What is the nature of "truth"?

Metaphysics and Epistemology
1

After going to a meeting for an OPAR discussion group, it seemed that most of us were confused (or at least disagreeing) over Rand’s definition of the word “truth”. She says (given on page 165 of OPAR) that truth is “the recognition of reality”. Some of us at our meeting thought that truth is simply an attribute of a proposition, whether or not the speaker or listeners recognize it to be so or arbitrarily asserted it to be so.

To use Peikoff’s example, a parrot can arbitrarily declare that 2+2=4, but the parrot wasn’t right or wrong, since it didn’t know what it was talking about. However, I think it’s still correct to say that the assertion which the parrot spoke was true, even though it was arbitrary for the parrot to have said it. Truths are still true regardless of why they were asserted (although the parrot’s “knowledge” is not valid since it’s not based in reality and is merely arbitrary, so it’s no indicator of the parrot’s ability to use logic or anything).

This may be a matter of what the more common use is, but since many people speak of things like “absolute truth” as independent of human knowledge/cognition, and since most dictionaries include, as a definition of “true” or “truth” the idea of simply being in concordance with reality, I think it’s possible to classify the parrot’s random mumblings as true or false, and not some uncategorizable middle ground (and this uncategorizable middle ground seems to be what Peikoff is asserting the parrot’s statement was).

2

After going to a meeting for an OPAR discussion group, it seemed that most of us were confused (or at least disagreeing) over Rand’s definition of the word “truth”.  She says (given on page 165 of OPAR) that truth is “the recognition of reality”.  Some of us at our meeting thought that truth is simply an attribute of a proposition, whether or not the speaker or listeners recognize it to be so or arbitrarily asserted it to be so.

To use Peikoff’s example, a parrot can arbitrarily declare that 2+2=4, but the parrot wasn’t right or wrong, since it didn’t know what it was talking about.  However, I think it’s still correct to say that the assertion which the parrot spoke was true, even though it was arbitrary for the parrot to have said it.  Truths are still true regardless of why they were asserted (although the parrot’s “knowledge” is not valid since it’s not based in reality and is merely arbitrary, so it’s no indicator of the parrot’s ability to use logic or anything).

You are more or less describing a neo-Platonic version of truth which makes a distinction between truth as a property of propositions which are “out there”, and “knowledge of the truth” (as well as the relationwhip between the proposition and reality). But this intermediary thing, the “external proposition”, doesn’t exist. Propositions are conceptual, hence mental. You can’t have a proposition (which is mental) and recognise (which is mental) the relation between the proposition and reality, and not recognise that relation.

About the parrot: parrots don’t make assertions. Only humans can make assertions. Parrots can be trained to make noises which have an acoustic relationship to things that would be assertions if spoken by a person (speaking English, for example). An assertion requires understanding, not just pronunciation. Because a parrot cannot understand, it cannot assert, so it has neither truth nor falsehood. Pronunciation is not the same as “speaking the truth”.

This may be a matter of what the more common use is, but since many people speak of things like “absolute truth” as independent of human knowledge/cognition, and since most dictionaries include, as a definition of “true” or “truth” the idea of simply being in concordance with reality, I think it’s possible to classify the parrot’s random mumblings as true or false, and not some uncategorizable middle ground (and this uncategorizable middle ground seems to be what Peikoff is asserting the parrot’s statement was).

First off, there is absolutely no disharmony between Rand’s theory of truth and the correspondence theory of truth (the concordance with reality that you mentioned) – Objectivist truth is correspondence between a consciousness and reality (i.e. a recognition of the facts). Second, yes there is this misunderstanding of truth and such conceptual monstrosities like “absolute truth” vs. “non-absoute truth”, and a lot of people do somehow think that truth is some mysterious “out there” thing. But you don’t have to believe that, and you don’t have to talk that way, and you don’t have to let people get away with saying things like that. Truth is what you have when you recognise the nature of reality.

3

This sort of question “What is truth?” has been discussed for something like 2500 years, and on HPO at least they seem to be no furthur ahead than 2500 years ago. At the current rate of progress (on HPO at least) they probably will discuss it for another 2500 years without a resolution. Notice that the question is not what is the truth about this or the truth about that, but the extremely abstract question what is truth.

I asked on HPO, if the question got resolved (hypothetically speaking), what would be the next step? I would think that if the question has a practical purpose for the living of life, then the next step would be to find the truth about this or the truth about that, to the end that we may live better. The answer I got was “wait for it to get unresolved”. And in a roughly similar context, someone said “welcome to philosophy”.

This sort of response (“wait for it to get unresolved”) tends to turn me off philosophy. For me, philosophy is not for itself but is for the purpose of living. I might have some interest in the question (“what is truth”) if it can be shown to to me to be of practical value to me in the living of my life.

Aristotle said somewhere (quoting from memory):

“To say of what is that it is or to say of what is not that it is not is truth.”

Can we accept this and get on with it?

The foregoing is not intended as as an attack or insult to the person who started this topic. It is only a statement about the difference between philosophy as it often is and philosophy as it can be and should be. I hope we do the latter here.

4

Propositions are conceptual, hence mental. You can’t have a proposition (which is mental) and recognise (which is mental) the relation between the proposition and reality, and not recognise that relation.

Okay, this makes sense so far.

About the parrot: parrots don’t make assertions.  An assertion requires understanding, not just pronunciation.

I know that. Perhaps my wording was wrong. I guess I should have said “utterance” or something.

And it sounds like you’re saying that the parrot didn’t make the proposition that 2+2=4. Does that mean that we shouldn’t even try to evaluate it, since no one actually proposed anything? I don’t think it’s bad to say that the parrot’s vocalization is true or false just because the parrot spoke in arbitrariness.

Because a parrot cannot understand, it cannot assert, so it has neither truth nor falsehood. Pronunciation is not the same as “speaking the truth”.

Hmm. I know that the parrot itself was not speaking truth, but the thing that it said was still true as a statement. Peikoff’s other example was the wind haphazardly blowing the sand in the desert to spell out the sentence “A is A”. Obviously the wind and sand were not “speaking the truth”, but A is A. 2+2 DOES equal 4.

First off, there is absolutely no disharmony between Rand’s theory of truth and the correspondence theory of truth (the concordance with reality that you mentioned) – Objectivist truth is correspondence between a consciousness and reality (i.e. a recognition of the facts).

I was saying that not only is truth in concordance with facts, but truth IS facts. This not only implies that truthful knowledge is in concordance with facts, but that an accidental statement (like sand blown into a sentence of english words) can still be true even if it’s not formed by a mind or thing that knows its truth.

Second, yes there is this misunderstanding of truth and such conceptual monstrosities like “absolute truth” vs. “non-absoute truth”, and a lot of people do somehow think that truth is some mysterious “out there” thing.

I think the reason why they think “monstrosities” like “the truth is out there” is because they acknowledge that existence exists independent of whether or not someone is perceiving it. “Truth” and “fact” are generally used interchangeably in our language. The parrot hasn’t used any knowledge to randomly pronounce a true statement, but two plus two does equal four regardless of how the parrot managed to pronounce those words. The primacy of existence over consciousness is why I have trouble with this “it’s only true if you acknowledge it to be so” definition.

But you don’t have to believe that, and you don’t have to talk that way, and you don’t have to let people get away with saying things like that. Truth is what you have when you recognise the nature of reality.

I know that I’m allowed to use whatever definitions I please. In fact, I could make up new words altogether to describe the concepts I use, but my point is that most people use a different definition for “truth” than Peikoff and Rand seem to be using. And I generally like to use words that help me communicate better, too.

5

I’ve never been entirely happy with the parrot example, because I dont think the distinction between an arbitrary collection of sounds’ and a ‘grasp of reality’ is anywhere near as pronounced if we consider a computer instead of a parrot. Could a computer capable of passing a Turing test utter a true statement? What about a robot? It seems a bit arbitrary to say that a ‘false’ statement made by a character such as Rimmer in Red Dwarf “isnt actually false” on the grounds that Rimmer is a hologram that (supposedly) lacks a conceptual faculty, even though its conversational skills are completely indistinguishable from those of a human.

Or what about the output of a computerized prediction program? We talk about weather forecasts as being ‘true’ or ‘false’, but obviously the computer which produced them had no ‘grasp’ on the facts of reality when it made them (and dont reply that it is a human that grasps these predictions once they are made - a human would not have the mental powers to process all the information that the computer did when it made them, and the human has no reason for thinking the prediction is true other than because ‘the computer said so’). The same applies to the many results that have been produced by artificial intelligences. Are these ‘true’?

Or consider the original proof of the four color theorem in mathematics. This proof is currently impossible to validate by hand, and requires a computer to check it. A human certainly doesnt ‘grasp the truth’ of this proof - he only knows that it is true because the output of a computer program proclaims that it is. Can we really say that a ‘fact of reality’ has been grasped here?

I do agree that the notion of truth should go beyond being a property of propostions, and that there must be _some_ kind of ‘grasp of reality’ involved; I’m just not entirely sure what it constitutes.

6

I use the words truth and false as epistemological concepts that designate the status of a proposition; Designating whether or not it refers to fact (which is a metaphysical concept).

In order for a proposition to be true, it must pass two tests:

  1. The auditory/visual symbols that compose the proposition must designate concepts that refer to fact. In order for a concept to refer to fact, it would need to be formed correctly (See “Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology” for Ayn Rand’s theory of Concept formation).

  2. The concepts that are used must be validly combined. The standard for this validity is The Law of Non-Contradiction.

7

After going to a meeting for an OPAR discussion group, it seemed that most of us were confused (or at least disagreeing) over Rand’s definition of the word “truth”.  She says (given on page 165 of OPAR) that truth is “the recognition of reality”. 

Those words, taken originally from Galt’s speech in Atlas Shrugged, are more a characterization of truth, not a definition. Ayn Rand gave a proper definition of truth in ITOE, p. 48, “Truth is the product of the recognition (i.e., identification) of the facts of reality.”

Truth then has two aspects, one epistemological – “identification” – and one metaphysical – facts of reality.

Some of us at our meeting thought that truth is simply an attribute of a proposition, whether or not the speaker or listeners recognize it to be so or arbitrarily asserted it to be so.

I think what you are after here is the concept “fact,” not “truth.” Both are concepts, so in that sense they are epistemological. And concepts being objective, both refer to reality, so in that sense they are metaphysical. The difference lies in that “truth” emphasizes the epistemological aspect, while fact emphasizes the metaphysical.

To use Peikoff’s example, a parrot can arbitrarily declare that 2+2=4, but the parrot wasn’t right or wrong, since it didn’t know what it was talking about.  However, I think it’s still correct to say that the assertion which the parrot spoke was true, even though it was arbitrary for the parrot to have said it.  Truths are still true regardless of why they were asserted

As I described above, truth is primarily epistemological, and in this example it would refer to knowledge of 2+2 = 4. Knowledge is not arbitrary, so the notion of truth would not apply to the case of the parrot. Peikoff discusses this in some detail in the pages that follow the example.

However, I think it would be fair to say that what the parrot uttered is a fact, even though it is not knowledge on the parrot’s part. One may change your last sentence, then to say: Facts are still facts regardless of why they are asserted. It is sort of like saying: Reality is what it is, regardless of what we think it is.

8

It is only a statement about the difference between philosophy as it often is and philosophy as it can be and should be.  I hope we do the latter here.

Well, I had a disclaimer in the title that my post is mainly just a question of semantics.

Spearmint:

I’ve never been entirely happy with the parrot example, because I dont think the distinction between an arbitrary collection of sounds’ and a ‘grasp of reality’ is anywhere near as pronounced if we consider a computer instead of a parrot.

I think it’s easier to think about the parrot problem before considering the computer/robot problem, since a parrot has more obviously said those words only out randomnes. A computer is generally programmed to follow a set of steps based on inputs, ie. to use some systematical method to organize the information from its “senses”.

It seems a bit arbitrary to say that a ‘false’ statement made by a character such as Rimmer on Red Dwarf “isnt actually false” on the grounds that it is a robot that (supposedly) lacks a conceptual faculty, even though its conversational skills are completely indistinguishable from those of a human.

Well, now you’re getting into what constitutes a conceptual faculty or not. My question is that, given the arbitrariness of a “statement” or set of sounds, we can still say that the “statement” was true or false. A robot’s declaration might not be arbitrary, so that’s a matter for another discussion. Similarly, a conceptually-capable man can arbitrarily declare “this coin will land heads up next time I drop it”, on the basis that he simply feels it, and regardless of how the coin lands, the man was not speaking truth, but his utterance can be judged as true or not.

9

QUOTE: (Spearmint @ Jul 25 2004, 10:04 PM)

I’ve never been entirely happy with the parrot example, because I dont think the distinction between an arbitrary collection of sounds’ and a ‘grasp of reality’ is anywhere near as pronounced if we consider a computer instead of a parrot. Could a computer capable of passing a Turing test utter a true statement? What about a robot? It seems a bit arbitrary to say that a ‘false’ statement made by a character such as Rimmer on Red Dwarf “isnt actually false” on the grounds that it is a robot that (supposedly) lacks a conceptual faculty, even though its conversational skills are completely indistinguishable from those of a human.

My understanding is that the epistemological status of all such phenomenon is a big zero. The perceptual symbols that a parrot or computer happen to produce have no epistemological status, untill it is processed by us. You can look at it this way: parrots, computers, robots, etc. are able to produce perceptual symbols that stimulates thought in our own mind. Those perceptual symbols as such do not designated anything other than the percpetual symbol itself.

You can only prescribe truth and falsehood to these phenonmenon once they have acquired the mental content that your mind has given them.

10

I’ve never been entirely happy with the parrot example, because I dont think the distinction between an arbitrary collection of sounds’ and a ‘grasp of reality’ is anywhere near as pronounced if we consider a computer instead of a parrot.

Why? The essential aspect that they both lack is a volitional consciousness, and the very notion of knowledge only applies to that context.

Could a computer capable of passing a Turing test utter a true statement? What about a robot?

No. No different than a parrot. Show me a computer or a robot with a volitional consciousness, and then I will say otherwise.

Or what about the output of a computerized prediction program? We talk about weather forecasts as being ‘true’ or ‘false’, but obviously the computer which produced them had no ‘grasp’ on the facts of reality when it made them (and dont reply that it is a human that grasps these predictions once they are made - a human would not have the mental powers to process all the information that the computer did when it made them, and the human has no reason for thinking the prediction is true other than because ‘the computer said so’).

Nonsense. The “information” is not in the computer, it is in the mind of those who program the computer to perform certain electronic operations, and in the mind of those who translate the information into some electronic form for the program to process, and in the minds of those who analyze the results. Information is a human concept. We have been over this ground before in some detail. Search on earlier posts by myself and Bowzer, with information as the argument.

Or consider the original proof of the four color theorem in mathematics. This proof is currently impossible to validate by hand, and requires a computer to check it. A human certainly doesnt ‘grasp the truth’ of this proof - he only knows that it is true because the output of a computer program proclaims that it is. Can we really say that a ‘fact of reality’ has been grasped here?

Not all mathematicians accept the four color proof, but all that means is that there is some debate over the full extent of the logical and factual processes by which the proof was done. There is nothing wrong, per se, in using a sophisticated computer, or even a simple calculator, as an extension of man’s reasoning processes, to the extent that that extension abides by the same logical standards. In the case of the computer the issue is the logic of the program which was created by a human mind.

I do agree that the notion of truth should go beyond being a property of propostions, and that there must be _some_ kind of ‘grasp of reality’ involved; I’m just not entirely sure what it constitutes.

The answer to that encapsulates the most fundamental aspects of Objectivism. See my previous post.

11

Ack, more posts were posted while I was writing mine…

Andrew Sternberg:

In order for a proposition to be true, it must pass two tests:

  1. The auditory/visual symbols that compose the proposition must designate concepts that refer to fact. In order for a concept to refer to fact, it would need to be formed correctly (See “Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology” for Ayn Rand’s theory of Concept formation).

  2. The concepts that are used must be validly combined. The standard for this validity is The Law of Non-Contradiction.

In that case, the parrot’s “proposition” certainly was true. I can see that 2+2=4, based on the data my senses give me; so it meets part 1’s requirement. And there’s no contradiction in the statement, so part 2 is met, too. My question wasn’t that of how to distinguish whether or not an assertion is true, it was more of whether or not the parrot’s declaration should even be viewed as a “proposition”, and on the difference between “truth” and “fact”.

Stephen Speicher:

However, I think it would be fair to say that what the parrot uttered is a fact, even though it is not knowledge on the parrot’s part.

Okay, I can understand that.

My main confusion was in that I didn’t know (even implicitly) of any difference between “fact” and “truth” before reading this. One implication of this definition of “truth” as separate from “fact” is that we don’t “find” or “discover” truth, but that we “achieve” truth through discovering facts. I don’t think that that’s how “truth” is generally used in the English language, if at all (I think almost any native english-speaking person you ask will tell you that truth is discovered rather than achieved), so it seems kind of strange to start using this new definition for it. Although I understand its cognitive usefulness.

The parrot uttered a fact, although it didn’t use any conceptual faculty to do so. To the parrot, the sounds are meaningless. The parrot did not speak truth. But since we are hearing the parrot speak, we can evaluate these arbitrary sounds, and acknowledge that the parrot uttered a fact, and in our recognition of this fact, hasn’t the utterance become “truth”, and can’t we then say, “It is true that 2+2=4”?

12

This sort of question “What is truth?” has been discussed for something like 2500 years, and on HPO at least they seem to be no furthur ahead than 2500 years ago… The foregoing is not intended as as an attack or insult to the person who started this topic. It is only a statement about the difference between philosophy as it often is and philosophy as it can be and should be.  I hope we do the latter here.

Huh? Philosophy as it should be is Objectivism, and as you might have noticed this is a forum that, in fact, is dedicated to that philosophy. Within Objectivism there is no controversy in regard to the nature of truth. The fact that a bunch of nuts on hpo have “debated” the issue for a long time has nothing whatsoever to do with the Objectivist view.

13

The parrot uttered a fact, although it didn’t use any conceptual faculty to do so.  To the parrot, the sounds are meaningless.  The parrot did not speak truth.  But since we are hearing the parrot speak, we can evaluate these arbitrary sounds, and acknowledge that the parrot uttered a fact, and in our recognition of this fact, hasn’t the utterance become “truth”, and can’t we then say, “It is true that 2+2=4”?

Strictly speaking, what I said was that what the parrot uttered was a fact, not that the parrot uttered a fact. I probably should not have even thrown that it in at the end, since I see now how confusing that could be. Permit me to restate that part.

Under all and every circumstances, whatever a parrot utters is just a bunch of noise. We, as beings with a volitional consciousness, are capable of interpreting that noise as identifying a truth or recognizing a fact, but it is us, not the parrot, who hold that “noise” as meaningful words, as knowledge.

14

ashleyisachild:

In that case, the parrot’s “proposition” certainly was true. I can see that 2+2=4, based on the data my senses give me; so it meets part 1’s requirement. And there’s no contradiction in the statement, so part 2 is met, too. My question wasn’t that of how to distinguish whether or not an assertion is true, it was more of whether or not the parrot’s declaration should even be viewed as a “proposition”, and on the difference between “truth” and “fact”.

One of my points was that the proposition isn’t the parrot’s. Stephen is right is saying that no matter what the parrot “says” (or a computer displays) the it is only noise (or visual percepts in the case of a computer).

You could look at it in two different ways. The noise doesn’t become a proposition untill it triggers the concepts in your mind and untill you formulate the proposition, in which case it becomes yours (not the parrot’s) and available to your consciousness to determine the truth or falsehood of it.

Or you could look at it in the following way. Since the parrot isn’t randomly spewing noise, since the parrot had to “learn” this noise from somewhere, you could view the parrot as a medium that serves to transmit, to you, the proposition from the one who “taught” the parrot the noise in the first place. In other words, the parrot is just a bizarre vessel for another volitional consciousness to communite with your volitional consciousness.

In fact, the parrot is in principle no different from the system being used this moment to transmit my thoughts to whoever is reading this at this moment. For this reason, it is just as fallacious to declare that the parrot is expounding truth as it is to declare that your monitor expounds truth.

One final, but interesting point that just popped into my head. The parrot is not conscious of the meaning behind the noise. Your computer is not conscious of the meaning behind the pixels. Even though a human being which does have the capability to know the meaning behind the perceptual symbols he expounds, to the extent to which he defaults on that capability, to the extent to which he parrots what he has memorized, he too is simply acting as a bizare transmission device for whoever first uttered that combination of sounds to him. Unfortantely, this is how the Toohey’s of the world prefer it.

15

I agree that a parrot is not capable of making a conceptual “statement” of that complexity. At best, it can possible communicate simple ideas like hungry, horny, scared, etc. And they would probably all sound like “squawk”. :slight_smile:

VES

16

(The following is a short paraphrase of my notes from a class taught by Dr. Binswanger; I hope that you find it as illuminating as I do.)

Objectivity (in the Objectivist sense) is a necessary but not a sufficient condition of truth. You can be objective and still err. “True” implies more than “objective.” It implies not only that you have been objective but that you have been successful. There is a distinction between the merely false and the non-objective.

17

I know that. Perhaps my wording was wrong. I guess I should have said “utterance” or something.

“Made a noise”. Even saying that parrots make “utterances” is misleading. You would not say that when a dog barks, he is making an utterance. I suggest that you focus a bit more on the literal meanings of words, and try to avoid metaphorically-driven misuses. Yes, the squawk of a parrot has something on common with an actual pronounced proposition “2+2=4” said in English – there are similarities in sound to the point that when a parrot makes that noise, people who speak English may recognise it as the statement “Two plus two equals four”. That is it. Proposition, and truth, has to do with meaning and not sound. Utterances are not just noises. To be an utterance, it has to be pronounced, but an utterance also must be the uttering of a sentence (sentences have meaning), and parrots don’t have sentences. Sounds, yes, sentences, no.

And it sounds like you’re saying that the parrot didn’t make the proposition that 2+2=4.  Does that mean that we shouldn’t even try to evaluate it, since no one actually proposed anything?  I don’t think it’s bad to say that the parrot’s vocalization is true or false just because the parrot spoke in arbitrariness.

The parrot’s noise is beyond arbitrary, it is just noise. I can make an arbitrary statement like “There is a bear in Gordon’s back yard”, which is an arbitrary statement since I have no evidence whatsoever that tells me if this is a fact. But I do understand what the proposition / sentence says. Parrots have no understanding at all – it is just noise to them. Saying that the parrot “speaks” is a metaphor – they make noises, with no grasp of the nature of these noises.

Hmm.  I know that the parrot itself was not speaking truth, but the thing that it said was still true as a statement.

But the parrot makes no statements, it just makes noises. People can make statements, and they can train parrots to make something resembling the sounds that comes out of a human mouth when a human utters the sentence “Two plus two equals four”. The parrot only has the sounds (even then, in nothing like the form that a human has them), and truth does not reside in the sounds, it resides in the meanings.

I was saying that not only is truth in concordance with facts, but truth IS facts.  This not only implies that truthful knowledge is in concordance with facts, but that an accidental statement (like sand blown into a sentence of english words) can still be true even if it’s not formed by a mind or thing that knows its truth.

This constitutes a somewhat specific useage of the word by Objecivists (and perhaps some others) – “fact” refers to metaphysical state of affairs, i.e. “what is”. You need to distinguish between reality (facts) and consciousness (truth), since they have a very different status.

I know that I’m allowed to use whatever definitions I please.  In fact, I could make up new words altogether to describe the concepts I use, but my point is that most people use a different definition for “truth” than Peikoff and Rand seem to be using.  And I generally like to use words that help me communicate better, too.

I don’t actually believe that most people use a “truth is out there” definition of truth – most people probably haven’t thought about the question much. I do suspect that a lot of prominent people, especially academicians, use “truth” in that way, and it’s an ongoing struggle. Part of the struggle is to not capitulate on the nature of truth, to not allow them to redefine truth (or knowledge, certainty, justice… alas, the list is long).

18

Or you could look at it in the following way.  Since the parrot isn’t randomly spewing noise, since the parrot had to “learn” this noise from somewhere, you could view the parrot as a medium that serves to transmit, to you, the proposition from the one who “taught” the parrot the noise in the first place.  In other words, the parrot is just a bizarre vessel for another volitional consciousness to communite with your volitional consciousness.

Andrew, I always enjoy when people express ideas in a unique way, and I must say I found this “parrot is just a bizarre vessel” to be rather funny. And, the way you then tied it to …

In fact, the parrot is in principle no different from the system being used this moment to transmit my thoughts to whoever is reading this at this moment.  For this reason, it is just as fallacious to declare that the parrot is expounding truth as it is to declare that your monitor expounds truth.

… was rather brilliant. Thanks for both an illuminating and entertaining example.

19

(The following is a short paraphrase of my notes from a class taught by Dr. Binswanger; I hope that you find it as illuminating as I do.)

Objectivity (in the Objectivist sense) is a necessary but not a sufficient condition of truth. You can be objective and still err. “True” implies more than “objective.” It implies not only that you have been objective but that you have been successful. There is a distinction between the merely false and the non-objective.

Nicely put. And, just to expand on this a bit: since we are not omniscient we can look back at our past thinking and realize that we erred in regard to the truth. In which case we would say that at the time what we really had was a justified belief (assuming a rational process), but that we never really had the truth.

20

Huh? Philosophy as it should be is Objectivism, and as you might have noticed this is a forum that, in fact, is dedicated to that philosophy. Within Objectivism there is no controversy in regard to the nature of truth. The fact that a bunch of nuts on hpo have “debated” the issue for a long time has nothing whatsoever to do with the Objectivist view.

Perhaps I should have said philosophical discussion as it should be, to be more exact.

That’s great. Now that the subject of “what is truth” is settled, we can go on to the next step. I look forward to finding out the truth about subjects outside of philosophy that matter to my everyday life. Philosophy being a means and not an ultimate end.