Recent posts on “truth”

Today I want to give an overview of what I have been pointing to in recent posts. That is to say, I want to put them in perspective.

Truth is important. If you think I have been arguing against the idea of truth, then you have misunderstood my intentions. When I read various arguments, I see many misconceptions about truth. I have been attempting to clear up those misconceptions.

Why and how?

I have been studying human cognition. And one of the things that we humans do, is make assessments of truth. In order to understand cognition, we need to understand how we make those decisions.

My approach has been to attempt understand human behavior in how we use “true”.

Truth is a human artifact

Perhaps the most common misconception is the idea that truth is human independent. We see this, for example, when people talk of “the way the world is” rather than “the way that we see the world” or “the way that the world is to us”. When they talk of “the way the world is,” they typically are talking of true statements that can be made about the world and they are taking it that this is human independent.