What are some examples of Objective Truth?

[slimvictor]

I wanted to suggest that our delineation between things and actions those things take might not apply to reality outside of our investigation of it. My qualm with the claim that something must exist is with the "thing" part. Abandoning this, though, suggests that we cannot capture this truth linguistically
ebola

There is psychological evidence for the differentiation of actions and objects at even level, from perception to memory.
This isn't to say that the "reality" that you allude to in this quote (are you assuming objective truth in order to think about objective truth?) necessarily contains actions and objects, but that, at least, we are programmed to think in terms of actions and objects.
Additionally, essentially every language in the world differentiates between actions and objects (through the precise membership of each set does differ slightly from language to language, the bulk are the same).
This shows that we find it convenient to think in terms of actions and objects.

However, I am not entirely sure why you say "Abandoning this, though, suggests that we cannot capture this truth linguistically". Whether we assume a priori that things exist or not doesn't change the linguistic facts. It doesn't determine if the sentence makes sense, for example. Are you concerned with the question of whether the linguistic sign has a real-world referent, instead of "just" one in our minds? If so, linguistics cannot solve this problem for us.
But if we are to be concerned with the language used to express the (attempt at) objective truth, we need to look at all aspects of the statement, not just the concept of "thing".
Surely, if someone says "something exists" and that something is an action, for example, or a property, that doesn't change the truthfulness of the sentence.
Existence without a thing (etc.) to exist is meaningless.
Existence implies something to exist.
Therefore, the verb "exist" is just as relevant as the noun "thing" in the original sentence.
If we have captured the "truth" (as you put it) of existence linguistically, we must be prepared to accept all of the assumptions entailed by the rest of the utterance, including the verb in particular.
(I am not ready to allow that this is an objective truth.)

 

[slimvictor]

I only claim that it is an objektive fact that there is MORE than nothing. What 'something' is doesn't matter.

Once again, I am afraid that "objective truth" has been reduced to meaning "everyone would agree on this". Such an approach doesn't really even begin to get at the question of whether an objective reality exists, which seems like the question we want to look at here.

 

[ebola?]

There is psychological evidence for the differentiation of actions and objects at even level, from perception to memory.
...
Additionally, essentially every language in the world differentiates between actions and objects (through the precise membership of each set does differ slightly from language to language, the bulk are the same).
This shows that we find it convenient to think in terms of actions and objects.

This sounds essentially right.

This isn't to say that the "reality" that you allude to in this quote (are you assuming objective truth in order to think about objective truth?) necessarily contains actions and objects, but that, at least, we are programmed to think in terms of actions and objects.

Yes, I was trying to point to phenomena including those out of the scope of the subject's interaction with 'stuff'. One odd thing is that due to various inter-connective links, the subject interacts with the entirety of his surroundings (the universe writ-large), but sans awareness of most of this interaction.

However, I am not entirely sure why you say "Abandoning this, though, suggests that we cannot capture this truth linguistically".

Oh. I was talking about what language tries, and fails to, point toward, the extra-linguistic.

Are you concerned with the question of whether the linguistic sign has a real-world referent, instead of "just" one in our minds?

I think that it's likley some other relation...

If so, linguistics cannot solve this problem for us.

I agree, given language's failure to straightforwardly point to things outside of its sphere of influence.

But if we are to be concerned with the language used to express the (attempt at) objective truth, we need to look at all aspects of the statement, not just the concept of "thing".
Surely, if someone says "something exists" and that something is an action, for example, or a property, that doesn't change the truthfulness of the sentence.
Existence without a thing (etc.) to exist is meaningless.
Existence implies something to exist.

Actually, I was trying to use language to say something which structures of language preclude expressing. Thus, I am imprecise and in-exhaustive.

Therefore, the verb "exist" is just as relevant as the noun "thing" in the original sentence.

I should have clarified, substituting "prior to the distinction between thing and act".

If we have captured the "truth" (as you put it) of existence linguistically

We can't.

ebola

 

[Pythagoras]

Very interesting thread. I think the impasse has been reached.

Slimvictor posits language as mere convention, even the most fundamental statement, say 'cogito ergo sum' does not satisfy his strict reduction of language as mere convention. Ebola I think is correct in concluding that within the limits of Slimvictor's ontology, seemingly objective statements, even tautologies, collapse into subjectivity.

I think that ebola's formulation of an ontology that delineates subject from object, that something is both until a temporally relevant point in time where linguistic/conventions collapse the ontological distinction.

perhaps the phrase

'I will not die' is such a objective statement, rendered true or false when I must skip this mortal coil. 'I am, that I am' is another such statement that alludes to ebola's object-state ontology, where language by its very nature must be absent due to its function in splitting the object-subject's undifferentiated nature?

Either that or I have misunderstood everyone.

EXEUNT

 

[morpher001]

Perhaps objective truth is only possible for an observer standing outside a well defined system. Simply because the system is well defined, objective truths should be attainable. This should be possible even when the facts defining the system are purely arbitrary.

 

[Pythagoras]

I have a few remaining problems with slimvictors assumptions.

That tautologies are not objective truths, ignoring logic's central role as meta-language, or at least a surer basis to discuss the role of convention in seeking the truth. Why ignore modal logics' novel approach to truth?

Not being a linguist, but speaking several (admittedly badly) the object/action dichotomy is less obvious in the Latinate branch where a single word so often denotes both object and action. The psychological level, that of memory, neurology I think remain evidentially underdetermined to support the 'naturalistic' certainty that directs us to adopting such a model, which implies an ontology that can appear so natural ,perhaps rightly so, perhaps not when matters of objective truth, more properly framed, demand new and unexplored ontologies, as suggested by ebola.

As ontologies that allow for new (yet counter-intuitive) truths, that allow the questions of philosophy to gain a new impetus, and regain its cardinal role in forming intersubjective objects that allow it to engage the academic spectrum anew. That said, the hour is late, but perhaps there is more meat on this metaphysical bone.

PAX

 

[Vader]

I do not consider anything you wrote to be (or represent) objective truth.
I also do not believe in objective truth.

Is that objectively true?

Language is not the only bearer of truth. Beliefs can also be true, so if they correspond with objective reality (or bear whatever the appropriate relation is to objective reality), then there will be an objective truth that sidesteps your assertion that all truths are contingent on convention. So, what might some beliefs of this kind be?

I think that conditionals are likely to be our best bet:

If there is a triangle, then it has three sides.
If there is a ball that's red all over, then that ball isn't blue all over.
If classical logic is true, then there are no contradictions.

You'll have to excuse the fact that I've attempted to express these beliefs in language, I'm aware it must be confusing but it's very difficult to communicate without doing so. To my mind, the beliefs that those propositions represent are onjectively true.

 

[slimvictor]

I just saw an article entitled "Five Reasons you won't Die" that essentially relies on the argument that there is no objective reality for you to die from. It mentions some evidence that the objective world is an illusion - sums it up rather well, I thought.

We've been taught we're just a collection of cells, and that we die when our bodies wear out. End of story. I've written textbooks showing how cells can be engineered into virtually all the tissues and organs of the human body. But a long list of scientific experiments suggests our belief in death is based on a false premise, that the world exists independent of us − the great observer.

Here are five reasons you won't die.

Reason One. You're not an object, you're a special being. According to biocentrism, nothing could exist without consciousness. Remember you can't see through the bone surrounding your brain. Space and time aren't objects, but rather the tools our mind uses to weave everything together.

"It will remain remarkable," said Eugene Wigner, who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1963 "in whatever way our future concepts may develop, that the very study of the external world led to the conclusion that the content of the consciousness is an ultimate reality."

Consider the uncertainty principle, one of the most famous and important aspects of quantum mechanics. Experiments confirm it's built into the fabric of reality, but it only makes sense from a biocentric perspective. If there's really a world out there with particles just bouncing around, then we should be able to measure all their properties. But we can't. Why should it matter to a particle what you decide to measure? Consider the double-slit experiment: if one "watches" a subatomic particle or a bit of light pass through slits on a barrier, it behaves like a particle and creates solid-looking hits behind the individual slits on the final barrier that measures the impacts. Like a tiny bullet, it logically passes through one or the other hole. But if the scientists do not observe the trajectory of the particle, then it exhibits the behavior of waves that allow it pass through both holes at the same time. Why does our observation change what happens? Answer: Because reality is a process that requires our consciousness.

The two-slit experiment is an example of quantum effects, but experiments involving Buckyballs and KHCO3 crystals show that observer-dependent behavior extends into the world of ordinary human-scale objects. In fact, researchers recently showed (Nature 2009) that pairs of ions could be coaxed to entangle so their physical properties remained bound together even when separated by large distances, as if there was no space or time between them. Why? Because space and time aren't hard, cold objects. They're merely tools of our understanding.

Death doesn't exist in a timeless, spaceless world. After the death of his old friend, Albert Einstein said "Now Besso has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us...know that the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion." In truth, your mind transcends space and time.

Reason Two. Conservation of energy is a fundamental axiom of science. The first law of thermodynamics states that energy can't be created or destroyed. It can only change forms. Although bodies self-destruct, the "me'' feeling is just a 20-watt cloud of energy in your head. But this energy doesn't go away at death. A few years ago scientists showed they could retroactively change something that happened in the past. Particles had to "decide" how to behave when they passed a fork in an apparatus. Later on, the experimenter could flip a switch. The results showed that what the observer decided at that point determined how the particle behaved at the fork in the past.

Think of the 20-watts of energy as simply powering a projector. Whether you flip a switch in an experiment on or off, it's still the same battery responsible for the projection. Like in the two-slit experiment, you collapse physical reality. At death, this energy doesn't just dissipate into the environment as the old mechanical worldview suggests. It has no reality independent of you. As Einstein's esteemed colleague John Wheeler stated "No phenomenon is a real phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon." Each person creates their own sphere of reality - we carry space and time around with us like turtles with shells. Thus, there is no absolute self-existing matrix in which energy just dissipates.

Reason Three. Although we generally reject parallel universes as fiction, there's more than a morsel of scientific truth to this genre. A well-known aspect of quantum physics is that observations can't be predicted absolutely. Instead, there's a range of possible observations each with a different probability. One mainstream explanation is the 'many-worlds' interpretation, which states that each of these possible observations corresponds to a different universe (the 'multiverse'). There are an infinite number of universes (including our universe), which together comprise all of physical reality. Everything that can possibly happen occurs in some universe. Death doesn't exist in any real sense in these scenarios. All possible universes exist simultaneously, regardless of what happens in any of them. Like flipping the switch in the experiment above, you're the agent who experiences them.

Reason Four. You will live on through your children, friends, and all who you touch during your life, not only as part of them, but through the histories you collapse with every action you take. "According to quantum physics," said theoretical physicists Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow, "the past, like the future, is indefinite and exists only as a spectrum of possibilities." There's more uncertainty in bio-physical systems than anyone ever imagined. Reality isn't fully determined until we actually investigate (like in the Schrödinger's cat experiment). There are whole areas of history you determine during your life. When you interact with someone, you collapse more and more reality (that is, the spatio-temporal events that define your consciousness). When you're gone, your presence will continue like a ghost puppeteer in the universes of those you know.

Reason Five. It's not an accident that you happen to have the fortune of being alive now on the top of all infinity. Although it could be a one-in-a-jillion chance, perhaps it's not just dumb luck, but rather must be that way. While you'll eventually exit this reality, you, the observer, will forever continue to collapse more and more 'nows.' Your consciousness will always be in the present -- balanced between the infinite past and the indefinite future -- moving intermittently between realities along the edge of time, having new adventures and meeting new (and rejoining old) friends.

source

 

[schwiftee]

That is if you believe in Objective Truth.

I can say that 1+1=2 and that might be the case, but does that refer to reality?

I can say that the temperature is 40 degrees out, but does that refer to reality as well?

Are these just not systems created by us?

Does Objective Truth exist? On the contrary does Subjective Truth exist?

Do they both not exist and are actually just concepts? Could there be no objective and subjective truths?

dr,tl
theres a problem in all of this in that the more you try and define exactly what something is you realise it is only that way because thats how you chose how to define it.

 

[slimvictor]

Language is not the only bearer of truth.

I have argued here that language is not a bearer of truth at all.

If there is a triangle, then it has three sides.
If there is a ball that's red all over, then that ball isn't blue all over.
If classical logic is true, then there are no contradictions.

You'll have to excuse the fact that I've attempted to express these beliefs in language, I'm aware it must be confusing but it's very difficult to communicate without doing so. To my mind, the beliefs that those propositions represent are onjectively true.

What if your ball is red all over, but then someone paints it blue?
There is a ball that is red all over, and that ball is blue all over.
The red is still there, underneath the blue paint.
It is also still vividly alive in my mind.
And yet, it is hard to deny that it is blue now.
Maybe you need to add "at any given point in time" to your sentence?
But the ball is still red in my mind....
It is red for me.
And my color-blind friend has no idea what you are talking about. It looks green to him in any case.
And, to my blind friend, those words are just abstract concepts, nothing tangible. She experiences color in a very different way.
And to my Russian friend, you are being extremely uninformative. Russian has two basic color terms that divide up the blue spectrum. Which one are you referring to?
And my Tarahumara friend has only 3 color terms dividing up the entire spectrum, so to her, you are being far too specific. She mentally translates "red" to "warm color", and "blue" to "cold color".

At what point does your "objective truth" lose its objectivity?
How many people does it take to disagree before you accept that it was subjective?
Maybe you, yourself, are the one to determine what is "objective" for everyone else? Sounds fishy to me.


My friend had a triangle with 4 sides.
It was a triangle used in an orchestra, made a metal and struck with a metal piece.
However, it was made in the shape of a square.

Just when you thought you had overcome the problems with considering language as a system of expressing beliefs without altering them in any way, without allowing subjectivity to enter into the encoded message (as if there were no subjectivity in beliefs themselves!).
That is not the way language works.
It is not a system designed to express the way the world is. That is a fallacy/myth.
It is inherently a system designed to express individual humans' experiences of the world. The evidence for this is everywhere (including my last 4 or 5 posts).

You claim to have recognized the problem, but then you try to get around it using language anyway.
Impossible.

 

[slimvictor]

I have a few remaining problems with slimvictors assumptions.

That tautologies are not objective truths, ignoring logic's central role as meta-language, or at least a surer basis to discuss the role of convention in seeking the truth. Why ignore modal logics' novel approach to truth?

Not being a linguist, but speaking several (admittedly badly) the object/action dichotomy is less obvious in the Latinate branch where a single word so often denotes both object and action. The psychological level, that of memory, neurology I think remain evidentially underdetermined to support the 'naturalistic' certainty that directs us to adopting such a model, which implies an ontology that can appear so natural ,perhaps rightly so, perhaps not when matters of objective truth, more properly framed, demand new and unexplored ontologies, as suggested by ebola.

As ontologies that allow for new (yet counter-intuitive) truths, that allow the questions of philosophy to gain a new impetus, and regain its cardinal role in forming intersubjective objects that allow it to engage the academic spectrum anew. That said, the hour is late, but perhaps there is more meat on this metaphysical bone.

PAX

It seems that you believe that logic has a role as a "meta-language".
I would argue that logic is only tangentially related to language.
Language is about subjective experience. (as in my post immediately above)
Language is a purely human creation and tool.
Logic is scientific, mathematical, and super-human.
Human beings are mostly illogical.
(Hadn't you noticed? )

 

[Jabberwocky]

tarski proved that any predicate that acts as 'truth like' is inconsistent. i.e. that anything which we might want to define as 'truth' is undefinable. individual facts can be objectively true, but you cannot collect together every objectively true fact and point to that collection as 'the objective truth.'

i know you wanted to differentiate between 'abstract truth' and 'objective truth' and this, as a logical theorem, looks like it addresses the former not the latter, but as the theorem holds regardless of the kind of objects you're talking about (as long as the objects can logically exist) it holds for the type of things you want to know the truth about.

it seems, in parallel to Socrates on Knowledge, the only objective truth is that there is no objective truth.

nb- this is my interpretation of the implications of the undefinability of truth, and i may have missed something in the details of the proof, however i have discussed it with both logicians and philosophers and met little disagreement to the overall conclusion about objective truth.

omfg- abuse of quantum theory again. Many worlds does not imply death does not exist!!!

 

[slimvictor]

omfg- abuse of quantum theory again. Many worlds does not imply death does not exist!!!

The many worlds part says that the meaning of death is different if you believe that you live in one universe of many (as compared to believing that you live in the only universe). This is undoubtedly true.

 

[Jabberwocky]

eventually all the yous will die, and then you will be dead. so yeah its a slightly different concept but death does still exist. Many Worlds is only a viable interpretation because it leaves all the laws of physics, biology, etc, intact. were it to genuinely undermine the rest of science, which a lot of people seem to think it does, it would not be genuinely upheld by scientists.

 

[Vader]

You claim to have recognized the problem, but then you try to get around it using language anyway.

As I said, I am not trying to claim that language is an objective truth bearer, because of course language only has meaning by virtue of convention. What I am trying to do is talk about pure, unexpressed beliefs (although, of course, talking about them without language is rather difficult).

My belief is that if there is a triangle (a thing that has three points at which one side meets another side), then it must have three sides. Now, there's no need to get all caught up in what I mean by "side" or "angle", because I don't mean anything by them other than what I conceive of in my head. My idea of a side or an angle is not conventional, and it doesn't matter if it coincides with anyone else's concepts. All that matters is that, given my conception of an angle, and my conception of a side, it is true that if there were to be a thing that had three of one, it would also have three of the other.

Now, equivocation would render this truth subjective; your example of the musical instrument which shares its name with the shape I am thinking of demonstrates this. However, there is no equivocation inside my own mind. There is no ambiguity, and there is no way that my belief could be false. You might object, and say that given your conception of what a side is, and of what an angle is, that it is possible for a triangle with a different number of sides to exist. But this misses the point. If I were to (attempt to) express my belief in language, that proposition would not be objectively true, because you might interpret in completely differently. But beneath the wishy-washy language, there is a concrete concept in my head, with real content, which coincides with objective reality.

Let us examine the ball example. Your objections do not apply to my belief. My conception of "red" has caught up in it the notion of being instantaneous. For me, if an object is red, it is red right now. Therefore, it cannot be both red and blue all over. The word might mean something else to you, but that seems like a totally arbitrary consideration when weighing up the truth value of my belief.

 

[slimvictor]

My idea of a side or an angle is not conventional, and it doesn't matter if it coincides with anyone else's concepts. All that matters is that, given my conception of an angle, and my conception of a side, it is true that if there were to be a thing that had three of one, it would also have three of the other.

...
However, there is no equivocation inside my own mind... beneath the wishy-washy language, there is a concrete concept in my head, with real content, which coincides with objective reality.

Sounds like your understanding of objective truth would allow it to be confined entirely to one person's understanding. This does not fit the definition of objective truth I had assumed.

It may be that the definition of objective truth is the issue here.

How you can know if your conception coincides perfectly with objective reality is baffling to me.

I also do not assume the existence of objective reality as you do.

Let us examine the ball example. Your objections do not apply to my belief. My conception of "red" has caught up in it the notion of being instantaneous. For me, if an object is red, it is red right now. Therefore, it cannot be both red and blue all over. The word might mean something else to you, but that seems like a totally arbitrary consideration when weighing up the truth value of my belief.

I would contend that "red" is not an instantaneous notion.
It takes time for something to be red.
For example, I can show you a video of a blue square that changes to red for only 2 milliseconds, and then ask you if the square was red. You will have been unable to perceive the redness, due to the limited time it was red, and you will most likely answer that the square was not red.
It was red in some sense, but you do not perceive that, and therefore it was not red to you.

Redness is a property of objects that is less permanent than objecthood, but less ephemeral than actions generally are. Actions, properties, and objects form a continuum of temporal stability, with actions lasting the shortest time (and being encoded in language as verbs), properties lasting a longer time (and being encoded as adjectives), and objects lasting the longest time (and being encoded as nouns).
A dog "lasts" 15 years, but its color may change (or be altered) in a shorter time than that. What is does - eating, sleeping, running - lasts a far shorter time.
This is not exceptionless - some languages don't have adjectives, for example, and some verbs describe actions that last a very long time, such as endure, and some verbs and nouns refer to essentially the same thing, such as flash - but as a general rule, it is true.
Adjectives even have special grammatical properties in English (and some other languages), permitting them to take a suffix to mark the change of state leading to the condition in which the adjective applies. This is because adjectives are not permanent, but are sufficiently state-like to warrant a treatment intermediate between nouns and verbs. (The sky is reddening works, but this is not possibly with verbs or nouns.)
So adjectives, such as red, prototypically require some temporal stability.
Therefore, you claim that your conception of red is atemporal or instantaneous, but such a conception is not supported by the linguistic or perceptual evidence.

Finally, I should mention that, once again, your assumptions of objective reality and a belief system that corresponds more or less- perfectly to that reality do not mesh with my own.

 

[Tromps]

I am a male. If you think that's subjective you're an idiot

Don't over think it.

I really don't think it's one way or the other though. Some thing's are subjective, and some things are objective. Everything isn't so black and white.

 

[slimvictor]

I am a male. If you think that's subjective you're an idiot

Don't over think it.

I really don't think it's one way or the other though. Some thing's are subjective, and some things are objective. Everything isn't so black and white.

Will you be a male after you've died?
What is the "I" to which you refer?
Some people have claimed that the "I" is a spirit, neither male nor female.
Don't under-think it.
It might not be as self-evident as you take it to be.

 

[IamMe90]

i dunno, i think descartes (ironically) demonstrated to us that skepticism is always going to defeat the possibility of a perfectly objective truth. we'll have intersubjective consensus to an asymptotically probable degree, but that consensus between subjects will never transcend into objectivity.

it's a basic structural issue - as a subject i can't certainly confirm that my perception of anything adheres to yours - because i have no direct access to your perception.

you have to keep in mind arguments like

My idea of a side or an angle is not conventional, and it doesn't matter if it coincides with anyone else's concepts. All that matters is that, given my conception of an angle, and my conception of a side, it is true that if there were to be a thing that had three of one, it would also have three of the other.

...
However, there is no equivocation inside my own mind... beneath the wishy-washy language, there is a concrete concept in my head, with real content, which coincides with objective reality.

while tempting, are irrelevant to the discussion at hand. this is only an example of subjective certainty, but "objective" requires a transcendence of mere subjectivity - if we were only arguing the viability of subjective truths, there wouldn't be an issue, for precisely the reasons outlined in the argument above - but we are not arguing subjective truths, we are arguing objective truths.

and until you not only provide a way for me to directly hijack not only yours, but everyone elses' perceptions of reality directly, but also provide a way for me to combat the skeptic doubts that will follow (e.g. how is that i am sure that what i am perceiving as "hijacking into your perception" is actually your perception?), you will not justify objective truth. the problem is that even if you somehow fulfilled requirement 1, you will NEVER fulfill requirement 2 - it is simply a by product of living a subjective existence in a world of (what we assume to be) other subjects and objects.

hopefully this is articualte as i intended... writing on drugs always seems so much easier than it really is at the time haha

 

[Vader]

Sounds like your understanding of objective truth would allow it to be confined entirely to one person's understanding. This does not fit the definition of objective truth I had assumed.

If you are going to define objective truth as such, then you effectively rule out the possibility of any truth-bearers but language having the property, and given that all language is necessarily contingent on convention for meaning, you have framed the concept in such a way that it is impossible before we even begin.

How you can know if your conception coincides perfectly with objective reality is baffling to me.

It doesn't have to. All I am claiming is that if one of my conceptions (a three angled shape) were to coincide with a real object, then another of my conceptions (a three sided shape) also latches on to that object. The fact that any three angled object existing in a two-dimensional space must also have three sides is so intuitively obvious that I don't see how you can doubt it.

I also do not assume the existence of objective reality as you do.

How on earth do you make sense of our experience then? I'm more than happy to admit that we are detached from objective reality, and that we can never experience nuomena, but to me the best inference to make to explain our mental lives is obviously (to me) that there is, in fact, a world independent of any consciousness.

I would contend that "red" is not an instantaneous notion.
It takes time for something to be red.
For example, I can show you a video of a blue square that changes to red for only 2 milliseconds, and then ask you if the square was red. You will have been unable to perceive the redness, due to the limited time it was red, and you will most likely answer that the square was not red.
It was red in some sense, but you do not perceive that, and therefore it was not red to you.

Redness is a property of objects that is less permanent than objecthood, but less ephemeral than actions generally are. Actions, properties, and objects form a continuum of temporal stability, with actions lasting the shortest time (and being encoded in language as verbs), properties lasting a longer time (and being encoded as adjectives), and objects lasting the longest time (and being encoded as nouns).
A dog "lasts" 15 years, but its color may change (or be altered) in a shorter time than that. What is does - eating, sleeping, running - lasts a far shorter time.
This is not exceptionless - some languages don't have adjectives, for example, and some verbs describe actions that last a very long time, such as endure, and some verbs and nouns refer to essentially the same thing, such as flash - but as a general rule, it is true.
Adjectives even have special grammatical properties in English (and some other languages), permitting them to take a suffix to mark the change of state leading to the condition in which the adjective applies. This is because adjectives are not permanent, but are sufficiently state-like to warrant a treatment intermediate between nouns and verbs. (The sky is reddening works, but this is not possibly with verbs or nouns.)
So adjectives, such as red, prototypically require some temporal stability.
Therefore, you claim that your conception of red is atemporal or instantaneous, but such a conception is not supported by the linguistic or perceptual evidence.

See, I really feel you've missed my point here. All this talk about language is irrelevant to belief. It doesn't matter one jot if what "red" means to you isn't what "red" means to me. Detached from the language is a mental object, that exists in my consciousness, the nature of which is not subject to debate because I know what it is.

The example you give of a square that reflects/emits light at one wavelength and briefly changes to another shows that sentences in English using the word "red" are not objectively true. But my beliefs are not in English; they are bundles of concepts. Given my concept of redness, the square isn't red unless I perceive it as red. I think that the example is an awkward one in this instance, given the inherently subjective nature of colour.

When we talk of objective truth, I guess what I think of is truth concerning what Locke would term primary properties of objects, the thing as it is independent of perception. My belief, even if it is shared by no-one else, would be objective (in my understanding) so long as it concerned objective reality.