how do you know that the things you think are "true" are actually true?

Question

please- let's try to avoid circular logic on this one (i.e.- "because i know")

Answer 1

The things we think are true are subjective, and most are lies. When truth hits you it tends to devastate. Doesn't it? Because it's not something you expected, it's not even something you suspected. Yet you know, if only because you can't breathe and spend an inordinate amount of time trying to convince yourself you're crazy. But that's my opinion. And what is it worth?

Answer 2

You should watch Rashomon. The truth is a vast thing, you cannot hold all of it comepletely. You may know something based on the facts presented, but that is not what there only is. Nothing is as it seem. Everything is at first assumed, based on the facts of course, and on these assumptions we realize more things, after transcending from one viewpoint to another. You say it is true because you have experienced it, but are we sure what we experienced is true? Things like that. So ASSUME. At least you have to make a decision, and open for possibilitites that your decisions has pictures of other things which you have not realized: falsifiability of Popper. Basically, truth is objectively viewed, so don't place color of blue or orange on it.

Answer 3

Seeing the truth as the truth, the false as the false and the truth in the false is the act of denial. It's an act and not an idea. The total denial of thought, the idea and the word brings freedom from the known; with the total denial of feeling, emotion & sentiment there's love. Love is beyond and above thought and feeling.
"I maintain that truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect. That is my point of view, and I adhere to that absolutely and unconditionally. Truth, being limitless, unconditioned, unapproachable by any path whatsoever, cannot be organized; nor should any organization be formed to lead or to coerce people along any particular path. If you first understand that, then you will see how impossible it is to organize a belief. A belief is purely an individual matter, and you cannot and must not organize it. If you do, it becomes dead, crystallized; it becomes a creed, a sect, a religion, to be imposed on others "

Answer 4

Trust your senses. Go with the flow. Then measure things. Test things. Experiment. Try to predict. Then try to control. Invent a micro chip or a potato chip. If you are really up to it, invent peace.
Avoid circular logic; do things.

Answer 5

If you are a true skeptic, you cannot believe that even your name is truly your own, as you have no way of knowing you are that person, other than taking the word of others. As for everyday truisms, you have to observe the world around you, and see if it works the way these truisms say. Gravity is an easy example of this.

Answer 6

I don't know whether they are actually true. My beliefs just seem the more logical of options at hand. Eg invisible man in the sky versus no man in the sky, simple basic logical.

Answer 7

It's called intersubjective corroboration, and it is the foundation of theoretical science. Without repeatable controlled experiments or confirmation from others for whose data suggests a similar conclusion, then all we have is blind faith in whatever wild notions we might have. In other words, you can never be absolutely certain, but you can often be certain beyond a reasonable doubt.

Answer 8

Depends on what you think it takes to meet the conditions of the term "know". Skeptics argue that in order to know, you have to have complete certainty, in which case it would be impossible to "know" the truth of pretty much any proposition (save perhaps the proposition "I exist").

More moderate, empiricist types, by contrast, say that to "know" is to have a true, justified belief; then to know, you simply have to gather evidence in favor of said proposition, believe it, and have it turn out to be true.

Answer 9

What is true for one person isn't always true for all. The search for truth can take a life time. A truth may be discarded in time when it no longer seems true.

Answer 10

If they are consistent with the other things you believe to be true then you can accept them as being true until proved otherwise. It is not possible to know if something is absoutely and universally true. And therefore, it is not practical to assume everything is false unless proven universally true.