“What is truth?” perhaps it is worth inquiringthe meaning behind it and what it truly means, since truth is very likely themost important concept in all of philosophy, logic, religion, science and eveneveryday life. After all, if a philosophy or religion or logical argument orscientific theory isn’t true, what good is it? Why do we need a framework forhow to act? This can be answered through many ways, for example if there wasn’tjust one way to act, everyone would do anything they wanted to do andeverything could get out of hand. Weneed a complete justice system and laws to manage the people. Without them,everything that is illegal, will turn out legal and literally all hell in thesense will break loose.
Maybe in a utopian society, wrong is right vice versaright is wrong, but as we know today wrong is wrong compared to the statementof right is right under certain circumstances. From what I understand from thisquestion and from the world we live in today, the moral framework of rules andregulations keep the citizens safe from the world, but more importantly keepsthe citizens safe from themselves. This kind of protection of such frameworkseeks to protect and defend the rights of the people or the things it governs.Fromwhat I understand, we can only give up our perspective of the truth by theexperiences and circumstances that we are put in every minute of every day ofour lives. Truth is only true in the eyes of the beholder.
Suppose you examine a banana and determinethat it’s yellow, sweet, smooth and easily melted in your mouth. You might thinkthis is what the banana is, putanother way, you’ve made claimsabout the banana and seemingly made statements about real properties of the banana. Now let’s supposeyour friend is color blind, knowing that that both of you do not know that itis so, and when he looks at the banana, he says that the banana is a dull browncolor.
He then makes a statement aboutthe color of the banana but it’s different than your claim. What color is thebanana, why does it has so much meaning behind it? Well, if you think about it,you might respond “that’s an easy one”. In actuality you come to the conclusionthat the banana is yellow because we’ve agreed that your friend has anirregularity in his vision and even though we may not know he has it, the factthat he does means his view of reality is improper or incorrect. But now let’ssuppose everyone is color blind and we all see “yellow” shaded bananaas brown? We can make this objection even stronger by asking how we know thatwe all aren’t in fact color blind in a way we don’t understand and bananas reallyaren’t yellow after all. No one has access to the “real” color of the banana.
Best services for writing your paper according to Trustpilot
Again, the response might be that that this is a knowledge problem, not a truthproblem. The banana really is yellow but we all believe it’s brown. But noticethat the truth of the banana’s color has little role to play in what webelieve. No one knows what the truth is and so it plays no role in ourknowledge.Fromthe question “Is there really objective truth or is everything subjective?”Many people would say that there is no such thing as objective truth due to everythinga person goes through is based on feelings and experiences they go through.
Ibelieve that truth becomes objective when feelings are taken out of theequation, but everything in this world we live in, we understand that feelingscan cloud our judgement and reason, that’s why I feel that truth is very muchsubjective. As humans our personal perspectives are the only thing that we haveaccess to. Without it, our perspective of what is good vs bad will be altered. Inother words, there is nothing that we call “real” that is not in some human’sperspective, because for example I can say to someone “Oh look there’s a monsterin my closet” but only I would see the monster, but to someone else the monsterwouldn’t be there and they would respond “You’re just imagining things”.Butthe real question is who we to really answer the question of what is real orfake in the world? Even through science everything cannot be proven. For example:Are aliens real? Is there really an Area 51? But to prove the bigger questionsof is there really a God? If so why would he or she put people of this worldthrough a great tragedy like being diagnosed with cancer? If there is somethingsuch as truth to what is real and what isn’t, who are we to say? If there wasanother way to explain this, which there are many, can we really get beyond ourown way of thinking or even get beyond our own perspective of the truth? Inorder to get over our own way of thinking, is to walk a mile in someone elseshoes.
The first step in understanding others, is by first understanding thatperson from a different perspective other than our own. For example from thenovel by Mark Twain, The Prince and the Pauper exemplifies exactly that.Within the novel it tells of two boys who are identical in appearance, thepauper lives a horrid life but askes the question of what is out true ormisleading, while the prince lives a wonderful life but a depressing one,masked by riches. They both switch places and lives the life of the other. Thisis a great example of how to understand people by walking around in the othersshoes.
Therefore, from what I understand truth as, truth cannot be objective,but merely both objective and subjective.Does human life have a meaning? If so, what is thatmeaning? Arguably one of the greatest psychological assets ofthe religious tradition is to provide exactly this grand idea, with theapparent intention of assuring us that our lives do indeed have meaning. These questionscan be given more of an understanding through religion and the big questions oflife can be answered through different teachings of religion. As this quote by Wittgenstein, TractatusLogico-Philosophicus mentions “Wefeel that even when allpossible scientificquestions have been answered, the problems of life remain completely untouched.Of course there are then no questions left, and this itself is the answer… Thesolution of the problem of life is seen in the vanishing of the problem. (Isnot this the reason why those who have found after a long period of doubt thatthe meaning of life became clear to them have been unable to say whatconstituted that meaning?)” This quote makes the readers understand that theunanswered questions still are meant to be answered due to the confusion of whythings the way they are and has the knowledge to answer the question thatmankind has.
