I think I buy the correspondence theory, but I wish I had a better grip on the notion of 'correspondence to reality.' I suspect that you buy it too, but maybe not.

Anyway, it seems to me that truth is a property of certain representations, in particular, thoughts and sentences. I'm reluctant to say a property of communications since uncommunicated thoughts can be true, as well as sentences uttered into the abyss or inscribed in book that's never opened. You suggest that, in cases such as these, the communication is internal. But communication seems to essentially involve two minds. You can talk to yourself, but I don't think we'd call this communicating with yourself. (Then again, what if Crusoe wrote in his diary 'Saw a footprint today' and read it some time later. Is he communicating with himself? I don't know.)

Anyway, I think that truth is a property that representations (thoughts and sentences) have when they correspond to reality. (Photographs, paintings, and perceptual experiences are representations that may correspond to reality, but for some reason we call them 'accurate,' not 'true.') I certainly agree that whether something represents the world and how it represents the world depends ultimately (in some complicated way) on minds. Sentences represent, but only when they are used by someone to make a statement (i.e. to express a thought). (On second thought, the dependency isn't this tight. Suppose I program a computer to randomly combine words of English. Humans die off, and the computer keeps running. Eventually the computer comes up with 'Napoleon was short.' I'm inclined to think that, even though no one is using this sequence of shapes to express a thought, the result is not only a sentence of English, but a true sentence. Still, the result would not be a sentence if there had never been any minds.) While minds determine whether something is a representation and what it represents, they do not determine whether the representation is true. That is for the world to decide. In other words, minds (in some complicated way) determine that 'Napoleon is short' is a representation and that it represents Napoleon as being short. But whether the representation is true depends only on whether Napoleon was in fact short. If he was, it's true. If he wasn't, it's false. It's not the case that 'thinking makes it so' (or whatever the line is from Hamlet). Nor is it the case that needing, wanting, or desiring makes it so. Desires influence our decisions about what to investigate and, to a lesser extent, our decisions about what to believe. (Although the idea of deciding to believe is dubious. Suppose I offer you one thousand dollars to believe that you are the President of the U.S. You can pretend to be the President, and you can pretend to believe you are the President, but you cannot get yourself to believe you are the President just because you want to believe it.) But they cannot make a belief that Napoleon was tall true. So, Eric, is this our disagreement? Do you think that thinking/desiring that it be so makes it so? (By the way, I should say that the notion of 'correspondence to reality' is utterly mysterious to me. But so is the notion of truth.)

The sentence 'I will raise my arm' is extremely interesting. Here's a puzzle (that I think you're on to). If we try to combine three plausible assumptions, we run into problems. (1) Assume that after I utter this sentence, I am still free to raise or not raise my arm. (2) Assume that every utterance of a (declarative) sentence is either true or false. (3) Assume that the past is unalterable. Suppose first that my utterance is true. It follows that I am no longer free to refuse to raise my arm. Why? If I were to refuse to raise my arm, then I would be changing a fact about the past, namely, the fact that my utterance was true. And the past is unalterable. Now suppose instead that my utterance is false. It follows that I am no longer free to raise my arm. If I were to raise my arm, then I would be changing a fact about the past, namely, the fact that my utterance was false. And the past is unalterable. What gives? (I don't remember Aristotle's solution, but I remember he came up with the puzzle. His sentence was something like 'There will be a battle tomorrow.')

Eric Replies: [Return to Reaction and Comments page] or [Return to Home Page] or [Return to Top of Page]

Yes, I more or less accept the correspondence theory of Truth. However, it is, I think, a mistake to take all the things we pick out from reality as having the same ontological status. You mention Properties, for example. The properties of an object do not have the same ontological status as the object itself. Properties are not real in the sense of "separate entities". They are perceptions. In reality, the properties of objects are not distinct from the observed object. I do not think that sentences have the property of "Truth" in that sense, because truth is an abstraction from reality; an abstraction that we then attempt to communicate. In order to communicate, the "Property" must be made distinct in order to give the communication clarity, but Reality is One. It is made into "properties" and such like, by the nature of human perception and human communication. It is this element of clarification, necessary for the facilitation of communication, which makes all communication, however accurate, not true in the strictest sense - because reality is the truth and language is symbolic of reality.

I think that the argument above particularly applies to communicating with one's self, which can more accurately be described as Thinking. Internal debate I believe to be essential to this process, but I take it to be the only case where the truth process can be generated without a physically separate interlocutor. I was delighted by your examples of the closed book and the call into the abyss. However, I don't think that a truth unknown is a truth. Truth is discovered and disseminated, or it is nothing. It is not a pre-existing thing as a truth, it is simply a pre-existing part of reality. It is not possible to completely remove the human factor from the truth, because truth is our way of capturing a human knowledge of reality. It is a property of the human nature of perception. It is not within the representations, it is within our understanding of the representations. It is within us and our understanding of reality. The same point can be made with regard to your excellent example of the computer generating random sets of words (which again reveals a marvellous facility for appropriate imagery on your part). The computer in question is not generating truth, because truth cannot exist outside of a context of human understanding. No mind to understand, no truth. Before human beings evolved, there was no such thing as truth. After human beings are extinct, there will be no truth. Truth is one of our mental strategies for dealing with the oneness of reality. Thinking, therefore, creates it. However, reality makes it so (remember correspondence). We should not confuse the medium with the message. I cannot make up the truth, I can only discover it and create an appropriate representation for communication using an agreed and understood symbolism.

In the case of the raised arm, all such statements, strictly speaking, can only be promises and not truths. In my opinion, one of the difficult things about the concept of Truth is its power to influence once it is claimed for a statement. In reality, such promises only acquire the status of Truth upon the completion of the act itself. When dealing with human beings, in other words, we are not dealing with a thing without a mind and this complicates matters. When making a truth claim for a human action, chronology becomes crucial. Our awareness of this arises from a shared humanity. Therefore, we are not amazed if the person making the truth claim does not raise his arm, nor are we amazed if he does, because we are all aware that (under the circumstances you have stated) the person in question is free to raise their arm or not. The puzzle set, then, comes about from a mistaken assumption regarding the ontological nature of the Truth. It is assumed that Truth is a pre-existing thing (the truth that "There will be a battle tomorrow" refers to something which exists now). This is the influence of Plato's Forms again. Only Facts are concerned with pre-existing things. Tomorrow has not yet happened, therefore it is not a fact that "A battle will happen tomorrow," and it cannot be a fact until the battle occurs, therefore the statement is a statement of promise, or prediction, which may be fulfilled or may not. All such statements (rooted in and dependant upon human actions) are of the same ilk.

Of course, there is a cultural element to all this. For example, if I am a soothsayer and I cast the runes and claim to see a battle tomorrow, and my hearers all have a firm belief in soothsaying, then my prediction may well come true because of that belief. In other words, those who believe they do not have freedom can, indeed, lose it. The comfort afforded by a belief in control over reality has been paid for by many and many a human life.

Cary Writes: [Return to Reaction and Comments page] or [Return to Home Page] or [Return to Top of Page]

The remarks of yours I'd like to follow up on are the following: (1) Properties are not real in the sense of separate entities, and properties are not distinct from the observed object, (2) Properties are perceptions, and (3) Reality is One. (I'm sorry to be so fastidious, but this is how I like to do philosophy.) I take it that (2) and (3) express your reservations about the existence of properties. But in (1) your target seems to be only certain mistaken pictures of the relationship between objects and properties. So we can bracket your skepticism about properties for the purpose of discussing (1). Here goes. You say (roughly) that properties are not distinct from the object which has them.

Your idea might be that (A) the collection of properties an object 'has' is really identical with the object. For example, this apple just is the properties of being shaped like so, being chemically composed like so, being colored like so, and so on, collected together. If the apple isn't just its properties, then it seems that after we strip away the redness, the sweetness, and the shape and size of the apple, we should be left with the apple (or, better, the thing) itself, shorn of all its properties. And this is difficult to conceive. There is, however, a problem with identifying the apple with its properties. The apple can lose or gain some properties while remaining the same apple. Similarly, I can go bald or acquire a tan without becoming a different person. The collection of properties which, supposedly, I was identical with is now different, but I remain (numerically) the same person.

Instead, your idea might be that (B) the property of, say, being a chair wouldn't exist unless some object had that property. Opposed to this idea is the Platonic picture you mention according to which properties like being a chair or being a sphere reside in heaven and, while objects on earth more or less perfectly have (or, to use some jargon, 'instantiate') those properties, the existence of those properties in no way depends on their being instantiated by objects. On this picture, chairhood would exist even if there were no chairs. Like you, I don't care for this picture.

Finally, your idea might be that (C) the properties of an object cannot exist apart from that very object. (This idea also stands in opposition to the Platonic picture.) I can lose the property of having hair, but then the property of having hair goes out of existence. One consequence of this idea is that no two objects share the very same property. Strictly speaking, it is false to say that you and I have hair. You have hair1 and I have hair2. If I go bald, the property of having hair2 goes out of existence, but
(unless you go bald) the property of having hair1 continues to exist. (Or, for that matter, if I go out of existence, hair2 goes out of existence. But surely my corpse has hair2 (at least for a while)). This is a strange idea. There is something to be said for our having hair in different ways. But this should not mean that we do not both have hair. What would biologists do if there were no such property as being mammalian, only mammalian1, mammalian2, and so on. Or physicists if there were only having mass1, having mass2, etc. There would be nothing for laws of nature to be about.

When you say that properties are perceptions do you mean only properties like being red, being heavy, being sour, and being loud? Or do you mean all properties? I'll assume you mean all and that this idea is connected to your idea that Reality is One. You seem to think that all division of objects into kinds (and perhaps even division of the universe into objects) is in some way artificial or conventional. I have to think about this more. I had drawn up a couple arguments against it, but I don't think they go deep enough. By the way, is this claim supposed to be obvious upon reflection or can you provide an argument for it?

Eric Replies: [Return to Reaction and Comments page] or [Return to Home Page] or [Return to Top of Page]

I think your option (C) is the closest to my own position. Your example of biologists and hair perfectly illustrates one of the important points I would like to make in my argument. In order to gain understanding, things which are (in one sense) all unique (occupying different spaces and/or times) must be treated as if the same. With simple objects this view of reality works well. However, I think it should be remembered that the ontological status of hair is different from the ontological status of a property, such as, say, mass. Hair can be separated physically from the object.

Complex objects are objects only for a limited time. In my opinion, it is more accurate (greater understanding is gained) if we say that the apple is a process within the context of reality. The separation of objects (or event-processes) results in abstracted mental models. The concept of a property is mental and exists as a mental model. If the mental model is accurate, understanding is gained through its application to reality. What I maintain concerning properties is that they cannot be "stripped away" because they are the object as a human experience. Properties are simply mental abstractions from the experience. Objects in the mind are mental models matching the reality; perceived properties are abstractions from the models. Take an example: Mass. Can we say that a particular apple has mass? Yes, we can. Can we have the apple’s mass without the apple? I don’t believe so. Not in reality, not as a separate entity.

Mass, I maintain, is intrinsic. It only becomes a separate thing, a Property, byway of mental abstraction and only exists in human minds as a concept. This does not mean that real objects do not have mass, it simply means that to generate the property of mass (something intrinsic understood as a separate entity) a mind is required to impose the concept of separation upon reality. Without a perceiver there can be no perception (just as I maintained in my earlier email to you when I said that Truth must have a context of human understanding in order to exist). I should also say that this argument does not mean that the concept of mass has no meaning. It has meaning in every human mind which experiences reality, whether it is so defined and labelled and understood as “Mass”, or not. We understand mass before being taught the concept, because our own experience of reality gives us that understanding. What is gained by a definition resulting in a separate entity, is a less fluid entity (reality becomes “fixed” and stable for examination) resulting in an agreed generalisation, a concept with which we can work together towards inter-subjective predictions regarding the behaviour of reality. We shift from a “feeling” which we accept without question, to an “idea” which we can use to objectify the world and so control it through calculation concerning it. This is the argument I have proposed as a solution to the problem of induction. It does not mean that I suggest science changes its methods in line with my argument. My argument is rather directed towards raising awareness. As a metaphysical argument, it cannot be supported by any absolute corporeal evidence. This applies to all metaphysical arguments.

In examining the problem of induction, we might claim that we are examining our own relationship to our own mental creations (events). The justification for our way of dealing with reality is pragmatic. It does, in fact, work. Therefore, it is logical to apply what works. Successful strategies are self-justifying. So, why does it work? It works because we are also a part of reality. We are reality-created (through evolution). Being reality-created beings, we have a grasp of the “direction” of reality. In other words, a temporal/spatial awareness of changes that are one way only. For example, broken cups do not reassemble themselves and fall back up onto the table; large rocks do not fly up into the clouds unaided; aged apples do not unshrivel and jump back onto the tree. This is the “pattern” of reality; which is relative, of course, and relies upon a usual context (normal human beings upon the face of the Earth as we now know it). It is my contention that our brains are devices organised by and for this process as it proceeds within this context. We have, therefore, an innate appreciation of the trends within reality, upon which we can build more sophisticated mental structures, which depend upon the definition of “Events” and “Objects”. The mental ordering of objects and events (causes and effects) is based upon this innate appreciation of the direction of reality, plus inter-subjectivity and introspection.

If we can, therefore, correctly identify something as a cause and something else as its effect, it is because we have an expectation, a feeling, that causes and effects are out there in reality and we can identify them and gain predictive knowledge. We can create a mental model that works, because it corresponds with reality. If something appears to be a cause or an effect, but turns out to be in conflict with our innate appreciation of pattern, we would tend to reject it, or have it tested by others. These innate expectations (arising from the subconscious and expressed through feelings of satisfaction and certainty) could almost be said to operate like a blind person’s white cane. They indicate what is there, they provide a guide. It is a guide that can mislead us, a guide we can apply inappropriately or in the wrong direction, but I contend that such innate expectations are what we are provided with by the evolutionary process, and they are what we instinctively use as the bases of knowledge creation.

Processes do not acquire properties, but it is my contention that reality is a process. It follows that reality does not acquire properties. If the apple becomes wrinkled with age, it is simply revealing the development of the process. However, this does not mean that the concept of properties is not useful and illuminating as regards a human understanding of reality. Just as the logical fiction of measurement is useful and meaningful within a human context, so is the concept of property.

James Haryett writes: [Return to Reaction and Comments page] or [Return to Home Page] or [Return to Top of Page]

I would like to disagree your views about the meaning of 'truth'. In one of your paragraphs you state that "I believe Truth to be a process intimately bound up with human needs, wants and desires. For example, it cannot exist as an entity apart from a human mind". When I hear the word 'truth' to me this word is always a past tense. Truth means to me that there was a course taken in history, which happened in a certain way, at a certain time, for a certain reason. Even if it just happened one minute ago it is now part of history. Now this event is now etched in time it cannot be physically altered in anyway. For example; this morning I ate froot loops for breakfast. There is nothing I can do to change that now (even if I wished I had something healthier) but the only truth in this case is that I had froot loops. I see what you are saying in that if there were no people around to question the truth of an incident there would be no reason to doubt the truth, and that because of this "truth cannot exist as an entity apart from a human mind". But the way that I see it is truth is a constant and there is always truth as long as there is history and time. The only thing human beings can do is distort the truth, which unfortunately is a general practice.

Eric replies: [Return to Reaction and Comments page] or [Return to Home Page] or [Return to Top of Page]

Yes, I think that, strictly speaking, truth is rooted in the past, so far as confirmation and correspondence with the facts is concerned. Something needs to be determined in order for us to confidently express the truth concerning it. However, an important part of that determination is the mental defining of the event as an event, as something separated from the rest of experience. What I mean is, the expression of truth is generated in the Now. For example, you say you had froot loops for breakfast. Very well then. But you are making the statement now, and in making the statement you are generating the truth. Truth, then, is not simply a matter of the past, but also of the present, seeing that, at any particular moment we may select the particular truth we wish to express from the mass of data we have acquired through past experience. Truths which are not mentally defined within a human skull as truths, are not yet truths.

You say that "there is always truth as long as there is history and time" and I completely agree with you. The crucial word here is History. If there were no human beings, there would be no history and therefore no truth. At some stage in the future, there will be no human beings. Therefore the Present is where the truth maintains itself, ontologically speaking. And it exists only in the minds of men and women, for it is the minds of men and women that have the ability to seek it out byway of mental effort. Without minds to think, there cannot be truth, because consciousness is required to apprehend it - and in saying "apprehend" I mean to refer to generation, as well as empirical capture of the original data.

None of this rules out mistaken apprehension, or distortion or anything else, of course. I think that the conditions for truth generation are never ideal, seeing as it is human minds which must always do the job! Unfortunately, only human beings can communicate truths, unless you believe in god or something else spiritual.

James Haryett writes: [Return to Reaction and Comments page] or [Return to Home Page] or [Return to Top of Page]

Your reply to my theory of 'truth' is very good and I understand everything that you are saying. I truly believe that the meaning of truth has many different meanings to each of every individual on earth. Personally the way I look at the word 'truth' is that it is simply that, just a made up word. As human beings we have come up with formed sounds to communicate real and tangible things around us. In saying this I am categorizing descriptions and drawings as tangible things. If you and I were cavemen and I told you that I saw a dragon (before the word dragon was commonly known) you would not be able to understand what I was talking about unless I verbally described, or drew a picture of the object I was talking about. For me because in reality I saw a crocodile and from that real sighting made up the rest about the wings and fire breath I have distorted the truth. What I mean is the truth was already there, truth being a human word for reality and actuality. Whether I saw the crocodile that day or walked home a different way and missed it completely the croc was there! Therefore truth always exists outside the human mind since it is just a word to describe what is real and factual around us whether we are here to observe it or not. Now obviously what I am describing to you about the croc will not be the truth. Although now that I have made a description either verbally or by drawing pictures for you the next person you tell about the dragon, you will be describing my drawings to them. Therefore you will be telling the truth, the truth is you have seen drawings of a dragon and as long as you are describing my pictures to the next and not saying you saw the dragon yourself you are telling the truth. I did show you drawings and from now on all mentions of this dragon actually are mentions of my drawings, which in reality I did make. I hope this explains my views on truth, which are: it is just another word for what's really either taken place or even not taken place whether observed or not.

Eric replies: [Return to Reaction and Comments page] or [Return to Home Page] or [Return to Top of Page]

Yes, Truth is just a made up word - but then again, so are all words. Just because words are made up, it doesn't follow that they are in some way devalued by that fact. You say that truth has many different meanings for different people? If this were really so, how could we ever agree concerning it? If you mean that people claim truth for many things that they are not really sure of, or that people make claims to certainty in metaphysical and spiritual areas where empirical evidence is lacking, then I can agree with that, certainly. I acknowledge that people want to lay claim to truth, even when dealing with areas where it cannot be known. But a statement which can never be confirmed cannot be a truth, it can only be statement making a claim to truth. I also know, of course, that people lie - even to themselves, sometimes. In spite of all this, I still hold that truth is a universally understood human mental strategy for dealing with an empirical human reality.

After all, why do we all regard the truth as so important? Why do we all lay claim to it? Why do we expect it to empower us, to make us free, to lend moral weight to our arguments? If we are talking about the real meaning of the word Truth - what makes it so precious and desirable - I think that an acceptable meaning can be defined - one that honest and intelligent people would accept. The meaning can be summed up as, an accurate communication concerning a real state of affairs. This involves correspondence with reality and a shared and understood vocabulary. It involves, most crucially, the process of expression, of communication, which in turn presupposes an act of perception. In other words, if nobody sees the crocodile of your example, who is supposed to be perceiving this supposed pre-existing truth? A truth unperceived is without reality. A truth, to be a truth, must be known, it must be discovered, it must be apprehended, it must be in a brain. If nobody knows it, how can it be a truth? We can say the crocodile exists (this is a fact, if an unknown one), but the truth of its existence cannot be known until it is perceived by a human being. The only way around this, is to propose something similar to Plato's forms, or Berkeley's all-seeing god.

James Haryett writes: [Return to Reaction and Comments page] or [Return to Home Page] or [Return to Top of Page]

When I said that people have many different meanings for the word truth what I should have said was that people could perceive the word truth from different angles. For instance when I read your examples of truth when you say, "a statement which can never be confirmed cannot be a truth" or "A truth, to be a truth, must be known, it must be discovered, it must be apprehended, it must be in a brain" these statements mean something different for me. It seems to me that you are not talking about the word truth but are instead talking about the act of seeking the truth. In that sense I agree with you that if there is a question about the truth of a statement the person questioning will either find the truth or a lie. So if this person believes the lie then the truth has not been found hence the real truth does not exist (in the mind of the inquirer anyways). If the receiver of the information believes the truth then the real truth has been found. However my argument is that in order to seek the truth the truth must have existed outside of the mind beforehand in order to be sought after. This in turn means that an event in time, had to have taken place in a certain way in which now cannot be changed only lied about. Now I think that we can agree that a lot of events happen on earth without a conscious mind around for miles to witness it. Therefore truth is a word for definite events whether witnessed or not. Only a 'searching of the truth' would not exist outside of the human mind. So whether questioned or not there is going to be a truth that existed about any situation before evidence of the situation was ever entered as information for the human mind to sort out and work out as fact or fiction.

Eric replies: [Return to Reaction and Comments page] or [Return to Home Page] or [Return to Top of Page]

We create the truth, we invent it, but if it is The Truth, we have not made it up in terms of content and meaning. I mean that, if it is truth, it is not a fiction, because it will correspond with the facts. Yet, still, it has to be created in order to exist at all. Before it is Truth it is no more than a part of reality, indistinguishable from the rest of reality. It doesn't exist as truth until it has been perceived as truth and expressed as truth.

I think that it's very important to distinguish between statements where we wish to make a truth claim and statements which partake of the truth process, because in one way such statements are all the same (they all lay claim to Truth), but in another (confirmable correspondence with reality) they are not. In the latter case, the statement will succeed in transferring truth from one person to another, because correspondence with reality is perceived and understood by the person receiving the truth. In the former case, a claim is made which may or may correspond with reality, but which cannot be checked, perhaps only for now, perhaps permanently.

The impracticality of checking most statements for correspondence with reality means that, in real life, we exercise our judgement as to whether something is true or not. Truth, in practical terms, concerning many everyday statements is not worth disputing, and becomes a matter of belief rather than the strict Truth I've been concentrating on it this exchange of views.

For example, you may say that you had Froot Loops for breakfast, but no one witnessed your breakfast. The context of this act of yours defines for us its importance. If it is simply a truth claim in answer to the question: "I had toast for breakfast today, what did you have?" then any answer you make which is reasonably likely is going to be accepted by the vast majority of reasonable people who know your honest character. After all, what reason could you have to lie about such a petty matter? Note, however, that if a person where to be pressed upon this matter: "What did James have for breakfast, truthfully, now." Then the answerer would be forced to say: "I believe he had Froot Loops". He cannot say that he knows you had Froot Loops. Strictly speaking, because he was not there to witness you at breakfast, he cannot check the correspondence of your claim with reality. This may not matter in the normal course of affairs, but if the person pressing the point happens to be, say, a member of the police force, then we can see how much of what we claim as truth is in fact no more than claims to truth, never to be confirmed, even if accepted as truthful by the vast majority of people we meet, simply on pragmatic grounds.

But we can see from this, that although we use the word Truth in this slack way every day of the week, we still understand the strict Truth by which I define the meaning of the term. It is correspondence with the facts expressed and understood. Before it is expressed and understood a statement cannot even make a truth claim, never mind be the truth. And a part of that understanding must be confirmation of the correspondence with reality. Your statement concerning your breakfast may not stand up in a court of law, unless you can provide witnesses. Your strongest argument would be "What reason would I have to lie about such a trivial thing?" But if a murder were committed at breakfast time by a person identical to you, then suddenly your breakfast (and in particular, the time you ate it) become important matters to be investigated properly. In such a case, the context dictates that we pursue the truth, not simply as a statement from you, but as a correspondence with reality.

Now, your contention is, that in spite of anything anybody says or does, there is a state of affairs in reality such that truth exists in that state of affairs prior to its discovery by anybody. Therefore, you did have Froot Loops for breakfast and that's the truth, even if nobody (including you yourself) ever expresses it. It is my contention that you are mistaking reality for the truth. In one sense, I can agree with this, because all real truth is concerned with reality and reality is the ultimate truth. But we human beings deal with a human reality within Reality. Truth is our human mental strategy for dealing with reality. Unexpressed truths are simply facts. The dragon is a truth claim which cannot correspond with the facts. The crocodile is the Truth, but only after it has been perceived by a human being and then expressed as a truth claim (internally in the witnessing mind, or externally in telling others of it), which in this case corresponds with reality and as such, is true. Truth is a process which takes place between human beings and within human beings. The Facts are another name for reality, regardless of human beings. Yet, even so, the facts cannot exist as facts without being apprehended as facts, therefore I prefer the term Reality to Facts, because Reality merges everything into one, which I regard as more accurate, divorcing the human context more effectively. Without a perceiver, there cannot be a perception. Truths about human reality are discovered by us byway of our long-time evolutionary interaction with reality. We seek pattern because we have been designed by that interaction to do so. But without us to express our findings, our findings do not exist.

If we imagine the universe in the billions of years before the existence of humanity, with its planets rolling in their orbits, on and on for millions upon millions of years, where do you imagine truth to be? Unless you have a god in the picture, or Plato's forms, or some such metaphysical device, you cannot have a perceiver or anything resembling a human perception. Again, imagine after all humanity has had its day and the universe is rolling on again, millions upon millions of years, with no one to witness it. Where has the truth gone? Who knows that you had Froot Loops?

Sorry about that last sentence, but I couldn't resist it.

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