I don't want to put words in recons mouth, but much of what is accepted as truth is only truth- because -it is generally accepted as such...Whether because people are polite, or only have other fish to fry, they do not challenge the accepted version of truth....

Let me demand a small bit of honesty from you: If you saw a dog, and you had no concept of a dog, what are you seeing???

The answer, of course, is that I am seeing a dog. But if I hac no concept of a dog, I would not realize that I was seeing a dog. In the 15th century, when people saw whales they were seeing mammals. But since they did not have the concept of mammal, they did not realize they were seeing mammals. Just as if were you to be in the same room as I was, but I did not know who you were, Fido would be in the same room, but I would not know it.

What is puzzling about that?

You are proving my point...The same thing happened with Incas and Aztecs first seeing men on horse back... They could not tell what they were seeing and in such situation the natives could not separate the two, but thought they were seeing some mythiopic form of being.... We see by way of forms... We recognize by way of forms, and we know by way of forms...They are not always correct, and philosophy has the purpose of correcting forms... But the distance between our forms and the objects conceived is only physical...The dog in our mind is the dog in reality...As Schopenhaur said: The world is my idea...No one can say, and also prove whether when seeing a thing if they are seeing the thing, or seeing the thing through the medium of its form... Consider...You not only see what a thing is based upon knowledge of it, but seeing what it is not....The form is like a hologram...If you see a three legged dog you know instantly that it departs from the form, and in no essential fashion...

I agree that some of what is accepted as true is not true at all. It was accepted as true that Earth was flat, and it was not. So what? What is that supposed to imply about truth? What is your point? People often make mistakes.

The earth is not flat???I put stuff on it and the stuff does not fall off... Who says it is not flat???

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What is your point? You implied that I was not seeing a dog if I did not have the concept of a dog. Is that what you are saying now? Or not? Never mind all this stuff about forms. If I haven't the concept of a dog, then I am not seeing that the animal is a dog. But that does not mean that I am not seeing a dog. Never mind forms. Is that right?

You might be seeing something if you saw a dog without the concept of a dog, but you would not be seeing a dog...

Scientists, and the educated people of the world. And, I suppose, even you when you are not philosophizing. What makes you think stuff would fall off if it were round? It is round, and stuff doesn't fall off.

You have just contradicted yourself. How could it be that I was both seeing a dog, and not seeing a dog? That is what you have just written in one sentence (not even two).

Well, it is flat around here, and that is the world I deal with...As a practical matter it is flat, even if, as a fact, it is spherical... In relation to man the mountains are high... To a map maker they are insignificant to the general flatness of the earth...We need to know in what sense reality departs from the world of appearance, and what the practical significance of that difference is....

Scientist need a degree of understanding that transends the obvious because they deal in abstractions which must be more exacting to support conclusions...For the rest of us, our level of truth need not be more exact than the conclusions we would draw from truth....

---------- Post added 12-10-2009 at 09:11 AM ----------

B

Forms are the difference between something, and a specific thing...Hamlet was challenged by spectral evidence such as no one today would accept..Was that change accomplished without an understanding of 'Real' things???.The level of our personal knowledge grows as we move from the general, (something), to the specific, (dog)...A form represent a judgement... Each one is a class... We define a dog, and in the process define what a dog is not...

No one can form a concept out of an isolated phenomena...What ever it is or was has to be like one other thing minimum to be identified... The form represents a class, and the class defines the individual...To know a dog you must have a concept of dogs...

Well, I've been saying that truth is based on persuasion in the broad sense of rhetoric rather than in the narrower sense logic. I don't think humans operate by logic. They are emotional mythological status-seeking beings. <-- opinion.

I think when people call themselves logical and they aren't saying much more than that they find their current opinions self-persuasive.

As for logic - well, most of the time we don't consciously use it. But it can be useful in some cases to ensure that we are thinking straight and not contradicting ourselves.

What are things made of? What is a chair minus our concept of it as chair? Is it not the concept that strings the sense-data together? That summons it up in our imagination when it is not present? Have we any access to any sort of meaningful reality without concept? It's a good question.
Every form is a classification, and a definition...As a classification it relates one form to all others...The form is also a form of relationship between people, just as we now relate through language, philosophy, and the internet..

Quote:

And what about the concept of concept itself?

That has changed as far as I can tell, mostly between metaphysical and material...

Bring on the lingustic historicism. How is a concept like concept invented? How is a concept/term like "abstract" invented? I suggest that in the beginning man used tropes, especially metaphors, to create/refer to these concepts.

Concepts are not invented...Every bit of knowledge is a concept... The principal of conservation cannot be taught to children before a certain age, but it is essential to reasoning.... I had to look stupid once trying to puzzle out conservation on one of these forums, though I did not need to be able to consciously express it to use it... Every concept is conserved... We think of conservation as identity, and as we have it from Aristotle, A is A, before after or during a logical operation...Specific gravity uses a certain defined relationship between weight and volume to identify elements...It is because these forms are conserved in relation to each other...Forms as definition would be useless if they were not conserved... No one could write a dictionary... Well, that covers a part of our experience: Physical forms...We can spend our whole lives trying to define life, or justice, or freedom... Apart from being conserved, we would like to conserve these meanings -while others go about defining them as suits them...Our concepts taken together are our culture, they are what we are, what we learn, and what we think with....No one can add anything new to our knowledge without adding to our list of concepts...

Do we not continually debate with words and all too often neglect the study of what words are? I suggest that linguistic philosophy is first philosophy, for philosophy is made of words. And the limits of word are presumably the limits of philosophy.

Fido is addressing the territory that I think is most relevant as far as evidence and truth goes. .

But the truth is created in the first place. That's the problem with the correspondence theory of truth. It presumes direct access to "truth" or "reality." Both of which are mediated. If we all agreed about the truth which statements were supposed correspond with, I doubt we would be arguing here and now.

Of course a person can always convince themselves that they are in touch with this reality, and others or not. Sometimes they convince others and start religions.

1. If the truth is created, then someone must have created the truth that the planet Neptune exists.
2. But for some one to have created the truth that the planet Neptune exists, he must have created the planet Neptune.
3. But no one created the planet Neptune.

4.Therefore, no one created the truth that the planet Neptune exists. (from 2, and 3, by Modus Tollens)

5.Therefore, no one created the truth, (From 1, and 4. By Modus Tollens).

You see, that is how making a case works.

Number 2 is where I think you're wrong. For me, a "truth" is a justified belief. (And this is just one way to use such a vague word.) To create a belief or its justification is not to create a planet.

Also you're terms are seriously under-defined in the first place, from my point of view.

What do we mean by "exist"? .