so why not take the plunge and fully embrace a world where information itself isn't as important as how it can be used, where reality doesn't matter nearly as much as a compelling and effective argument? Aren't we sort of there already, only with the majority of people still naive enough to consciously believe they have a reasonable grasp on objective reality?
Were we ever not there? Could we possibly ever not be there?
What truth or reality do you claim, except that which carries the most compelling and effective argument?
This discussion has been happening for at least 2,000 + years. This discussion is literally where the term "sophist" came from. The Sophists were a bunch of dudes that thought that there was no fact of the matter and that all that was important was the ability to effectively argue for your position. It wasn't accepted then and shouldn't be accepted now.
Hey, we sophists aren't wrong. Our opponents just have more convincing arguments.
Arguing for absolute truth faces the issue that you can't actually perceive that truth. The best that you can do is look at various possible truths, and subjectively decide which one you think is absolute. Everything you believe is based on some sort of spin, whether you were told it by someone else or convinced yourself of it.
This discussion has been happening for at least 2,000 + years. This discussion is literally where the term "sophist" came from. The Sophists were a bunch of dudes that thought that there was no fact of the matter and that all that was important was the ability to effectively argue for your position. It wasn't accepted then and shouldn't be accepted now.
Hey, we sophists aren't wrong. Our opponents just have more convincing arguments.
Arguing for absolute truth faces the issue that you can't actually perceive that truth. The best that you can do is look at various possible truths, and subjectively decide which one you think is absolute. Everything you believe is based on some sort of spin, whether you were told it by someone else or convinced yourself of it.
I'm going to take this opportunity to post this. It's a talk a friend of mine gave at Sacramento State. It's long-ish (30 minutes) and the really relevant part doesn't start until 20 minutes it, but it's still an enjoyable talk if you have the time.
The gist? Rephrased in terms of "absolute" truth, to borrow jothki's terminology, is that there is no way to know the absolute truth. You are more likely to be wrong about reality than to be right. However, some ideas are clearly better* than others.
* - How do we know they're better? His series on the rise and fall of logical positivism partly explains that.
Feral on
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
Yeah that's what I'm saying. Truth is always a matter of having the more convincing argument. Please, convince me that this isn't true.
Well, of course, unless you're talking about the kind of truth that is just intuitive assumption and can't be argued or proven. The existence of that kind of truth is itself an example of that kind of truth.
Well, of course, unless you're talking about the kind of truth that is just intuitive assumption and can't be argued or proven. The existence of that kind of truth is itself an example of that kind of truth.
Ah, the predicate. Something that is true simply because you've based your whole system of truth around it being true.
I went through with the whole wild business; and I was sure I was right; as he himself is now sure I was right. Nobody knew but I how far he had already gone along that road; and I knew that there was nothing for it but acute, practical, painful discovery that he could not control matter or the elements; that he could not move trees or remove pitchforks; that he could struggle for two hours with a rope and a pair of prongs and still be bound.
Basically, a young man drinks deeply of solipsism and becomes unable to be convinced of the reality of anything outside his own senses. The hero, Gabriel Gale, "convinces" him otherwise by dragging him out into the woods and pinning him to a tree with a pitchfork.
Feral on
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
I completely disagree with the youtube video guy. What makes today different than the 1800s is that we are far less likely to simply make an unfounded assertion and claim it as fact (as in, in academia, the media and pop culture notwithstanding)
The reason is that things discovered in the 1600s, 1700s, 1800s, 1900s etc using similar methods to what scientists use today were right.
If you were to ask me what people are getting wrong today I would say just about everything tied to dogma or religion. When it comes to science it's not really correct to say that a theory was wrong when you refine it, as theories are just the best explanation we have based on available evidence. There's a reason that "proof" is only used in mathematics.
A theory is only wrong, in my view, if it also makes an assumption that all available evidence has been collected
"We can't possibly know absolute truth, anyway!" is mostly a philosophical debate for philosophers. It hardly applies at all in any useful sense to anyone else, where a mostly accurate estimation of truth is what's really necessary. And we have good estimates of the truth in spades. Tell an engineer who's building a bridge that he can't know truth, and he'll tell you to cram it while he applies his knowledge.
I'm an atheist who does not believe in god, but people have tried to nail me down on this "absolute certainty" thing, which is crap and just muddies things. It's possible we're all in the Matrix, really.
"We can't possibly know absolute truth, anyway!" is mostly a philosophical debate for philosophers. It hardly applies at all in any useful sense to anyone else, where a mostly accurate estimation of truth is what's really necessary. And we have good estimates of the truth in spades. Tell an engineer who's building a bridge that he can't know truth, and he'll tell you to cram it while he applies his knowledge.
p much
Feral on
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
Basically, a young man drinks deeply of solipsism and becomes unable to be convinced of the reality of anything outside his own senses. The hero, Gabriel Gale, "convinces" him otherwise by dragging him out into the woods and pinning him to a tree with a pitchfork.
"We can't possibly know absolute truth, anyway!" is mostly a philosophical debate for philosophers. It hardly applies at all in any useful sense to anyone else, where a mostly accurate estimation of truth is what's really necessary. And we have good estimates of the truth in spades. Tell an engineer who's building a bridge that he can't know truth, and he'll tell you to cram it while he applies his knowledge.
You're either contradicting yourself, or exactly correct, I can't tell for sure.
There is no truth other than the useful applicable kind you describe. It seems the philosopher and the engineer in your scenario are mostly in agreement.
I completely disagree with the youtube video guy. What makes today different than the 1800s is that we are far less likely to simply make an unfounded assertion and claim it as fact (as in, in academia, the media and pop culture notwithstanding)
The reason is that things discovered in the 1600s, 1700s, 1800s, 1900s etc using similar methods to what scientists use today were right.
If you were to ask me what people are getting wrong today I would say just about everything tied to dogma or religion. When it comes to science it's not really correct to say that a theory was wrong when you refine it, as theories are just the best explanation we have based on available evidence. There's a reason that "proof" is only used in mathematics.
A theory is only wrong, in my view, if it also makes an assumption that all available evidence has been collected
Definitely contradicting yourself here. You presume that "what scientists use today" yields only truth, as if all available evidence on that matter has been collected. Quite likely a thousand years from now our current notion of scientific discovery will seem amusingly inept and fanciful.
I completely disagree with the youtube video guy. What makes today different than the 1800s is that we are far less likely to simply make an unfounded assertion and claim it as fact (as in, in academia, the media and pop culture notwithstanding)
The reason is that things discovered in the 1600s, 1700s, 1800s, 1900s etc using similar methods to what scientists use today were right.
If you were to ask me what people are getting wrong today I would say just about everything tied to dogma or religion. When it comes to science it's not really correct to say that a theory was wrong when you refine it, as theories are just the best explanation we have based on available evidence. There's a reason that "proof" is only used in mathematics.
A theory is only wrong, in my view, if it also makes an assumption that all available evidence has been collected
Definitely contradicting yourself here. You presume that "what scientists use today" yields only truth, as if all available evidence on that matter has been collected. Quite likely a thousand years from now our current notion of scientific discovery will seem amusingly inept and fanciful.
You're pointing at an undefined future and saying "they'll do it better".
They might do the process of science better, they might have better tools, but there is no reason to think the scientific method will be improved.
This is akin to saying that if we improve a 98% efficient motor's efficiency by another 3%, we'll have solved the world's energy problems forever.
Basically, a young man drinks deeply of solipsism and becomes unable to be convinced of the reality of anything outside his own senses. The hero, Gabriel Gale, "convinces" him otherwise by dragging him out into the woods and pinning him to a tree with a pitchfork.
"We can't possibly know absolute truth, anyway!" is mostly a philosophical debate for philosophers. It hardly applies at all in any useful sense to anyone else, where a mostly accurate estimation of truth is what's really necessary. And we have good estimates of the truth in spades. Tell an engineer who's building a bridge that he can't know truth, and he'll tell you to cram it while he applies his knowledge.
You're either contradicting yourself, or exactly correct, I can't tell for sure.
There is no truth other than the useful applicable kind you describe. It seems the philosopher and the engineer in your scenario are mostly in agreement.
I completely disagree with the youtube video guy. What makes today different than the 1800s is that we are far less likely to simply make an unfounded assertion and claim it as fact (as in, in academia, the media and pop culture notwithstanding)
The reason is that things discovered in the 1600s, 1700s, 1800s, 1900s etc using similar methods to what scientists use today were right.
If you were to ask me what people are getting wrong today I would say just about everything tied to dogma or religion. When it comes to science it's not really correct to say that a theory was wrong when you refine it, as theories are just the best explanation we have based on available evidence. There's a reason that "proof" is only used in mathematics.
A theory is only wrong, in my view, if it also makes an assumption that all available evidence has been collected
Definitely contradicting yourself here. You presume that "what scientists use today" yields only truth, as if all available evidence on that matter has been collected. Quite likely a thousand years from now our current notion of scientific discovery will seem amusingly inept and fanciful.
No, I'm saying because a scientific method doesn't create proofs, it creates explanations that wholly open to being changed based on new evidence or tools, equating it to the errant assertions that sky beard man says cats cause plagues because they are witches familiars is lunacy. Basically, if I lived in the 1900s and said "I very much doubt, based upon evidence, that the second law of thermodynamics will be rendered invalid in 100 years" it would have more validity than "black people are less intelligent than white people because they are the descendants of Cain". Despite all of our cultural and educational problems today, we are still appreciably more in camp A than camp B now than at any other time in human history. If the trend continues, we will continue to be less wrong about things in the future.
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AtomikaLive fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered Userregular
What does the word 'absolute' add to the word 'truth' that was not already there?
Malleability? I don't know.
I guess "truth" would be where you say that a day is 24 hours long, but stating that it's an "absolute truth" would be incorrect, as there's no such tangible thing as an hour anyway, and if our planetary rotation slowed or sped up for some reason, that "truth" would have to change.
I would say "truths" are more akin to facts, where "absolutes" are more like concretes.
Fun fact: most absolutist statements are kind of dumb, as well as disprovable.
What does the word 'absolute' add to the word 'truth' that was not already there?
Absolute truths are true regardless of your frame of reference (hence these are very rare indeed). However, relative thruths are true statements only under a set of specific conditions and are not always correct in other frames of reference.
For example, the value of absolute 0 is an absolute truth because it represents the coldest possible state in the universe, but the freezing point of water being 0 degrees centigrade is only true given the earth's gravitational force on water, elevation, correct pressure, and pure water, which means it is a relative truth, or only true under certain circumstances. Another example is classical physics which is only relevant at a particular scale, and no longer is a true body of knowledge when examining quantum mechanical or relativistic phenomenon.
What does everyone think of absurdism? The idea that absolute truth probably exists, but we could never completely find it. As creatures who are limited in scope, as well as ones that have demonstrated that patterns do exist through the use of the scientific method, isn't this conclusion valid?
The only counter argument I've seen, is the idea that though individually we may be limited, but together we are able to combine our knowledge for more efficient thinking. But even so, isn't the idea of "infinite knowledge" still naive? That all the world's great logical minds combined would probably just put us very far ahead, but not give us all the answers?
I guess a further counter argument is that the contemplation of infinite knowledge predisposes the idea of infinite questions which is speculative. But, and this has more to do with the theory of math than anything and I hope an actual mathematician that's taken more theoretical math, that it can be reasonably inferred that there are an infinite number of patterns that can be represented mathematically?
So, given that there are an infinite number of patterns in nature, thus an infinite number of questions for humans to answer, and assuming that a level of repeatability can be demonstrated through the use of mathematics and the scientific method, then we can assume that objective truth exists, but we will always be in search of it.
No, I'm saying because a scientific method doesn't create proofs, it creates explanations that wholly open to being changed based on new evidence or tools, equating it to the errant assertions that sky beard man says cats cause plagues because they are witches familiars is lunacy. Basically, if I lived in the 1900s and said "I very much doubt, based upon evidence, that the second law of thermodynamics will be rendered invalid in 100 years" it would have more validity than "black people are less intelligent than white people because they are the descendants of Cain". Despite all of our cultural and educational problems today, we are still appreciably more in camp A than camp B now than at any other time in human history. If the trend continues, we will continue to be less wrong about things in the future.
Oh yeah I pretty much agree here. Progress doesn't happen everywhere at once at the same rate, and we can recognize relative quality in how truth is achieved, regardless of whether it's between two scientists at the same time or two that have centuries between them. But we're still talking about who has the more convincing argument, and we can chase this philosophical rabbit down a pretty deep hole if we choose to.
What does the word 'absolute' add to the word 'truth' that was not already there?
Absolute truths are true regardless of your frame of reference (hence these are very rare indeed). However, relative thruths are true statements only under a set of specific conditions and are not always correct in other frames of reference.
For example, the value of absolute 0 is an absolute truth because it represents the coldest possible state in the universe, but the freezing point of water being 0 degrees centigrade is only true given the earth's gravitational force on water, elevation, correct pressure, and pure water, which means it is a relative truth, or only true under certain circumstances. Another example is classical physics which is only relevant at a particular scale, and no longer is a true body of knowledge when examining quantum mechanical or relativistic phenomenon.
Most truth is of the relative variety.
Ehh... I think you're confusing a lot of different things here. For one, you seem to be talking about constants, not absolutes. The temperature at which water can crystallize into solid is variable, whereas, say, the speed of light is constant.
But even these statements can be phrased in different ways. I mean, water solidifying isn't soley a matter of thermal energy. It's solid because its molecules aren't moving around much anymore, and so they bond together into solid crystalline formation. Their motion can be affected by a lot of things, like solute and pressure. It's just that in common practice, the easiest way to slow down those molecules is to extract a lot of thermal energy from them. You could also just exert a lot of pressure on them. You're only perptuating the confusion when you try to incorporate these other factors into something like "water freezes at 0C given certain cirucmstances" (an absolute truth in your terms), because the more meaningful truth you are hinting at is the phase diagram of water, in which 0C holds no special meaning except as an arbitrary point at which some standards are defined.
I like this example, because the statement "water freezes at 0C" is a truth in much the same way that "water freezes in winter" is. It's "true," given a lot of practical assumptions about other circumstances and factors, and yet in fact can easily be shown false. It incorrectly implies that the season (or the temperature) is the direct cause of freezing.
As for absolute zero, I also find that an interesting example. It escapes the problems I mentioned before, because it is defined as a lack of thermal energy, and hence, per our own definition, of course it is the temperature at which there is no thermal energy. But absolute zero cannot be experimentally achieved (meaning that as far as we know, it does not and cannot exist), and in quantum physics it is thought to be impossible because of ground-state energy. So your "truth" here could in many ways be compared to me saying, "a ten-legged flying zebra has black stripes."
What does everyone think of absurdism? The idea that absolute truth probably exists, but we could never completely find it. As creatures who are limited in scope, as well as ones that have demonstrated that patterns do exist through the use of the scientific method, isn't this conclusion valid?
The only counter argument I've seen, is the idea that though individually we may be limited, but together we are able to combine our knowledge for more efficient thinking. But even so, isn't the idea of "infinite knowledge" still naive? That all the world's great logical minds combined would probably just put us very far ahead, but not give us all the answers?
I guess a further counter argument is that the contemplation of infinite knowledge predisposes the idea of infinite questions which is speculative. But, and this has more to do with the theory of math than anything and I hope an actual mathematician that's taken more theoretical math, that it can be reasonably inferred that there are an infinite number of patterns that can be represented mathematically?
So, given that there are an infinite number of patterns in nature, thus an infinite number of questions for humans to answer, and assuming that a level of repeatability can be demonstrated through the use of mathematics and the scientific method, then we can assume that objective truth exists, but we will always be in search of it.
There are an infinite number of natural numbers (1, 2, ..., infinity) so it seems fair to say that there are an infinite number of 'patterns', depending on what you mean by 'pattern'.
But absolute truth isn't the same thing as omniscience or total knowledge or whatever you're describing. Having any one thing be true regardless of frame of reference and knowing what that thing is presumably doesn't require knowing everything.
And Yar, ground-state energy is the energy that's left over when a system is at absolute zero, so the two don't conflict. You can't have a system with zero energy but you can have one at absolute zero temperature.
What does the word 'absolute' add to the word 'truth' that was not already there?
Absolute truths are true regardless of your frame of reference (hence these are very rare indeed). However, relative thruths are true statements only under a set of specific conditions and are not always correct in other frames of reference.
For example, the value of absolute 0 is an absolute truth because it represents the coldest possible state in the universe, but the freezing point of water being 0 degrees centigrade is only true given the earth's gravitational force on water, elevation, correct pressure, and pure water, which means it is a relative truth, or only true under certain circumstances. Another example is classical physics which is only relevant at a particular scale, and no longer is a true body of knowledge when examining quantum mechanical or relativistic phenomenon.
Most truth is of the relative variety.
I agree.
However, it can be argued that this is a semantic, not a metaphysical, difference.
There is, arguably, no fundamental categorical difference between a relative truth and an absolute truth. (I'm going to use a different example than water because water is kind of weird in regards to pressure and volume - unlike most substances, it expands when it solidifies.) The statement "the boiling point of methane is -161C" is incomplete; it is only true for methane at 1 atmospheric pressure. However, that context is implied; the truth value of that statement depends on whether we can safely assume the missing information.
(Consider similar constructions: "men are pigs" and "men are fighting in wars." Both of these statements would be made truthful by adding the word "some" at the beginning: "Some men are pigs," "some men are fighting in wars." We would usually hold that the first one is false but the second one is true, because we would likely assume from context that the speaker means "all men are pigs" in the first case but "some men are fighting in wars" in the second.)
However, it is always true that "the boiling point of methane is -161C at 1 atmospheric pressure." This is a complete statement, missing no information needed to assess its truth value, and we can conclude that it is (mostly) true (in as much as any moderately precise empirical statement can be judged as "true,"). It doesn't matter if the speaker is speaking from a pressurized diving bell, that statement remains true. Consequently, saying that the boiling point of methane being a relative truth - ie, it depends on a certain frame of reference - is merely saying that the 'truth' is incomplete. The missing frame of reference is missing information that we must assume.
So, fundamentally, the distinction between a "relative truth" and an "absolute truth" isn't a categorical metaphysical difference. It's a semantic difference, made out of expediency - we don't want to, nor should we have to, identify all the relevant contextual circumstances in every conversation (outside of, say, scientific journals).
Feral on
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
What you are getting at is that, when you include the proper frame of reference when stating a "relative truth" then it may be considered metaphysically equivalent to statements of "absolute truth", and I basically agree. However, I will point out that relying on unspoken assumptions within true statements will still produce statements that are only correct under certain circumstances and are therefore only relatively truthful not absolutely so. The danger in this shorthand that we use is that when such statements become false then relative truths become lies of omission, which can be very harmful.
So a statement of absolute truth about the phase state of some measure of water, could include "water becomes solid at 0 degree C under the proper conditions", but the statement that "water freezes at 0 degrees C" is trivially falsifiable and is risky to rely on when leaving our standard reference frame.
So I would say that a statement's truth value depends not only on what is said but exactly how something is said as well.
Of course this exercise is infinitely more complex and interesting when we apply truth testing to areas of life not governed by physics, such as politics or religion (though some may argue that you can't test religion for truth since it is based on faith not reason and then others might point out that there is no truth in politics).
What you are getting at is that, when you include the proper frame of reference when stating a "relative truth" then it may be considered metaphysically equivalent to statements of "absolute truth", and I basically agree. However, I will point out that relying on unspoken assumptions within true statements will still produce statements that are only correct under certain circumstances and are therefore only relatively truthful not absolutely so. The danger in this shorthand that we use is that when such statements become false then relative truths become lies of omission, which can be very harmful.
So a statement of absolute truth about the phase state of some measure of water, could include "water becomes solid at 0 degree C under the proper conditions", but the statement that "water freezes at 0 degrees C" is trivially falsifiable and is risky to rely on when leaving our standard reference frame.
So I would say that a statement's truth value depends not only on what is said but exactly how something is said as well.
Of course this exercise is infinitely more complex and interesting when we apply truth testing to areas of life not governed by physics, such as politics or religion (though some may argue that you can't test religion for truth since it is based on faith not reason and then others might point out that there is no truth in politics).
True dat.
Feral on
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
And Yar, ground-state energy is the energy that's left over when a system is at absolute zero, so the two don't conflict. You can't have a system with zero energy but you can have one at absolute zero temperature.
Right, the way I stated it was wrong, but the point was that the truth value of "absolute 0 is the coldest possible state in the universe" has a number of problems. Absolute zero itself seems impossible, so it isn't the coldest possible. And theoretically, kinetic energy can never completely be removed (because then we'd have a definite location and velocity, oops), and temperature is kinetic energy, so the "absoluteness" of what we call absolute zero is debatable.
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MrMisterJesus dying on the cross in pain? Morally better than us. One has to go "all in".Registered Userregular
So, fundamentally, the distinction between a "relative truth" and an "absolute truth" isn't a categorical metaphysical difference. It's a semantic difference, made out of expediency - we don't want to, nor should we have to, identify all the relevant contextual circumstances in every conversation (outside of, say, scientific journals).
I agree with everything you've said in that post, however, I would go farther and say that not only is the currently discussed difference between relative and absolute truth neither deep nor metaphysical, but in fact it's not interesting at all (nor worth making).
Statements about the temperature at which water boils are elliptical; they leave out some information, such as purity, pressure, and so on. But principles of charitable interpretation tell us, as listeners, to fill in the correct information in the gaps under ordinary circumstances, and, under ordinary circumstances, that is indeed what we do. Unless some outlandish factors direct us to do otherwise, when someone says "water boils at 0 degrees" we will interpret them as meaning that it boils at 0 degrees celsius, (not fahrenheiht) at 1 atmospheric pressure, (not on top of a mountain) and so on. Without such charitable interpretation, language would be, if not impossible, at least a lot more difficult and much different.
When someone says "water boils at 0 degrees" what we interpret them to mean is the fuller statement. So they are not stating a relative truth, in the terminology just offered. They are in fact stating an absolute truth. It is hard to see when, if ever, someone would actually state a relative truth in the way currently being suggested.
If someone tells me that water boils at 0 degrees, I'm going to damn well want to know how to properly interpret that, so I can figure out the necessary rating for my pressure suit.
I hope my statements were not read as a suggestion of how to behave, or a recommendation of how to speak.
MrMister, you've really confused me with that post...
Edit: jothki you fucking rule!!
His point is fairly simple actually. Our sentences tend to be elliptical. We leave out information that is implied. Occasionally this causes confusion, but most of the time we are able to understand each other pretty well.
When you say "water freezes at 0 degrees,"(henceforth known as Statement 1) we're assuming that someone is aware that what we mean is "water freezes at 0 degrees farenheit at 1 atmospheric pressure"(henceforth known as Statement 2). It would take a long time for us to say every single word that is ever implied in our sentences, and on top of that we would think that any person that got in our face about statement 1 was being an asshole. They knew what we meant, because that's what most people mean most of the time.
Essentially there are linguistic conventions that protect us from having to explain everything we ever say. In that sense, if you utter Statement 1 you aren't relating some sort of "relative" truth, you are in fact relating Statement 2. You don't need to say all the words to still mean the same thing.
LoserForHireX on
"The only way to get rid of a temptation is to give into it." - Oscar Wilde
"We believe in the people and their 'wisdom' as if there was some special secret entrance to knowledge that barred to anyone who had ever learned anything." - Friedrich Nietzsche
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MrMisterJesus dying on the cross in pain? Morally better than us. One has to go "all in".Registered Userregular
edited June 2011
Tip of the hat to LoserForHire for saying it more clearly.
And Yar, ground-state energy is the energy that's left over when a system is at absolute zero, so the two don't conflict. You can't have a system with zero energy but you can have one at absolute zero temperature.
Right, the way I stated it was wrong, but the point was that the truth value of "absolute 0 is the coldest possible state in the universe" has a number of problems. Absolute zero itself seems impossible, so it isn't the coldest possible. And theoretically, kinetic energy can never completely be removed (because then we'd have a definite location and velocity, oops), and temperature is kinetic energy, so the "absoluteness" of what we call absolute zero is debatable.
I don't think absolute zero has much bearing on the concept of whether or not there are objective truths in the universe.
Your thinking about it also wrong: whether or not absolute zero is actually practically achievable has zero bearing on whether or not it is the coldest possible state in the universe, which it is.
You seem to be using the science you want to claim can't have any absolute truth values, to make an absolute truth value statement. You're invoking Heisenburg's Uncertainty Principle, yet if science has no absolutes, then there's no reason to think HUP always applies (and indeed, a good deal of work on grand unifying theories looks into seeing if there is determinacy beneath the quantum veil - HUP is after all, really a comment on the limits of measurement although what qualifies as "measurement" is a very strange distinction in and of itself.)
Tip of the hat to LoserForHire for saying it more clearly.
Thanks.
I had help. I was actually reading the very passages that talk about this from the Philosophical Investigations tonight.
LoserForHireX on
"The only way to get rid of a temptation is to give into it." - Oscar Wilde
"We believe in the people and their 'wisdom' as if there was some special secret entrance to knowledge that barred to anyone who had ever learned anything." - Friedrich Nietzsche
His point is fairly simple actually. Our sentences tend to be elliptical. We leave out information that is implied. Occasionally this causes confusion, but most of the time we are able to understand each other pretty well.
When you say "water freezes at 0 degrees,"(henceforth known as Statement 1) we're assuming that someone is aware that what we mean is "water freezes at 0 degrees farenheit at 1 atmospheric pressure"(henceforth known as Statement 2). It would take a long time for us to say every single word that is ever implied in our sentences, and on top of that we would think that any person that got in our face about statement 1 was being an asshole. They knew what we meant, because that's what most people mean most of the time.
Essentially there are linguistic conventions that protect us from having to explain everything we ever say. In that sense, if you utter Statement 1 you aren't relating some sort of "relative" truth, you are in fact relating Statement 2. You don't need to say all the words to still mean the same thing.
This is all correct IMO, but I don't think it's exactly what hanskey was geting at. The implication I got was that hanskey was comparing a constant (or perhaps a tautology) to a variable, calling one absolute and the other relative. No matter, really.
I don't think absolute zero has much bearing on the concept of whether or not there are objective truths in the universe.
Hmmm... sort of. I mean, yes, that is essentially what I was saying. Absolute zero is a theoretical concept and is given a particular measurement value. Hanskey was using it as an example of an "absolute truth" and I don't think the relationship there was very solid. However, like many other possible examples, it is a good example of many of the problems that arise when trying to assert an objective truth.
Your thinking about it also wrong: whether or not absolute zero is actually practically achievable has zero bearing on whether or not it is the coldest possible state in the universe, which it is.
See, as jothki pointed out, this is a very problematic statement you are making. If it is impossible, how is it then possible? This seems to be a rather stark contradiction, perhaps a failure to meaningfully distinguish imagination from observation/reality (often a cause of failed truth). Perhaps you are saying that it is a well-argued lower bound on possible temperatures? Ok, but that does not make it a possible temperature itself. In simple terms, what coolant could you use to cool something to 0K? Wouldn't that coolant have to be below 0 in order to cool something to 0? Absolute zero only exists as a point on a graph at which any amount of any gas would be expected to shrink to a volume of size zero. Presuming it didn't condense to liquid first... which they all do at some point above zero. So again, there are a trunkfull of reasons to question the nature of "truth" with respect to absolute zero.
You seem to be using the science you want to claim can't have any absolute truth values, to make an absolute truth value statement. You're invoking Heisenburg's Uncertainty Principle, yet if science has no absolutes, then there's no reason to think HUP always applies (and indeed, a good deal of work on grand unifying theories looks into seeing if there is determinacy beneath the quantum veil - HUP is after all, really a comment on the limits of measurement although what qualifies as "measurement" is a very strange distinction in and of itself.)
You're jumping ahead and attributing a lot of things to me that I didn't say. If what you're asking is, "is it an absolute truth that there are no absolute truths?" then of course the answer is, "no." The question answers itself. You are correct that there are a lot of interesting unresolved scientific and philosophical issues concerning the limits of measurement and certainty, and how they apply to materialism and solipsism.
Interesting. Truth only matters if someone wants to live correctly. Truth has different definitions by everyone and every religion. I have an opinion, but I'm not going to say. The key is to look at what is most authentic, I think.
Posts
What truth or reality do you claim, except that which carries the most compelling and effective argument?
Maybe optimal policy to get reelected.
Hey, we sophists aren't wrong. Our opponents just have more convincing arguments.
Arguing for absolute truth faces the issue that you can't actually perceive that truth. The best that you can do is look at various possible truths, and subjectively decide which one you think is absolute. Everything you believe is based on some sort of spin, whether you were told it by someone else or convinced yourself of it.
http://www.ralentz.com/old/space/feynman-report.html
The last quote most readily applies here.
I'm going to take this opportunity to post this. It's a talk a friend of mine gave at Sacramento State. It's long-ish (30 minutes) and the really relevant part doesn't start until 20 minutes it, but it's still an enjoyable talk if you have the time.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8V8rtdXnLA
The gist? Rephrased in terms of "absolute" truth, to borrow jothki's terminology, is that there is no way to know the absolute truth. You are more likely to be wrong about reality than to be right. However, some ideas are clearly better* than others.
* - How do we know they're better? His series on the rise and fall of logical positivism partly explains that.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Well, of course, unless you're talking about the kind of truth that is just intuitive assumption and can't be argued or proven. The existence of that kind of truth is itself an example of that kind of truth.
Ah, the predicate. Something that is true simply because you've based your whole system of truth around it being true.
From The Crime of Gabriel Gale by GK Chesterson:
http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~mward/gkc/books/Poet_and_Lunatics.html
Basically, a young man drinks deeply of solipsism and becomes unable to be convinced of the reality of anything outside his own senses. The hero, Gabriel Gale, "convinces" him otherwise by dragging him out into the woods and pinning him to a tree with a pitchfork.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
The reason is that things discovered in the 1600s, 1700s, 1800s, 1900s etc using similar methods to what scientists use today were right.
If you were to ask me what people are getting wrong today I would say just about everything tied to dogma or religion. When it comes to science it's not really correct to say that a theory was wrong when you refine it, as theories are just the best explanation we have based on available evidence. There's a reason that "proof" is only used in mathematics.
A theory is only wrong, in my view, if it also makes an assumption that all available evidence has been collected
I'm an atheist who does not believe in god, but people have tried to nail me down on this "absolute certainty" thing, which is crap and just muddies things. It's possible we're all in the Matrix, really.
p much
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
You're either contradicting yourself, or exactly correct, I can't tell for sure.
There is no truth other than the useful applicable kind you describe. It seems the philosopher and the engineer in your scenario are mostly in agreement.
Definitely contradicting yourself here. You presume that "what scientists use today" yields only truth, as if all available evidence on that matter has been collected. Quite likely a thousand years from now our current notion of scientific discovery will seem amusingly inept and fanciful.
You're pointing at an undefined future and saying "they'll do it better".
They might do the process of science better, they might have better tools, but there is no reason to think the scientific method will be improved.
This is akin to saying that if we improve a 98% efficient motor's efficiency by another 3%, we'll have solved the world's energy problems forever.
No, I'm saying because a scientific method doesn't create proofs, it creates explanations that wholly open to being changed based on new evidence or tools, equating it to the errant assertions that sky beard man says cats cause plagues because they are witches familiars is lunacy. Basically, if I lived in the 1900s and said "I very much doubt, based upon evidence, that the second law of thermodynamics will be rendered invalid in 100 years" it would have more validity than "black people are less intelligent than white people because they are the descendants of Cain". Despite all of our cultural and educational problems today, we are still appreciably more in camp A than camp B now than at any other time in human history. If the trend continues, we will continue to be less wrong about things in the future.
Malleability? I don't know.
I guess "truth" would be where you say that a day is 24 hours long, but stating that it's an "absolute truth" would be incorrect, as there's no such tangible thing as an hour anyway, and if our planetary rotation slowed or sped up for some reason, that "truth" would have to change.
I would say "truths" are more akin to facts, where "absolutes" are more like concretes.
Fun fact: most absolutist statements are kind of dumb, as well as disprovable.
For example, the value of absolute 0 is an absolute truth because it represents the coldest possible state in the universe, but the freezing point of water being 0 degrees centigrade is only true given the earth's gravitational force on water, elevation, correct pressure, and pure water, which means it is a relative truth, or only true under certain circumstances. Another example is classical physics which is only relevant at a particular scale, and no longer is a true body of knowledge when examining quantum mechanical or relativistic phenomenon.
Most truth is of the relative variety.
The only counter argument I've seen, is the idea that though individually we may be limited, but together we are able to combine our knowledge for more efficient thinking. But even so, isn't the idea of "infinite knowledge" still naive? That all the world's great logical minds combined would probably just put us very far ahead, but not give us all the answers?
I guess a further counter argument is that the contemplation of infinite knowledge predisposes the idea of infinite questions which is speculative. But, and this has more to do with the theory of math than anything and I hope an actual mathematician that's taken more theoretical math, that it can be reasonably inferred that there are an infinite number of patterns that can be represented mathematically?
So, given that there are an infinite number of patterns in nature, thus an infinite number of questions for humans to answer, and assuming that a level of repeatability can be demonstrated through the use of mathematics and the scientific method, then we can assume that objective truth exists, but we will always be in search of it.
Ehh... I think you're confusing a lot of different things here. For one, you seem to be talking about constants, not absolutes. The temperature at which water can crystallize into solid is variable, whereas, say, the speed of light is constant.
But even these statements can be phrased in different ways. I mean, water solidifying isn't soley a matter of thermal energy. It's solid because its molecules aren't moving around much anymore, and so they bond together into solid crystalline formation. Their motion can be affected by a lot of things, like solute and pressure. It's just that in common practice, the easiest way to slow down those molecules is to extract a lot of thermal energy from them. You could also just exert a lot of pressure on them. You're only perptuating the confusion when you try to incorporate these other factors into something like "water freezes at 0C given certain cirucmstances" (an absolute truth in your terms), because the more meaningful truth you are hinting at is the phase diagram of water, in which 0C holds no special meaning except as an arbitrary point at which some standards are defined.
I like this example, because the statement "water freezes at 0C" is a truth in much the same way that "water freezes in winter" is. It's "true," given a lot of practical assumptions about other circumstances and factors, and yet in fact can easily be shown false. It incorrectly implies that the season (or the temperature) is the direct cause of freezing.
As for absolute zero, I also find that an interesting example. It escapes the problems I mentioned before, because it is defined as a lack of thermal energy, and hence, per our own definition, of course it is the temperature at which there is no thermal energy. But absolute zero cannot be experimentally achieved (meaning that as far as we know, it does not and cannot exist), and in quantum physics it is thought to be impossible because of ground-state energy. So your "truth" here could in many ways be compared to me saying, "a ten-legged flying zebra has black stripes."
There are an infinite number of natural numbers (1, 2, ..., infinity) so it seems fair to say that there are an infinite number of 'patterns', depending on what you mean by 'pattern'.
But absolute truth isn't the same thing as omniscience or total knowledge or whatever you're describing. Having any one thing be true regardless of frame of reference and knowing what that thing is presumably doesn't require knowing everything.
And Yar, ground-state energy is the energy that's left over when a system is at absolute zero, so the two don't conflict. You can't have a system with zero energy but you can have one at absolute zero temperature.
Critical Failures - Havenhold Campaign • August St. Cloud (Human Ranger)
I agree.
However, it can be argued that this is a semantic, not a metaphysical, difference.
There is, arguably, no fundamental categorical difference between a relative truth and an absolute truth. (I'm going to use a different example than water because water is kind of weird in regards to pressure and volume - unlike most substances, it expands when it solidifies.) The statement "the boiling point of methane is -161C" is incomplete; it is only true for methane at 1 atmospheric pressure. However, that context is implied; the truth value of that statement depends on whether we can safely assume the missing information.
(Consider similar constructions: "men are pigs" and "men are fighting in wars." Both of these statements would be made truthful by adding the word "some" at the beginning: "Some men are pigs," "some men are fighting in wars." We would usually hold that the first one is false but the second one is true, because we would likely assume from context that the speaker means "all men are pigs" in the first case but "some men are fighting in wars" in the second.)
However, it is always true that "the boiling point of methane is -161C at 1 atmospheric pressure." This is a complete statement, missing no information needed to assess its truth value, and we can conclude that it is (mostly) true (in as much as any moderately precise empirical statement can be judged as "true,"). It doesn't matter if the speaker is speaking from a pressurized diving bell, that statement remains true. Consequently, saying that the boiling point of methane being a relative truth - ie, it depends on a certain frame of reference - is merely saying that the 'truth' is incomplete. The missing frame of reference is missing information that we must assume.
So, fundamentally, the distinction between a "relative truth" and an "absolute truth" isn't a categorical metaphysical difference. It's a semantic difference, made out of expediency - we don't want to, nor should we have to, identify all the relevant contextual circumstances in every conversation (outside of, say, scientific journals).
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
So a statement of absolute truth about the phase state of some measure of water, could include "water becomes solid at 0 degree C under the proper conditions", but the statement that "water freezes at 0 degrees C" is trivially falsifiable and is risky to rely on when leaving our standard reference frame.
So I would say that a statement's truth value depends not only on what is said but exactly how something is said as well.
Of course this exercise is infinitely more complex and interesting when we apply truth testing to areas of life not governed by physics, such as politics or religion (though some may argue that you can't test religion for truth since it is based on faith not reason and then others might point out that there is no truth in politics).
True dat.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
I agree with everything you've said in that post, however, I would go farther and say that not only is the currently discussed difference between relative and absolute truth neither deep nor metaphysical, but in fact it's not interesting at all (nor worth making).
Statements about the temperature at which water boils are elliptical; they leave out some information, such as purity, pressure, and so on. But principles of charitable interpretation tell us, as listeners, to fill in the correct information in the gaps under ordinary circumstances, and, under ordinary circumstances, that is indeed what we do. Unless some outlandish factors direct us to do otherwise, when someone says "water boils at 0 degrees" we will interpret them as meaning that it boils at 0 degrees celsius, (not fahrenheiht) at 1 atmospheric pressure, (not on top of a mountain) and so on. Without such charitable interpretation, language would be, if not impossible, at least a lot more difficult and much different.
When someone says "water boils at 0 degrees" what we interpret them to mean is the fuller statement. So they are not stating a relative truth, in the terminology just offered. They are in fact stating an absolute truth. It is hard to see when, if ever, someone would actually state a relative truth in the way currently being suggested.
MrMister, you've really confused me with that post...
Edit: jothki you fucking rule!!
His point is fairly simple actually. Our sentences tend to be elliptical. We leave out information that is implied. Occasionally this causes confusion, but most of the time we are able to understand each other pretty well.
When you say "water freezes at 0 degrees,"(henceforth known as Statement 1) we're assuming that someone is aware that what we mean is "water freezes at 0 degrees farenheit at 1 atmospheric pressure"(henceforth known as Statement 2). It would take a long time for us to say every single word that is ever implied in our sentences, and on top of that we would think that any person that got in our face about statement 1 was being an asshole. They knew what we meant, because that's what most people mean most of the time.
Essentially there are linguistic conventions that protect us from having to explain everything we ever say. In that sense, if you utter Statement 1 you aren't relating some sort of "relative" truth, you are in fact relating Statement 2. You don't need to say all the words to still mean the same thing.
"We believe in the people and their 'wisdom' as if there was some special secret entrance to knowledge that barred to anyone who had ever learned anything." - Friedrich Nietzsche
Man, everything makes so much more sense now.
I don't think absolute zero has much bearing on the concept of whether or not there are objective truths in the universe.
Your thinking about it also wrong: whether or not absolute zero is actually practically achievable has zero bearing on whether or not it is the coldest possible state in the universe, which it is.
You seem to be using the science you want to claim can't have any absolute truth values, to make an absolute truth value statement. You're invoking Heisenburg's Uncertainty Principle, yet if science has no absolutes, then there's no reason to think HUP always applies (and indeed, a good deal of work on grand unifying theories looks into seeing if there is determinacy beneath the quantum veil - HUP is after all, really a comment on the limits of measurement although what qualifies as "measurement" is a very strange distinction in and of itself.)
Thanks.
I had help. I was actually reading the very passages that talk about this from the Philosophical Investigations tonight.
"We believe in the people and their 'wisdom' as if there was some special secret entrance to knowledge that barred to anyone who had ever learned anything." - Friedrich Nietzsche
Hmmm... sort of. I mean, yes, that is essentially what I was saying. Absolute zero is a theoretical concept and is given a particular measurement value. Hanskey was using it as an example of an "absolute truth" and I don't think the relationship there was very solid. However, like many other possible examples, it is a good example of many of the problems that arise when trying to assert an objective truth.
See, as jothki pointed out, this is a very problematic statement you are making. If it is impossible, how is it then possible? This seems to be a rather stark contradiction, perhaps a failure to meaningfully distinguish imagination from observation/reality (often a cause of failed truth). Perhaps you are saying that it is a well-argued lower bound on possible temperatures? Ok, but that does not make it a possible temperature itself. In simple terms, what coolant could you use to cool something to 0K? Wouldn't that coolant have to be below 0 in order to cool something to 0? Absolute zero only exists as a point on a graph at which any amount of any gas would be expected to shrink to a volume of size zero. Presuming it didn't condense to liquid first... which they all do at some point above zero. So again, there are a trunkfull of reasons to question the nature of "truth" with respect to absolute zero.
You're jumping ahead and attributing a lot of things to me that I didn't say. If what you're asking is, "is it an absolute truth that there are no absolute truths?" then of course the answer is, "no." The question answers itself. You are correct that there are a lot of interesting unresolved scientific and philosophical issues concerning the limits of measurement and certainty, and how they apply to materialism and solipsism.
ruh-roh
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.