Mengapa saya memakai Andorid ?

Mengapa saya memakai Andorid ? Ini pertanyaan yang orang sering tanyakan, dan seperti kita tahu perang penggemmar IOS (Apple) dan Android seru luar biasa di Internet baik dalam ulasan di berbagai Web maupun Forum. Untuk saya pribadi yang tidak pernah berubah adalah IOS hanya dipakai apple, sehingga Apple adalah IOS, IOS adalah operating system yang hanya dipakai oleh apple , kondisi ini ada untungnya ada tidaknya. Produk Apple hingga detik ini pun selalu membuat saya dan banyak membuat orang berdecak kagum karena bentuk dan kualitasnya (perangkat kerasnya), saya pemilik IPOD Classic 5th Gen (2005) dan ITOUCH 3rd Gen (2009), hingga dipenghujung 2012 ini masih berjalan dengan baik dan belum mengalami battery drop. Hingga saat inipun ITOUCH 3rd Gen saya bisa diupdate hingga IOS 6, dari sudut pandang saya sebagai pemakai casual tidak banyak perubahan yang terjadi, kecuali pengelompokan icon app, SIRI ? saya tidak senang pakai voice command, karena aneh menurut saya dan mau diiklan kaya apa juga voice command hingga saat ini belum seperti harapan.Saya juga pernah melakukan jailbreak menginstall app bajakan tentunya, sekarang tidak lagi tentunya, karena ada alasan yang akan saya ceritakan dibawah.

Selain bicara soal perangkat kerasnya, Apple didesain untuk bekerja sesuai dengan pola yg diinginkan, contoh : mau mengcopy lagu ? masukan lagu di library Itunes dulu, baru di sync atau copy ke IPOD, ITOUCH ataupun IPHONE. Masalah Ekosistem, ada 2 hal lagi yang unggul, ITUNES store memang memiliki lebih banyak Apliaksi (App) , dan Appnya lebih berkualitas, ekosistem perangkat penunjang seperti speaker dan lain2 juga lebih banyak. Keunggulan ekosistem pada dasarnya karena Apple/IOS lebih dulu lahir.

Sekarang menjawab pertanyaan Android, perlu dipahami Android adalah OS / Operating system, tidak seperti halnya IOS, perangkat keras android memiliki berbagai macam merek, Android merupakan open source OS yang dimiliki Google dan dikembangkan bersama dengan OHA (Open Handset Alliance, http://www.openhandsetalliance.com ) , OHA terakhir memiliki 84 anggota, terdiri dari pabrik semikonduktor, perangkat lunak, perangkat keras, penyedia jasa jaringan, untuk merek yang dikenal antara lain Samsung, HTC, Sony, LG, hingga merek dari China seperti Huawei, ZTE, INTEL, NVIDIA.

Preferensi saya memakai perangkat keras berbasis Andorid adalah : (saya tidak melakukan Root)

1. Pilihan Harga dan Kualitas, tidak seperti halnya IOS, android memberi banyak pilihan merek perangkat keras, saya dapat bebas memilih sesuai kondisi keuangan saya, masing-masing merek mengembangkan android dengan tambahan fitur, seperti HTC memiliki HTC Sense atau Samsung dengan TouchWiz nya, (Amazon Kindle Fire HD pun memakai android sebagai basis OSnya tetapi sudah dimodifikasi secara mendalam) namun semuanya memiliki benang merah yang sama. Ekosistem perangkat penunjang berkualitas memang lebih sulit karena diversifikasi perangkat, namun versi murahnya jadi lebih banyak. Dengan standar Micro USB dapat dipastikan ekosistem perangkat penunjang akan berkembang pesat, dan untuk yang suka musik beberapa perangkat HTC sudah menunjang perangkat keras Beats (karena mereka punya saham perusahaannya), sehingga buat yg demen bass perangkat headphone atau earphone Beats by Dr Dre tertunjang dengan baik. 

2. Aplikasi gratis dan lebih murah, saya berusaha untuk tidak memakai aplikasi bajakan “sebanyak mungkin” , pelanggaran hak cipta itu pada dasarnya salah, utk smartphone saya masih mampu berkat android. Aplikasi di android lebih banyak gratisnya dibandingkan dengan IOS (bahkan untuk aplikasi yg sama), berdasarkan informasi per Q2 2012 60% aplikasi di Itunes Store (IOS) adalah aplikasi bayar sedangkan di Google Play (Android) hanya 30%. Hal ini dimungkinkan karena bisnis model Google adalah iklan, aplikasi di android banyak yang gratis karena menayangkan iklan, walau beberapa aplikasi yg sama juga menawarkan versi bayar dengan menghapus iklan dan fungsi tambahan, tetapi pilihannya ada pada anda sendiri. Selain banyak yang gratis Aplikasi di android lebih murah , dapat diperiksa aplikasi yg sama (dari developer yg sama dgn nama yg sama, fungsi yg sama) harganya lebih murah di Google Play. Google Play pastinya juga lebih agresif mengadakan promosi harga.

3. Kebebasan “copy & paste” , semua perangkat berbasis android ketika dihubungkan dengan komputer akan terlihat dan beroperasi seperti layaknya USB Flashdisk, mau memasukan file apapun , termasuk musik, film, tinggal “copy & paste”, android memiliki aplikasi yang dapat memutar hampir semua jenis film dan musik yang gratis. Tidak pelu lagi konversi file musik atau film.

4. Dapat dihubungkan dengan alat2 USB, dengan USB OTG (On The Go , dgn harga 30-50rb rupiah) maka USB Flashdisk dapat dibaca lewat file explorer (ada beberapa aplikasi, saya memakai Astro), fungsi nya sama seperti ketika menghubungkannya dengan notebook/PC . USB OTG juga dapat menunjang mouse hingga keyboard (contoh paling praktis memakai unifying Logitech), Hardisk Eksternal juga dapat ditunjang bila memakai USB POWER HUB.

 5. Android dapat menjalankan fungsi yang sama seperti IOS, walau masing2 memiliki perbedaan keunggulan. Fungsi didapatkan dari aplikasi, perlu dipahami Android memulai debutnya di tahun 2010, sehingga dari segi kuantitas kalah (10-15%) dan kualitas aplikasi secara keseluruhan masih dibawah IOS, namun pertanyaannya adalah : Berapa banyak aplikasi yang sebetulnya kita pakai? Biasanya kita akan memakai hanya beberapa puluh aplikasi saja dari pembuat aplikasi yang terkemuka, dan saya bisa pastikan yang ada di IOS juga ada di Android dan kualitasnya juga sama, artinya bicara kuantitas dan kualitas aplikasi menjadi tidak relevan pada saat ini (2012), terutama dari sudut pandang aplikasi yang dipakai. dapat dipastikan semakin dewasanya sistem Android, maka aplikasi semakin tersedia banyak (walau pembuat aplikasi masih sering terkendala karena diversifikasi perangkat keras android maupun model bisnis iklannya) , dan faktanya tidak dapat dielakkan Q2 2012 60% smartphone memakai sistem android (40%nya merek Samsung) dan IOS hanya 18,8%. Singkat kata selama anda memakai produk dengan merek unggulan kendala ‘kualitas’ aplikasi tidak menjadi masalah, karena mereka pembuat aplikasi akan berusaha menyelaraskan programnya dengan perangkat keras unggulan.

Demikianlah alasan mengapa saat ini saya pribadi memilih Android ketimbang IOS. Bagi yang memiliki preferensi penggunaan yang sama dengan saya yakin Android lebih mengakomodasi dibandingkan IOS.

One for all, all for one Contact !

1 hal yang saya sukai dari Blackberry adalah backup & transisi kontaknya, sehingga perpindahan ke unit Blackberry yg lain sangat mudah, karena saya ingat sekali pada saat saya memindahkan kontak dari Sony Ericsson ada beberapa tahapan yang saya lalui untuk memindahkannya, prosesnya membuang waktu cukup lama. Ketika saya memakai Android , saya menemukan fitur kontak yg menyenangkan, semua kontak dapat disimpan di Gmail contact dan di sinkronisasi dengan HP yang kita gunakan, semua Android dapat memakai kontak yg berada di Gmail contact, fungsi sinkronisasi juga dapat diaktifkan, sehingga ketika memasukan data baru di Android maka Gmail Contact juga terupdate. Yang paling menyenangkan adalah sebagai pengguna Blackberry saya dapat melakukan nya dengan aplikasi “Google Sync”, program ini dapat didownload lewat browser blackberry ke m.google.com/sync indahnya semua dilakukan secara OTA (on the air), pastikan saja anda berada di tempat yang sinyalnya baik. Bagi pengguna CDMA seperti saya juga, fitur sinkronisasi ke Gmail ini menjadi sangat menarik, seperti diketahui HP CDMA cenderung murah dan fiturnya tidak baik (walaupun yg bermerek) sehingga memindahkan kontak merupakan hal yg tidak mudah, bila ingin ganti HP CDMA, menggunakan HP berbasis Android merupakan langkah terbaik, karena selain saat ini sudah ada beberapa HP android berbasis CDMA yang harganya dibawah 1 juta rupiah, fungsi search contact di Android sangat memudahkan pencarian nama , karena dapat mengambil bagian dari tengah dari nama. Pengguna IOS (Iphone) pun dapat melakukan sync dengan Gmail contact, dengan aplikasi “Contacts Sync for Google Gmail” , namun app ini tidak gratis , harganya 2,99 USD , utk yang gratis menggunakan google sync, namun ada beberapa masalah silakan di baca di http://goo.gl/gaTKf Pengguna Nokia utk seri2 seperti C3 sudah dapat melakukan google sync juga, petunjuk step by stepnya ada di http://goo.gl/QcRoh Maka hanya dengan memaintain Gmail contact, maka semua HP kita dapat terupdate , yang pernah kehilangan HP dengan ratusan kontak dan belum di backup pasti paham kesulitannya, dengan menaruh seluruh kontak di Gmail contact, kehilangan HP walau sakit tidak menyebabkan kita kehilangan kontak koneksi kita yang jauh lebih berharga.

MIO Moov 200 VS Garmin Nuvi 205

Ok Folks, setelah nyari2 review GPS murah MIO Moov 200 versus Garmin Nuvi 205 gak ketemu akhirnya diputuskan utk nanya langsung sama SPG dan teknisi di PRJ, mumpung ngumpul di satu tempat dan ada teknisi. Mengapa 2 model itu? krn itu model yg paling murah hehehe, saya cuma butuh GPS nya doang gak butuh feature yang aneh2, dalam persepsi saya Garmin memiliki kualitas bagus, sedangkan Mio lebih murah dan petanya lebih akurat, apakah benar demikian? Lets find out...

Objektif :
Kelebihan
Garmin Nuvi 205
Kualitas buatan, saya gak bedah dalemnya tentu tapi dari tampilan luar saja sudah terlihat bahan yg digunakan lebih baik dari Mio, dan pastinya modelnya lebih bagus (ini agak subyektif si), infonya Garmin ini buatan Taiwan, sedangkan Mio buatan Cina (so secara mendasar seharusnya memang dalemnya juga bagusan garmin , tapi yah produk buatan Cina pun ada yang lebih bagus dari Taiwan, so amannya saya berpendapat buatan Garmin lebih bagus baik luar maupun dalem.
Garansinya sama2 1 tahun

Baterainya dapat bertahan dengan pemakain selama 4 jam ! si Mio cuma 2,5 jam (aktualnya mungkin bahkan cuma 2 jam kali), portabilitas Garmin jadi lebih bagus.

Petanya bisa diisi sendiri, dan katanya memiliki community based terbesar di dunia, entah di Indonesia (tapi katanya krn Garmin yg masuk pertama di Indonesia pasti lebih besar), saya mengamini hal ini juga. Mio harus diisi oleh service center Mio di Jl. Dewi Sartika atau pas ada event pameran2 Free (tapi koq repottt yah???) , yg serem diisi sendiri boleh aja krn spt garmin pakai provider map yg sama Tele Atlas (koq serem ?) , ya karena kalo ampe ngehang trus probelm dan diketahui pihak mio maka garansinya ilangggg... Hiks...

Peta yang terload seluruh Indonesia, dan peta asia tenggara lain ! Mio Hanya ada peta Jawa Bali Sumatera utk Indonesia, ada singapore, Malaysia dan Thailand

Tampilan animasi layar lebih bagus dan profesional, Mio fungsional saja.

Suara pemandunya lebih merdu terkesan profesional

Respon layar touch screen lebih responsif (mungkin krn processornya juga), mio agak lemot, saya belum membandingkan lebih dalam tapi tampaknya waktu yg dibutuhkan utk mengkalkulasi rute lebih cepat juga di Garmin

Mekanisme GPS holder dengan pola jepit, mudah di pasang dan dilepaskan, Mio lebih ribet dan kebayang akan lebih cepat rusak.

Sudah dapat memakai Micro SD, Mio SD saja, penggunaan Micro SD lebih luas saat ini.



Mio Moov 200
Provider peta boleh sama tapi Mio punya software yg bisa melihat jalan 2 arah, sehingga kita tahu jalur mana yg 2 arah atau satu arah, ini pentinggg buat daerah bandung dan dibeberapa derah Jakarta yg jam jalurnya suka berubah dan ditunggui “You know who”
Kenapa Mio bisa begitu ? karena ...

Mio memiliki 2 penangkap sinyal GPS, infonya sinyal ini dari 2 provider yg berbeda, akibatnya : lebih jarang putus karena kalo yg satu putus masih ada yg satu lagi, ada backup gituuu, pencarian lokasi lebih cepat krn ada 2, ya 2 lebih baik dari 1, inilah salah satu penyebab kenapa baterai si Mio cuma tahan ½ nya dari Garmin , abis pake berdua sih hehehehe

Peta Mio tetap diupdate oleh distributornya , dan tentu memperhatikan akurasi dan sebagainya, belum berpengalaman betul tentang hal ini, tetapi artinya peta yg dari distributor harusnya lebih reliable krn bukan dari community, tapi toh walau serem, Mio tetap bisa pakai peta community, tapi saya lebih merasa aman dgn peta resmi dari distributor, yg mnrt saya toh dijaga dengan baik contentnya krn ini memang salah satu hal terpenting dari fitur GPS.

Karena Fokus cuma Jawa , bali dan Sumatera, pihak Mio mengclaim bahwa terutama peta kota2 besar di Jawa detail sekali bahkan melebihi Garmin , ini poin obyektif yg perlu pembuktian memang.

Tampilan Peta 3D Mio lebih bagus krn jembatan memilki bentuk 3 dimensi

Yang terakhir : MIO beli Tunai di PRJ (mungkin bukan harga terbaik sih tp spy apple to apple) 1.490.000, kalo mau dicicil 0% 12 bulan Pake CC 1.690.000 (ya intinya gak 0% lah, bayar bunga bok Rp. 200.000 utk 1 tahun, bahasa pualing aneh yg tenar sekarang ini 0% tp lebih mahal hehehe), Garmin Rp. 1.700.000 Tunai...

Ok Siapakah yg saya pilih ? Mungkin ini tujuan saya beli dan kondisi saya
Saya bukan tipe adventure, saya tinggal di Jakarta, yg jalanya tikusnya buanyak dan jalan besarnya macetttt, kalo jalan jauh2 paling di sekitar jawa kalo pake mobil, paling puyeng sama jalanan di bandung, saya jago baca peta tapi susah mengingat jalan.

Bunyi drum ......

Mio Moov200 !!!!

Loh? kenapa? Ya singkatnya krn harga... dan fungsi. Yg saya butuhkan akurasi yg tinggi dari jalan terutama kalau di kota kaya Jakarta dan bandung utk 1 arah atau 2 arah, Mio menjawab keduanya, dan saya merasa peta dari MIO akan lebih reliable krn harusnya peta menjadi salah satu keunggulan mereka, toh sedikit, dan saya tidak punya wacana keliling indonesia pake mobil tanpa guide (not adventure type folks...).

Buat saya fungsi pada akhirnya mengalahkan tampilan maupun kualitas (toh perlu dibuktikan) dan umur baterai yg pendek memang payah banget tapi yah itulah krn 2 penerima GPS... (Trade off yg adil menurut saya, dan saya lebih butuh yg 2 ketimbang 1).

Ok the subyektif part on the decision.
Mio pakai SPM (yup cowo...) loh? ya karena si SPM mengenal produknya dengan baik dengan cepat menjawab keunggulan produknya dari Garmin ketika ditanya.
Ajaibnya ketika kita ngobrol lebih dalam dia pake Garmin loh koq? Yup karena ternyata dia suka adventure! Dari infonya Peta Hutan dan kelautan garmin tidak terkalahkan, so yg doyan jalan2 cocoknya memang sama garmin , dan tentu walau gak diceritain baterai yg lebih lama tentu dibutuhkan oleh yg suka adventure (bayangan hutan tentu so pasti susah listrik utk charge itu GPS bukan?)
Trus pertanyaan yg krusial saya tanya itu baterai Mio kalo ude drop bagaimana dijawab ada garansi 1 tahun , trus saya bilang kalo ude 2 thn gimana? nah dia bingung kmdn dia tanya sama teknisi, dan si teknisi menjelaskan bahwa harganya 180rb, kemudian krn temen cerita charger mobilnya rusak, kalo beli berapa dijawab juga 275rb (tapi ini bukan issue sih ada banyak cara lain utk mencharge si Mio , krn dia pake standar mini USB,artinya lighter USB charger manapun bisa dipake juga dgn kabel yg benar, kalo ada yg mo nanya ttg ini nanti saya jelaskan).
Si Teknisi tanpa ditanya juga menjelaskan tentang kelebihan Mio , kalau tidak salah tangkep based on data bujur lintang utk tau posisi, esensinya bukan infonya tapi si teknisi paham dan peduli walau sales itu urusan SPM. Kmdn saya juga ada tanya soal GPS merek lain dan saya dijelaskan perbedaannya walau yg mendasar tapi mengena.

Lalu bagaimana dgn Garmin? mereka pakai SPG mmmmm yes (it is a girll) Yipeeee??? nope.... krn si SPG gak tau apa2 ketika ditanya keunggulan Garmin terhadap Mio, kmdn dia memanggil Teknisi , dn si teknisi agak bingung utk menjawab (maklum kn teknisi gak biasa promo) tapi akhirnya dia bilang Garmin ini sudah terisi lengkap peta seluruh Indonesia, dan bisa diisi dgn peta community , dan communitynya besar, lalu saya tanya kalo saya muter2nya di jawa doang apa peta kota2nya lebih detail dari mio? dan dijawab dengan peta kita seluruh Indonesia... Ha? yea yg ditanya apa yg dijawab apa (hanya pengualngan) maka saya tanya lagi , akhirnya dia jawab oh mustinya lebih lengkap krn community besar (tp sy melihatnay dia gak yakin juga sebetulnya dgn jawaban itu hehe namanay jg saya subyektif yah dlm hal ini). Kemudian terbersit dari saya menanyakan baterainya berapa lama? dia menjawab 4 jam , oh bagus , lalu saya tanya pertanyaan yg sama seperti di Mio kalo baerai sdh drop stlh 2 tahun bagaimana, jawabannnya adalah sam spt di Mio, oh ada garansi 1 tahun, lau sama sy nyatakan iya tapi yg saya tanyakan adalah kalo drop stlh 2 tahun, orangnya masih bilang kan garansi Pak, lalu saya tegaskan ini sy bicara stlh 2 tahun kan gak ada garansinya, akhirnya dia mercenung dan bilang Pak biasanya yg banyak dibetulin itu layarnya , bukan ganti baterainya (nah loh.... ini lebih aneh buka aib sendiri, tp memang dia bilang oh ya itu setelah lama pemakain Pak...), dari sini saya jadi bingung teknisi tapi ditanya hal teknis dasar soal baetrai koq gak paham , dan kayanya kualitas garmin yg saya persepsi juga ternyata ya banyak masalah di layar juga jadi mustinya kualitas garmin tidak terpaut jauh sekali dari Mio kalo boleh disimpulkan) kemudian saya tanya harga baterainya berapa ? jawabannya gak tau......
Dalam hati saya jadi ragu juga pantesin dari tadi ditanya soal baterai koq kayanya tidak to the point, ternyata harga juga gak tau. Akhirnya saya bilang mas tidak tahu, nah kemudian dia ambil kartu nama dan dia bilang nanti tanya ke nomor yg ada dikartu saja.
Saya kemudian tanya lagi apa kelebihan Garmin? Lalu stlh dia berpikir bbrp detik dia menjawab kita punya buatan Taiwan, Mio itu buatan Cina, jadi garmin lebih bagus, kmdn saya nyatakan dari bentuk lebih bagus yah, dia setuju. Akhirnya saya pamit dan bilang akan berpikir dulu.

Moral of story from subjective point of view :
SPG/M haruslah menguasai produk minimal keunggulan produk terhadap lawan terdekat, konsumen beda2 kalo yg model cermat kaya saya tentu butuh info yg detail dan kayanya yg sampe mo beli GPS itu emang model org tipe cermat (dari Buku Personality Plus).
Teknisi pun harus peduli dan paham akan produknya apalagi yg esensial , sehingga menjawab gak pake muter2 krn emang yakin.
Wuihh panjang yah.. oke deh saran terakhir :
Beli Mio kalo karakteristik pemakaian seperti saya, pake di mobil, ato deket dengan sumber listrik, banyakan jalan di kota2 besar di Jawa, gak mo repot, harga jadi salah satu faktor kuat.

Beli Garmin kalo.. suka adventure, keliling Indonesia, butuh baterai long lasting..demen kotak katik gadget, dan tentu pencinta bentuk, walau mungkin gak 100% org pada setuju tapi pasti sebagian besar akan menyatakan bentuk garmin lebih bagus !

Mana yg lebih unggul? mnrt saya tergantung mau dipakai utk apa, masing2 memang mengisi kebutuhan yg berbeda kalo menurut saya...

So Semoga review Versus GPS yg sekelas ini membantu siapapun yg mau beli GPS murah.

The Truth is Grey

Some people have been questioning me about my favorite quote "The Truth is grey" sometimes it is hard for me to explain it, a simple explanation are : I can say something is a truth with all my knowledge, experience, faith, value, believes... but I know that others might not accept it, even I already explain it from end to end, so I might not like it but I understand others can perceive different things about what I said as a truth, thats why I said The Truth is grey, it depends on a lot of things that a person can perceive. For the long one I include some writing from wikipedia, my religion scholar view and some others, read it and perhaps you will start to understand why The Truth is Grey...

The word truth has a variety of meanings, from honesty, good faith, and sincerity in general, to agreement with fact or reality in particular.[1] The term has no single definition about which a majority of professional philosophers and scholars agree, and various theories of truth continue to be debated. There are differing claims on such questions as what constitutes truth; what things are truthbearers capable of being true or false; how to define and identify truth; the roles that revealed and acquired knowledge play; and whether truth is subjective, relative, objective, or absolute. This article introduces the various perspectives and claims, both today and throughout history.

Nomenclature and etymology
Further information: Veritas and Aletheia

The English word truth is from Old English tríewþ, tréowþ, trýwþ, Middle English trewþe, cognate to Old High German triuwida, Old Norse tryggð. Like troth, it is a -th nominalisation of the adjective true (Old English tréowe).

The English word true is from Old English (West Saxon) (ge)tríewe, tréowe, cognate to Old Saxon (gi)trûui, Old High German (ga)triuwu (Modern German treu "faithful"), Old Norse tryggr, Gothic triggws,[2] all from a Proto-Germanic *trewwj- "having good faith". Old Norse trú, "faith, word of honour; religious faith, belief"[3] (archaic English troth "loyalty, honesty, good faith", compare Ásatrú).

Thus, 'truth' involves both the quality of "faithfulness, fidelity, loyalty, sincerity, veracity",[4] and that of "agreement with fact or reality", in Anglo-Saxon expressed by sōþ.

All Germanic languages besides English have introduced a terminological distinction between truth "fidelity" and truth "factuality". To express "factuality", North Germanic opted for nouns derived from sanna "to assert, affirm", while continental West Germanic (German and Dutch) opted for continuations of wâra "faith, trust, pact" (cognate to Slavic věra "(religious) faith", but influenced by Latin verus). Romance languages use terms following the Latin veritas, while the Greek aletheia and Slavic pravda have separate etymological origins.

The major theories of truth

The question of what is a proper basis for deciding how words, symbols, ideas and beliefs may properly be considered true, whether by a single person or an entire society, is dealt with by the five major substantive theories introduced below. Each theory presents perspectives that are widely shared by published scholars.[5][6] There also have more recently arisen "deflationary" or "minimalist" theories of truth based on the idea that the application of a term like true to a statement does not assert anything significant about it, for instance, anything about its nature, but that the label truth is a tool of discourse used to express agreement, to emphasize claims, or to form certain types of generalizations.[5][7][8]

Substantive theories
Truth, holding a mirror and a serpent (1896). Olin Levi Warner, Library of Congress Thomas Jefferson Building, Washington, D.C.

Correspondence theory
Main article: Correspondence theory of truth

Correspondence theories state that true beliefs and true statements correspond to the actual state of affairs.[9] This type of theory posits a relationship between thoughts or statements on the one hand, and things or objects on the other. It is a traditional model which goes back at least to some of the classical Greek philosophers such as Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle.[10] This class of theories holds that the truth or the falsity of a representation is determined in principle solely by how it relates to "things", by whether it accurately describes those "things". An example of correspondence theory is the statement by the Thirteenth Century philosopher/theologian Thomas Aquinas: Veritas est adaequatio rei et intellectus ("Truth is the equation [or adequation] of thing and intellect"), a statement which Aquinas attributed to the Ninth Century neoplatonist Isaac Israeli.[11][12] Aquinas also restated the theory as: “A judgment is said to be true when it conforms to the external reality” [13]

Correspondence theory practically operates on the assumption that truth is a matter of accurately copying what was much later called "objective reality" and then representing it in thoughts, words and other symbols.[14] Many modern theorists have stated that this ideal cannot be achieved independently of some analysis of additional factors.[5][15] For example, language plays a role in that all languages have words that are not easily translatable into another. The German word Zeitgeist is one such example: one who speaks or understands the language may "know" what it means, but any translation of the word fails to accurately capture its full meaning (this is a problem with many abstract words, especially those derived in agglutinative languages). Thus, the language itself adds an additional parameter to the construction of an accurate truth predicate. Among the philosophers who grappled with this problem is Alfred Tarski, whose semantic theory is summarized further below in this article.[16]

Proponents of several of the theories below have gone farther to assert that there are yet other issues necessary to the analysis, such as interpersonal power struggles, community interactions, personal biases and other factors involved in deciding what is seen as truth.

Coherence theory
Main article: Coherence theory of truth

For coherence theories in general, truth requires a proper fit of elements within a whole system. Very often, though, coherence is taken to imply something more than simple logical consistency; often there is a demand that the propositions in a coherent system lend mutual inferential support to each other. So, for example, the completeness and comprehensiveness of the underlying set of concepts is a critical factor in judging the validity and usefulness of a coherent system.[17] A pervasive tenet of coherence theories is the idea that truth is primarily a property of whole systems of propositions, and can be ascribed to individual propositions only according to their coherence with the whole. Among the assortment of perspectives commonly regarded as coherence theory, theorists differ on the question of whether coherence entails many possible true systems of thought or only a single absolute system.

Some variants of coherence theory are claimed to characterize the essential and intrinsic properties of formal systems in logic and mathematics.[18] However, formal reasoners are content to contemplate axiomatically independent and sometimes mutually contradictory systems side by side, for example, the various alternative geometries. On the whole, coherence theories have been criticized as lacking justification in their application to other areas of truth, especially with respect to assertions about the natural world, empirical data in general, assertions about practical matters of psychology and society, especially when used without support from the other major theories of truth.[19]

Coherence theories distinguish the thought of rationalist philosophers, particularly of Spinoza, Leibniz, and G.W.F. Hegel, along with the British philosopher F.H. Bradley.[20] They have found a resurgence also among several proponents of logical positivism, notably Otto Neurath and Carl Hempel.

Constructivist theory
Main article: Constructivist epistemology

Social constructivism holds that truth is constructed by social processes, is historically and culturally specific, and that it is in part shaped through the power struggles within a community. Constructivism views all of our knowledge as "constructed," because it does not reflect any external "transcendent" realities (as a pure correspondence theory might hold). Rather, perceptions of truth are viewed as contingent on convention, human perception, and social experience. It is believed by constructivists that representations of physical and biological reality, including race, sexuality, and gender are socially constructed.

Giambattista Vico was among the first to claim that history and culture were man-made. Vico's epistemological orientation gathers the most diverse rays and unfolds in one axiom – verum ipsum factum – "truth itself is constructed". Hegel and Marx were among the other early proponents of the premise that truth is, or can be, socially constructed. Marx, like many critical theorists who followed, did not reject the existence of objective truth but rather distinguished between true knowledge and knowledge that has been distorted through power or ideology. For Marx scientific and true knowledge is 'in accordance with the dialectical understanding of history' and ideological knowledge 'an epiphenomenal expression of the relation of material forces in a given economic arrangement'.[21]

Consensus theory
Main article: Consensus theory of truth

Consensus theory holds that truth is whatever is agreed upon, or in some versions, might come to be agreed upon, by some specified group. Such a group might include all human beings, or a subset thereof consisting of more than one person.

Among the current advocates of consensus theory as a useful accounting of the concept of "truth" is the philosopher Jürgen Habermas.[22] Habermas maintains that truth is what would be agreed upon in an ideal speech situation.[23] Among the current strong critics of consensus theory is the philosopher Nicholas Rescher.[24]

Pragmatic theory
Main article: Pragmatic theory of truth

The three most influential forms of the pragmatic theory of truth were introduced around the turn of the 20th century by Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, and John Dewey. Although there are wide differences in viewpoint among these and other proponents of pragmatic theory, they hold in common that truth is verified and confirmed by the results of putting one's concepts into practice.[25]

Peirce defines truth as follows: "Truth is that concordance of an abstract statement with the ideal limit towards which endless investigation would tend to bring scientific belief, which concordance the abstract statement may possess by virtue of the confession of its inaccuracy and one-sidedness, and this confession is an essential ingredient of truth."[26] This statement emphasizes Peirce's view that ideas of approximation, incompleteness, and partiality, what he describes elsewhere as fallibilism and "reference to the future", are essential to a proper conception of truth. Although Peirce uses words like concordance and correspondence to describe one aspect of the pragmatic sign relation, he is also quite explicit in saying that definitions of truth based on mere correspondence are no more than nominal definitions, which he accords a lower status than real definitions.

William James's version of pragmatic theory, while complex, is often summarized by his statement that "the 'true' is only the expedient in our way of thinking, just as the 'right' is only the expedient in our way of behaving."[27] By this, James meant that truth is a quality the value of which is confirmed by its effectiveness when applying concepts to actual practice (thus, "pragmatic").

John Dewey, less broadly than James but more broadly than Peirce, held that inquiry, whether scientific, technical, sociological, philosophical or cultural, is self-corrective over time if openly submitted for testing by a community of inquirers in order to clarify, justify, refine and/or refute proposed truths.[28]

Pluralist theories
Main article: Pluralist theory of truth

Most traditional theories of truth are monist: that is, they hold that there is one and only property the having of which makes a belief or proposition true. Pluralist theories of truth deny this assumption. According to pluralism, there may be more than one property that makes propositions true: ethical propositions might be true by virtue of coherence; propositions about the physical world might be true by corresponding to the objects and properties they are about. Pluralism, in short, holds out the prospect that propositions might be "true in more than one way".

Crispin Wright is the most well-known advocate of pluralism about truth. In his 1992 book, Truth and Objectivity [29] Wright argued that any predicate which satisfied certain platitudes about truth qualified as a truth predicate. In some discourses, Wright argued, the role of the truth predicate might be played by the notion of superassertibility.

Michael Lynch (philosopher) has recently championed a different type of pluralism about truth. In a series of articles and in his 2009 book Truth as One and Many[30] Lynch argues that we should see truth as a functional property capable of being multiply manifested in distinct properties like correspondence or coherence.

Minimalist (deflationary) theories
Main article: Deflationary theory of truth

A number of philosophers reject the thesis that the concept or term truth refers to a real property of sentences or propositions. These philosophers are responding, in part, to the common use of truth predicates (e.g., that some particular thing "...is true") which was particularly prevalent in philosophical discourse on truth in the first half of the 20th century. From this point of view, to assert the proposition “'2 + 2 = 4' is true” is logically equivalent to asserting the proposition “2 + 2 = 4”, and the phrase “is true” is completely dispensable in this and every other context. These positions are broadly described

* as deflationary theories of truth, since they attempt to deflate the presumed importance of the words "true" or truth,
* as disquotational theories, to draw attention to the disappearance of the quotation marks in cases like the above example, or
* as minimalist theories of truth.[5][31]

Whichever term is used, deflationary theories can be said to hold in common that "[t]he predicate 'true' is an expressive convenience, not the name of a property requiring deep analysis."[5] Once we have identified the truth predicate's formal features and utility, deflationists argue, we have said all there is to be said about truth. Among the theoretical concerns of these views is to explain away those special cases where it does appear that the concept of truth has peculiar and interesting properties. (See, e.g., Semantic paradoxes, and below.)

In addition to highlighting such formal aspects of the predicate "is true", some deflationists point out that the concept enables us to express things that might otherwise require infinitely long sentences. For example, one cannot express confidence in Michael's accuracy by asserting the endless sentence:

Michael says, 'snow is white' and snow is white, or he says 'roses are red' and roses are red or he says ... etc.

But it can be expressed succinctly by saying: What Michael says is true.[32]

Performative theory of truth

Attributed to P. F. Strawson is the performative theory of truth which holds that to say "'Snow is white' is true" is to perform the speech act of signaling one's agreement with the claim that snow is white (much like nodding one's head in agreement). The idea that some statements are more actions than communicative statements is not as odd as it may seem. Consider, for example, that when the bride says "I do" at the appropriate time in a wedding, she is performing the act of taking this man to be her lawful wedded husband. She is not describing herself as taking this man, but actually doing so (perhaps the most thorough analysis of such "perlocutionary" statements is J. L. Austin, "How to Do Things With Words"[33]).

Strawson holds that a similar analysis is applicable to all speech acts, not only to special perlocutionary ones: "To say a statement is true is not to make a statement about a statement, but rather to perform the act of agreeing with, accepting, or endorsing a statement. When one says 'It's true that it's raining,' one asserts no more than 'It's raining.' The function of [the statement] 'It's true that...' is to agree with, accept, or endorse the statement that 'it's raining.'"[34]

Redundancy and related theories
Main article: Redundancy theory of truth

According to the redundancy theory of truth, asserting that a statement is true is completely equivalent to asserting the statement itself. For example, making the assertion that " 'Snow is white' is true" is equivalent to asserting "Snow is white". Redundancy theorists infer from this premise that truth is a redundant concept; that is, it is merely a word that is traditionally used in conversation or writing, generally for emphasis, but not a word that actually equates to anything in reality. This theory is commonly attributed to Frank P. Ramsey, who held that the use of words like fact and truth was nothing but a roundabout way of asserting a proposition, and that treating these words as separate problems in isolation from judgment was merely a "linguistic muddle".[5][35][36]

A variant of redundancy theory is the disquotational theory which uses a modified form of Tarski's schema: To say that '"P" is true' is to say that P. Yet another version of deflationism is the prosentential theory of truth, first developed by Dorothy Grover, Joseph Camp, and Nuel Belnap as an elaboration of Ramsey's claims. They argue that sentences like "That's true", when said in response to "It's raining", are prosentences, expressions that merely repeat the content of other expressions. In the same way that it means the same as my dog in the sentence My dog was hungry, so I fed it, That's true is supposed to mean the same as It's raining — if you say the latter and I then say the former. These variations do not necessarily follow Ramsey in asserting that truth is not a property, but rather can be understood to say that, for instance, the assertion "P" may well involve a substantial truth, and the theorists in this case are minimalizing only the redundancy or prosentence involved in the statement such as "that's true."[5]

Deflationary principles do not apply to representations that are not analogous to sentences, and also do not apply to many other things that are commonly judged to be true or otherwise. Consider the analogy between the sentence "Snow is white" and the character named Snow White, both of which can be true in some sense. To a minimalist, saying "Snow is white is true" is the same as saying "Snow is white," but to say "Snow White is true" is not the same as saying "Snow White."

Formal theories

Truth in logic
Main articles: Logic, Validity, Fact, and Interpretation (logic)

A necessary truth is a statement which is true in all possible worlds. A logical truth is a necessary truth the truth of which is determined by its so-called logical constants (eg. if, then, or, and not, every). A contingency is not a necessary truth and its truth depends upon the world. A proposition such as “If p and q, then p.” is considered to be a logical truth and "All bachelors are unmarried" a necessary truth but not a logical truth. One theory is that necessary truths are all and only analytic truths, i.e., true because of their meanings, but this is disputed.[37] Further details can be found at Analytic-synthetic distinction and Necessary truth.

Logic is concerned with the forms of arguments and of statements that determine whether one statement is entailed by others, and whether a statement is a logical truth. In a formal (or artificial) language a sentence has a truth-value only under some interpretation, a logical truth being true under all intepretations.

Truth in mathematics
Main articles: Model theory and Proof theory

There are two main approaches to truth in mathematics. They are the model theory of truth and the proof theory of truth[citation needed].

Historically, with the nineteenth century development of Boolean algebra mathematical models of logic began to treat "truth", also represented as "T" or "1", as an arbitrary constant. "Falsity" is also an arbitrary constant, which can be represented as "F" or "0". In propositional logic, these symbols can be manipulated according to a set of axioms and rules of inference, often given in the form of truth tables.

In addition, from at least the time of Hilbert's program at the turn of the twentieth century to the proof of Gödel's theorem and the development of the Church-Turing thesis in the early part of that century, true statements in mathematics were generally assumed to be those statements which are provable in a formal axiomatic system.

The works of Kurt Gödel, Alan Turing, and others shook this assumption, with the development of statements that are true but cannot be proven within the system.[38] Two examples of the latter can be found in Hilbert's problems. Work on Hilbert's 10th problem led in the late twentieth century to the construction of specific Diophantine equations for which it is undecidable whether they have a solution,[39] or even if they do, whether they have a finite or infinite number of solutions. More fundamentally, Hilbert's first problem was on the continuum hypothesis.[40] Gödel and Paul Cohen showed that this hypothesis cannot be proved or disproved using the standard axioms of set theory and a finite number of proof steps.[41] In the view of some, then, it is equally reasonable to take either the continuum hypothesis or its negation as a new axiom.

Semantic theory of truth

The semantic theory of truth has as its general case for a given language:

'P' is true if and only if P

where 'P' is a reference to the sentence (the sentence's name), and P is just the sentence itself.

Logician and philosopher Alfred Tarski developed the theory for formal languages (such as formal logic). Here he restricted it in this way: no language could contain its own truth predicate, that is, the expression is true could only apply to sentences in some other language. The latter he called an object language, the language being talked about. (It may, in turn, have a truth predicate that can be applied to sentences in still another language.) The reason for his restriction was that languages that contain their own truth predicate will contain paradoxical sentences like the Liar: This sentence is not true. See The Liar paradox. As a result Tarski held that the semantic theory could not be applied to any natural language, such as English, because they contain their own truth predicates. Donald Davidson used it as the foundation of his truth-conditional semantics and linked it to radical interpretation in a form of coherentism.

Bertrand Russell is credited with noticing the existence of such paradoxes even in the best symbolic formalizations of mathematics in his day, in particular the paradox that came to be named after him, Russell's paradox. Russell and Whitehead attempted to solve these problems in Principia Mathematica by putting statements into a hierarchy of types, wherein a statement cannot refer to itself, but only to statements lower in the hierarchy. This in turn led to new orders of difficulty regarding the precise natures of types and the structures of conceptually possible type systems that have yet to be resolved to this day.

Kripke's theory of truth

Saul Kripke contends that a natural language can in fact contain its own truth predicate without giving rise to contradiction. He showed how to construct one as follows:

* Begin with a subset of sentences of a natural language that contains no occurrences of the expression "is true" (or "is false"). So The barn is big is included in the subset, but not " The barn is big is true", nor problematic sentences such as "This sentence is false".
* Define truth just for the sentences in that subset.
* Then extend the definition of truth to include sentences that predicate truth or falsity of one of the original subset of sentences. So "The barn is big is true" is now included, but not either "This sentence is false" nor "'The barn is big is true' is true".
* Next, define truth for all sentences that predicate truth or falsity of a member of the second set. Imagine this process repeated infinitely, so that truth is defined for The barn is big; then for "The barn is big is true"; then for "'The barn is big is true' is true", and so on.

Notice that truth never gets defined for sentences like This sentence is false, since it was not in the original subset and does not predicate truth of any sentence in the original or any subsequent set. In Kripke's terms, these are "ungrounded." Since these sentences are never assigned either truth or falsehood even if the process is carried out infinitely, Kripke's theory implies that some sentences are neither true nor false. This contradicts the Principle of bivalence: every sentence must be either true or false. Since this principle is a key premise in deriving the Liar paradox, the paradox is dissolved.[42]

Notable views
La Vérité ("Truth") by Jules Joseph Lefebvre

Ancient history

The ancient Greek origins of the words "true" and "truth" have some consistent definitions throughout great spans of history that were often associated with topics of logic, geometry, mathematics, deduction, induction, and natural philosophy.

Socrates', Plato's and Aristotle's ideas about truth are commonly seen as consistent with correspondence theory. In his Metaphysics, Aristotle stated: “To say of what is that it is not, or of what is not that it is, is false, while to say of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not, is true”.[43] The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy proceeds to say of Aristotle:

Aristotle sounds much more like a genuine correspondence theorist in the Categories (12b11, 14b14), where he talks of “underlying things” that make statements true and implies that these “things” (pragmata) are logically structured situations or facts (viz., his sitting, his not sitting). Most influential is his claim in De Interpretatione (16a3) that thoughts are “likenessess” (homoiosis) of things. Although he nowhere defines truth in terms of a thought's likeness to a thing or fact, it is clear that such a definition would fit well into his overall philosophy of mind.[43]

Very similar statements can also be found in Plato (Cratylus 385b2, Sophist 263b).[43]

Medieval age

Avicenna

In early Islamic philosophy, Avicenna (Ibn Sina) defined truth in his Metaphysics of Healing, Book I, Chapter 8, as:

What corresponds in the mind to what is outside it.[44]

Avicenna elaborated on his definition of truth in his Metaphysics Book Eight, Chapter 6:

The truth of a thing is the property of the being of each thing which has been established in it.[45]

However, this definition is merely a translation of the Latin translation from the Middle Ages.[46] A modern translation of the original Arabic text states:

Truth is also said of the veridical belief in the existence [of something].[47]

Aquinas

Following Avicenna, and also Augustine and Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas stated in his Disputed Questions on Truth:

A natural thing, being placed between two intellects, is called true insofar as it conforms to either. It is said to be true with respect to its conformity with the divine intellect insofar as it fulfills the end to which it was ordained by the divine intellect... With respect to its conformity with a human intellect, a thing is said to be true insofar as it is such as to cause a true estimate about itself.[48]

Thus, for Aquinas, the truth of the human intellect (logical truth) is based on the truth in things (ontological truth).[49] Following this, he wrote an elegant re-statement of Aristotle's view in his Summa I.16.1:

Veritas est adæquatio intellectus et rei.
(Truth is the conformity of the intellect to the things.)

Aquinas also said that real things participate in the act of being of the Creator God who is Subsistent Being, Intelligence, and Truth. Thus, these beings possess the light of intelligibility and are knowable. These things (beings; reality) are the foundation of the truth that is found in the human mind, when it acquires knowledge of things, first through the senses, then through the understanding and the judgement done by reason. For Aquinas, human intelligence ("intus", within and "legere", to read) has the capability to reach the essence and existence of things because it has a non-material, spiritual element, although some moral, educational, and other elements might interfere with its capability.
Modern age

Kant
Immanuel Kant

Immanuel Kant discussed the correspondence theory of truth[43] in the following manner, criticizing correspondence theory as circular reasoning.

Truth is said to consist in the agreement of knowledge with the object. According to this mere verbal definition, then, my knowledge, in order to be true, must agree with the object. Now, I can only compare the object with my knowledge by this means, namely, by taking knowledge of it. My knowledge, then, is to be verified by itself, which is far from being sufficient for truth. For as the object is external to me, and the knowledge is in me, I can only judge whether my knowledge of the object agrees with my knowledge of the object. Such a circle in explanation was called by the ancients Diallelos. And the logicians were accused of this fallacy by the sceptics, who remarked that this account of truth was as if a man before a judicial tribunal should make a statement, and appeal in support of it to a witness whom no one knows, but who defends his own credibility by saying that the man who had called him as a witness is an honourable man.[50]

According to Kant, the definition of truth as correspondence is a "mere verbal definition", here making use of Aristotle's distinction between a nominal definition: a definition in name only, and a real definition: a definition that shows the true cause or essence of the term that is being defined. From Kant's account of the history, the definition of truth as correspondence was already in dispute from classical times, the "skeptics" criticizing the "logicians" for a form of circular reasoning, though the extent to which the "logicians" actually held such a theory is not evaluated.[50]

Hegel

Hegel tried to distance his philosophy from psychology by presenting truth as being an external self–moving object instead of being related to inner, subjective thoughts. Hegel's truth is analogous to the mechanics of a material body in motion under the influence of its own inner force. "Truth is its own self–movement within itself."[51] Teleological truth moves itself in the three–step form of dialectical triplicity toward the final goal of perfect, final, absolute truth. For Hegel, the progression of philosophical truth is a resolution of past oppositions into increasingly more accurate approximations to absolute truth. Chalybäus used the terms "thesis," "antithesis," and "synthesis" to describe Hegel's dialectical triplicity. The "thesis" consists of an incomplete historical movement. To resolve the incompletion, an "antithesis" occurs which opposes the "thesis." In turn, the "synthesis" appears when the "thesis" and "antithesis" become reconciled and a higher level of truth is obtained. This "synthesis" thereby becomes a "thesis," which will again necessitate an "antithesis," requiring a new "synthesis" until a final state is reached as the result of reason's historical movement. History is the Absolute Spirit moving toward a goal. This historical progression will finally conclude itself when the Absolute Spirit understands its own infinite self at the very end of history. Absolute Spirit will then be the complete expression of an infinite God.

Schopenhauer

For Schopenhauer,[52] a judgment is a combination or separation of two or more concepts. If a judgment is to be an expression of knowledge, it must have a sufficient reason or ground by which the judgment could be called true. Truth is the reference of a judgment to something different from itself which is it sufficient reason (ground). Judgments can have material, formal, transcendental, or metalogical truth. A judgment has material truth if its concepts are based on intuitive perceptions that are generated from sensations. If a judgment has its reason (ground) in another judgment, its truth is called logical or formal. If a judgment, of, for example, pure mathematics or pure science, is based on the forms (space, time, causality) of intuitive, empirical knowledge, then the judgment has transcendental truth.

Kierkegaard

When Søren Kierkegaard, as his character Johannes Climacus, wrote that "Truth is Subjectivity", he does not advocate for subjectivism in its extreme form (the theory that something is true simply because one believes it to be so), but rather that the objective approach to matters of personal truth cannot shed any light upon that which is most essential to a person's life. Objective truths are concerned with the facts of a person's being, while subjective truths are concerned with a person's way of being. Kierkegaard agrees that objective truths for the study of subjects like mathematics, science, and history are relevant and necessary, but argues that objective truths do not shed any light on a person's inner relationship to existence. At best, these truths can only provide a severely narrowed perspective that has little to do with one's actual experience of life.[53]

While objective truths are final and static, subjective truths are continuing and dynamic. The truth of one's existence is a living, inward, and subjective experience that is always in the process of becoming. The values, morals, and spiritual approaches a person adopts, while not denying the existence of objective truths of those beliefs, can only become truly known when they have been inwardly appropriated through subjective experience. Thus, Kierkegaard criticizes all systematic philosophies which attempt to know life or the truth of existence via theories and objective knowledge about reality. As Kierkegaard claims, human truth is something that is continually occurring, and a human being cannot find truth separate from the subjective experience of one's own existing, defined by the values and fundamental essence that consist of one's way of life.[54]

Nietzsche

Friedrich Nietzsche believed the search for truth or 'the will to truth' was a consequence of the will to power of philosophers. He thought that truth should be used as long as it promoted life and the will to power, and he thought untruth was better than truth if it had this life enhancement as a consequence. As he wrote in Beyond Good and Evil, "The falseness of a judgment is to us not necessarily an objection to a judgment... The question is to what extent it is life-advancing, life-preserving, species-preserving, perhaps even species-breeding..." (aphorism 4). He proposed the will to power as a truth only because according to him it was the most life affirming and sincere perspective one could have.

Robert Wicks discusses Nietzsche's basic view of truth as follows:

Some scholars regard Nietzsche's 1873 unpublished essay, "On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense" ("Über Wahrheit und Lüge im außermoralischen Sinn") as a keystone in his thought. In this essay, Nietzsche rejects the idea of universal constants, and claims that what we call "truth" is only "a mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms." His view at this time is that arbitrariness completely prevails within human experience: concepts originate via the very artistic transference of nerve stimuli into images; "truth" is nothing more than the invention of fixed conventions for merely practical purposes, especially those of repose, security and consistence.[55]

Whitehead
Search Wikiquote Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Alfred North Whitehead

Alfred North Whitehead a British mathematician who became an American philosopher, said: "There are no whole truths; all truths are half-truths. It is trying to treat them as whole truths that play the devil".

The logical progression or connection of this line of thought is to conclude that truth can lie, since half-truths are deceptive and may lead to a false conclusion.

Nishida

According to Kitaro Nishida, "knowledge of things in the world begins with the differentiation of unitary consciousness into knower and known and ends with self and things becoming one again. Such unification takes form not only in knowing but in the valuing (of truth) that directs knowing, the willing that directs action, and the feeling or emotive reach that directs sensing."[56]

Fromm

Erich Fromm finds that trying to discuss truth as "absolute truth" is sterile and that emphasis ought to be placed on "optimal truth". He considers truth as stemming from the survival imperative of grasping one's environment physically and intellectually, whereby young children instinctively seek truth so as to orient themselves in "a strange and powerful world". The accuracy of their perceived approximation of the truth will therefore have direct consequences on their ability to deal with their environment. Fromm can be understood to define truth as a functional approximation of reality. His vision of optimal truth is described partly in "Man from Himself: An Inquiry into the Psychology of Ethics" (1947), from which excerpts are included below.

the dichotomy between 'absolute = perfect' and 'relative = imperfect' has been superseded in all fields of scientific thought, where "it is generally recognized that there is no absolute truth but nevertheless that there are objectively valid laws and principles".

In that respect, "a scientifically or rationally valid statement means that the power of reason is applied to all the available data of observation without any of them being suppressed or falsified for the sake of a desired result". The history of science is "a history of inadequate and incomplete statements, and every new insight makes possible the recognition of the inadequacies of previous propositions and offers a springboard for creating a more adequate formulation."

As a result "the history of thought is the history of an ever-increasing approximation to the truth. Scientific knowledge is not absolute but optimal; it contains the optimum of truth attainable in a given historical period." Fromm furthermore notes that "different cultures have emphasized various aspects of the truth" and that increasing interaction between cultures allows for these aspects to reconcile and integrate, increasing further the approximation to the truth.

Foucault

Truth, for Michel Foucault, is problematic when any attempt is made to see truth as an "objective" quality. He prefers not to use the term truth itself but "Regimes of Truth". In his historical investigations he found truth to be something that was itself a part of, or embedded within, a given power structure. Thus Foucault's view shares much in common with the concepts of Nietzsche. Truth for Foucault is also something that shifts through various episteme throughout history.[57]

Baudrillard

Jean Baudrillard considered truth to be largely simulated, that is pretending to have something, as opposed to dissimulation, pretending to not have something. He took his cue from iconoclasts who he claims knew that images of God demonstrated the fact that God did not exist.[58] Baudrillard wrote in "Precession of the Simulacra":

The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth—it is the truth which conceals that there is none. The simulacrum is true.
—Ecclesiastes[59][60]

Some example simulacra that Baudrillard cited were: that prisons simulate the "truth" that society is free; scandals (eg, Watergate) simulate that corruption is corrected; Disney simulates that the U.S. itself is an adult place. One must remember that though such examples seem extreme, such extremity is an important part of Baudrillard's philosophy. For a less extreme example consider how movies, almost without exception, end with the bad guy being punished, thus drilling into the viewers that successful businessmen and politicians are good or, if not, will be caught.[58]

Ratzinger

Philosopher and theologian Joseph Ratzinger, before his election as Benedict XVI, explored the relationship of truth with tolerance,[61] conscience,[62] freedom,[63] and religion.[61] For him, "beyond all particular questions, the real problem lies in the question of truth."[61]

In consonance with Aristotle and Aquinas, Ratzinger affirms that human reason has the power to know reality and arrive at the truth, and for this he alludes to the achievement of the natural sciences. He sees that "the modern self-limitation of reason" rooted in Kant which views itself incapable of knowing religion and the human sciences such as ethics leads to dangerous pathologies of religion and pathologies of science (ecological disasters and destruction of humans).[61][64] He thinks that this self-limitation, which "amputates" the mind's capacity to answer fundamental questions such as man's origin and purpose, dishonors reason and is contradictory to the modern acclamation of science, whose basis is the power of reason.[61][64]

In his book Truth and Tolerance, Ratzinger affirmed that truth and love are identical. And if well understood, according to him, this is "the surest guarantee of tolerance."[61]

Badiou

Alain Badiou has gained renown in contemporary continental philosophy for his theory of truth as a situated "truth-procedure" consisting in the practice of fidelity to an event. According to Badiou, truth-procedures are situated, singular, subjective, and universal. Badiou defines love, art, science, and politics as the four domains of truth-procedures, and defines philosophy as a space of thought conditioned by and concerned with thinking through the interaction of truth-procedures in these four domains. Badiou's theory of truth is deeply rooted in his mathematical ontology, and has gained notoriety as a critique of postmodern philosophy and post-structuralism articulated from within the tradition of Continental philosophy.

Osho

Indian mystic Osho noticed that truth could never be revealed by mind-thinking. Thus, any philosopher or thinker who would theorize upon truth, would deviate from the path of truth. He proposed meditation techniques as ways of reaching the truth. Here is a transcription of a speech given by Osho:

The philosopher thinks about things; it is a mind approach. My approach is a no-mind approach. It is just the very opposite of philosophizing. It is not thinking about things, ideas, but seeing the clarity that comes when you put your mind aside and you see through silence not through logic. Seeing is not thinking. The sun rises there. If you think about it, you miss it because while you are thinking about it, you are going away from it; in thinking you can move miles away; and thoughts go faster than anything possible. If you are seeing the sunrise, then one thing has to be certain, that you are not thinking about it. Only then you can see it. [..] [Thinking] it does not allow reality to reach you, it imposes itself upon reality. It is a deviation from reality. Hence no philosopher has ever been able to know the truth. All the philosophers have been thinking about the truth. But thinking about the truth is an impossibility. either you know, or you don’t. If you know it, there is no need to think about. If you don’t how can you think about. A philosopher talking about truth is like a blind man talking about light. If you have eyes, you don’t think about light, you see it. Seeing is a totally different process ; it is a product of meditation.

Original article : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth

not enough?

Philosophers view
http://www.iep.utm.edu/t/truth.htm
My religion view
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15073a.htm

People may not agree with my quote but at least people may understand why...

Bahagia

Very good article, do not have time to finish my heaven and hell article yet...

Bahagia

John C Maxwell suatu ketika pernah didapuk menjadi seorang pembicara di
sebuah seminar bersama istrinya. Ia dan istrinya, Margaret, diminta
menjadi pembicara pada beberapa sesi secara terpisah. Ketika Maxwell
sedang menjadi pembicara, istrinya selalu duduk di barisan terdepan dan
mendengarkan seminar suaminya. Sebaliknya, ketika Margaret sedang
menjadi pembicara di salah satu sesi, suaminya selalu menemaninya dari
bangku paling depan.


Ceritanya, suatu ketika sang istri, Margaret, sedang menjadi pembicara
di salah satu sesi seminar tentang kebahagiaan. Seperti biasa, Maxwell
duduk di bangku paling depan dan mendengarkan. Dan di akhir sesi, semua
pengunjung bertepuk tangan. Yang namanya seminar selalu ada interaksi
dua arah dari peserta seminar juga kan ? (Kalau satu arah mah namanya
khotbah.)

Di sesi tanya jawab itu, setelah beberapa pertanyaan, seorang ibu
mengacungkan tangannya untuk bertanya. Ketika diberikan kesempatan,
pertanyaan ibu itu seperti ini, "Miss Margaret, apakah suami Anda
membuat Anda bahagia?"

Seluruh ruangan langsung terdiam. Satu pertanyaan yang bagus. Dan semua
peserta penasaran menunggu jawaban Margaret. Margaret tampak berpikir
beberapa saat dan kemudian menjawab, "Tidak."

Seluruh ruangan langsung terkejut. "Tidak," katanya sekali lagi, "John
Maxwell tidak bisa membuatku bahagia." Seisi ruangan langsung menoleh ke
arah Maxwell. (Kebayang ga malunya Maxwell saat itu.) Dan Maxwell juga
menoleh-noleh mencari pintu keluar. Rasanya ingin cepat-cepat keluar.
Malu ui!

Kemudian, lanjut Margaret, "John Maxwell adalah seorang suami yang
sangat baik. Ia tidak pernah berjudi, mabuk-mabukan, main serong. Ia
setia, selalu memenuhi kebutuhan saya, baik jasmani maupun rohani. Tapi,
tetap dia tidak bisa membuatku bahagia."

Tiba-tiba ada suara bertanya, "Mengapa?"

"Karena," jawabnya, "tidak ada seorang pun di dunia ini yang bertanggung
jawab atas kebahagiaanku selain diriku sendiri."

Dengan kata lain, maksud dari Margaret adalah, tidak ada orang lain yang
bisa membuatmu bahagia. Baik itu pasangan hidupmu, sahabatmu, uangmu,
hobimu. Semua itu tidak bisa membuatmu bahagia. Karena yang bisa membuat
dirimu bahagia adalah dirimu sendiri.

Kamu bertanggung jawab atas dirimu sendiri. Kalau kamu sering merasa
berkecukupan, tidak pernah punya perasaan minder, selalu percaya diri,
kamu tidak akan merasa sedih. Sesungguhnya pola pikir kita yang
menentukan apakah kita bahagia atau tidak, bukan faktor luar.

Contohnya rasul Paulus. Ketika itu rasul Paulus sedang dihimpit oleh
keadaan. Ia disiksa dan dipenjara, ditolak kanan kiri. Tapi coba lihat
surat-suratnya. Apakah berisi keluh kesah? Justru sebaliknya! Sebagian
besar surat-surat Paulus justru berisikan motivasi, berita gembira dan
inspirasi. Rasul Paulus bahagia. Meskipun keadaan sekelilingnya mungkin
merupakan alasan ia tidak bahagia, namun ia bahagia..


Bahagia atau tidaknya hidupmu bukan ditentukan oleh seberapa kaya
dirimu, seberapa cantik istrimu, atau sesukses apa hidupmu. Ini masalah
pilihan: apakah kamu memilih untuk bahagia atau tidak.


Seorang sahabat menaruh kasih setiap waktu, dan menjadi seorang saudara dalam kesukaran.
Amsal 17:17

Happiness or Satisfaction ?

People mix up those 2 words! Do you think people in the world are happier than 50 years ago? Money can't buy Happiness is it true? Well, as promised in "The Beginning" I will pour some of my thought around Happiness and Truth as stated under the title of this Blog. Here we go!

To satisfy you... according to Richard Layard (writer of Happiness: Lessons from a New Science) the world is not happier than 50 years ago, even though the world have more & more rich people! Money can’t buy happiness True? Yes... but we all act as if we’d be happier with a bit more money, we are conditioned to want to be rich (even when we know the rich aren’t happy either), we all want the latest gadget, we want to earn more money because then we’ll have the good life. Why this is happening? (Just a note according to some studies at least basic needs need to be fulfilled even some give some minimum income per year, for common sense I agree but I think it is not completely true).

My personal answer based on what I see around and read are:
1. People confuse about Happiness and Satisfaction
2. Happiness is measured with success, power & influence (money is lingering between those 3)

Weird? yeah I will give some extreme example to explain it.
When you able to take some revenge to someone who wrong you, when you beat your competitor with "all means necessary", when you doing "it" with a whore, when you able to scold & explode your emotion, when you able put someone "in the corner", able to buy expensive stuff & gadget, you fell satisfaction not happiness actually. As the word itself satisfaction means fulfilling a desire or need or appetite, so scolding, revenge are fulfilling wrath desire, the whore & expensive thing are fulfilling a lust desire and so on.

Most of the people confuse about these two, because both happiness and satisfaction have some same element: Joy. I'm not trying to be a linguist here, but these are true, we all experienced this feeling. Perhaps with some more example, it will more clearer, happiness usually happen when you see your first born child, when you are among your old friends after 10 years never met, finding peace in a prayer, cured from deadly disease, able to help other people (in spontaneous situation), giving blood to local blood bank.

What is the different? Perhaps some explanation I can do are, happiness do not feed on other people sorrow that for sure, nor your desire, no hidden agenda, not self centered and you can guess too that happiness have a strong correlation with peace.

Ok another example, holding your healthy firstborn baby is happiness, but seeing your son graduate from reputable university with high score is not happiness it is a satisfaction, but you can shed tear too in that moment, to be exact it usually come from pride.

I across this sentence while browsing and quote it in Facebook before “That funny statement, is only funny because it’s somewhat true. The reason people want whatever is currently “hot” is because they believe it will contribute towards their satisfaction and happiness in life. The word “believe” is the key here. People believe that buying more and more things will make them happy, when in fact research has shown time and time again that this simply isn’t the case.” To be exact, buying “hot” things indeed bring satisfaction either for their pride for showing, or lust for just being have that thing or other selfish reason but not happiness.

Although happiness is an emotion, we can select it when we choose it regardless the situation, but I know you will need a very discipline mind to do so. Satisfaction in other hand have a set of standard and goal, if not fulfilled satisfaction will not happen.

So what we can do?
We all have a wonderful gift; in fact we are the only species in this earth able to self examining, so learn yourself, ask what is important in your life (but unselfish one) and seek your true happiness.

Some other words I can share this time to enhance your happiness :
Learn to think positive, accept differentiation, stop asking fairness (I will write about this in the future), find some little happiness here and there (looking through the window and see a mountain view in my old office bring me happiness) and find your meaning, what you can do in this world which you start from yourself.

Note:
Watching the end of Battlestar Galactica really give me some thought about happiness and materialism and inspire me to write this blog, so this one is my tribute to that wonderfull TV series.
Feel free to share your thoughts too.

"Knowing the path is not the same as walking the path"

Dinosaurs Extinction

"For over 100 million years, dinosaurs, and not mammals, were the dominant form of life on Earth. The pinnacle of evolution at the time, dinosaurs filled the niches of being the largest, most differentiated animals -- herbivores and carnivores both -- on the planet. As you well know from seeing their fossils, they would dwarf their modern, mammalian counterparts if they were still alive today. But they're not still alive today, because a mass extinction event occurred 65 million years ago. And the fossil record indicates that it occurred all at once, which is unusual. The Earth was overrun with dinosaurs, everywhere. In just a few hundred thousand years, they were all gone. All of them. Large, small, it doesn't matter. That's what extinct means -- every last one." Ethan Siegel

There are some evidence that the cause might not from Chicxulub asteroid impact so now scientist try to look for more evidence, so... what kind of event that actually happen that erase all those Dinosaurs? a very interesting mystery.