Real Talk!

There are a variety of views as to what constitutes truth; how to define and identify truth; upon the roles that revealed or acquired information have in truth; and whether truth is subjective, relative, objective, or absolute. In fact, my personal research has uncovered at least a half dozen “theories” of truth.

Now, then, the theories come from many different angles, as well. Some attempt to quantify truth mathematically and others are more philosophical in nature. Existentialists suggest that people create the meanings of their own lives. Rationalists seek “reason” through deduction and intellect to interpret things. Empiricism relies on the observed and recorded results of carefully engineered experiments. Idealism suggests that the existence of anything depends upon the mind of those who perceive them, or don’t perceive and that reality is composed of minds and states of mind.

Egad!

Wikipedia lists the following theories of truth:

·Consensus theory of truth ·Correspondence theory of truth
·Deflationary theory of truth · Epistemic theories of truth
·Indefinability theory of truth ·Pragmatic theory of truth
·Redundancy theory of truth ·Semantic theory of truth

Sheesh how many versions of the truth are there?

From my own experience; I do know that pretty well everyone has a different way of interpreting and differentiating between truth and a falsehood… and we all have our own way of defining truth, too.

It’s easy to understand why we might sometimes disagree about what is true and what isn’t. I mean, if we are all speaking different languages when it comes to what constitutes “truth” then, how likely are we to agree?

A lot of definitions of truth seem to revolve around the word “reality”. Then, the problem is that the definition of reality often encompasses the word true or truth. Hmmmm.

I’ve come to accept that each of us has their own sense of reality and it’s our personal life experience that affects how things appear to us.

In my high school law class one day, the teacher had two people come, unexpectedly, running and screaming through the door, around the room a little and then back out. We were instructed to immediately stop and write down exactly what had just happened.

Well, I have to tell you that not one student described the “actors” the same way and nobody had the same story, not even that close. It was a very telling exercise.

It can be unnerving how sure you are that something is true and only later, discover that you were way off target. The truth sometimes changes, with additional knowledge. So really, isn’t truth a just “feeling” that you have, based on the information available and past experience- throw in a healthy dash of personal interpretation based on your intuition of the occurrence?

Amazing how changes in your life will always be proportionate to your knowledge. The same could be said about how we interpret the truth.

I do believe that there is a huge difference between truth and honesty. Thank heavens!

Oh, and wait a minute.

I recently read: “Life is whatever you choose to remember”.

I think that sounds more like it.