Thoughts on Truth - Philosophy

Here is an elevated place revealing a broad view of the entire landscape to take a cursive glance at the salient structures but without supporting details.

What I attempt to acquire throughout these investigations is knowledge of the truth.

It seems to me that the bedrock on which my thoughts about truth rest is the use of relations between thoughts called entailment. Entailment is the glue, the nails and screws, the force of gravity that holds all thoughts together. I have been thinking about it for a very long time, but I have failed in elucidating its essential and deeper structure. The closest I get to understanding it is to a nebulous mereological understanding. I do use it, and have an understanding of its use, without having a clear concept of what it is. However, I will continue to analyze it, as it is the most important action.

Another fundamental thought that I make use of is negation. I understand when I use negation, but it seems to me that it is an action that I can't describe any clearer than its very actuation and the sense that negation makes in my understanding itself.

The use of entailment led me to another centrally important use of a thought, to wit, the use of my thought of reality. When I have analyzed the thought I make use of when making assertions about reality, I discover that I am making use of a vague basic idea directed to static parts of an all-inclusive, transcendental yonder, other, or "out-there". The latter part of this has the possibility of being better defined, but as it appears to me right now, any further definition is conditional, contingent, or arbitrary, and so I have started with this more basic general understanding and it will be fleshed out more later.

It appears that there are different modes of being for me. The way my mind works, and the way I interact with parts of myself and the things around me, are very different in these various modes. To mention a few, there are: dreams, daydreams, memories, muscle memory routines I have expertise in, new skills I'm attempting, fits of rage, sexual stonedness, social interactions, and intellectualization. This is not supposed to be an exhaustive list, just some examples.

Intellectualization is the mode of being that philosophical Truth proper seems to be within. This mode of being uses: conscious awareness, concepts that understanding seek to grasp, analysis, and rational methodologies. So I will dwell in intellectualization, but will also conduct an intellectualized analysis of the other modes as well.

Phenomena are my only evidence from which to use entailment to arrive at any conclusions about reality. Often times, phenomena appear as a continuum without distinctions. But when I am in an illectualized mode of being, it suggests that there are always lots of differences between phenomena that I might not have previously noticed. Where my conscious mind recognizes a difference between phenomena, my mind can cleave separate identities. Phenomena are the only evidence I have for Being, and these different phenomena are the only evidence I have for there being a difference in being. It is because of this comparison between phenomena that I am aware of a great variety in modes of being, in methods for belief and methods for action in my dealing with the world and reality. When I first look at phenomena it appears a blurred continuum. When I look closer at phenomena, I notice the differences between things. However, when I look even closer at these differences, their boundary lines become blurred once again, and it is suggested that, though the phenomena are different, the point at which my conscious mind can clearly distinguish that they are finally different comes more from me or on how they affect me, than from the things themselves.

In order to find the Truth and accurately describe Reality, I will try and create an ethic of what should be asserted and what actions should be performed. This will take the form of a system of coherent thoughts that would take input and deliver a consistent output that is based on the input in a specific way revealing truth.

I attempt to arrive at knowledge of the truth using what is called a rational method. A rational method is characterized by a conscious awareness of phenomena and the details they are presented with, drawing distinctions based on phenomenal differences, having clear understanding of what things are and how they appear to relation before conscious awareness, having a natural conscious understanding of the connections between thoughts based on entailment and negation only.

In entailment, certain ideas lead to other particular ideas consistently if the moves are performed correctly. Without this consistency the function of the process to tell me what I should do is undermined, and the improper use of negation can lead to a breakdown of intellectualized understanding.

To take any intellectualized position on reality being any particular way, there should be a sufficient justification for doing so. This includes taking a position on whether evidence is present that entails sufficient justification, and so there is a sufficient justification for taking sufficient justification as what I should require.

I began seeking truth and investigating everything rationally, what it can know and what it cannot know. Eventually, this led me to rationally analyze rationality itself, as well as other methods, to clarify them and to define their boundaries. Once I reach the limit of what this rational method can tell me, I rationally analyze other methods and then make use of them while explicitly acknowledging the limits of their conclusions.

A strict following of my rational method leads me to conclude that there is a conscious realm to what has been traditionally called the self, and a different realm, whether it is part of the self or not, that affects the conscious realm. The being and properties of this other realm are unknown and I can never know how much of it can be known, but only that there are myriad nonconscious beliefs and perceptions that affect the conscious realm. In fact, it could itself be conscious, but its consciousness is not this consciousness with which I will deal.

Rationality functions only within what this consciousness can reflect on. Consciousness appears to be a spotlight that can shine on some of these beliefs and perceptions that weren't in consciousness just previously. Eventually conscious rationality appears to be only a sort of "fact checking" correcting or verifying beliefs and perceptions held in the nonconscious.

I already have myriad unconscious beliefs. They form my foundational worldview. The introduction of new present phenomena even in the background field, the introduction of changes in phenomena, of actions by phenomena, of speech acts by phenomena can unconsciously change beliefs. A concsciously present event of the aforementioned can be conscious in various degrees, for example, I hear a noise in the next room and don't focus on it much but I was conscious of it and now I believe my cat is in the next room, or I can completely focus on the belief. All degrees can still correct and rewrite some of my unconscious beliefs and world system, I don't know if all of my beliefs are revisable. Some of these beliefs are also logical inference rules which lead me to one thought from another thought. It seems there are subconscious inference rules as well. As I move about I am continually correcting and rewriting the worldview, by not everything in the world system is correct, and neither are all of my rewrites. So rationality with consciousness is another way of rewriting and is the onlyt way my conscious intentional mind can verify and correct. I constantly have consciousness rewriting parts of my worldview and use many different methods to do this as well, but rationality has laws that make its own analysis systematic and consistent, so I intentionally try and use that method in search of truth. Rationality is the conscious mental process that determines what a thing is and what thoughts have to follow from it. Logic is an attempt to capture this process in sentences, steps, articulate the rules explicity in a symbolic form. So I want to use rationality and form explicity conscious beliefs that I know are true so I can correctly rewrite my world system. But the real world changes faster than my world system ever could, and I don't even know if I have access to correct all beliefs in my unconscious worldview, sometimes I learn something consciously but I discover I still have a contrary subconscious belief, so sometimes I don't rewrite it. I occasionally witness myself in tension trying to rewrite an intractable belief that concsious rationality has proved wrong. So I want to correct as much of it as I can but because I'm limited in doing so and I don't even know how limited I am, I want to at least have a correct worldview as far as I have the access to it. (I must look deep into unconscious truth). If I believe something I hold it to be true, whether it is actually true or false. My beliefs are actually true or false. Beliefs can be justified or unjustified. Justified beliefs can be actually true or false. So I can't distinguish, in conscious analysis, between justified true beliefs or justified false beliefs. In other words, I can't tell if a belief is known or not, which means I can't tell if a belief is true or false. Although it is still possible to have knowledge with this definition (an unconscious knowledge, or a knowledge that you don't know that you know it), depending of course on what is meant by justified, you will just never be able to distinguish true beliefs from false ones consciously. What I'm after is a way to distinguish true beliefs from false ones. And I can dependings upon the scope of the assertion in the belief. Anything where we identify or equate a particular in one category with a particular in a another category will not necessarily follow, so it can't be rationally determined and is always subject to doubt. Truth is a relation between an assertion and part of reality, two different categories. In order for truth to be in consciousness, both categories of truth must be within consciousness, and one must necessarily lead to the other, identity or category logic appear to be the only way this happens, Other routes can't be ruled out. So knowledge is belief attended by the consciously focused on presence of the correspondence (as identity) of assertion with the part of reality it points at, awareness of a belief's truth. This awareness occurs only in the present, so beliefs in my worldview that aren't currently justified by awareness of their truth, aren't known. However, definitions and logical deductions still are known, regardless of time. I object to knowledge being justified, true belief because justified seems to already include a notion of knowledge itself in it, it seems that knowledge should begin as a state of completion already at the finish line, then investigate how one gets to the finish line. Justified can include a notion of the finish line but doesn't tell me what the finish line is like, it just describes the process of reaching the finish line. There is no judgment in knowledge, judgment is an attempt to get at truth.

In deductive logic one false premise undermines the ability to determine the truth value. So if our goal is to be rational or to have true beliefs then this rationally gets us no closer to our goal than not doing it. The conclusions have no justified claim to be true. This is parallel if premises are left out, and we can never know for most situations that some relevant premises have not been left out, only in simple premises is this assured. Simple phenomena can't be wrong, simple definitions about simple phenomena can't be wrong, this is the only way to have secure deduction because it is the only form where rationality can't conceive of additional possibilities altering the conclusion. Any deductive argument that involves even one complex phenomena, or even one complex definition, the conclusion isn't necessarily true. A logical argument is only truth preserving in an non real world exclusionary context, we can't match it with reality because we can't guarantee its limited scope, that means a sound argument necessarily gives us a conclusion with a truth value, but its truth value could be an opposite truth value in actuality. (This could be a basis for proving empirically that one or more premises are false or excluded later on).

Truth is a difficult subject. People use this same word to talk about completely different things, so we can dismiss a lot of others' talk about truth because it doesn't deal with what I am dealing with here. I am interested in determining which representations of reality, in thought and experience, correspond accurately with reality itself. This is the Truth that I am writing about, all others might be interesting or useful, but they are not about thoughts corresponding to reality. I will provide an argument for this concept in the exposition. A further complication of Truth is that it ends up being a part of a coherent system.

My view is that the most exact and objective taxonomical categorization is always two groups: the positive, and the negation of the positive. For example, everything that is can be categorized into cats or not-cats. For simplification's sake, I will ignore this and focus on the categories I think are important, though I realize others can be drawn. I break philosophy into three main categories of purpose: to determine what we should believe, to determine what we should do, and for the sake of enjoyment. What we should believe involves epistemology, theories on method, ontology, metaphysics, etc. What we should do is pragmatics, ethics, and the good life. Enjoyment is philosophy done for the sake of intellectual pleasure, aesthetics, creation, originality, etc. Although an endeavor may involve more than one category, the primary intention of my endeavors on this site falls under the first category, establishing what we should believe. I see it as a logical consequence that determining what we should believe also determines what we should believe we should do. However, a specific small section of this site does also focus on the enjoyment that comes from creating a theory for its own creative, aesthetic pleasures.

It is my belief that throughout philosophy's history, philosophy, generally speaking, has sought a Platonic ideal, an absolute truth proven by an absolute rationality. But as with all Platonic Forms, all we ever encounter are particulars, including the particular of the current perspective, insight, idea, and even the logical argument. It is my position that the universe evolves; species evolve; language evolves; individuals evolve; physical objects, fields, and space are constantly changing; I evolve; my personal meanings evolve; my thoughts evolve; my memories evolve; and my consciousness, understanding, perspective, and beliefs evolve. I am many different people, and perspectives, and desires, and thoughts, and beliefs, through time and even at the same time. What makes sense and what is understood is relative, contingent, and evolves. What is reasonable is relative, contingent, and evolves. The logical conclusion is a particular, so viewed from a higher perspective is relative, contingent, and evolves. I think unbiased, accurate reflection and observation militates for these views. This is not to say that there are no absolutes or no constants, but only that currently we appear to be epistemologically divorced from them.

Logic deals with how one thought is connected to another thought, so in a sense, logic deals with how we think. My concept of reality is not logically identical to how I think about things, even how I necessarily think about things. Logic is not necessarily metaphysics. It could be, but it also could not be. It is unknown, but what is known is that logic at this particular time is limited in its power to give me information about reality. In other words, the particular logical argument of the present shows that reality does not necessarily have to conform to logical argument.

Logical bivalent truths seem all that are stable for me in this constantly flowing world, but even which of these is affirmed and which is denied, and what the logically necessary conclusion is can change with the introduction or adjustment of new premises (i.e. experiences). All that is for me is the current particular logical argument. This is humbling, but is itself tentative.

So I have a theory to describe what I believe is happening. What I propose is that there are myriad collections of variously related thoughts called "thought contexts". Thought contexts are made up of a variety of feelings, moods, thoughts, and experiences. Our minds are constantly switching between different thought contexts, usually without our conscious awareness, which is the source of an untold number of disagreements. Our thoughts are interpreted and understood through the particular thought context we are using at the time. However, certain thought contexts cannot be combined with other thought contexts without becoming incoherent.

One of the foundational ideas of my system, which I was influenced toward by Bertrand Russell's position about not having a thought of a contradiction (which I believe I have also found in Plato), is that there are certain propositions that people maintain which are actually incoherent given the thought context they occur within, but there are some thoughts that are consistent and coherent with other thoughts. I think that people confuse themselves with ideas that are contradictory, but people don't realize they are confused about the deeper implications of what they maintain. To give a simple example, a person might believe that all men are mortal, and also believe that Socrates is a man, but then they also maintain that Socrates is immortal. The person can successfully jump back and forth between believing different propositions, but their system of thoughts as a whole is ultimately incoherent. The foundational idea of my system is that some thoughts are incoherent and don't actually exist together in a system of thoughts, and other ideas are, in fact, coherent within a system of other thoughts. What I maintain is that ideas that contradict each other cannot be maintained at the same time in the same way by the same person, and such contradictory systems of thought are never actually thought (they don't exist in the mind) but are results from the person jumping between various systems of thoughts without being aware of it; that people are simply unaware of the complexities of how their brain thinks about things, and that from a higher vantage point what they proclaim is nonsense.

This would mean that some ideas can be believed together and some ideas can't be believed together. With this awareness of our mental limitations I attempt to show that there are systems of ideas that we can dismiss because they cannot be coherently thought and other systems that we are forced to choose from. This makes no claim on the metaphysical realm, this only claims that there are certain propositions that are not legitimate proposals for us to consider about the metaphysical realm or anything else for that matter.

In my view, reality and the truth we speak of it are reduced to psychology. For me the Platonic dream of transcendence to reality is unobtainable, as least at the present time in the context of the present premises that I'm aware of, and therefore of the current particular logical argument. However,although it is reduced to psychology, it is my argument that there are current intractable, unavoidable, in short, current necessary facts of our psychology, these views being among them.

Everything I experience appears to be particulars, but this allows me to still construct perfectly logical arguments from my experience. Since some phenomena are given to us, it is not legitimate to maintain that these phenomena are not given to us, indeed it is inconceivable to me. And these phenomena are then used as the elements making up the complex world that we experience. Any belief that is completely reducible to presented phenomena is rational. Any belief that is not completely reducible to presented phenomena is arbitrary and lacks rational justification. The main focus of my system is epistemological and methodological, concluding that there are certain thoughts that have to be believed as true, the present subjective phenomena, whatever the rest of reality may be, and to deny these particular thoughts as true appears to be merely confusion and nonsense.

Nonetheless, for all of these limitations of absolute statements, the concepts of reality, truth, and knowledge are known, and offer a foundational thought context to currently determine what the limits of knowledge are given my current circumstances, and determine some knowledge within these boundaries. These true concepts cohere together to form an unassailable foundation (like the earth itself) from which to build off of to a determined height. But it does not suffer from the disconnected relativism of a coherent theory of truth because these concepts are also determined to be grounded in present phenomenal experience itself. Therefore it is not arbitrary like other coherent systems. But the rational method also doesn't take us very far to give us all the knowledge that we would hope for and so at that point one must get by in the world with nonrational methods.

Most of our life must depends on animal faith (a phrase I have borrowed from George Santayana), an innate subconscious reasoning, but we still use rationality to oversee it and correct where it can, through inevitably faulty but practically valuable methods of reason and science.

The search for truth requires a number of rational norms to get us to what we seek. But given that, at this point, an absolute ethic or morality or meaning to life cannot be known. From this point we don't deal with truth but with pragmatism, and a pragmatism that helps us meet our goals and values but keeping itself in check since it realizes that each individuals personal values are no more absolutely valuable than any other persons or creatures for that matter. This encourages us in a more modest, openminded, nonjudgmental, tolerant disposition, one where recognition of value pluralism, liberty, personal pragmatism, and equality are consistent with what we know about knowledge. To promote this pluralistic balance, liberty, and equality, since no one set of values or rights should be ventured to be taken absolutely true, we should promote in ourselves virtues that tend to preclude violations of this balance. And positive psychology, science, reason, and wisdom should pragmatically be incorporated to promote a value pluralism to facilitate human happiness, personal freedom, and security that would more likely ensure individuals staying within reasonable limits and maintaining equilibrium with each other and the living creatures around them.

I started off with a hope of acheiving objectivity. But why? What validity does this notion hold? Why is it to be sought like a God? It appears to me to be a confused illusory notion, based on logical errors, and without any absolute value in it, and the personal value in it appears arbitrarily placed. As humans we almost naturally seek something greater than ourselves, seeking the absolute. But morality, value, meaning, wonder, love, and truth itself are all essentially and importantly subjective positions in a very crucial sense, on an objective thing that as far as I can tell is void and empty of any of these things, and though we may want them to be these ways objectively, what sense does this make? How would they be different from the subjective form that is real? What could they offer that is different, greater, better, or more? We may be dismayed that there isn't more, but why this is so is what truly should be analyzed, because as far as I can tell, what we are is enough!

I begin by including a possible background history, arrived at by reflection, that may or may not have been a causal factor in leading me to the acceptance of particular notions of reality, truth, and knowledge, and also maybe lead me to ask the driving question that informed and created my system. I don't see those reflections as having any bearing on the justification of the system. I describe the particular concept of reality that my entire system is based on, which determines all subsequent questions and logical deductions. This one specific concept of reality determines what I mean by truth, knowledge, and proof.

I define truth, reality, belief, knowledge and they form a foundational thought context from which to understand everything else. All we have for starting premises, for building blocks to construct our world-views from, is phenomena presented to our own subjective consciousness. Phenomena are the only evidence we have from which to draw conclusions. This positive approach reflects on what is presented to consciousness, noting phenomena as they are. As phenomena are the only things presented, all conclusions are deduced from presented phenomena. Distinctions and similarities are recognized in the nature of presented phenomena creating innumerable natural categories and concepts. One category is of sensory phenomena, another category is of abstract-interpretive phenomena associated to the sensory phenomena. This first category is objective; the second category is subjective and contextually understood. Concepts of Truth, belief, knowledge, are found within the presented sensory phenomena of sight, touch, time, and space; and since my intention is to find the Truth, the concept of Truth is employed with the presented phenomena to consciously realize what is true.

What is found is that phenomena like relations, similarity, difference, intentionality, emotions, universals, ideas, and more, all are just as present as phenomena like a trope of red in the firetruck I presently see, etc. These present and past phenomena are the evidence used in more complex processes of interpretation which give rise to religious, scientific, and common sense theories of the world, which can be seen to possess the phenomenon of faith and the use of contingent, groundless concepts, instead of being reducible to pure sensory phenomena.

My system is based entirely on a particular concept of reality. The details of my system were determined by being what is appears to me to be the only thoroughly rational, coherent possibility if the concept of reality is given central importance, i.e. the arche for the system.