I have been pondering over truth quite a bit of late, specifically its subjectivity. By placing a truth in another context it does not always remain true (or meaningful). Reality seems to have different meanings for all of us. Yet there are some truths as to how things seem to appear which seem to hold true for most of us. To me this is the distinction in Bohrs quote between trivial and great truths. We can both agree that I am typing right now, or that strawberrys are red (unless you are colorblind perhaps), or that we walk on two legs. These are trivial truths, depicting low level interpretations of sense data (where did that jargon come from?), and their opposites are plainly false.
The lower level truths are indeed more consensual, yet each person still brings their own slight spin to how they perceive and interpret things. When we start trying to ascribe truth, a sense of what actually is, too more meaningful, higher level concepts such as beauty, freedom, spirituality, science, etc (ideas), we run into problems. What one person holds to be true, that which is coherent in their own context, may not make any sense in another persons context. Yet neither of these opposing truths is any more or less true than the other. They just have their respective place in different points of view.
Its kind of like a conceptual counterpart to Einsteins relativity of perceptual viewpoints. Someone in a train throws a stone out the window and sees it fall straight down. An other outside would see it falling in a parabola. Now the stone is an idea, lets say the idea of a god (or gods, or creator, or forces, or nothing, or what have you). Which religion has the true conception of a higher force? And what of all the people who do not believe in such a thing? Yet most claim to have the truth, denying out of hand any amount of truth for the others. And without stepping outside of our system (by being that higher force), we would have no way of actually knowing the truth. Which reminds me of another of Einsteins thoughts on relativity, of an elevator in space either being pulled up or pushed up, and those inside not being able to know the difference. (That was a poor description of the example).
So, by being in a subjective context, any absolute ideal truths are indeterminate and all opposing truths* (those in other contexts) could be true (or irrelevant).
*Can a truth really have a distinct opposite, one thing that is diametrically opposed to it? To me at least the opposite of a thing is all the things that it is not, the myriad possibilities that could (or could not) have been in that things place (or in any other place).
"Nothing is true. Everything is permissible."
- Hassan i Sabbah
"Everything is true. Nothing is not permissible."
- Randolph Fenderson
The lower level truths are indeed more consensual, yet each person still brings their own slight spin to how they perceive and interpret things. When we start trying to ascribe truth, a sense of what actually is, too more meaningful, higher level concepts such as beauty, freedom, spirituality, science, etc (ideas), we run into problems. What one person holds to be true, that which is coherent in their own context, may not make any sense in another persons context. Yet neither of these opposing truths is any more or less true than the other. They just have their respective place in different points of view.
Its kind of like a conceptual counterpart to Einsteins relativity of perceptual viewpoints. Someone in a train throws a stone out the window and sees it fall straight down. An other outside would see it falling in a parabola. Now the stone is an idea, lets say the idea of a god (or gods, or creator, or forces, or nothing, or what have you). Which religion has the true conception of a higher force? And what of all the people who do not believe in such a thing? Yet most claim to have the truth, denying out of hand any amount of truth for the others. And without stepping outside of our system (by being that higher force), we would have no way of actually knowing the truth. Which reminds me of another of Einsteins thoughts on relativity, of an elevator in space either being pulled up or pushed up, and those inside not being able to know the difference. (That was a poor description of the example).
So, by being in a subjective context, any absolute ideal truths are indeterminate and all opposing truths* (those in other contexts) could be true (or irrelevant).
*Can a truth really have a distinct opposite, one thing that is diametrically opposed to it? To me at least the opposite of a thing is all the things that it is not, the myriad possibilities that could (or could not) have been in that things place (or in any other place).
"Nothing is true. Everything is permissible."
- Hassan i Sabbah
"Everything is true. Nothing is not permissible."
- Randolph Fenderson
The mere fact that something appears true to me, while its opposite appears true to you, has no relevance to whether it is in fact true or false. Unless the "real world" doesn't exist outside of our perceptions of it...