The epistemic problem of "deriving truth from scratch "

[Someone here]

On 11/03/2026 at 2:17 AM, LastThursday said:

Truth requires some amount of persistence of some aspect of experience. Persistence is just a kind of memory. A truth which is always persisting is an absolute truth, by some measure of "always".

A lot of what can be understood in experience are constructions (or interpretations) in experience: chairs, people, sky, air, food, self. The constructions are a kind of truth by virtue of the fact that they are a kind of memory. I understand a chair, and chairs exist, because the chair construction persists as a form of memory, and that construction is applied whenever something in raw experience matches the "template". 

Constructions are fluid and so don't persist absolutely: chairs are not absolute truth. Constructions given to you by other people, are not absolute truth either.

To get at a different truth then, you have to deal with the non-constructed parts of experience. One such thing is that experience exists all the time, it's hard to deny that something is there, something is happening; it is an absolute truth.

I would say it is potentially impossible to know if you're dealing with a construction or not, maybe everything in experience is a construction, it's hard to tell. Is the colour red a construction or not? Certainly the word "red" definitely is, but is the direct experience of it a construction, where does red start and end in experience? What about, nearly red? Anything that delineates reality, is almost certainly a construction of some type. But isn't reality just distinctions?

 

Thank you

. Chatgpt:

 

Your perspective is interesting because it blends epistemology (how we know truth) with phenomenology (how experience appears). Philosophically, it contains several strong intuitions but also some tensions and questionable assumptions. Below is a structured critique.

1. The Core Claim: Truth Requires Persistence

You suggest that truth depends on persistence in experience, which you equate with memory.

Philosophically, this resembles ideas from:

(experience and pragmatism)

(temporal structure of consciousness)

(ideas as copies of impressions and habits)

Critique:

Truth vs recognition

Persistence may be required for recognizing truth, but not necessarily for being true.

Example: a one-time cosmic event can still be true even if never remembered.

Memory is fallible

If truth depends on memory, then truth inherits memory’s unreliability.

Philosophically, truth is normally defined independently of human cognition (e.g., correspondence theories).

Category confusion

You are blending:

Truth (a property of propositions)

Experience (a phenomenological event)

Many philosophers argue truth belongs to statements about experience, not experience itself.

This tension would be criticized by analytic philosophers like .

2. Constructions as Memory-Based Templates

Your idea that concepts like chairs are persistent templates applied to experience aligns with several traditions:

— categories structuring experience

— meaning through language practices

modern predictive processing theories of perception.

However, there are problems.

Problem: Conflating concept formation with truth

The fact that a concept persists does not make it true.

Example critique:

“Unicorn” is also a persistent conceptual template.

Persistence alone does not validate ontological status.

So persistence might explain how we organize experience, but not why something exists or is true.

3. The Claim that Experience Itself Is Absolute Truth

You argue that the existence of something happening is undeniable.

This resembles Cartesian certainty:

— “I think, therefore I am.”

However, your formulation is closer to:

“Something is happening.”

Strength

This is a powerful minimal epistemic certainty.

Philosophically similar to:

Husserl’s phenomenological givenness

some forms of phenomenological realism

Critique

Even here there are challenges:

Who or what experiences?

If everything is construction, the subject itself might be constructed.

Buddhist and phenomenological critiques

Traditions such as Buddhist philosophy argue even the notion of "experience" is conceptually imposed.

Self-referential problem

If everything that delineates reality is a construction, the statement itself is also a construction.

So the theory risks self-undermining skepticism.

4. The Construction vs Raw Experience Distinction

You propose that truth might lie in non-constructed experience.

This is philosophically controversial.

Many philosophers reject the idea of pure, unstructured experience.

Example:

famously criticized what he called the “Myth of the Given.”

His argument:

There is no raw, uninterpreted sensory given; all perception is conceptually structured.

If Sellars is right, your project of finding non-constructed truth may be impossible.

5. The Red Example

Your question about redness touches a classic problem in philosophy of perception.

Is redness:

a physical wavelength?

a neural process?

a phenomenological quality?

Philosophers call this qualia.

Key issue:

Even if the experience of red is immediate, the concept of red still structures how we interpret it.

So the raw/constructed distinction becomes very difficult to maintain.

6. The Distinction Problem

Your final question is philosophically deep:

“Anything that delineates reality is probably a construction. But isn't reality just distinctions?”

This resembles ideas from:

— Laws of Form

structuralist and Buddhist philosophy.

Critique:

If all distinctions are constructed, then:

either reality itself is constructed

or our access to reality is necessarily constructive.

Both undermine the possibility of pure non-constructed truth.

Overall Evaluation

Strengths

Your framework captures several important insights:

perception involves pattern recognition

concepts are socially transmitted constructions

minimal certainty may lie in the existence of experience

These align with phenomenology and cognitive science.

Weaknesses

Key philosophical issues:

Truth vs cognition confusion
Persistence explains recognition, not truth.

Persistence criterion too weak
False beliefs can persist.

Unclear notion of “raw experience”
Many philosophers reject its existence.

Self-undermining skepticism
If all distinctions are constructions, the theory undermines itself.

✅ A stronger version of your theory might say:

Experience is structured through persistent interpretive patterns.

Truth is not persistence itself, but stable successful coordination between interpretations and experience.

This would move your view closer to pragmatism.

If you'd like, I can also:

show which existing philosophical positions your view is closest to, or

help formalize it into a coherent philosophical theory (because it’s actually close to several modern cognitive theories of perception).

[Someone here]

On 11/03/2026 at 5:14 PM, Sincerity said:

To sum up, here's my best advice: for good contemplation on the fundamental, you need to have a solid grasp on some reference point (like "I", "now", "reality"). You need to know clearly what you're contemplating on, even if you don't see it's nature yet. Have it on your radar. And then laser focus on it.

This is pretty logical: when you're contemplating on "what is now?", you need to understand what "now" is referring to. The contemplation is on that which the word "now" is referring to. That is a reference point.

I'd go as far as to say there is no thing in direct experience which might be an actual perception of "now". There is no solidity to anything.  

[vibv]

38 minutes ago, Someone here said:

Yes I agree ..language is a huge part of the conundrum. What is language?  A commony agreed upon verbal to describe objects ..what are objects without names?

If you learn to perceive without language you gain access to greater intelligence.

[Sincerity]

1 hour ago, Someone here said:

I'd go as far as to say there is no thing in direct experience which might be an actual perception of "now". There is no solidity to anything.  

God/Now is always elusive and non-solid. That’s true. But still, you can train yourself to know what to contemplate on and how to raise state to such a level that you have a profound awareness of God.

I’m speaking from experience. You could do it too.

Edited March 13 by Sincerity

[Carl-Richard]

On 11.3.2026 at 8:42 PM, Sincerity said:

Well, I think you obviously can have genuine insights about eg. morality. If I contemplated morality, I would primarily focus on my behaviours and think whether they were right, good, loving. What made them loving or unloving? Are these assessment objective in any way? Does that matter? Why do I even care about morality? Etc.

So yes, I think you can go deep into concepts once you bring them back into „reality” during contemplation. And if that’s done, you can have some great insights. Not absolute per se, but still true/wise.

Simply don’t contemplate concepts „in a vacuum”. Think over specific examples.

But then we're talking deep in the Walmart sandbox kind of deep. That's why I think "insight" and "belief" are truly not firm distinctions. Insight (unless if we're talking about non-dual awakening as kind of insight, which here we're not) is just when something bubbles up from the pool of other beliefs or the same cognitive architectures underlying those beliefs (language, concepts, words, expressions).

It might be highly salient, highly meaningful, by virtue of it bubbling up in that way, but still, it is bubbling up from the pool of beliefs / cognitive architectures and presents itself as that. "Eureka! My mind just had a mind blast!". Ok, but are you the universe yet?

Edited March 13 by Carl-Richard

[Sincerity]

49 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

That's why I think "insight" and "belief" are truly not firm distinctions. Insight is just when something bubbles up from the pool of other beliefs (unless you're talking about non-dual awakening as a kind of insight, which here we're not).

I think there can definitely be overlap between insight and belief. Having what felt like a „profound insight” which later turned out to be false and based on fake foundations. I’ve had that in life. Being wrong is a bitch. 😆

But I wouldn’t draw insight as just a subset of belief. I think it can depend on 1) whether you’re approaching contemplation (especially on the fundamental) from genuine beginner’s mind and interest in truth and 2) whether your insights from this beginner’s mind repeat across time.

I think genuine interest in truth for the sake of it is a mechanism that cleanses you of the corruption of invalid beliefs. Across a long span of time, that is. Doing the work to see truthfully and to throw all that isn’t true out, if you care about that. Having done that, I think the possibilities of true insight are real.

And you’re obviously always still fallible, even if you care about truth.

Edited March 13 by Sincerity

[Someone here]

1 hour ago, Carl-Richard said:

But then we're talking deep in the Walmart sandbox kind of deep. That's why I think "insight" and "belief" are truly not firm distinctions. Insight (unless if we're talking about non-dual awakening as kind of insight, which here we're not) is just when something bubbles up from the pool of other beliefs or the same cognitive architectures underlying those beliefs (language, concepts, words, expressions).

It might be highly salient, highly meaningful, by virtue of it bubbling up in that way, but still, it is bubbling up from the pool of beliefs / cognitive architectures and presents itself as that. "Eureka! My mind just had a mind blast!". Ok, but are you the universe yet?

I think that's a great way of articulating the problem. 

My guru told me "any answer you get from the outside is false.look within ". Isn't that itself an outside authority telling me what is true and what is false ? 

[Leo Gura]

4 hours ago, Someone here said:

...then what is left ?

Truth

[RamBam]

Kant gives a great framework for approaching these questions. I don't think Kant has a deep appreciation for the essence of being and is overall pretty dry. Still, his writing offers an excellent methodology for understanding the capacity and limitations of insight gained from perception. Some Christian prejudice sprinkled in but still makes space for God, transcendence, and the sublime. Curious if this community has any appreciation for og western phil? 

[LastThursday]

@Someone here a good unpacking and critique of my ideas by ChatGPT there:
 

8 hours ago, Someone here said:

Persistence may be required for recognizing truth, but not necessarily for being true.

Example: a one-time cosmic event can still be true even if never remembered.

I would disagree strongly with ChatGPT about that point. Can something actually be true if no information about it was ever captured? How can truth be distinguished from falsehood if there is nothing to go on after the fact? In other words to validate truth, it must persist long enough to be validated. And validating truth requires phenomenology. Otherwise, absolutely anything could be true, but argue that we could have just forgotten about it.

There's a deep point here. Either: truth sits as a one-time fact that holds forever (ChatGPT), or, truth is a continuous process that needs refreshing every time we dip back into it (me).

In reality though, all truths have side effects in the world at large and are not forgotten. Most truths cast a shadow, and we look for the thing that cast it.

[Ziran]

On 3/10/2026 at 7:54 AM, Someone here said:

... this just goes on in a circle ...

Within the psyche, the metaphorical "heart", the emotive faculties, in conjunction with the pattern recognition of the intellect, can escape the loop.  Remember Yoda?  "Trust your feelings, Luke".  Live long enough or reincarnate.  Sooner or later, intuition and natural deduction will take care of it.

Edited 7 hours ago by Ziran

[zurew]

On 2026. 03. 14. at 0:52 AM, LastThursday said:

Can something actually be true if no information about it was ever captured? How can truth be distinguished from falsehood if there is nothing to go on after the fact?

But thats just an epistemic issue not an issue about metaphysics. There can be facts that we will never know about or prove given our epistemic issues, but from that doesnt follow that those facts arent true.

Their truth value isn't dependent on our knowledge of them, unless you take it to be the case that all truths are knowledge dependently true.

We can list here a large set of facts about physics that werent known by any person on Earth during the ice age, but from that doesnt follow that the laws of physics had to change or that the laws of physics were different back then.

Or we can just go with a rape example, where one person rapes another - do you think there isn't any fact of the matter about one person raping another up until the point the jury becomes conscious of the evidence against the rapist? Or do you take it to be the case, that if there cant be sufficient evidence presented against the rapist, the rape just didnt happen?

Edited 6 hours ago by zurew

[Xonas Pitfall]

On 13/03/2026 at 4:17 PM, Someone here said:

Isn't this question begging ? 

My question is if you strip away all notions of base reality and also the notion of truth itself along with all of language and concepts and everything you've been taught by others ...then what is left ?

Try it yourself. Do exactly what you’re asking: remove all your assumptions and beliefs. What is anything you can be sure you know? Try to remove everything.

The only thing you will be left with is pure “is-ness.” This is now, therefore it is. This is in my direct experience, therefore it is. This “is-ness” is truth, or pure correspondence that things are just what they are, not some other way or with some filter, assumption, or perception added to them. Just A = A. This is what it is. It won’t have any thoughts or any further veil of perception. It really does feel like pure nothingness, or a vacuum of existence, just pure being.

[Jirh]

The problem isn't much about deriving truth from whichever source(s). It's more about assuming it needs to derived in the first place.

[LastThursday]

1 hour ago, zurew said:

unless you take it to be the case that all truths are knowledge dependently true.

That is exactly my stance. It's all about information and relativity.

Truth and falsity is just the answer to a proposition. To use a toy example, consider the proposition "all triangles have three sides". Either that is true or that is false. And that answer is unchanging, whether someone is aware of the proposition or not.

But unless you think that propositions themselves are divorced from reality (as some sort of Platonic form), then you have to step it back and ask: where does the proposition live? It has to appear (exist) in the mind of a person. The order of importance is then first Existence, then Proposition, then Truthiness. Each thing needs the previous one to make any sense. Truth is the state of a proposition, but has no life of its own, and equally a proposition is a state of existence, it has no life of its own without it.

By relativity then, a proposition can exist in one mind, but not another, and so truthiness exists in one mind but not another. How does a proposition get relayed to another mind? Information transfer. Once transferred it then "exists" in another mind, and so does its truth or falsity.

The information transfer can be extremly subtle though. Information "leaks" in many different ways through cause and effect chains. There is also the problem of uncertainty, it may not be known if a proposition is true or false, until more information comes to light: the process of science, or the questioning and evidence in a court case.

2 hours ago, zurew said:

Or we can just go with a rape example, where one person rapes another - do you think there isn't any fact of the matter about one person raping another up until the point the jury becomes conscious of the evidence against the rapist? Or do you take it to be the case, that if there cant be sufficient evidence presented against the rapist, the rape just didnt happen?

Your example is just a case of relativity. There may be a truth to the proposition: person A raped person B, and that truth can be known by person A and B. But the jury does not know the truth of the proposition, because not enough information has been transferred to be able to answer the proposition. A proposition can both be true and uncertain simultaneously depending on who holds it.

[Mellowmarsh]

On 10/03/2026 at 2:54 PM, Someone here said:

Anything I come to know from the external world is prone to error and falsehood . It can never be trusted as an absolute truth.

There is only “your” truth.

Everyone else gets their truth from the exact same source, namely, from their imagination. 

[zurew]

24 minutes ago, LastThursday said:

A proposition can both be true and uncertain simultaneously depending on who holds it.

But relative propositions also have a fact of the matter about them once the additional relative context is provided in the proposition itself. (You can be wrong about relative propositions, once the context is added and they are not knowledge dependently true)

The proposition (X) that "person A raped person B"  won't change just because the jury doesnt know whats up with that rape case. Its just the case that the jury simply doesnt know what kind of truth value that relative proposition holds (whether it is true or false) , but its still a fact of the matter that the proposition is true.

The relative facts surrounding the case is what makes proposition (X )true or false, not someone's knowledge about the case. (Person A raping person B is what makes proposition (X) true, not whether the jury has any knowledge about the case or not).

I think you confuse where the proposition is located at with the content of the proposition. Even relative propositions' truth value are dependent on the content of the propositions and they are not dependent on where the propositions are located (it doesnt matter whether you are a platonist or non-platonist about propositions, that is a tangential question to this problem).

The only way the location of the given proposition becomes relevant to the truth value of said proposition (whether the proposition is true or false) is if the content of the proposition is about the location itself.

Edited 4 hours ago by zurew

[Ramasta9]

There is an "epistemic" drug going around in the forums, the hype-trains are hitting real hard lately. 

[LastThursday]

@zurew you're just seeing it from a different paradigm than me, maybe I hold an unusual position. 

From my paradigm the content of the proposition is less important than its existence (location) in the first place. I say this because you can have any content you like. Think of a proposition machine that churns these things out one every second. You contend that if any of these arbitrary propositions are true (or false), then they are forever true, even if no one reads them. But were the propositions true before the machine generated them? No, because the truthfulness depends on the proposition existing in the first place. From my point of view the proposition needs to be "instanced" by both coming into existence and being understood in someone's mind (i.e. it's relative). The proposition itself contains information, and that information must be "held" somewhere.

Apart from the content, the proposition itself must be validated in some way. It doesn't hold that a proposition is immediately true or false, other states may be, "unknown" or "uncertain". Validation takes "effort" and "time" however small. I agree that once the state of a proposition is known, then you can extend its truthfulness both backwards and forwards in time, but that's only after the fact. The flipside way of looking at it is that a proposition always had a definite truthfulness value, but you had to uncover it by some sort of process. Either way discovering the truthfulness of a proposition is a process, exactly as a jury does in court.

Edited 2 hours ago by LastThursday

[zurew]

51 minutes ago, LastThursday said:

You contend that if any of these arbitrary propositions are true (or false), then they are forever true, even if no one reads them.

No the content of the proposition can make it time relatively true or false.

Getting back to the rape case, we can add and explicate time relative facts to the case and that way the truth value of said proposition can change if you change the content about time.

51 minutes ago, LastThursday said:

No, because the truthfulness depends on the proposition existing in the first place.

I dont know what it means for a proposition to exist, but regardless I take it that it doesnt depend on that, what matters is the content that the  proposition relates/corresponds to. The laws of physics exists before you become conscious of the laws of physics or before anyone utters any proposition about the laws of physics.

There are facts of the matter about the laws of physics independent from your knowledge of it. It might be the case, that you dont know anything about the laws of physics , but thats just a statement about  knowledge, but that doesnt change anything about the laws of physics.

51 minutes ago, LastThursday said:

It doesn't hold that a proposition is immediately true or false, other states may be, "unknown" or "uncertain".

That is compatible with what I am saying. For instance,  you can make propositions where the content of said proposition is something about the future, and those propositions doesnt have any truth value yet.

51 minutes ago, LastThursday said:

Apart from the content, the proposition itself must be validated in some way

Still disagree, thats an epistemic issue not a metaphysics issue .

Gravity still works even if you are unconscious of it. Your epistemic limitation or your lack of knoweldge doesnt change any fact about gravity.

Edited 1 hour ago by zurew