A philosophical paradox–Are there truths?

James, when he took his turn as the weekly editor, assigned everyone the task of writing to the theme Philosophy. Now, it’s his turn to weigh in.

By James Zheng

Generally, during our everyday life, the following questions of “really?” or “is that true?” appear in a usual conversation in response to crazy facts. People always  respond to those questions with something like, “I just know…,” or “Yeah, because I heard it from….” When you ask these questions, you normally accept the ideas given by others or online sources. But, should you believe these ideas? Are they true?

Regarding philosophy, some people say that the nature of philosophy is making a simple fact sound ridiculously complex. I would not disagree with that because philosophical questions make things sound entirely different and new. In my mind, philosophy is a way of comprehending our lives better and extracting the essence of everything.

But, as the study and discussion around philosophy develops, more questions arrive that are nearly impossible to answer. “Are there truths?” is one of these questions. Well, what is a truth? Going by the explanation from Google, truth is “the quality or state of being true.” Before going into this too deeply, there is one important factor I must mention called common knowledge. This type of knowledge is that of the majority and can be anything. Common knowledge can be things like humans need oxygen to be alive or Washington D.C. is the capital of the United States. Most of what we call common knowledge has also been verified as much as possible, like the idea that there are seven days in a week. We often define that kind of stuff as the truth. But, in philosophy, truth is not just simply a fact authorized by the public or a widespread claim. On the contrary, truth is more of a correct understanding of objective things and their laws. Currently, I think science is probably one of the most essential displays of truth.

In my mind, there must be more truths. Our thought and cognition is constituted by truths. The way that we can think is based on vast amounts of truth. If there is no truth, our ideas and thoughts would collapse because truth is the basis of our thinking. In other words, our thoughts are based on cardinal truths. Here is one example: when you are saying, “I want to eat something,” you are realizing the truth that you are hungry and you have the aspiration to eat, which sounds more like logic, but they are quite similar. Critically speaking, even in the circumstance that I say there is no truth, I have already accepted the truth that “there is no truth.” And, what are some examples of a truth? I would say that nature itself is a representation of truth. Nature represents two of the most reasonable phenomena, time and life. I cannot question the authenticity of these two things. It is not because I do not want to. I simply could not.

Still, in the philosophical region, I ask myself why philosophers bring up incomprehensible questions. It may due to the conflicts they had with their religious beliefs or they feel questionable about the world. Perhaps they were suddenly inspired by something. To not make this post too tedious, I found some interesting responses from a forum in regards to the question “Is there truth?”

• “Absolute truth is incognizable in terms of a human being’s low compelling perspective. At most, human beings can only exclude a handful of things that are absolutely not truths.” – Blogger Liu Yang

• “The truth is that I know that I know nothing at all.” – Blogger Passenger

• “The truth that is said by my girlfriend is the only truth I know.” – Blogger YIIYG

• “Dongfeng Ballistic Missile, Julang Submarine-Launched Missile, Tsar Bomba” – Blogger Xiang Long Deng Dai ing

• “Love” – Blogger I Think You Lost Your Mind

• “Truth is a described fact that is not contrary to objective facts such as the following things:

People will die if they don’t eat.

Nothing lasts forever.

Even the universe will perish. All things existing in the universe will naturally disappear.” – Blogger Ye Ban You Ren

• “The world is always changing, changing is always definite, eternity is relative.” – Blogger Guang Ming Lei Luo

I still insist on my opinion of saying there must be truth. But, this post is not telling you to follow my idea or make some simple things sound really complicated. I personally just think that this question is interesting to explore. Is there such a thing as truth? If you are interested, please show me what you think about this question/paradox in the comments!

Editor: Luke Langlois