The Insidious notion that there is no such thing as truth.

[Beet]

As the mainstream media has been collapsing, the Rupert Murdoch worshippers on the right now claim that there is no such thing as truth, no such thing as bias, that all journalists are hacks, that any assertion that they may have aspired to ethics or professional standards is a naive religion, and the media consists of nothing but a cacophony of text with no particular meaning.

Very well then, if there is no such thing as truth, why do people even dialogue with one another? They have no chance of arriving any closer to the truth. Why talk politics at all? What is the point? Why even believe in things like 'freedom' and 'democracy', in fact, why even care at all about one's country, in our case the United States and its Constitution? What's to prevent us from dissolving into civil war and secession? Nothing! After all, there is no truth, right? If that's the direction the right wants to head down, then so be it; but then they will get a fight on those terms, and it will be a damned good one.

[Vepres]

You know, for the past few months I have just pretend these nuts don't exist

[A18]

Who said this, exactly?

Regardless, "there is no truth" is itself a claim about the truth. Anyone can say such a thing, but only a mad man can believe it.

[Beet]

I don't want this to be a glib dismissal. There are serious questions here. When I raised the idea of unbiased news, I was challenged into a pretty ugly and ad hoc definition of unbiased. And the critics may be right that news was never anything more than pure hackery.

I just wonder though-- are there any standards? The prominence of freedom of speech and freedom of press in democratic political theory has been high for centuries. Is this prominence meant to be a pure balance of powers play-- or is there supposed to be any meaning, any point, to the actual words that are used in this speech?

When two people debate a policy, are they actually supposed to enlighten each other and be able to influence one another on the basis of some shared understanding? If the idea of public dialogue is stripped of all notion of truth, standards, then how is it anything but lies? How does any political conversation people have become anything but lies?

As for "who said this", I recently heard the top paragraph here said by the founder of Newser.com, a news aggregator and Murdoch biographer (update- his name is Michael Wolff), on NPR. True to form, he rudely and repeatedly interrupted the other hosts and callers, practically shouting, and was only gently called on it.

[A18]

Well, truth exists—the average member of "the right" surely does not deny that.

If "unbiased reporting" simply entails a good-faith effort to provide the public with accurate and relevant information, without taking its political implications into account, then it is a perfectly coherent concept. Yet herein lies the problem: A good reporter publishes those things that are both accurate and relevant. But accuracy and relevance can only be determined through the use of human judgment.

What is important is to regularly expose yourself to the arguments of those you disagree with. I am not a fan of John Stuart Mill, but even a broken clock is right twice a day, and this passage is dead-on (emphasis mine):

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[dead0man]

This reminds me of the "science wars".  From wiki

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[Queen Mum Inks.LWC]

I've never understood the whole "There's no such thing as truth" argument - it's just dumb, in my opinion.

[Associate Justice PiT]

This reminds me of the "science wars".  From wiki

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     Postmodernists believe that there is no such thing as Truth, which is different from the notion that there is no such thing as truth. I am not sure that any serious philosopher would argue against the existence of empirical truth.

[dead0man]

     Postmodernists believe that there is no such thing as Truth, which is different from the notion that there is no such thing as truth. I am not sure that any serious philosopher would argue against the existence of empirical truth.

Can you dumb that down a little.

[Scam of God]

     Postmodernists believe that there is no such thing as Truth, which is different from the notion that there is no such thing as truth. I am not sure that any serious philosopher would argue against the existence of empirical truth.

Can you dumb that down a little.

They don't deny that there is a material world beyond their senses. They deny that the mere fact they can sense it gives them any sort of privileged vantage-point to interpret the meaning of that world.

I am inclined to agree with them. I believe that relativism is a prerequisite of a libertarian philosophy.

[Bunwahaha [still dunno why, but well, so be it]]

Well, yes, there might be One Truth, but no one can affirm it. Each one can just deal with his own truth, which can change with the point of view of others but no one can come saying "my truth is The Truth". Thus it opens the door to "there is no truth", which form my point of view is valid as "no one can pretend getting The Truth" (if ever there is one). You can "think" "believe" "be convinced" but you must acknowledged that you can be wrong, even would it be ultimately.

Then, in media, well, you can pretend it, but then you have to come with your arguments about the interpretation/description of such or such fact, and you come with things that seem totally unlikely to most of people, then you'll likely stay alone with your truth. Your stuff might be totally disconnected of the One and Only Truth and people can listen you nevertheless, but humans are not always attracted by accuracy...

Whatever...

And:

the Rupert Murdoch worshippers on the right now claim that there is no such thing as truth, no such thing as bias, that all journalists are hacks, that any assertion that they may have aspired to ethics or professional standards is a naive religion, and the media consists of nothing but a cacophony of text with no particular meaning.

Saying this is claiming for a truth.

And:

If the idea of public dialogue is stripped of all notion of truth, standards, then how is it anything but lies? How does any political conversation people have become anything but lies?

If there is not truth, there is no lies...

[Filuwaúrdjan]

     Postmodernists believe that there is no such thing as Truth, which is different from the notion that there is no such thing as truth. I am not sure that any serious philosopher would argue against the existence of empirical truth.

Can you dumb that down a little.

Not exactly dumbed down, but this remark on the subject (written about sixteen years ago) is probably clearer:

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[k-onmmunist]

Objectively, all truths are a lie.

You make your own truths subjectively.

[jokerman]

    Postmodernists believe that there is no such thing as Truth, which is different from the notion that there is no such thing as truth. I am not sure that any serious philosopher would argue against the existence of empirical truth.

Can you dumb that down a little.

They don't deny that there is a material world beyond their senses. They deny that the mere fact they can sense it gives them any sort of privileged vantage-point to interpret the meaning of that world.

Essentially yes.  In fact the system holds a dichotomy between "fact" and "truth."  A fact is something that happens.  It can be described no other way; it is reality (of course some postmodernists I'm sure even deconstruct the notion of phenomenon as discrete, observable facts [that is to say, they deny even empirical truth]).

Truth on the other hand, as they have it, is based off of facts but can only essentially approximate it.  A truth can be a normative category or a scientific law (religion and science are more dependent upon each other than we might think).  

The basis of Western truth, for example, is causality, and the attempt to understand nature through it.  Of course we could have never proceeded with this without the innate faith in causality born in the Catholic tradition around the year 1000.  God's exists in all "forces" of the universe and thus the universe acts in accord to causality.  Simultaneously thus we see the roots for both Calvinist predestination and Darwin's natural selection.

Alas, no system is perfect, and that is why we have to introduce complete alien metaphysics into our science, such as Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle or the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, neither of which are in any way related to causality.

[Vepres]

Well, there are many things that are, for all practical purposes, truths. It is true that if I dropped a pen it would fall to the ground.

     Postmodernists believe that there is no such thing as Truth, which is different from the notion that there is no such thing as truth. I am not sure that any serious philosopher would argue against the existence of empirical truth.

Can you dumb that down a little.

They don't deny that there is a material world beyond their senses. They deny that the mere fact they can sense it gives them any sort of privileged vantage-point to interpret the meaning of that world.

Uh, why not? There's no reason they shouldn't.

[Scam of God]

Well, there are many things that are, for all practical purposes, truths. It is true that if I dropped a pen it would fall to the ground.

See jokerman's distinction between what is a "fact" and what is a "Truth". To simplify somewhat, a "Truth" is a "fact" that is bent to serve an ideological end. A "Truth" is a centralized State; a "fact" is a decentralized community.

The mere fact that my pen falls to the ground when dropped does not convey on it any significance of moral or emotional value.

[Vepres]

Well, there are many things that are, for all practical purposes, truths. It is true that if I dropped a pen it would fall to the ground.

See jokerman's distinction between what is a "fact" and what is a "Truth". To simplify somewhat, a "Truth" is a "fact" that is bent to serve an ideological end. A "Truth" is a centralized State; a "fact" is a decentralized community.

The mere fact that my pen falls to the ground when dropped does not convey on it any significance of moral or emotional value.

Ah, okay, I see the distinction. Everybody has their own personal truths, and they're all valid.

[muon2]

     Postmodernists believe that there is no such thing as Truth, which is different from the notion that there is no such thing as truth. I am not sure that any serious philosopher would argue against the existence of empirical truth.

Can you dumb that down a little.

Perhaps I can also help with an example. As a graduate student in physics in the early eighties I had a roommate who was a graduate student in the humanities. We often got into lengthy debate about varius matters of politics and life, and rarely could we come to closure. At one point we tried to pin down what we took as fixed versus that which was debatable (I'll try for this example to avoid using the word truth.)

It became clear that as a scientist I saw facts as fixed due to their ability to be measured and opinion to be debatable based on the facts. My friend with a postmodern bent took quite the opposite approach. He saw opinions as personal and fixed by that person, but the facts were often in doubt and therefore debatable.

We each could show clear examples from our own fields as evidence of our worldview, but the very nature of our disciplines put us at odds when we tried to match up our conclusions. Our logical progressions were so fundamentally different that if our conclusions failed to match, we had little basis for a meaningful discussion.

[Хahar 🤔]

     Postmodernists believe that there is no such thing as Truth, which is different from the notion that there is no such thing as truth. I am not sure that any serious philosopher would argue against the existence of empirical truth.

Can you dumb that down a little.

Perhaps I can also help with an example. As a graduate student in physics in the early eighties I had a roommate who was a graduate student in the humanities. We often got into lengthy debate about varius matters of politics and life, and rarely could we come to closure. At one point we tried to pin down what we took as fixed versus that which was debatable (I'll try for this example to avoid using the word truth.)

It became clear that as a scientist I saw facts as fixed due to their ability to be measured and opinion to be debatable based on the facts. My friend with a postmodern bent took quite the opposite approach. He saw opinions as personal and fixed by that person, but the facts were often in doubt and therefore debatable.

We each could show clear examples from our own fields as evidence of our worldview, but the very nature of our disciplines put us at odds when we tried to match up our conclusions. Our logical progressions were so fundamentally different that if our conclusions failed to match, we had little basis for a meaningful discussion.

That's the most meaningful thing I've read all week.

[jokerman]

     Postmodernists believe that there is no such thing as Truth, which is different from the notion that there is no such thing as truth. I am not sure that any serious philosopher would argue against the existence of empirical truth.

Can you dumb that down a little.

Perhaps I can also help with an example. As a graduate student in physics in the early eighties I had a roommate who was a graduate student in the humanities. We often got into lengthy debate about varius matters of politics and life, and rarely could we come to closure. At one point we tried to pin down what we took as fixed versus that which was debatable (I'll try for this example to avoid using the word truth.)

It became clear that as a scientist I saw facts as fixed due to their ability to be measured and opinion to be debatable based on the facts. My friend with a postmodern bent took quite the opposite approach. He saw opinions as personal and fixed by that person, but the facts were often in doubt and therefore debatable.

We each could show clear examples from our own fields as evidence of our worldview, but the very nature of our disciplines put us at odds when we tried to match up our conclusions. Our logical progressions were so fundamentally different that if our conclusions failed to match, we had little basis for a meaningful discussion.

Personally, I'm a pragmatist.  As long as your realm of the natural sciences continues to produce and advance civilization, you win the debate.  That is truth.