[Panther]

Originally Posted by Asurai

Wait. You were never taught the difference between an opinion and a fact? Holy fuck, our schools are worse than even I thought.

I used a more lighthearted example than the others were giving to break the monotony. I could have pointed out how suicide bombers know they're going to heaven to kick it with their god when they do what they do, but everyone else thinks that they're the soul of evil; but I would rather attempt to keep it semi-lighthearted.

Truth is not subject to perception.

Everything that a human being experiences is. If we could see a situation from every possible angle, and know every intimate detail of everything that happened to us and around us, our heads would explode before we learned how to sit up on our own.

And you're wrong. Finding a "collective truth" is so difficult because people often mistake what they see. Regardless of who knows or doesn't know it, and regardless of how horrendously or slightly wrong people may be about a particular event, the fact remains that that event happened as it happened.

Yes, but what is taken as truth is the misperceptions and various other observational shortcomings. We can never know the absolout truth of any situation, ever, even if we witness it ourselves.

Example: people give incorrect testimony during a trial, and a person is convicted on that evidence. Later, it becomes learned that they were incorrect about what they saw, and that the convict was actually innocent. Would you argue that because they thought that they perceived him commiting the crime, their brainwaves actually altered reality so that he became guilty when they (mistakenly) perceived him to be guilty? That he did commit the crime in the past when they thought in the present that he had commited the crime?

What that person said and believed was the truth to them. No, the events did not alter, but what they know as true was what they testified. All we know as human beings is what we percieve. That is the ony truth we ever have.

There is one reality, one truth, and how a person perceives it is irrelevant.

What good does that truth do then? Yes, events happenthe same for everyone, but that doesn't matter, because not everyone perceives them to happen the same way.

The only alternative is: the law of identity is invalid; the different people perceived events which, although located in the same time and space, was different; and the different people exist in alternate dimensions from this one, while remaining able to communicate with and perceive each other. Each of these violates a fundamental rule of science.

No, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that truth to you is not nessisarily truth to me, regardless of what actually happened. Say you're joking around with Tstone, and call him a name. The truth that you have is that you're joking around. The truth that I have might be that you're being an ass. The event doesn't change, but our personal ideas of truth are wildly different. While you have a better grasp of the actual event than I do, being able to see more angles than me, you still don't know the whole truth, because you can't see from the eyes of all the people who read this hypothetical post (Note: I am not in anyway sayign tha you wouild ever call Tstone, or anyone else, a rude name. I just needed an example). All that we have is our own personal truths based on what we know, which is based on what we perceive.

Our ideas of truth are based on our perceptions.