User:Evarenon/sandbox/Approaches to Knowledge/Seminar Group 3/Truth

Verifiability (Camilla and Camille):
The attribute of verifiability of truth is one that is deemed necessary. But something true doesn't have to have been verified but has to be verifiable (hypothetically). To verify if something is true, there is a need for observation and theory. We cannot assume any proposition is verified only with experience, or only with knowledge. Truth can also only be verified in a certain frame of pre-existing knowledge. Falsification can be considered as a subsection to verifiability. Verifying claims, particularly non-quantitative ones, does not always result in a clear understanding of their "truths". To aid in this, a lot more focus is placed upon the process of verification. This line of approach is often taken by behaviourists and in operational analyses of meanings.

Universalism (Laura, Emilie and Lily):
The attribute of universalism in the realm on truth is much contested by these readings with readings 1 and 2 questioning the concept of universalism in much more concrete areas such as moral values and philosophy, if there is no such thing as universality in our moral values and our philosophies then how can there possibly be universality in truth. This follows onto Nietzsche's thoughts about the entire subject of truth, are the things we uphold as truths really 'truth' or are we simply using metaphors and illusions? Is a universal truth something that it is tethered to us as the human race or does it extend beyond our species to a 'truth' upheld by the entire universe?

Majority Agrees (Truth by Consensus) (LI and Guan):
Truth by consensus can be deemed as a non-essential attribute when we are defining the concept of “truth”. Consensual truth can challenge the ideal of “definite truth”, which can be deemed as the more common “truth” we come across, such as in Science. However, truth by consensus has been on the rise given the availability of access to “information”, which results in the phenomena of “fake news”. In all three articles, the authors argue that consensual truth is not an essential attribute, as it may not be completely objective and may be coloured by one’s identity. Despite this, consensual truth is not easy to correct, as pointed out in one of the readings, due to the different levels of one’s cognitive ability and the overload of information and difficulty in discerning the “truth” from false.

Social Constructs of Truth (Amber, Jordan and Eesha):
Truth may not be an objective entity, but rather a notion that evolves through the changing perception of society. As society develops over time, its notion of truth and our perception of validity, suggesting that true objectivity cannot be achieved as truth is socially constructed and is always dependent on the perspective of society at any given time.

Truth is infinite and always evolving (Tancrede and Hadrien):
There is a debate whether or not objective truth is reachable for humans. If you think not because we can only interpret our reality from our own subjective, human and personal perspective, and that a truth is suppose to be true despite any subjective factor, than truth is something infinite as nether really reached. Moreover, it makes truth always evolving from one person to another.

Without going this far, we can still stay truth is infinite because even very intuitive and evident truths can be rationally contested. For instance, Irish philosopher Berkeley contested the existence of material reality, making perception and mind the only valuable reality.

Furthermore, truth is infinite and always evolving because it is often a matter of interpretation and evalution. In History for instance, historical sources might often contradict or be incomplete, and others source might have been destroyed, making it very difficult for historians to sort out the historical truth. According to a paper by the website History Today, even the same source can lead to different conclusions depending on the interpretation.

Finally, infinite and always evolving are attributes of truth as we shouldn't consider truth as something fixed. A possible definition of truth is adequacy to reality. However, with the expansion of accessible knowledge thanks notably to technological progress and taking in account personal perspectives, what seems to be the most adequate to reality always evolves. In science for instance, a theory is considered as true as long as it is the one that explains the best what we can observe and experience. In this way, Einstein's theory "chased" Newton's, and will certainly be chased one day by another one.

Coherence (Maeve and Ryan)
Based on the argument presented by Russell, ‘coherence’ is an attribute of truth that is not essential. The coherence theory fails to account for the existence of more than one set of coherent beliefs and if there is only one universal truth, neither sets can be true. The consequences of looking at coherent beliefs as ‘truth’ is that one would fail to recognize the beliefs of others if they do not cohere. However, this view on truth could suggest that there is not one universal truth, but that truth is subjective.

Another way of viewing coherence in truth within my chosen article would be to consider it truth in terms of interconnected belief, wherein a belief may be true if it is consistent or, coherent, with other ideas we have. In the realm of this article, the nature of coherent truth would be revealed by the use of complex metaphors consisting of varying other overlaying conceptual truths. A conceptual metaphor does not rely upon the existence of a consistency with other similar ideas so Brown in a way refutes the conceptual idea of truth as coherent. It could be argued that an issue lies within this argument in that Brown talks more of the manner in which truth is consumed rather than the nature of the truth being consumed. Although conceptual metaphors provide an excellent mechanism for facilitating a comprehensible perception of truth, a concept refers only to an individual truth or a small cluster, whereas it could be said that the collective truth we are discussing requires an endlessly collective consortium of metaphorical concepts, something that is not possible.