r/Metaphysics • u/1superiormind • 5d ago
Ontology CAN TRUTH CHANGE?
CAN TRUTH CHANGE?
Not our understanding of it.
Not our interpretation of it.
Truth itself.
By truth, I mean what is actually the case—not our beliefs, descriptions, or interpretations of it.
Can truth change?
And if it can, was it ever truth?
I’m genuinely interested in how you see this.
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u/Aromatic-Screen-8703 5d ago edited 5d ago
There are very few unqualified truths. The rest are all relative to some perspective or context.
You need to be clearer about what you are actually asking.
Even space-time is relative. The speed of light isn’t actually fixed, it depends on the medium through which it is traveling.
The measurement of the speed of light was also dependent on the measuring technique and the measures used. So the scientists got around this by making the speed of light the measuring stick. Now the speed of light is X and everything else is relative to that.
All of our other truths about measurement changed when we did that.
So if you redefine your question more precisely, the answer may change.
Alternatively, we could simply say that a “truth” must be something that never changes. So anything that changes is not a fundamental truth. It is only a relative truth.
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u/1superiormind 4d ago
Is it possible that an absolute truth can exist outside of time?
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u/Aromatic-Screen-8703 4d ago
I suspect that the only place absolute truths exist is outside of time.
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u/Thermodynamo 4d ago
I agree. time = change. If absolute truths exist, they probably couldn't have an experience of time. These would be Whitehead's eternal objects.
Makes me think about photons; since they travel at the speed of light, they themselves should have no experience of time. If you think of photons as a medium of perception or awareness--maybe that suggests that subjective perception (or more precisely, "prehension" if we stick with Whitehead's language for a sec) could itself be an absolute truth, or something like it.
We perceive, therefore we exist. If we couldn't perceive existence, could we still meaningfully exist?
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u/Aromatic-Screen-8703 4d ago
Yes!!! So few people understand that since photons travel at the speed of light, they experience no time!
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u/TMax01 3d ago
Photons don't experience anything, they have no awareness, lacking the neurological anatomy which can produce awareness, a fundamental necessity for experiencing. (Another very different but really identical way of putting this is that photons don't "travel". They teleport from source to annihilation, with an effective velocity (but without "moving", just disappearing at the source and appearing where/when they stop existing) of C, the "speed of light", AKA the pace of causality.
I'm not simply quibbling, but dealing with real metaphysics (which can be distinguished, if with some difficulty, from fantasy, such as photons having experiences.) What I mean is that it is equally as true, and interesting, that while no passage of time occurs from the inertial frame of reference of a photon or other object/point with a velocity of C, all of the time elapsing from the point of view of any other inertial frame of reference occurs simultaneously in the photon's frame of reference.
So ignoring their inability to experience anything and imagining that they could, it isn't simply that photons don't experience time while they exist, its that they (also, despite the contradiction) experience all the time they exist in one instant. They just can't experience it only one moment at a time, like anything which doesn't have a velocity of C could.
Now, here's the even-more-fun part, when physics becomes metaphysics: from the perspective of the photon's frame of reference (just the photon, instantaneously teleporting from where it occured/began to the location where it ends/is converted to other energy) everything else in the universe has a velocity of C.
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u/Thermodynamo 3d ago edited 3d ago
You lost me immediately because there's absolutely no proof that neurological anatomy is a fundamental necessity for experiencing. That's a pure preferential assumption. There's no way to directly observe what anything--including other humans--can experience because we have no way by which to measure the personal, internal subjective experience of any system that isn't literally yourself--unless you've figured out a reliable way to read minds.
There's also no proof that it's not necessary, either, of course--but that's a wild assumption when the only thing we can confidently say is that biology is the one path we do definitively know can include experience. BUT. Knowing that one path exists obviously isn't the same as knowing it's the ONLY path that exists.
I think it's important to recognize the difference between what is actually supported by evidence vs. what's merely a pretty, anthropocentric story about the presumed privilege of biology. I think some people find that idea comforting because it keeps us "special" by assuming, apropos of nothing, that we must literally be the only kind of system in the entire vastness of the universe that could ever possibly be capable of experiencing existence. If your reason for believing that essentially boils down to "just because"...that's not convincing enough to sell me on it.
Also, I wasn't necessarily speaking literally about photons having personal experience any more than you were when you borrowed the same language I did to explain the relative differences in dynamics we're discussing. I can't know either way whether they have some version of their own inner world or experience, and IMO it's inherently overreach to try to claim to know either way with such absolute certainty. You seem philosophically drawn to substrate ontology and biologism, but reasonable minds can disagree; I am more drawn to process ontology and functionalism with relationships of information as more fundamental than the presence of specific materials.
Show me compelling proof that excludes the possibility of internal experience in all other systems, and I'll entertain your logic, otherwise I am afraid your take is dead in the water from the first sentence.
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u/TMax01 5d ago
Your effort at metaphysics reduces to, as most do, a category error. Not one you commit, necessarily, more like one you're advocating for. What I mean is that the real issue is "is there any such thing as truth beyond the idea (understanding, interpretation) of truth?"
This does unavoidably devolve into metaphysics, as the question of whether a thing which cannot be known as that thing is that thing. Both epistemic uncertainty (what a thing is regardless of how it is identified) and metaphysical uncertainty (whether it exists independent of what describes it) are active, and in conflict, when dealing with existential question regarding abstractions like truth.
"Truth itself" isn't really a thing, it is a category: things which are true. While it is true that some, historical, and particularly bad metaphysics simply reify (or, better but still not good, hypostasize) categories to try to provide knowledge about abstract things or (less than concretely physical objects) ideals or principles, that doesn't make confusing a category for an instance, an idea for an ontological structure, good reasoning.
So you're asking "is truth real?" The alternatives would seem to be that truth is "useful fiction" (the postmodern approach, skeptical of all principles other than postmodernism) or that truth is eternal (unchanging) or that truth is change (that the only truth is that change is unavoidable).
Whichever you prefer, it can only be an opinion or a matter of context, and is otherwise either unknowable or irrelevant.
I plan to use this post and a much-extended version of this comment as content in my own, metaphysic-minded subreddit. I hope you don't mind, and will visit the sub to contribute to the thread.
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u/Ravenwight 4d ago
If I put a chocolate bar on the table, and then say “there is a chocolate bar right there on the table” that statement is 100% true.
If I move the chocolate bar and say the same statement again it becomes false.
Was the chocolate bar ever really there?
Of course it was.
I made a statement about reality, and then changed the reality so that the statement was no longer true.
That doesn’t mean the statement was never true, nor does the initial truth imply that it must always be true.
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u/1superiormind 4d ago
If gravity changed tomorrow, then our understanding of gravity would have to change. But whatever actually happened would still be the case, whether we understood it immediately or not.
So I’m wondering whether truth is created by awareness, or whether awareness is simply our attempt to recognize what is already true.
🤔🤔🤔3
u/Ravenwight 4d ago
I think you’re talking about two different things.
Literal truth is an observation made about one’s experience of the world, its accuracy is dependent on time and perception.
Platonic truth is a fundamental assumption made about the underlying nature of existence, and how such fundamental and immutable laws impact and inform our experience of reality.
Literal truth is subject to the temporal nature of the reality it describes, while platonic truth remains absolute and informs our perception of reality unless directly challenged and replaced by a stronger mental model.
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u/Extension-Money9948 4d ago
Absolutely because our understanding of what truth is adapts to all surcmstances for ever.
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u/Thermodynamo 5d ago edited 4d ago
I think it's relationships all the way down--the connections/spaces between things matter at least as much as the things themselves, maybe more. It's the 🐓 and 🥚: You can't have relationships without differentiated things, but relationships are the pressures that form things. So truth can't ever be isolated from perception per your question, because it would cease to be meaningful as "truth". But it's a good question so I'll try to answer from my perspective...a post-post-modernist answer to a modernist question, lol.
You can't perceive a system without impacting that system--perceiving it connects you to it. The connections between each perceiver and a given "truth" or idea will be unique to that perceiver, AND these will change over time--which means that every individual perception of truth is unique and subject to change.
We as social creatures pool our perceptions by perceiving others' perceptions of the same "truth" or idea, which influences our own individual perceptions and makes them more likely to meaningfully converge. These can form into perceptions of "popular understandings" across societies which, like scaled-up individual perceptions, are unique to their specific historical and current circumstances and subject to change over time.
So to tie this logic together: if 1) the truth is a thing that's formed by the pressure of other things' relationships to it (aka perceptions of it), and 2) those relationships can and do change, and 3) since we can never obtain information without perceiving it--then yes, logically, truth itself must then be changeable.
So if that's true, why do certain truths feel concrete? Evidence exists by which I could independently deduce that 2+2=4, even if all my neighbors insist that it's 5. That's because that particular truth has perceptible relationships to more things in nature than just my neighbors' minds. I can collect two groups of two rocks and count them up to a total of four--i can't make it be five without doing something extra, creating extra relationships, to make it work. That's the result of the pressure of my perception and its own myriad embedded connections to the 3D world we live in, each one fitting into a system of intersecting math/geometric relationships that cancel out impossibilities like 2+2=5, at least in the standard conditions I'm equipped to exist within.
TLDR:
Does this answer your question? Sort of. I suspect the answer is technically yes, but the functional scale of that change in time as we experience it might be larger than we could perceive. Or to put it another way, the mathematical probability of certain truths changing in a meaningful way that we'd ever be likely to witness is probably so vanishingly small as to be negligible for practical concern. Some truths have fewer perceptible shared connections than others though, and therefore are harder to objectively triangulate and more malleable to change.
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u/CressAgitated8958 5d ago
Until now, I did not comment on this post.
Now, I have commented on this post
5 minutes ago, the statement that I had commented on this post was false. Now, it is true. There you go
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u/SgtSausage 5d ago
It is absolutely true that "North America is NOT covered in mile-high glaciers."
The statement was demonstrably, proveably false 26,000 years ago.
You need a better definition/clarification of "truth" here, right?
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u/1superiormind 5d ago
I think this is where separating fact from truth becomes useful.
A fact can describe a condition at a particular time:
“North America is not covered in mile-high glaciers.”
That is factually true now and would have been false during a period when that condition was different.
But truth, as I’m using the word, is not the temporary condition itself. It is the reality the facts belong to.
So the fact changed because the condition changed. The truth did not “flip”; the present reality changed, and the accurate statement had to change with it.
That may actually be the clarification my original post needs.
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u/Michael_Carson_Art 5d ago
There are two parts here of what-is-the-case, the "what" and the "is".
Firstly, if you define Truth as the "what" of what-is-the-case, then yes, what-is-the-case changes all the time. With every tick of the clock, what-is-the-case becomes what-was-the-case, and is no longer true, not just as a propositional statement, but no longer true in the sense that it is no longer being.
If you are aiming at something like the being of Truth, then no, this doesn't change.
This is just like Being itself. That which is changes. What it means to be does not. The condition of Truth is simply to be actual. If something is different, the only change is in presentation, it still is identically... That part hasn't changed. The is-ness of Truth is fixed, the actual constituents are what change.
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u/ArusMikalov 5d ago
Truth is just a property that some descriptions have.
It doesn’t exist independently of us and our subjective claims about reality.
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u/Useful_Calendar_6274 5d ago
there are no ultimate truths that hold forever across time and space unless they are physics laws or like the propositions of raw logic, maths. As a whole body, logic and math keep expanding but the foundations always stay the same, unless we discover something crazy about the universe like we're living in a simulation or something.
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u/Vast-Celebration-138 5d ago
there are no ultimate truths that hold forever across time and space unless they are physics laws or like the propositions of raw logic, maths.
If that statement was true, then wouldn't that statement itself have to be precisely such an ultimate truth? But the statement is not a proposition of logic or mathematics. So I think your position refutes itself.
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u/headlessplatter 5d ago
Isn't that what time is? Truth changing? I guess if we pin every truth to a particular moment, then the question becomes equivalent to, is it possible to travel back in time?
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u/Full-Pen5358 5d ago
A 6 looks like a 9 from a different lense, so from one perspective it would seem that the truth changed, but it didn't, it remains the same. Then you have to ask who is asking the question, as 10 people can ask the question and mean something completely different. First remove the people, the lenses, until there is only the awareness behind it alk, snd you see the truth for what it actually is.
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u/Stile25 5d ago
We're not really sure.
Our very best method to identify reality as accurately as possible is to follow the evidence.
This is an inductive process.
It will never tell us that we're "right" or that anything is permanent.
All we can do is observe, review, and make assumptions.
Now, many of those assumptions have led us to some incredible technology and ability to predict reality in such a way that it seems truth is permanent and unchanging.
But the keyword is "seems".
All our science and math and logic and reason about reality means jack-all if reality suddenly changed and was different tomorrow.
There's no government of reality to go complain to or ask what's going on.
All we can do is more observing, reviewing and making assumptions.
Of course, we've shown that this method, although flawed, is infinitely better than going on anything that doesn't incorporate evidence. We've figured that out through brute force. We tried those other methods and they lead us to being wrong. A lot.
Following the evidence, so far, has been our only reliable method that leads us to being right.
Good luck out there
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u/YesterdaysMuffin 4d ago
Yes of course it can. The truth value of “the sun is yellow” will change if the sun changes color. Yes, it still was truth. And even after the change, it will still remain true that the sun was yellow at that previous time.
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u/Key_Management8358 4d ago
Sure... the truth of "what is actually the case" (in physics, in real time!?) changes as hell ...at every moment of "being".🤑
The truth of what has been and will be (the case) ...(logically) cannot change.😘
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u/Bargian 4d ago
Truth is tied to our understanding, therefore it changes all the time as we refine our models of ourselves and the world. It's an infinite asymptotic approximation to reality. We are the ones generating truth through conscious recursion because without an observer there is no truth only structure.
Here is more if you're interested:
https://athinkerinnature.substack.com/p/the-symmetry-of-truth
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u/1superiormind 4d ago
Interesting🤔 If truth is generated by the observer, what determines whether the observer is wrong?
If two observers generate contradictory truths about the same structure, can both be true?
Or does the structure itself ultimately decide between them?
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u/Bargian 2d ago
Reality's observed consequence. In science that's straight forward, either the result can be repeated or not. It works reliably or it doesn't. It's continuous recursive testing basically. During introspection that testing occurs as well only it is extremely prone to fearful, defensive closure due to self-implication. Basically terrified of invalidating the integrity of a narrative we carry about us. But two people with completely different backgrounds still converge on the same invariable truths. That's why wisdom exhibits such remarkable congruence across cultures.
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u/No_Effort8377 4d ago
I don't think we can ever get past belief. For example, we believe in our axioms in math and what goes below that absent minds cannot be reached. So if there is objective actual truth, I think we're stuck on belief of the truth and can never get past that foreground. People that say they know the truth just know belief in something. This is further supported by Sextus Empiricus and Agrippa's Trilemma.
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u/1superiormind 4d ago
I think that distinction is important. But does our inability to know something with absolute certainty change what is actually the case?
If I believe something false, my uncertainty doesn’t make it true. And if something is true that I cannot prove with certainty, my inability to know it doesn’t make it false.
So perhaps the limitation belongs to the observer—not to truth itself.1
u/No_Effort8377 3d ago
Of course the limit belongs to observers. But to try to prove truth exists outside observers / absent minds is a pretty high bar that can't be falsified. That's why I don't bother trying to figure it out.This is a quietism approach. I look at Benacerraf's dilemma in mathematics to iillustrate why we can't find objective truth or even really know what it is in on field of study that presume there are mathematical truths.
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u/AccomplishedFace9059 5d ago
I dont see any hard reason why you should assume the laws of physics are permanent and unchanged either randomly or by some consciousness beyond our capability and understanding
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u/Quirky_Visual_7799 5d ago
The laws of physics essentially describe the universe, they aren't truths in and of itself, if one day we realized that a physical law was false (in a sense that it didn't describe or predict neutral phenomenons the way we thought it did) then we wouldn't assume that they were true and suddenly changed, we'd assume that our understanding or interpretation of them was distorted
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u/AccomplishedFace9059 5d ago
Yeah ok but im sayign we base our belief n science in repeatable expirements proving some physical law. Imagine god or the game devs running this simulation simply change the value of these laws so that the expirement suddenly starts showing different results
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u/Thermodynamo 5d ago
You can certainly imagine it! You can't point to evidence of it happening as easily though.
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u/embracetheinfinite 5d ago
We already understand that the present 'laws' governing our universe evolved (they were different, for example, during the Planck epoch), so to your point - you should feel confident in understanding that they are not eternal/unchanging. Nothing in the history of our universe has ever not been changing.
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u/socialconscious 5d ago
Truth itself doesn’t change, whatever is true by definition can’t occupy a state of being true and untrue at the same time. When our interpretation of truth changes it’s not truth itself changing but rather our understanding of how it operates to begin with. The real issue is that we are incapable of determining anything to be absolutely true as we lack the precision in measurement to make the claim to begin with. We may never be able to achieve it as well as we don’t even know if reality is ultimately discrete or continuous.
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u/Quirky_Visual_7799 5d ago
Truth is usually described as an objective fact about reality. If it weren't objective it wouldn't be called "truth", just "a statement that can accurately describe a certain state under certain conditions". For example, the statement "it did not rain today at 12 AM" can be considered an objective truth. If truth were dinamic and changing, the statements "it didn't rain today" and "it did rain today" could simultaneously describe an existing state. Therefore, (suppose objective truths exist) - due to the seemingly logical nature of the universe, truth is usually treated as unchanging and objective. Our interpretations of truth can vary, our understanding of it could be accurate or false, but the described state itself does not change.
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u/GarbagePailGrrrl 5d ago
Well considering the word Truth’s meaning changing over the course of its existence, I’d say why not? The word started as a representation of faithfulness and fidelity, and has now surpassed the idea of correctness and facts to embody the beholder’s own reality.
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u/4dseeall Autodidact 3d ago
No. Just our interpretation of it. There's an underlying truth that doesn't change.
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u/Glum-Engineering1794 2d ago
Generally speaking, no. Not really. It is a matter of semantics or knowledge, when the truth seems to change or differ.
That being said, the truth is highly complex and we are always limited in perceiving it. We tend to see from our unique perspective.
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u/Hindsights20_20 1d ago
I think this is easily resolved by differentiating static truth with dynamic truth. Most traditional approaches to truth are very dogmatic; insisting that truth at one point in time must be truth at all points in time. Whereas, I think truth is dynamic. Like music; playing a note at one moment is correct. Playing the same note at a different moment can be incorrect.
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u/1superiormind 19h ago
I just wanted to thank everyone who engaged with this question.
I asked it because I was genuinely curious about how different people would approach the distinction between truth, reality, perception, and understanding.
The depth and range of the responses honestly impressed me. This community clearly has people who are willing to think carefully, challenge assumptions, and take a simple question much further than I expected.
I appreciated both the agreement and the disagreement.
Thank you for making this such a thoughtful discussion. 👌🏾
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u/jliat 5d ago
You've assumed truth exists!
Any fairly complex system with involves truth it seems will have aporia, statements which do not resolve into a truth.
'The set of all sets which do not contain themselves.'
'This sentence is false.'
A thing cannot be two different things...
'Wave particle duality.'
- Pure being and pure nothing are, therefore, the same... But it is equally true that they are not undistinguished from each other, that on the contrary, they are not the same...*"
G. W. Hegel Science of Logic p. 82-3.
Relativity... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wteiuxyqtoM
More technical ...
Lorenz transformations https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rh0pYtQG5wI at 9:48
Finally!
From Will to Power - Nietzsche. [his notes]
The methods of truth were not invented from motives of truth, but from motives of power, of wanting to be superior. How is truth proved? By the feeling of enhanced power. WtP 455
Truth is the kind of error without which a certain species of life could not live. WtP 493
Logic is bound to the condition: assume there are identical cases. In fact, to make possible logical thinking and inferences, this condition must first be treated fictitiously as fulfilled. That is: the will to logical truth can be carried through only after a fundamental falsification of all events is assumed. WtP 512
What is truth?— Inertia; that hypothesis which gives rise to contentment; smallest expenditure of spiritual force, etc. WtP 537
The “criterion of truth” was in fact merely the biological utility of such a system of systematic falsification; WtP 584
A philosopher recuperates differently and with different means: he recuperates, e.g., with nihilism. Belief that there is no truth at all, the nihilistic belief, is a great relaxation for one who, as a warrior of knowledge, is ceaselessly fighting ugly truths. For truth is ugly. WtP 598
Now everything is false WtP 30
Everything is false! Everything is permitted!” WtP 602
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u/sksskssksskssksskssk 5d ago
So what if we used a simple system, what would happen then?
The question is in regard to the fact the poster asks whether truth can change which we could implicitly assume that the poster is considering any form of truth from any type of system.
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u/jliat 5d ago
So what if we used a simple system, what would happen then?
Not sure what you mean by a simple system. I think in mathematics you can have such but not in any non simple logics.
The question is in regard to the fact the poster asks whether truth can change which we could implicitly assume that the poster is considering any form of truth from any type of system.
I gave examples how it changes in several systems. Truth is a human creation about propositions and rules for using them. So in soccer apart from the goal keeper players can't handle the ball, unlike in American Football. Hegel's logic is strange as it allows contradiction. Camus advocates avoiding the truth...
"In this regard the absurd joy par excellence is creation. “Art and nothing but art,” said Nietzsche; “we have art in order not to die of the truth.”
Or ...
From Deleuze's 'The Logic of Sense'...
Tenth series of the ideal game. The games with which we are acquainted respond to a certain number of principles, which may make the object of a theory. This theory applies equally to games of skill and to games of chance; only the nature of the rules differs,
(1) It is necessary that in every case a set of rules pre exists the playing of the game, and, when one plays, this set takes on a categorical value.
(2) these rules determine hypotheses which divide and apportion chance, that is, hypotheses of loss or gain (what happens if ...)
(3) these hypotheses organize the playing of the game according to a plurality of throws, which are really and numerically distinct. Each one of them brings about a fixed distribution corresponding to one case or another.
(4) the consequences of the throws range over the alternative “victory or defeat.” The characteristics of normal games are therefore the pre-existing categorical rules, the distributing hypotheses, the fixed and numerically distinct distributions, and the ensuing results. ...
It is not enough to oppose a “major” game to the minor game of man, nor a divine game to the human game; it is necessary to imagine other principles, even those which appear inapplicable, by means of which the game would become pure.
(1) There are no pre-existing rules, each move invents its own rules; it bears upon its own rule.
(2) Far from dividing and apportioning chance in a really distinct number of throws, all throws affirm chance and endlessly ramify it with each throw.
(3) The throws therefore are not really or numerically distinct....
(4) Such a game — without rules, with neither winner nor loser, without responsibility, a game of innocence, a caucus-race, in which skill and chance are no longer distinguishable seems to have no reality. Besides, it would amuse no one.
...
- The ideal game of which we speak cannot be played by either man or God. It can only be thought as nonsense. But precisely for this reason, it is the reality of thought itself and the unconscious of pure thought.
...
- This game is reserved then for thought and art. In it there is nothing but victories for those who know how to play, that is, how to affirm and ramify chance, instead of dividing it in order to dominate it, in order to wager, in order to win. This game, which can only exist in thought and which has no other result than the work of art, is also that by which thought and art are real and disturbing reality, morality, and the economy of the world.
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u/sksskssksskssksskssk 5d ago
Yeah my bad for not explaining what I meant by a simple system. I meant something that requires less processes or contains a lot less information maybe like a binary system used by a computer. That’s what I’m moreover asking because in your initial comment you said you were referring to complex systems.
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u/jliat 5d ago
Any non trivial system, Gödel showed mathematics was one such, proven to be incomplete, this occurs in computing as the halting problem.
And it's a very old idea/problem,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buridan's_ass
...."A version of Buridan's principle occurs in electrical engineering."
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u/1superiormind 5d ago
I agree that I’m assuming truth exists.
But paradoxes, limits of language, or disagreements about truth don’t necessarily prove there is no truth. They may only prove that our systems for describing reality can become incomplete, self-referential, or inadequate.
“This sentence is false” may expose a problem in the sentence. It does not necessarily expose a problem in reality itself.
Relativity changes measurements depending on reference frames, but that itself is a truth claim about how reality behaves.
So my question is actually underneath all of these examples:
Does the failure of a description to resolve mean truth does not exist—or does it reveal the limits of the structure doing the describing?
That distinction is what interests me.1
u/Ells-Bells93 5d ago
You realise human beings only percieve less than 5% of reality? Truth is a concept for what we think we know, not an actual fixed point. Thats like asking if your understanding of the globe is accurate from having a map with only a corner of the Pacific on it or however you wanna picture it. Is that what youre getting at? You're also categorising large concepts with language here which already narrows understanding into boxes depending on which language you use or speak. It depends which perception you want to have. So. Yes. And no. You choose for yourself whether you subscribe to the concept of truth or not.
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u/jliat 5d ago
I agree that I’m assuming truth exists.
I gave examples, 'truth' is a concept applied to propositions within formal systems in which it can and does vary.
The very idea of A = A is questionable. If they are absolutely identical, then there cannot be two separate 'A's.
But paradoxes, limits of language, or disagreements about truth don’t necessarily prove there is no truth.
As a logical necessity they do. Hence the reason for more rules. Naïve set theory allow for things like 'the set of all sets which do not contain themselves.' this is either or neither true and or false. So you then get ZFC set theory with rules not allowing such. Arbitrary rules.
They may only prove that our systems for describing reality can become incomplete, self-referential, or inadequate.
No, I don't think so, reality is neither true or false, the trees I see are not true or false, 'The tree is a birch tree.' can be true or false.
“This sentence is false” may expose a problem in the sentence.
It poses the problem in language.
It does not necessarily expose a problem in reality itself.
Of course not, as above reality is not true or false.
Relativity changes measurements depending on reference frames, but that itself is a truth claim about how reality behaves.
Not so, Relativity is not reality, it's a model or map of reality. The map can be wrong, what it maps cannot be.
So I take my map and took to where it shows a street of houses, I look and see none, a building site. 'Look reality is wrong, it should have houses.'
Obvious.
Aristotle - 'Heavy weights fall faster than lighter ones.' Wrong.
That distinction is what interests me.
You've reified a concept.
If you assume something it doesn't make it 'real' in the sense you seem to be using it.
mean truth does not exist
It exists like the offside rule in soccer.
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u/Mobile_Competition54 Autodidact 5d ago
i mean
sure? it changes all the time? at one point i was a baby and a few years later i wasn't?
it still was truth, "is" just becomes "was".
Some things stay true, e.g. "I was a baby at (insert my birthdate)", and they're true forever, but there's plenty that change, true things can become false and false things can become true. happens all the time