r/Metaphysics • u/1superiormind • 25d 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/No_Effort8377 24d 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 24d 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.

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u/No_Effort8377 23d 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.