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I recently read William James's " The Meaning of Truth" and "Pragmatism,"
a recurring theme is that truth is purely conceptual. A truth could be "true" in one instance while the next moment it is false.


Is Pragmatism a true philosophical belief? Or is it as Bertrand states, " A simple short-sighted practicalism?"

I recently read William James's " The Meaning of Truth" and "Pragmatism,"
a recurring theme is that truth is purely conceptual. A truth could be "true" in one instance while the next moment it is false.

It is an interesting question. Can we ever truly know that? Is it all perspective? Certainly every person has a different set of experiences which help to create the way he or she sees the world. I have thought about what truth is myself, sometimes. Some people are so convinced that they have truth. Something to ponder....

Some questions are hard to answer just because their terms are vague enough to elicit a wide variety of responses. Another word for such questions might be 'poor.' Truth is the word at issue, and it could be best to throw the word out as causing more trouble than it's worth. Keats tried to answer it thus: 'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,' and created an industry of interpretation lasting 200 years.

I see truth as an ultimate ideal. For myself, at least. A couple interesting side effects of continually searching for it is that you're instilled with a sense of humility, and your beliefs are very fluid.

I would say truth is how accurately the information in your head reflects reality. So, truth is only a concept that references this relationship, but the relationship is real. In all things but perhaps mathematics, the information stored in our heads can only be a compressed and rendered version. So we may not ever be able to have absolute truths, but we can come so very close that in some cases that it's not worth discussing. Something that is true in one instance yet false in the next seems to be referencing subjective beliefs. One thing to note is that sometimes philosophers spend years stuck in the 'world of words.' Test your thoughts against reality as often as you can for an anchor, otherwise you might start building epistemic bridges supported by nothing but air.

Interbane wrote:information stored in our heads can only be a compressed and rendered version.

Ouch! Interbane, you make ideas into a building site. How about pre-stressed thought, while you are industriously turning ideas into concrete? Thoughts do not 'compress' information, but do render it by transforming data into language.

Something that is true in one instance yet false in the next seems to be referencing subjective beliefs.

Can you give an example of a statement that is true and false?

epistemic bridges supported by nothing but air.

An 'epistemic bridge' such as the relation between the knower and the known is purely conceptual, so even air is too material a support. Logic is a separate form of intuition from sensation. Epistemic bridges are supported by nothing but logic.

Air is support, but it was a metaphor. If logic is used flawlessly it would serve as good support. I think most of the detachment from reality is in the definitions of words.

RT: "Thoughts do not 'compress' information, but do render it by transforming data into language."

Unless you have an entire elephant in your head, then you must compress whatever information you've rendered via the senses about an elephant to understand it.

It is all too easy to construct paradox when discussing the nature of truth in such a manner. It seems altogether correct to say that truth is outside of our conscious awareness of it yet a natural compulsion is also to maintain relevance by conceding that our notion of truth is highly dependent on personal conception, or imagination if you will. These two mutually exclusive statements are seeming correct within their respective context.

The very nature of objects seen as true has changed over time, theories are seemingly true then disproven, ultimately it should be recognized, or conceded (depending on the strength of your attitudes), that science has built our modern world. Science as new thinking about objects has transformed our doing.

But there are other important subjects outside of science. The central contribution of literature to truth continually confronts us with a shared experience of life, a shared humanity that has historically laid the bases for social and political reform. People are compelled to continually try bridging the gap that exists between academic thought and real outcomes as compared against or analyzed using the ideal of truth as both the tool and quality of the subject.

The centrality of science as a provider of truth depends on politics, society, and economics which derive their experiences, their truths if you will, from literature and art. Again the contribution of literature to truth is found in the sharing of human experience as the basis for social and political reform best used for helping the majority.

It could be viewed that the impulse for truth comes from the humanities, while the instruments for truth come from science. An applied form of science suggests that there is a preexisting science to apply. Science as knowledge is obviously systematic and often quantitative. The separation from humanities is in the idiosyncratic, antidemocratic use of definition. Definition defiantly lies at the heart of science, language is crucial to all methods of human communication, however the meaning of the science cannot to be found in definition.

Scientific words which have defensible meanings may be wrong, meaning then is always found in context never outside of it. The world as knowledge is naturally very rich in context and connection where surprising relationships result in discoveries by discerning previously overlooked patterns. These new meanings equal power and advanced capabilities for those who possess this specialized understanding.

Langauge is symbolism. An utterance brings to mind the object being described in an approximation of it's totality.

This is a form of compression. When i say "Red Car" an image comes to mind. I transfered a concept from my mind to yours with very little data. You picture a car with wheels, engine, steering column, gas and brake pedals, wind shields and everything else.

Language is symbolism. An utterance brings to mind the object being described in an approximation of it's totality.

Yes. There are some literary theorists who believe that there can be no truth at all because of that fact. Dwill said that some "terms are vague enough to elicit a wide variety of responses". Could it be that all language has that problem? Can we ever know truth beyond our own perspective? We do not even fully know ourselves. Things like trauma and transference can bring responses that we never expected.

Interbane wrote:Unless you have an entire elephant in your head, then you must compress whatever information you've rendered via the senses about an elephant to understand it.

The premise of the suggestion that ideas are compressions of things is a wrong idea about the nature of information. Information is purely conceptual and does not have physical dimension. How big are words? The information about an elephant is not the size of an elephant, as it is measured in words rather than in elephants. The information in a computer or a brain or a microfiche is ideas, not entities. If we compressed the bible to font of 0.0001 points it would still have the same information as the Gutenberg. The information is not compressed, only the medium for it. My jibe about concrete sought to show that material analogies for concepts ignore the inherent difference between spirit and matter. Taking this further, we can say that the idea of God is purely informational, and does not have physical dimension. A lot of debate about atheism assumes the false premise that only physical entities exist, ignoring the symbolic logic of information as a qualitatively different form of existence.