Truth - scientific, historical, personal

simu

The first duty of every person is to the truth - scientific truth, historical truth and personal truth. Do you agree or not?

I think the above is an admirable precept even if it's not always that easy to figure out what truth is!

Playboy

Truth is a philosophical minefield. I think the first duty of every person is to themselves. If everybody took care of themselves and worked on themselves instead of distracting themsleves from their problems then the world would be a much nicer place and we could all hold hands and go look for truth 2gether

Sleepy

Personally I think every person's first duty can be summed up in three words: "do no harm". If every person in the world today lived by this philosophy, there'd be no war, crime, famine, hunger or poverty. It's too much to ask for though... or so it seems.

Dades

I don't understand what's put forward in that statement. What is a "duty to the truth"? Don't tell lies? Don't mislead? Don't misrepresent?

Or is telling people to be themselves - which is a dangerous suggestion. We have laws in place to ensure that people don't do what would be true to them.

Sleepy although no a bad motto to live by, yours is not pro-active enough for me. There'd still be famine if we "did no harm". Still, it would probably help more than just advocating a duty to the truth.

simu

Atheist, I think it's what you have in your first paragraph there that was meant.

Sleepy, your one sounds good in theory but it's not always obvious that harm is being done. Also, some level of harm (think, to the environment, for example) is inevitable if humans are to live.

Playboy

Harm I would think is part of nature and anyways it is a highly subjective and culture specific word.

simu

Playboy wrote:

Harm I would think is part of nature and anyways it is a highly subjective and culture specific word.

Well, every word is culture-specific. But we must muddle on regardless!

It's fair enough to ask humans to consider any harm their actions result in though, imo. They are capable of that and then seeing if the action is still worthwhile.

bonkey

simu wrote:

The first duty of every person is to the truth - scientific truth, historical truth and personal truth. Do you agree or not?

I disagree.

I'd disagree less if the 'and' was changed to an 'or', which would be an implicit recognition that all three types of truth are not the same, and are often mutually exclusive.

jc

Sleepy

The Atheist wrote:

Sleepy although no a bad motto to live by, yours is not pro-active enough for me. There'd still be famine if we "did no harm". Still, it would probably help more than just advocating a duty to the truth.

If everyone lived by the principle, there'd be very little to be proactive about, the exploration our universe maybe but I think human desire would take care of that...

Sorry if I'm hijacking your thread simu...

Dades

The world would be a strange place if everyone spoke the truth.

And as simu adds in the OP - it's figuring out the truth where the problem lies.
Truth is little more than an opinion in many cases.

Imposter

Here's an interesting blog entry i read during the week that's somewhat related to this. I found it interesting. I guess the question here is what is the truth?

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

that was a great episode of star trek, wasn't it simu?

nesf

Mordeth wrote:

that was a great episode of star trek, wasn't it simu?

Star Trek is the source of all modern philosophical thought.

Tar.Aldarion

Mordeth wrote:

that was a great episode of star trek, wasn't it simu?

Foiled!!!!

I mean Shh you!
(poor wesley)



p.p.s.

wesley should be hanged.

Laguna

The Atheist wrote:

Sleepy although no a bad motto to live by, yours is not pro-active enough for me. There'd still be famine if we "did no harm". Still, it would probably help more than just advocating a duty to the truth.

That's not necessarily true about famine though, if we were all to live by the pathos of "do no harm", if one nation were to experience a famine or the onset of one, other nations would provide for them as not to would be doing "harm"...

bonkey

Laguna wrote:

That's not necessarily true about famine though, if we were all to live by the pathos of "do no harm", if one nation were to experience a famine or the onset of one, other nations would provide for them as not to would be doing "harm"...

It depends whether or not you define inaction as doing harm, as opposed to allowing harm to occur.

jc