Blurts & Spasms

In Response to Quora Question: "Can anybody provide a non-recursive definition of "truth?" If not, does that mean truth is nonsensical?"

Many humble, thoughtful and insightful folks have taken a crack at this question over the centuries and come up empty-handed, so you may be in good company there.

My take is that you can approach truth from any one of the positions below, and, given the context and desired outcome, one or more may have utility for you. Will they provide some escape from a recursive or self-referential trap? Perhaps. Or perhaps not. I suppose you'll just have to try them out and see for yourself.

1) Functional, pragmatic, empirical "truths" can be operationalized so that no matter how often those operations are repeated, and (almost) no matter what perspective an observer of those operations maintains, the outcomes remain consistent. In other words, they can be tested and verified by (almost) anyone.

2) Intersubjective "truths" are those that are actively or tacitly emerge within a collective as the shared thought field of that collective - its operational beliefs - and thus the quality and veracity of those truths will depend on the quality of evaluative discernment and breadth of shared experience the members of that collective possess. This can be an extremely useful concept in plotting an evolving course for "truth."

3) Integral "truths" are observations, conditions, projections, propositions and so forth that agree with a constantly expanding noosphere of all-inclusive, multidimensional information. And when I say "agree" what I really mean is that they resolve the multidialectical tensions of all perspectives into a virtual trajectory where the greatest agreement among the greatest number has the greatest probability.

4) Intuitive "truths" include a felt sense of knowing, without understanding how we know. It is sad that these are so often excluded from our map to "truth," since they offer great utility, especially in combination with the other approaches here.

5) Mystical truths, which a number of the other comments have touched upon, are the result of disciplined practices that allow us to encounter highly abstracted principles that - although they may be ineffable - override and transcend all other experiences of "truth." They simply are, and their "rightness," no matter how difficult or contradictory to the truths encountered in our other modes of consciousness, is inescapable.

Now...with all this said, there remains the inherent fallibility of the human mind and its functions - our perceptive and reasoning capacities are rather flawed in this regard. Which means, I think, that we should approach questions like "what is truth?" with both great courage and persisting doubt.

I hope this was helpful.