[quote="The Voice of Time" post_id=138076 time=1369157382 user_id=7289]
Throughout history there have been countless many ways to define truth. The latest and likely most extensively agreed upon is that truth is a correlation between the objective world (also called "reality") and our own. I want to slap this definition.
First of all, the definition overlaps with the word "correct", which means correlation between an ideal of an object and the experience of the same object. What many people forget is that "reality" is also an ideal, because how else could we conceive of it? How can we conceive of reality as independent of the mind if we could not first make it an idea of the mind? So reality is an idea, practically speaking and my objection is to say that "truth" is reflected in correctness when this is only a recent development historically speaking. Instead, correctness should be correctness, and truth should be truth.
So I came up with an idea myself about what truth is, one that tries to encompass all possible meanings of it, and that is that truth is a product of management of the mind. That is, any process of managing of our ideas leading up to a specific state of the mind with specific ideas and those beliefs that accompany those ideas. I also believe that's what it really, at the very abstract level, always has meant, and that every single definition has always been an instantiation of this abstract concept, an instance, so to speak, of a general concept. I'll also explain, that the reason why we find the current circulating definition so attractive (that truth = correlation between reality and contents of mind), is because of the battle we've had to make people seek answers in the sensuous world instead of ideology and religion, a battle which is still fought and finding recurrence every now and then. This however, is only an instance, and to understand how it is only an instance, can also help us understand when truth isn't true, that is, when we think perhaps that we are quite correct, but when our interpretations are hopelessly worthless (like when you interpret an illusion as literal and real, or if you focus wrongly so you don't get the really interesting about any situation), by allowing for multiple instances, we can compare them and figure out which one excels the best at its task, which in my world would be need satisfaction, but for other people might vary between other similar parameters.
Anybody finds this reasonable? Anything objectionable?
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For clarity, i like to use Actuality to refer to that external other, Reality to mean our consensus experience, and truth to apply to individual perspectives on it. But "traditional thoughts on truth" are useless because our understanding continually increases. Tradition is a maintenance of old ways, not perfect, settled knowledge.
Correct seems to be best understood as whether one justification matches another more prevalent one.