[The Phantom]

Truth = Utter silence. Talking/thinking ruins clarity.



Therefore I'm going to take a vow of silence!

[touched]

Truth is one. Viewpoints are subjective. Not every opinion is truth. We should keep our eyes open lest we become indoctrinated by mere opinions.

When I made my initial post it was with the thought that intps tend to have rather idiosyncratic, original and sometimes out-of-touch-with-reality views. We tend to get caught up in our insecurity & paranoia cuz we visualize all the 'possibilities', however realistically impossible they are. So I was trying to say that given this disposition that many of us seem to have, it seems ironic that we're called the seekers of knowledge or truth etc. Though you could say that it is this very awareness of all the possibilities of life, real and imagined, that let us break out of false but socially established beliefs to see what really is. Two sides to a coin.

When I talked of there arguably being 'no ultimate truth', I was referring more to areas like ethics/aesthetics, where sometimes opinion and truth seem to be one and the same. I suppose you could develop a hierachy to determine which views are more truthful than others. Like by using 'Harming people is bad' as the criterion, you can devise an entire system of ethics. Ethical truth then becomes the extent to which something meets the criterion. But on a philosophical level it would be hard to justify the normative statement of 'harming people is bad'.

& even in science you can have subjectivity. My teacher once told us something about how difficult it is to interpret data. There are a million different ways to interpret the same data, and how we do so is affected by previous theories, preconceived assumptions, confirmation bias, etc. I suppose you're saying that though there are a million viewpoints, it doesn't mean all these million viewpoints are true. And I totally agree with that. Thing is, how do we know what an 'ultimate truth' (transcending mere opinion) really is if we only ever perceive the world through our subjective viewpoints? If we can't quite escape being affected by our own biases etc.? of course though, all this is philosophical musing and not really relevant to how science actually works.

[yesiknowbut]

You need to stand far enough away or right in the middle: reality is holographic......or at least if truth exists it would be.

I'm not sure it matters that science or the universe is viewed subjectively. A million subjective viewpoints is a way of getting at a comprehensive picture, provided they are taken all together. Thus you need everybody's subjective interpretation of the truth to build the real picture, you can't just do it with one.

[AirMarionette]

^ You've only just recognized these things?

a few more perhaps...

'Explosives'

Mushrooms, the atom bomb, jellyfish, A tree,

They're compiled annotations; some old, some new. I get comments from people, "Oh, wow, I never noticed that!" on things I realize on a daily basis. Depends on an individual's perspective; the idea of ecumenical interconnection is not paramount to everyone.

Also 'explosives': plants, flowers, an umbrella.

I love this!

If intps are seekers of the truth, then why are we so damned subjective in our view of the world? Is it because truth itself is subjective and there are many different versions of it? So then an intp seeks not to discover THE truth (which arguably doesn't even exist), but merely his/her own interpretation of it?

A dendrite looks like a tree's branches. That's an interpretation. Now, it's called "dendrite" out of root word "dendron" which means "tree". That is a fact. Connect both and you have a reasonable analogy. Crystals experience "dendritic growth," because they branch in a "treelike" fashion.

Ti is a right-brained function, meaning it is perceptual, tentatively creative and, coupled with Ne, highly cerebral. Once you observe a pattern, it becomes part of a larger, logical system. You may choose to make something greater out of that observation, maybe turn it into a story, maybe go scream it off the top of a hill, maybe research it to find out how and why it works, or if it's actually true.

If I notice that the wheels on a bus are spinning as its motor is spinning as the Earth is rotating and orbiting around the Sun, that's a valuable, qualitative observation about the external world that is not subjective or personable. I'd call a "subjective truth" a belief - something that is certain to oneself, but not necessarily the world.

The famous INTP sight of an "elegant idea" could be based on creativity - a fountain of ideas and imaginative weaving - just as it could be based on logical deduction - if this, then that - or an integration of both.

[SomeWeirdGuy]

I think this is off topic, but I had to record this.

I was outside today for lunch break (recess as some may call it) and started randomly stepping in the thick mud by some puddles, trying to think of an equation (in my mind of course) to explain the mud moving away from where my foot steps. I got halfway through when I caught myself. I thought "What the **** am I even doing?"

Kind of weird isn't it?

[AirMarionette]

That's exactly what this thread was intended for, SWG. :D

[yesiknowbut]

Damn. Now I am all over Archimedes' principle and the viscosity of mud.......

[touched]

If I notice that the wheels on a bus are spinning as its motor is spinning as the Earth is rotating and orbiting around the Sun, that's a valuable, qualitative observation about the external world that is not subjective or personable. I'd call a "subjective truth" a belief - something that is certain to oneself, but not necessarily the world.

The famous INTP sight of an "elegant idea" could be based on creativity - a fountain of ideas and imaginative weaving - just as it could be based on logical deduction - if this, then that - or an integration of both.

I think I get what you mean. Subjectivity =/= detachment from reality. The Ti-Ne thought process is highly imaginative and unique to ourselves, but we do manage to arrive at final truths/facts with it. Thus a subjective process - one that involves e.g. identifying overarching patterns and similarities no one else would think to notice - leads to a final objective conclusion, so to speak. Like many different roads leading to a single, common destination. At least, where the world of concrete facts / mathematical logic is concerned -- areas where there are objective conclusions to begin with. Am I getting it right?

anyway, another random, somewhat unshaped one: Buddha was supposedly enneagram type 5. From my limited understanding of Buddhism, it holds that attachment to worldly possessions causes pain, opens you up to loss, inspires greed and selfishness etc., therefore we should relinquish our attachments in order to attain peace of mind. Doesn't this sound like the type 5 tendency to withdraw oneself? Fives fear having their personal space encroached upon by the outside world, just as how Buddhists seek to transcend worldly concerns. Fives use withdrawal as a coping mechanism, sort of similar to how Buddhists minimize their worries by (mentally or otherwise) relinquishing attachment.

[rappf]

Huh... So I was thinking about this...

In Reality:

(you = subject) AND (you = object)

Given multiple perspectives, this is possible—being a subject and an object takes place simultaneously. ("OR" would be inaccurate, as one doesn't "switch" on and off being an subject/object—because that would suggest that only one perspective can "run" at a time.) Yet,

In Definition:

(objectivity ≠ subjectivity)

Language has made 'object' and 'subject' contrary, and thus (you = subject) AND (you = object) is rendered "false" by definition. And how is this handled? Funny—rather than changing the nature of the definition—the, UH, man-made part—the reality of (you = subject) AND (you = object) is just dubbed a dialectic.

...what?

...That made me want to toy with the idea of

(objectivity = subjectivity)

...but that didn't sit with me quite well; they might not be opposites, but they're certainly not the same. So I starting thinking about "what exactly is 'objectivity' and 'objective truth'?"

And this popped up:

An "objective truth" is a "subjective truth" that most people agree about. Like that non-living thing with legs and a flat surface? Most of us agree that's a "table." The distance spanned by around 20 telephone poles (hazarding a guess)? A large amount of people agreed that's a "mile," and a large amount of people agreed that's whatever number "kilometers." And then those two camps of people got together and agreed that a "mile" is "whatever number kilometers." This is a so-called "objective truth" or "fact," because a helluva lot of people agree. "The earth is round" only became an "objective truth" when people started to agree with whatever-physicist/philosopher's "subjective truth." (What is "round" anyway? What is "the earth"?)

To sum up that hunk o' bull, [the/an] "objective truth system," I believe, is merely a collection of consistent [and/but] "subjective truths," [and/or] a rejection of inconsistent "subjective truths." (And then, the determination of "consistency" in "objective truth" is ALSO subjective/collective-subjective, LOL.)

Aside: ...I really don't think there's such a thing as "raw information" or "pure information." Before something can become ["classified as"] "information" at all, it has to pass through someone's perception—someone's unique subjective-truth system, founded on un-replicable genetics, thoughts, experiences, environment... Even from a first-hand source, there's already a huge amount of bias or "taint."

To theorize, the so-called "ultimate truth" would be the intersection point—an "objective" or "collective-subjective" truth that carries "true" to the dead, the living, whatever race, sex, blah, yada, yada—of all the perspectives, which are, well, reasonably infinite in diversity. Either that, or the "ultimate truth" is the entirety of all the perspectives in the world/universe/whatever, whether they're consistent or not.

(If so, humans won't be able to touch it, because THEIR BRAINS JUST CAN'T HACK IT—that amount of inconsistency, that amount of SHEER VARIANCE. Really, guys—infinity is such a horridly frightening concept, and we can only stomach it by making it smaller: grouping things, giving things "names"—hell, the idea of infinity is a little more palatable if it looks like a sideways eight—and thus creating our own paradoxes when the rigidity of definition, of standardized meaning and collective subjective "truth" creates "inclusion" and "exclusion.")

...So rather than

(objectivity ≠ subjectivity) or
(objectivity = subjectivity),

(pure objectivity = subjectivity 1 + subjectivity 2 + subjectivity' 3 ... subjectivity ∞) and
(relative objectivity = subjectivity 1 + subjectivity 2 + subjectivity 3 ... subjectivity any-#-but-∞) or
(being "objective" ≈ "collective-subjective") 'Think about what it would feel like to be in that person's shoes~!'

...In other words, I think the closest we can get to an "ultimate" or "objective truth" is just a big fuckin' mass of relatively consistent subjectivity.

Fssshit, "I'm" "tired." I'm gonna "go" "sleep" "soon."

[touched]

To theorize, the so-called "ultimate truth" would be the intersection point—an "objective" or "collective-subjective" truth that carries "true" to the dead, the living, whatever race, sex, blah, yada, yada—of all the perspectives, which are, well, reasonably infinite in diversity. Either that, or the "ultimate truth" is the entirety of all the perspectives in the world/universe/whatever, whether they're consistent or not.

I like that