Let’s just look at this for a second. Just one second. Try to remember the last time you sat on a rock, a stone. You were sitting on a stone. That is true, you don’t need theories to know that is true or blablabla, pretty simple, you know it is true. You were sitting on a rock. Does the truth of this apply only to my having said it? Before I said it, was there no truth value to you having sat on a rock? The fact of it, rather than the sentence?
See what I mean? It puts you in a ridiculous position.
Thanks to all for the input. I only post occasionally and other than getting philosophy from the internet (SEP & other philosophy sites and whatever papers I can find without signing up for some membership) operate in a vacuum. It’s good to hear the opinions of those who actually know philosophy from time to time. Have to say Uwrongx1000’s answer comes closest to what I’m looking for…never looked at truth that way (beginning, middle, end depending on goal of the organization studying it). Makes sense. Of the options property, relation, etc. discussion has more or less confirmed my suspicion that truth doesn’t fit neatly into a tidy category.
A last shot here. I do not think one has to go to philosophy even, to find truth.
Although it would be useful to start teaching philosophy in junior high, we have to apply our individual takes on what truth is, because lets face it, the decisions we make in our teen age years that need truth to be considered, will pre-empt in most cases the university years, if we ever get there.
We must pick and choose the truthful ways of perceiving our reality at that time, and try to project that toward the ends we see as appropriate for ourselves.
Some if it comes from parent’s teaching, some from our friends and neighbors, our early work environment, some from basic intuitive gut level feelings.
Lastly , we suddenly realize the need for change, irrespective what the truth is, of acting more in behalf of others then ourselves, that is the most profound rebelation ever. and it is really not a contingency at all, it dictates categorical necessity. When it is not considered in this way, the other, for whom usually, one feels and owes compelling responsibility , may be hurt, and by that token it becomes a debt, a sin of omission which comes back and hurts the owner of the debt.
The problem with teaching philosophy to children that young is that most children are born with, and to a great extent still possess at that age, an innate understanding of the difference between real life and make-believe. They are in no position to accept metphysics as anything but nonsense while that is the case.
9 th graders are no longer considered children Faust, however there are some deprived and late developing children who might fit that category.
Nonsense, the various modes of it, may be even at early age reflect Wittgenstein’s musings upon philosophy that makes sense. In terms of cognitive. and perceptive conflation. Child psychologists say actual depth preception occurs at the mirror stage. and this sense is somehow a-priori.
Ninth grade is high school. And they are still children. But there is another reason. To understand metaphysics (or any philosophy) you have to have a firm grasp of language. You have to know that “literally” means “literally” and that “like” means “like”. Or at least that it means something. There are highschoolers who could get to first base studying philsophy. Betteer that the time is spent learming about checking accounts and credit cards.
Yes but his question was philosophical, and my point is, that the above reasoning points to the question, of why a priori synthetic jugememts possible, is acquired early on.
Our validation through later philosophical study, through self or inatotutional learning, has this unrecognized and debates element , a posteriori.
This leads to some people’s opinion that philosophers are born, not made.
This is the path from epistemology to morality. So you suggest that epistemology is understandable to ninth graders? It was barely understood by Kant. Who was reputedly very smart. And had to be woekn from slumber by the anti-epistemologist. His religion forged by the fire of an atheist.
Simple for me. I’m just not sure about teenagers.
Back to topic, the confusion that the OP has is just this - that therer is an epistemology of truth. That comes from reading the Greats. Who were wrong.
Rather, we speak of true qualities, true relations and true properties -
“Truth” as a concept is not subservient to categorialism, but the root of it.
In other words:
The conception “truth”, which has the natural antipode “falsity”, is the first and foremost categorical distinction used to enable abstract thinking.
To align with what Faust said,
“Truth” is not a thing in a category, rather it is the category containing all statements which are true. This category is not part of itself, as the category has no syntactic structure, forms no statement.
“This category is not part of itself, as the category has no syntactic structure, forms no statement.”
This was always the great nuisance for Idealist philosophers who sought to demonstrate how the mother-category of descriptive statements, “truth”, amounts, by some internal machinations, to a comprehensive prescriptive statement. Aristotle and Kant sought to discern such machinations and failed, Nietzsche rather sought to devise a true statement that validates all true and all false statements. He succeeded.
What Pedro indicates, the sitting on a rock, I don’t use “truth” here but “reality”.
Truth is a value, most philosophers have estimated it as the highest value, Nietzsche did the incredible thing of questioning this rank, yet in doing so he merely liberated truth from being only the highest value.
The decision to separate memories of experiences in different categories sets a standard-value which is beyond the categories and their permutations.
Iconoclasm, fever, dreamstates are all meant to blow up the containers and go back to a precategorical identification.
If something is “true” something else must be “false”, and this is a strain on the nervous system, as it is only this system which keeps these things separated.
Hence the question after the value of truth. Let only useful truths rise! But this is precisely what science is.
However, useful for what?
It was long thought that scientific truth is usefulness-in-itself. And maybe it is.
But then: useful to whom?
In physiological terms, Truth is prescriptive. Any suggestion of the distinction true vs false sets in motion a teleological process aimed at clarification of some particular issue. It isolates consciousness from its fullness and sets part of it on a course to make some changes in itself.
Yeah, so once you start by confounding truth and reality, you’re on this slippery slope that Hegel’s brains slid off. If this is not a cautionary tale, I don’t know what is…