You are freaking mean. But, I take it as a compliment that you're still looking over my shoulder.

How?

Why?

I saw a 2-foot centipede crawl across my floor. Was that a fact? Was it truth? Of course not. It was a reality made up in my mind (on LSD). That's why it can't be both.

There's a hidden premise behind Person A's statement (illustrated if Person B is a sociopath for example, and they would not agree "That is true").


I just want to know why are you using the phrase "moral truth" instead of just "moral" or "morally good"? Some ppl might go along with your language, but others will push back just as they are here.

So: you could easily discuss the underlying topic by using different language, but you seem committed to using it - actually it seems very important to you that you use this language. Why is that?

Nice to see you Beau.

Murder is murder. It is what it is. It's a fact, a truth. Whether it is right or wrong is irrelevant.

I think you described knowledge rather than truth. Knowledge, then, would be a fact that can be demonstrated (I prefer this to proven).


How about this:

Truth: that which is the case.
Belief: holding that some proposition is true.
Knowledge: a belief that is true (plus is justified, or is held reliably, etc).
Fact: is some discovered truth.


So....

There exists a jar of uncounted jellybeans.
There happen to be 99 jellybeans in the jar.

It is true that there are 99 jellybeans in the jar (I think OrP would also call this a fact, whereas I would not, nor I suspect would Aaron). But after the jellybeans are counted, it world be a fact.

If someone counted the jellybeans correctly, they would believe that there were 99 jellybeans in the jar, and since that is true/a fact/arrived at reliably, they would know that there were 99 jellybeans in the jar.

Another person took a wild guess, and happened to arrive at the number 99. They would also believe there were 99 jellybeans, but they wouldn't know that there were.

And you

Whether "one shouldn't murder" is true depends on agreeing with the hidden premise (that one should avoid immoral acts). I thought you'd agree with me tbh!

Still thinking about your prior post.

My argument is that facts and truth are what they are.

Ideas, morals, thoughts, beliefs, faith, etc. are not equal to facts and truth.

I'm not sure what you're saying. A fact is a fact. Whether or not you or I have knowledge of it, is irrelevant. A bat lives in a cave in Indonesia. It can be proven, it is repeatable, and others can confirm it. It's a fact, but I've never seen it.

A bit of a problem with "knowledge". It's either a belief, or it's true. It can't be both.


They can't be uncounted, and know the jar has 99, that is not possible.

Duh.


That would be truth, not a belief.

That would be a belief.

Sorry man, you got nowhere.

Because I see “truth” and “reality” as inseparable and there are consequences when morality is associated solely with the world and doesn’t include reality. When I say “moral truth”, it’s a reminder that the focus is ultimately on reality rather than the world. It’s communicating that even though we live in the world, we are not supposed to adapt to the world.

I can prove, beyond any doubt, that statement is false with one dose of psychedelic drugs.

Care to try?

nope. Something based on evidence and reasoning can still be wrong. As you point out, science has changed and updated as it discovers new things.


Ummm what? So beliefs are never true?

He made his intentions more than clear: It's all about Jebus...but in the most long-winded, most dishonest way possible.

You admitted this yourself. Unless in your reality the things you've typed previously don't exist.

If reality is in your head, and you imagine that other people agree with you, then you have access to your own set of truth and facts, which puts you on a pathway that's completely different from the one you started on.

Of course, this has nothing to do with the actual challenge.

I'm sitting with a friend playing a game. I flip a coin and let it fall to the floor and it rolls under a table. I haven't found it yet. But the coin is definitely either in a "heads state" or a "tails state."

I think to myself, "I think it's a head." This is my belief. My friend thinks, "It's a tail." That's his belief. One of us is thinking a true thought and the other is thinking a false, even though neither of know the actual state of the coin.

It's best to avoid moral statements in this context. There are different philosophical perspectives on the nature of moral claims that complicate this quickly.

There is a collection of people who think the earth is flat. They have "verified" it for themselves using any of a number of "experiments" that they have set up.

Other people think the earth is round. They have similarly "verified" it for themselves using any of a number of "experiments" that they have set up.

Are both people making true statements because they both have a collection of people who verify the same conclusion? Is it neither true nor false that the earth is round?

This is another type of difficulty you run into by defining truth and fact as statements that people agree on.

Ok, so a fact and true are the same, in your usage.



I know this is a common way that belief is used. I've always used it the other common way, as I defined earlier. This usage also happens to be how belief and knowledge are defined in a technical sense within epistemology (knowledge being a subset of belief), and I think it's a lot more useful to define belief this way. It's obviously not easy to just change how you've used words historically, though.



I didn't say the jellybeans had been counted or the number was known, I was describing what was true, as the narrator of the scenario.



You say 'duh', but if you use fact to mean the same as truth, then the number of jellybeans was already a fact. It didn't become a fact after they had been counted (which was what I described).



.

But this describes when someone thinks something is the case and it is true - so of course it would be true, but more specifically it would be knowledge.



Duh!

Truth/reality is not what you're being criticized over. It's conflating language of truth/reality with morally good (are you or are you not calling that which is morally good, as morally true, or simply, as true?

What's an example of something "associated solely with the world", but not real?

So you have an agenda in using this term, and you think the topic is important.

If you could be convinced that you will lose potential targets because of this loaded language, is the topic important enough that you'd drop that loaded language? Or is the loaded language what is more important?

I'd rather think about the contents of your op, but this postmodern sounding language is an annoying first obstacle!

Perhaps you give a simple example of what you mean by your op?



PS
The bolded part is a phrase you use often in some of your recent posts, wouldn't you agree? If you really think you have something important to put forward, wouldn't it be better to use language in a way that you would expect more agreement?

If you look through my posting history, you will also notice that several times in this forum I have taken the language of the person I’m in discussion with and adjusted in the way you are suggesting.

It depends on what stage or level of morality the topic I am discussing is at. The process gets harder and harder as you progress. If I am talking about something that I know is alienating, then I’m not going to be concerned about using language that is alienating but much less alienating than the actions described. I realize that anyone who is going to be put off by the language is not currently in the right mindset to be able to hear me on the issue anyway.

I was doing just this when you replied, as it happens It crossed my mind that I'm focusing too much on your language choices rather than trying to get a grip on what you're trying to say. But otoh, your language choices are very deliberate, and perhaps there's something to uncover by pushing back on them.

But honestly, I just don't really follow what it is you are trying to put forward... hence scanning through some of your posting history.

To be clear, many times a post is for myself to come back to in the future if I need to. I take notes that I don’t share on the forum, so I try not to do too much of that, but I can easily justify sharing it by telling myself that perhaps it can help someone.

Participating in this forum has helped me a lot in articulating what I have experienced, and I find that if I don’t take note of a realization, then I will often lose it when I try to recall it later.

This thread is freaking awesome.

Thanks guys, I've got to get caught up.

Of course. Pluto used to be a planet, now it is not.

Why would you need to "believe" in a truth? A truth is what it is. Do you have "faith" in a truth? Why?

Neither of you know the truth -- until you see the coin.

Exactly. Moral claims or ideas have nothing to do with truth or facts.

This isn't about knowing truth. This is about the existence of truth. There is a truth about the coin even if we don't know it.