The Search For Truth Is Futile

: "I want the truth!"
: "You can't handle the truth!"

Who are you going to believe? Cruise or Nicholson?

There is no truth, only usefulness.

Is that true, or just useful?

It is not so much that there is no truth, it is just that there is no valid, rational way of deciding that what what you think is the the truth, is the truth. So, the first statement isn't true, it could be considered useful as a way of thinking about the world.

How are you defining truth, for this to make sense?

Don't define a truth. Act upon what you consider a useful idea. Since we cannot know any truth for sure, Nicholson cannot handle an idea.

Consider this: Science ostensibly has its mission as "the search for Truth". We propose hypotheses, test them, and the truer ones are supposed to win in the end. Yet, someone always seems to come up with a better hypothesis, or at least an improvement to an existing hypothesis. So we eventually accept the new hypothesis as "the Truth". But newer and better hypotheses come along and take the place of older, less "True" hypotheses. In fact, the hypothesis that has been most widely tested is:

: Not a single hypothesis is really "True". - (Including this one?)

So the search for Truth is futile. So what the hell are we doing this all for anyway? Because science is useful!

But:

Science is useful to describe reality. For pragmatism's sake, we decide to call that 'truth', 'fact' or some such. This is vastly different from the usefulness of propaganda, lies, and delusions.

When we say that someone is crushed by the truth, we mean that their delusions have been crushed by facts.

Science is the search for accuracy, not truth. Truth is binary: you either have it or you don't. Accuracy is a sliding scale, and science is the process of developing progressively more accurate descriptions of the world.

Consider other "absolute" type concepts such as infinity. You can never reach it, yet the idea is understandable and definable. Truth is a very useful, however unattainable it may be.

The whole basis of this page seems to be that because we haven't found unquestionable truth, the idea of truth is meaningless. Yet at the same time, there are definitely some things which are unquestionably false, and even the initial author is forced to admit some things are more true or less true than others. This seems to me to contradict the initial statement. It's certain people have been mistaken as to what truth is - Plato and whatnot. But to say that it therefore isn't anything, and to say that looking for it is futile, are extreme stretches.

The "mission" of science is not the search for truth. The scientific method is used to generate more useful models. Truth is irrelevant to science.

Some people say so. Most scientists, however, work with the idea that they are at least making approximations to truth. Why else should some things turn out to be more useful than others?

My experience is that most scientists, especially physicists, don't work with that idea. They strive for better models and leave truth to philosophers.

And yet few scientists will hesitate to tell you that the Newtonian approach to space and time is incorrect, though it is still very useful in most circumstances. I think you are mistaking what some people say about the philosophy of science for what scientists actually work with.

[A hint: The idea that the mission of science is a search for Truth is a UsefulIllusion? for science. It makes people want to be scientists. That's why I dropped out of science in University and switched to the much more pragmatic computer science. I still like learning about science, I just would never want to be a 'scientist'.]

[So do you choose your food without regard to whether it is tasty?]

... even the initial author is forced to admit some things are more true or less true than others. This seems to me to contradict the initial statement.

It only contradicts if you assume I care about the Truth of the initial statement. There is no Truth in exactly the same way that ThereIsNoSpoon. The initial statement is not True or False, not more or less true than any other statement. It is only useful. After I accepted it, I no longer wasted my time on the fruitless search for Truth. To me, that is a very useful thing.

The idea that things can be more or less true contradicts the idea that truth is a meaningless concept, period. In any case, I think it's pretty clear that any discussion of this isn't going to get anywhere. Simply note your ideas are controversial, and it's not useful to assume their truth in trying to persuade people of other things.

Some taoist once said something about the search for truth and it being dangerous to your health. Anyone remember a quote?

Well, an ancient Hebrew wrote "Of making many books there is no end, and much study wearies the body." It shows up in the Bible, in Ecclesiastes 12:12.

But Benjamin Franklin said "The only truth in life is you are born, you live, you do what you can with what you have, you get married, you die and you pay taxes."

That things have a tendency to accelerate towards the nearest large object is far more true than that all people get married and pay taxes.

   "The gods did not reveal, from the beginning, 
    All things to us, but in the course of time 
    Through seeking we may learn and know things better. 
    But as for certain truth, no man has known it, 
    Nor shall he know it, neither of the gods 
    Nor yet of all things of which I speak. 
    For even if by chance he were to utter 
    The final truth, he would himself not know it: 
    For all is but a woven web of guesses."
        Xenophanes (translated by KarlPopper) 
    -- TomAyerst

Plato [MrPlato] is dear to me, but dearer still is truth. -- MrAristotle (attributed to) (384-322 BC), Greek philosopher.

Truth in our ideas means their power to work. -- William James (1842-1910), American philosopher.

Science has a simple faith, which transcends utility. Nearly all men of science, all men of learning for that matter, and men of simple ways too, have it in some form and in some degree. It is the faith that it is the privilege of man to learn to understand, and that this is his mission. If we abandon that mission under stress we shall abandon it forever, for stress will not cease. Knowledge for the sake of understanding, not merely to prevail, that is the essence of our being. None can define its limits, or set its ultimate boundaries. -- VannevarBush (1890-1974), U.S. electrical engineer, physicist. Science Is Not Enough, The Search for Understanding (1967).

The idea that "ThereIsNoTruth?" stems from the concept that DirectPerception is impossible - that everything you perceive (through any sense or combination of senses) is "filtered" through prejudices, preconceptions, biases, and so on.

The fact that it is possible to doubt, that it is possible to lie, that it is possible to wonder, that it is possible to argue or to reason for or against a premise, none of this means that DirectPerception is impossible.

DirectPerception is possible. It is possible to know a thing. It's kind of trendy to assert that you can't be sure it's not all an illusion, but even the illusion is knowable.

If it makes you more comfortable to believe that "nothing is knowable" then I commend you to your chains. I know that knowing is possible, and that it is possible to know truth, and that it is possible to know the difference between what you know and don't know.

-- GarryHamilton

Perceptions aren't just filtered through prejudices, preconceptions and biases. They are filtered through nerve cells, delayed, quantized, re-ordered and processed before you become aware of them. When you think you see a butterfly, you really see is an image that has been delayed by 1/10th of a second, flipped right to left and organized by motion, color and shape recognition systems. You may think you know that knowing is possible, but you can't convince me. -- EricHodges

Agreed. It is possible to know things "enough to use them", but that's entirely different from knowing the complete truth of something. Even these words aren't really knowable, unless you have the complete context in which they were written - including the time, every last little quark in my brain, and the entire universe that might have affected me at the time. Plus there is the paradox that if you did know truth, that knowing would alter the truth and you'd be back to zero again . . . but like I said - it's possible to know something "enough". . .

The above sentence contains a pointless use of the word 'knowable'. -- BrentNewhall

Well, that's the whole point right - what exactly does it mean to "know something". Does it mean you know it completely and utterly, well enough to use, or maybe just a little? The search for truth is contingent on knowing what knowing means. . . which leads to a tidy little paradox.

: No, it doesn't. It just means you have to distinguish between different degrees of how well you know something.

The search for truth is futile. Much better is the search for the point where "good enough" kicks in. -- LCT

Most of the above comes down to asking how well our observations reflect reality. The assumption is that there is a meaning for reality beyond what can be observed. If the search for truth is only futile in the sense you can't resolve questions defined to be unresolvable, it's not really futile at all.

So TheSearchForAbsoluteTruthIsFutile?, but TheSearchForSomeTruthIsNotFutile??

GarryHamilton made two claims:

  DirectPerception is possible.
  It is possible to know a thing.

Direct perception is not possible. All perception is mediated by systems outside our conscious awareness and control. The assumption is that reality can be observed. That assumption is false. -- EH

This assertion is flawed; assumes perception is necessarily physical. As this discussion degenerates rapidly into the "physics vs metaphysics" argument, I would propose that we agree to disagree here. -- gh
- If you believe in something paranormal such as ESP, then if I were you, I wouldn't even admit to it in a place filled with engineers like WikiWiki, so saying "let's just agree to disagree" seems too little too late, caution-wise.
Yeah, I get that a lot. Still, I'd rather be thought a crackpot than deny what I know. I know engineers who have traveled the same road I have and who still manage to do engineering despite an understanding that all is not simply physical. Don't worry about me, I have fairly thick skin. -- gh

It isn't an assumption to say that perception is physical. Everything is physical by definition. Physics includes everything, including anything you might consider metaphysical. -- EH

[[If you just mean that you reject the doctrine of duality, that's one thing, but since it's well known that both sides of that issue are fairly popular, it might be good to say so explicitly. But in any case, I don't think I've ever before heard the claim that the physical includes even the metaphysical, could you expand on that? -- dm]]

The folks above are using metaphysics in the sense of "paranormal phenomena", such as ESP. If ESP happens it isn't outside physics, just outside our model of physics. Nothing is outside physics, just like nothing is outside the universe. That's the definition. Physics is what happens, regardless of whether we can model or predict it. And I reject many doctrines of duality. -- EH

[But, to paraphrase, it's a very persistent assumption.]

I'm going to agree that DirectPerception is not possible. It's possible to be in a zen-like state of "very observant", or to make oneself believe there is direct perception, but it's still mediated. DirectPerception is a state-of-mind, a UsefulLie, but it's still interpreted by the medium, and by the assumptions of the observer.

[Absolutely. The non-mystical meaning of DirectPerception is something like "perception that is not warped and clouded by the preconceptions of the logical, symbolic, interpretive, narrative aspects of the mind."]

TriteSayingsComeInPairs has a conflict about this: "To know a thing is to forget its name (Zen saying)" versus "To know a thing is to be able to name it (MrAristotle)"

The assumption there is that one knows a thing when one can see beyond it's symbol, but also that to know a thing is to have abstracted it - and therefore able to name it.

The assumption there is that things can be known. As Hassan i Sabbah said, "Nothing is true. Everything is permitted." - EricHodges

The "there are no absolute truths" cliche is also a paradox. Do you know the search for truth/absolute is futile? Truth is a recursive double-sided paradox.

To know truth, one must know what knowing is, which is unknowable unless already known.
To know there is no truth, one must know truth.

Yes, I know the search for truth is futile. I also know that any action is futile, so the search for truth isn't special in that regard. -- EH

As with the whole FreeWill problem, the very notion of DirectPerception it seems to me involves the idea of a homunculus, my TrueSelf?, inside my head and being unable to directly perceive owing to the curtain of my flesh. I am a materialist, and no dualist. I perceive the world by virtue of being part of it.

Gandhi's way of looking at (and for) Truth:

I meet a man and he says the wind blows to the East. I later meet another man and he says the wind blows to the West. Lo, I have a dilemma! A conflict! Someone is wrong. We must investigate, experiment, and throw away one of the conclusions.

Or the Truth is that one man tells me the wind blows to the East while another tells me the wind blows to the West.

Problem solved.

PhilosophyOfPragmatism, TrueOrFalse?, FalseOrTrue?, EverythingIsRelative