context

• Truth has been the subject of Epistemology and philosophers for thousands of years.
• The original Western Philosophical traditions starting with Thales looked for Truth from the natural philosophy of reality.
• By the time of Plato, the search for truth had turned into the anthropomorphic search for human Knowledge. A very different subject.
• Christopher Hitchens' maxim: "What is asserted without a proof, can be dismissed without a proof."

Problem

• Tim Rice captured the heart of the problem in Jesus Christ Superstar:

 [JESUS]
 I look for truth, and find that I get damned
 [PILATE]
 But what is truth? Is truth unchanging law?
 We both have truths - are mine the same as yours?

• The challenges of human efforts at discovering truth are summarized on the page General_Theory_of_Living_Systems#Problems.
• Human Knowledge or understanding is a poor measure of truth values.
• There was a time when we would believe that photographs or videos were factual, but "now that everything can be faked, how will we know what's real?"^[1] It seems that we are moving to a point of zero trust where people just believe what they have been conditioned to accept.

Solution

1. Go back to the original Greek philosophers and seek Information that is in concert with reality irrespective of any human endeavor.
2. Focus on Information and not on human knowledge.
3. For Identity Proofing the best source of Truth is reporting Information on an Audit of the processes that were used to build Assurance.

According to Xenophanes^[2]

But as for certain truth, no man has known it,
Nor will he know it; neither of the gods
Nor yet of all the things of which I speak.
And even if by chance he were to utter
The perfect truth, he would himself not know it;
For all is but a woven web of guesses

Despite that gloomy outlook Philosophers have been seeing a Foundation on which to build a edifice of human knowledege.^[3]

References

1. ↑ Joshua Rothman, Afterimage (2018-11-12) New Yorker p. 34ff
2. ↑ Xenophanes, translation by Karl Popper, The World of Parmenides, B34. ISBN 978-0415518796
3. ↑ Keith Parsons, It started with Copernicus p309 ISBN 9781616149291