VoF asked:

How do we determine what we believe to be true?

If we aren't able to coin a definite definition for what is truth then how is one to answer such a
question as it would be based on mere speculation.

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I hope you will pardon me for not regurgitating 5000 years worth of speculation on "what is truth?"
and how one might frame its definition so as to have an unassailable position on it. Instead, what I
want to suggest to you as a precept is this: It is part of the bargain engaged in by life forms — and I
mean all life forms from bacteria upwards — that the rules of existence may be rewritten. In the
material realm, truth is an easy concept: yeah or nay; there or not there etc. It is the clear-cut answer
to an unambiguous question. It is only natural, I suppose, that we humans would wish for this kind of
security, but it is purchased at a price — ultimately nothing less than giving up life for it. So the
bargain of which I spoke is this: that we enjoy the flexibility, plasticity, adaptivityof multi-choice
answers to all the question posed by the universe; and that we ask our questions in the same spirit.
And this way we retain options for development,for evolution,for growth— in short, for all the
wonderful things that make forms of life different from forms of nonlife; but this inevitably means that
the concept of truth must change as we ascend the spiral towards greater spiritual and intellectual
awareness. More knowledge means a greater range of truths; and if we continue to explore the
realms of being in the same manner as we have done in the past, we will discover not just new facts,
new sciences, but new truths as well.

In short, the whole notion of just one truth reflects (with apologies to many a great thinker) a view of
life that is a bit simplistic. And I don't think this is either a limitation or an invitation for anyone to aver
that 'therefore' we cannot distinguish truth from falsehood. We humans are complex beings; we can
accommodate the idea of many truths, because in the end there is a term or concept which (as it
were) does embrace them all, although obviously I would class it as a group concept: so let's call it
Truthfulness.If you accept this, then you can see how it also has a single opposite, namely
Falsehood.I won't go into this, but if you think a little about this opposition, you will then find that an
answer of the kind you asked is implicit here: for although there are many truth and many ways of
being truthful, there is only one way of being false.

Jurgen Lawrenz

Sydney

Well, most of the time we don't determine anything by means of procedures that can be spelt out
unless we are involved in science and experiment. In perceptual case, we check again. Sometimes
we ask others.

The logical positivists, early in the century, thought that we could hold that something is true if we can
verify it. This means that statements of value, those of ethics, aesthetics and many other evaluations
cannot be true. On this view, only facts can be true. But facts change. A fact for the philosopher
Hume was an impression, whereas a modern day fact might hold at the unobservable quantum level,
and beyond that there may be phenomena that we cannot verify at all.

Some people, in particular, these days, Bernard Williams, believe that there is an absolute conception
truth, aimed at by physicists, which is free from perspective and a relative truth which is relative to the
capacities of a being and the latter is the most we can achieve. But this doesn't really capture what
we mean by "true" when this is limited by our incapacity to know the absolute. For sure, the meaning
of truth is not "mere speculation". It is only because that we "know" what it means that we can talk
about it and use the concept to distinguish between absolute and relative truth. The concept might not
be definite, but (the Wittgensteinian view) is that to know what a concept means is to be able to use it.
Philosophers have tried to define it in terms of assertibility conditions, verification, correspondence to
states of affairs, or conceptual coherence, but nothing has been particularly conclusive. Lack of
determinacy is a problem with a lot of our concepts and I think it is too much to expect.

And it seems that truth might have different senses. When we talk of sentences being true we are
looking at semantic truth and tend towards a theory of correspondence to facts because of the
connection of sentences to logic through grammar, but the value problem arises, and a problem our
beliefs about fictional sentences. When we look at scientific truth, we may be more concerned with
coherence of a theory within our conceptual scheme.

We seek to justify beliefs in terms of reasons for holding them rather than their truth. But truth is that
towards which we aim.

Rachel Browne

Relativists determine something to be true by reducing it to basic statements. Such a truth exists only
in a specific system of thought.

Absolutists BELIEVE truth to be absolute. They attach the value TRUE to basic statements and
further use the same logic methods as relativists. In their eyes there exists only one system. That
comes close to your "definite definition". It is a point of view found in many religions. They all have
their own commandments (basic statements), and in some cases followers are ready to die for it.

There is no big difference between relativists and absolutists, only the first ones realize that they
DEFINED some things to be TRUE, and consequently that there are as many truths as definitions.

Henk Tuten