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How much does the truth really matter?

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  • MrMisterMrMister Jesus dying on the cross in pain? Morally better than us. One has to go "all in".Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    jothki wrote: »
    MrMister wrote: »
    For instance, I have every reason to believe that I am not about to die of a stroke (young, healthy, etc. etc.). A reasonable person most certainly would conclude that I am not about to die of a stroke. But that does not mean that it's true that I'm not about to die from a stroke.

    But you just concluded that it isn't necessarily true, so why are you claiming that it makes sense to conclude that it's true?

    Because it often makes sense to conclude that something is true without concluding that it is necessarily true. Or, in other words, it makes sense to believe things to be true without have a credence of 100%.

    MrMister on
  • hanskeyhanskey Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    Imperfect knowledge requires belief.


    Edit: If we waited for perfect knowledge, we'd die off pretty fast.

    hanskey on
  • FeralFeral MEMETICHARIZARD interior crocodile alligator ⇔ ǝɹʇɐǝɥʇ ǝᴉʌoɯ ʇǝloɹʌǝɥɔ ɐ ǝʌᴉɹp ᴉRegistered User regular
    edited June 2011
    I'm not sure what's going on with the physics discussion, largely because it seems to be above my scientific pay grade.

    Every single time my eyes scan past those last three words, they first register as "scientific gay parade."

    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.

    the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
  • LoserForHireXLoserForHireX Philosopher King The AcademyRegistered User regular
    edited June 2011
    Feral wrote: »
    I'm not sure what's going on with the physics discussion, largely because it seems to be above my scientific pay grade.

    Every single time my eyes scan past those last three words, they first register as "scientific gay parade."

    I would watch that parade.

    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
  • YarYar Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    The triple-point of water is the triple-point of water. Those original values were close to what must be the true values, since we keep measuring them. I don't know why you'd expect them to change dramatically, which seems to be what you're implying - but the original data was known to be wrong because, obviously, the Ideal Gas Law is for a point-gas which doesn't exist.
    I don't understand what any of this has to do with anything I said. I don't mean that as some snarky jibe... I'm just thinking we're not on the same page at all here because I don't see how any of this relates to what I said. Either way, what you're saying here is still completely incorrect.
    The SI definition is not fixed to the triple point of water, so much as the magnitude of the unit Kelvin is fixed to the triple point of water, but 0 Kelvin is still defined as - 0 Kelvin, which the triple point of water is defined against. (Wiki Link). The definition is fixed so Celsius and Kelvin will always have a simple linear conversion, but the magnitude of what 0 is is not defined by the triple-point of water.
    You have that backwards. One SI kelvin = 1/273.16 of the triple point of water. One kelvin (and hence zero kelvin) is very much without question defined against the triple point of water. The Kelvin scale exists only by saying "273.16 of them equal the thermodynamic temperature of the triple-point of water." The only question is where the 273.16 comes from. It was developed by Charles and Guy-Lassac and Kelvin when they studied gasses. Charles observed in gasses that between pressure and volume, if one is held constant, the other changes along a linear slope as temperature changes. Guy-Lassac discovered the number 0.00366 as the ratio. Kelvin used this and other data to extrapolate a zero-point for an ideal gas by extending the line to imagine a gas with zero pressure or zero volume, and from this defined absolute zero and an absolute temperature scale. He argued that the concept of an absolute temperature scale based on a lower bound is valid, because a gas of volume zero (or less) is impossible.

    There has been no significant other, or better, or more modern method of coming up with the absolute zero. It's the number we came up with in the 1800s. It's the coefficient of volume changes of a gas per degree Celsius temperature change realtive to the triple point of water. Because the coefficient is derived from measurements in Celsius, and the triple-point of water in Celsius is 1x10^-2, the scale naturally matches Celsius in magnitude (and hence is also then indirectly based on freezing and boiling points of water as well). The only things we've tweaked since the 1800s is that we set it to the triple point of water instead of the freezing point, and we've gotten more precise at measuring temperatures of water, allowing the gas expansion coefficient in Kelvin's math to be tweaked. However, to be clear yet again, this still means that SI absolute zero is defined as the temperature at which a volume of gas would reach zero pressure or zero volume. Which we know is impossible to actually happen.
    However, the existence of absolute zero is not a simple extrapolation of ideal gas law and I don't know why you keep hammering on this point because it's wrong. The existence of absolute zero is defined by thermodynamics, which, unlike what you keep saying, is not the Ideal Gas Law.
    OK!! So, here's where I think we're missing each other.

    1) Absolute zero is defined as a temperature. It's expressed as a number - zero. A temperature is a measurement. A number is a measurement, a calculation, a value. It isn't a thing unto itself, it's just a usable representation of some aspect of a thing, for the purposes of communication. And, we've never actually measured a temperature of zero kelvin. But we've extrapolated and defined the value of the measurement using math and data on gas and water measurements, and the Ideal Gas Law, and we still define the value as such today. So long as we're talking about a temperature or a measurement, this is what we have. You seem to imply that 0 kelvin comes from experimental attempts at measuring a temperature where kinetic energy ceases. This is not correct.

    2) The phrase "absolute zero" is commonly but somewhat clumsily used as a more general concept in theories and proofs, concerning a lack of energy to the point that thermodynamic equations based on temperature can't be applied to it. A minimal energy state or a lack of kinetic energy, where motion except for certain spin ceases. Leaving out numbers and temperatures and equations for a second, the idea of moving less than not moving at all is absurd on its face, and hence we recognize that not moving at all must be the least movement possible. As such, we could plug various values into all sorts of laws and equations to show that measurements of temperature must have a lower bound. Going back to #1, we have always used and still rely on the Ideal Gas Law, and the wackiness it implies when we suppose gas temperatures below a certain point, as the standard method of applying a meaningful temperature scale and null point to this concept. However, you are correct that we've also come up with all sorts of other equations and theories that similarly demonstrate that there would be absurdity and chaos if there was anything with negative thermodynamic energy. And, several that do the same for zero thermodynamic energy. The whole universe would freeze, and we'd have perpetual motions machines, and so on.

    3) Everything discussed in #1 and #2 add up to a couple things - a) there must be a theoretical lower bound on temperature measurements, and b) we tend to express this fact not by arguing a least possible temperature based on what we know of the universe, but rather only by supposing imaginary impossible scenarios in which there is a temperature is so low that the math no longer makes sense, which may therefore be an accurate lower bound. This distinction is not entirely trivial.

    Consider a particle with kinetic energy so low, it's matter wavelength equaled the diameter of the universe. It's temperature would be quite small in kelvins, but assuming a finite age and diameter of the universe, it's a non-zero value we might calculate. And you could argue that no lower temperature was possible. Note that this is also largely conceptual; I'm not claiming that we have or might ever verify such a thing, or that we even know all the numbers to calculate it. However, it's an argument for a definition of a lowest possible temperature that is also actually a theoretically possible temperature, based on knowledge of the universe, and something we perhaps could observe or achieve, rather than supposing a lowest "possible" temperature that is also well known to be an impossible temperature.

    Which is why I like this example. It demonstrates how people can get confused between information based on reality vs information based on unreality, and hence develop conflicting notions of truth.
    I do however cede - I think - your point about your original introduction of absolute 0, I came in half-way through a discussion. But your understanding of the interaction of gas laws and thermodynamics is simply incorrect and in some cases fallacious - i.e. the argument that we should think absolute zero is unreachable because any real gas would condense into a liquid.
    As I said, you should stop carelessly throwing out statements like this. You have not demonstrated any fallacy in any understanding on my part. SI absolute zero is still today very much defined in terms of the temperature where, thoeretically, an ideal gas would hit a pressure or volume of zero. That is undeniably how it is calculated today. Which is, incidentally, assuming it did not condense first (or otherwise stop behaving like an ideal gas), which we know for certain it would. So yes, as of right now, the SI value of absolute zero is derived from a theoretical set of circumstances, extrapolated using mathematics, but known to be impossible to exist. All you are saying is that there are also a lot of other equations and theories we've found that also make that temperature impossible, too, and so somehow that makes me wrong. This doesn't make any counterpoint that I can see. You still seem to fail to recognize the complication that arises when one claims something to "exist" when that thing is only defined in terms of how it can't exist.
    MrMister wrote: »
    I'm not sure exactly what you take Zeno's paradoxes to prove. After all, the original goal of the paradoxes was to prove that movement was an illusion and the knowledge of the senses was a lie, so, presumably, that's not what you're going for.

    As per the inherent paradoxes in the axioms of mathematics, I'd be surprised if more than one or two people on the board even knew the axioms of ZFC*, and I'd eat my hat if you could derive a contradiction from them, let alone explain how said contradiction could be relevant to modern physics.
    ELM referred to e, elementary particle charge. Charge is quantized. It only exists in integer multiples of a known value. There is no 1/2 of e. Consider the implications of quantization on any Zeno-style paradox. What if length were quantized? Zeno's paradox would disappear, and in a much cleaner manner than by using infinite sums. We'd simply say no, you don't have to cross an infinite number of points, because there aren't an infinite number of lengths to cross IRL, only a finite number of quantized ones. At some point, you can't divide in half anymore and claim a new sub-length that must be traversed. This is an important philosophical angle on quantum mechanics and modern physics.

    Anyway, I'm not saying length is quantized, but ELM's electron has a charge of e. I'm assuming this is relevant to his paradox, but I didn't really get into it. I'm just saying that if he's got a quantized quantity like charge mixed into a hypothetical scenario concerning a "centerpoint" that is a necessarily a non-quantized, infinitely precise length from the boundary of the electron, I'm not surprised that we end up with a "whoa, infinity, it's impossible." Does it mean that the centerpoint does or doesn't exist? I don't know, it seems to me that the given circumstances include some conflicting notions of what we mean by "exists." If the electron has a charge of e, how much charge does the left half of the electron have? I'm assuming that's a nonsensical question, but why? If charge is quantized, what does that mean about trying to penetrate exactly halfway through a particle with a quantum of charge? My physics is not strong enough to see this through. Maybe quantization is irrelevant. Maybe it's just because a center point would necessarily have a volume of 0 and hence nothing can ever "be" there as we would envision something being somewhere in 3D space.

    Yar on
  • MoridinMoridin Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    Yar, "average kinetic energy" is an incomplete and outdated definition of temperature. It's more accurately defined by the partial derivative or the systems entropy with respect to energy.

    So, no, we do not base our definition of absolute zero off the ideal gas law.

    Moridin on
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  • electricitylikesmeelectricitylikesme Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    Yar wrote: »
    ELM referred to e, elementary particle charge. Charge is quantized. It only exists in integer multiples of a known value. There is no 1/2 of e. Consider the implications of quantization on any Zeno-style paradox. What if length were quantized? Zeno's paradox would disappear, and in a much cleaner manner than by using infinite sums. We'd simply say no, you don't have to cross an infinite number of points, because there aren't an infinite number of lengths to cross IRL, only a finite number of quantized ones. At some point, you can't divide in half anymore and claim a new sub-length that must be traversed. This is an important philosophical angle on quantum mechanics and modern physics.

    Charge is only quantized in so much as the electron has a charge value of 'e'. It's not quantized in the universe - fractional electron charges are a real and indispensable component of the electric charge of quarks, responsible for the positivity of regular protons. It is not a fundamental law that charge be quantized in units of e. Were you roaming around in the primordial quark-gluon plasma all you'd see anywhere were fractional units of e.
    Yar wrote: »
    I do however cede - I think - your point about your original introduction of absolute 0, I came in half-way through a discussion. But your understanding of the interaction of gas laws and thermodynamics is simply incorrect and in some cases fallacious - i.e. the argument that we should think absolute zero is unreachable because any real gas would condense into a liquid.
    As I said, you should stop carelessly throwing out statements like this. You have not demonstrated any fallacy in any understanding on my part. SI absolute zero is still today very much defined in terms of the temperature where, thoeretically, an ideal gas would hit a pressure or volume of zero. That is undeniably how it is calculated today. Which is, incidentally, assuming it did not condense first (or otherwise stop behaving like an ideal gas), which we know for certain it would. So yes, as of right now, the SI value of absolute zero is derived from a theoretical set of circumstances, extrapolated using mathematics, but known to be impossible to exist. All you are saying is that there are also a lot of other equations and theories we've found that also make that temperature impossible, too, and so somehow that makes me wrong. This doesn't make any counterpoint that I can see. You still seem to fail to recognize the complication that arises when one claims something to "exist" when that thing is only defined in terms of how it can't exist.

    If you start your argument by assuming Kelvin is defined from the Ideal Gas Law, rather then the Ideal Gas Law being the logical product of thermodynamics (or indeed, presenting a compelling case as to why we should define the Kelvin based off of the Ideal Gas Law's physical implications, rather then perhaps defining it to interop with our other systems of measurement) - but easier to discover because it approximates real gases at the most easily accessible temperatures and pressures - then of course you're going to end up finding yourself to be right. Ergo your argument is fallacious because you've defined it as a truism. You have steadfastly refused to consider (or evidently read any of the things I've linked at your request) any other scientific discovery or it's ramifications.
    Yar wrote: »
    There has been no significant other, or better, or more modern method of coming up with the absolute zero. It's the number we came up with in the 1800s. It's the coefficient of volume changes of a gas per degree Celsius temperature change realtive to the triple point of water. Because the coefficient is derived from measurements in Celsius, and the triple-point of water in Celsius is 1x10^-2, the scale naturally matches Celsius in magnitude (and hence is also then indirectly based on freezing and boiling points of water as well). The only things we've tweaked since the 1800s is that we set it to the triple point of water instead of the freezing point, and we've gotten more precise at measuring temperatures of water, allowing the gas expansion coefficient in Kelvin's math to be tweaked. However, to be clear yet again, this still means that SI absolute zero is defined as the temperature at which a volume of gas would reach zero pressure or zero volume. Which we know is impossible to actually happen.

    And this is why your argument is utterly fallacious. The Ideal Gas Law is a thermodynamic model of a hypothetical gas which happens to accurately match some real gases under easily accessible conditions. Since it is so simple though, it does actually model certain thermodynamic properties accurately. Wait 2 years and we may have a new definition of the Kelvin - but wait for it - absolute 0 will still be absolute 0 because it is not merely the product of the Ideal Gas Law, even if it's existence can be inferred from it. And the reason for 273.16 is obvious - because it's super-convenient to simply rebase the Celsius scale for an absolute temperature scale. The reason a change to the Boltzmann constant is being considered is because that constant is more directly involved in the impact of temperature across solids, liquids and gases.

    EDIT: There's also the side-issue that establishing systems of measurement usually involves also establishing a practically implementable way to measure them. The kilogram could be defined by something cool like the relativistic mass of a hydrogen atom at v (some value close to the current mass of the kilogram) but good luck implementing that.

    The order of scientific discovery does not establish the precedence of physical laws.

    electricitylikesme on
  • CptHamiltonCptHamilton Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    Yar wrote: »
    A temperature is a measurement.

    This was an accurate statement in the 1800's but no longer is. As an illustration:

    1) What is the temperature of two atoms of Hydrogen in a vacuum?
    2) How do you measure it?
    3) Is it a solid, a liquid, or a gas?

    Answers:
    1) The inverse of the rate at which the entropy of the system increases with an increase in temperature, given by the partial derivative of the log of the number of microstates of the system with respect to energy multiplied by Boltzmann's constant.
    2) You can't. There is no device which directly measures entropy. But you can calculate it accurately.
    3) In modern parlance it is a gas at any temperature because any collection of un-bonded atoms or molecules is referred to as a 'gas'. A collection of Rubidium atoms at a temperature approaching 170 nanoKelvin is referred to as a 'gas' (until it stops being a gas and becomes a Bose-Einstein Condensate, anyway).

    Edit: "A measurement" is still a useful definition of a temperature, and when given in units of Degrees F or C it is a completely accurate definition as those scales are measurement-based. However it is not a complete definition of temperature. The accurate definition is that it is
    a quantity mathematically related to entropy. Which is why I said earlier that absolute zero is - now - defined by the minimum entropy value of a system. If T is inversely proportional to d/dE of S then T goes to zero as S goes to zero.

    CptHamilton on
    PSN,Steam,Live | CptHamiltonian
  • hanskeyhanskey Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    How much does truth matter?
    To a lawyer - not much.
    To an engineer - only in so much as it is useful to make things and pretty much know they will work ahead of time.
    To an artist - it is a wonderful toy to play with
    To a politician - a shiton, and it should be avoided at all costs to gain political advantage.

    Truth definitely matters to society. Both the skillful use of lies and truth are critical to successfully interacting with and within any human society, and if you can't do both well, when the time demands it, then nasty consequences can follow.

    To the poet, the truth is elusive and must be sought after.

    <and the thread is now back on-topic>

    hanskey on
  • CptHamiltonCptHamilton Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    hanskey wrote: »
    How much does truth matter?
    To a lawyer - not much.
    To an engineer - only in so much as it is useful to make things and pretty much know they will work ahead of time.
    To an artist - it is a wonderful toy to play with
    To a politician - a shiton, and it should be avoided at all costs to gain political advantage.

    Truth definitely matters to society. Both the skillful use of lies and truth are critical to successfully interacting with and within any human society, and if you can't do both well, when the time demands it, then nasty consequences can follow.

    To the poet, the truth is elusive and must be sought after.

    <and the thread is now back on-topic>

    I'd imagine that it's equally important to all of them.
    The lawyer needs to know the truth either in order to prove it or to hide it (depending whether he's the defense or the prosecutor and whether the truth is on his side).
    The engineer needs to know the truth to make sure shit don't break, as you said.
    The artist can't express something meaningful without the truth - write what you know/beauty is truth etc.
    The politician needs to know the truth to, as you said, use it; though not always by hiding it - there are plenty of cases where the truth is a more powerful tool than a lie

    And truth is important to all of them as humans since we are an almost uniquely curious species.

    CptHamilton on
    PSN,Steam,Live | CptHamiltonian
  • hanskeyhanskey Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    Hmmmm ... I can definitely see what you are saying. I think we can also agree that lies are equally vital, no?

    Isn't it interesting also that truth is so important, yet we never have complete knowledge?

    Actually, now I wonder if much of the drive to find truth comes from how incomplete our knowledge of our universe and selves is? We constantly operate with insufficient information to perfectly predict the results of our actions, but we must act in order to survive if nothing else! This would seem a fairly plausible reason why truth not only matters, but matters quite a bit to us humans.

    What I think is kind of amazing is how we went from seeking truth through observation for hunter and gathering groups survival, to pursuing truth far away from the physical trials of our historical survival strategies, in the "Ivory Towers" of intellectualism. That is a pretty amazing leap in my opinion.

    hanskey on
  • YarYar Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    So, this thread will need to get past the absolute zero thing at some point, or else I imagine everyone else will get tired of it. I still don't see any evidence or explanation of any sort to refute what I've said about it. What I do see is posts that start out saying I'm wrong, and then part-way through there is some Googling and research going on behind the scenes, realizing I'm completely correct, and then trying to dance around to a shifty conclusion.

    ELM likely knows that the charge of a quark being one-third e is a distraction. If you're talking quarks, charge is quantized at 1/3e (and no other fractions that aren't a mutiple of 1/3e). If not, it's quantized at e. Either way, there is no 1/2e. I don't even know that this matters. You seem to be trying to introduce meaningless complications.

    There is still no room for arguing against the fact that a kelvin is defined by international standard as 1/273.16 of the thermodynamic energy in water at the triple-point, and the fact that this number 1/273.16 is used because it is the expasion coefficient of gas relative to the triple-point of water, as determined by actual measurements of changes in temperature, pressure, and volume of gasses and actual measurements of the triple-point of water, in Celsius. So, in the internationally agreed-upon current-day terms that define a kelvin, 0 kelvins can only be described as the temperature at which the Ideal Gas Law would predict that the pressure or volume of a gas would be zero.

    When people say, "absolute zero," though, they don't necessarily mean the specific circumstances and standards that define kelvins. Absolute zero as a theoretical conceptual state of being can be expressed in a number of ways, and I get the "minimal amount of entropy." It is a catch-all for various arguments about how energy is not something that can decrease unbounded. But as I was originally trying to point out, this leaves open so many unanswered implications. Minimal expressed in what value? Why are we calling it a temperature and giving it a value of 0? Again, if we're talking about a measured and calculated quantity, 0 k is by definition measured and calculated precisely as I described above. But if we're talking about a state of being that has certain conceptual qualities, then that isn't necessarily a temperature or a number at all, and it isn't necessarily how we define 0k. This is true even if various experiments corroborate 0k as a lower bound.

    So yes, I have always fully understood that absolute zero is a concept that embodies a number of proofs that there must be a lower-bound on temperature, and I have never intended to imply that such proofs are wrong or that really there isn't a lowest temperature. I also seem to be the only one who understands how the value of absolute zero is currently defined. The original statement was "absolute zero is the lowest possible temperature" and it was given as an example of an absolute truth, which was given to mean that it was true without qualification and without needing any practical argument that supports it other than it's own truth. There were a lot of challenges to this, including challenging the notion of absolute vs. relative being used. My challenge was that the statement was of debatable truth value regardless, because absolute zero seems to be defined as both the "lowest possible temperature" and as a "known impossible temperature."

    I'm hoping that the point between us where we might agree is that the concept of absolute zero is a valid concept, I've never tried to argue that it isn't a useful, valid, meaningful concept to leverage, but it is a concept defined using that which we know to be impossible, and it is meaningful precisely because of its own impossibility. And hence I retain a meaningful objection to a supposed truth that calls it possible. I'd rather say it is a lower bound on possible temperatures. And as I said a while back, I'm fine with shortening that to "lowest possible," but not fine claiming this to be an example of a truth that doesn't require any assumptions or qualifications.

    Yar on
  • _J__J_ Pedant Registered User, __BANNED USERS regular
    edited June 2011
    No one seems to have explained the degree to which the OP is regressively self-refuting.

    LoserForHireX explained, a few pages back, language game theory and the degree to which discrete linguistic utterances utilize an understanding of implied meaning. That’s all well and fine with respect to arguments of “absolute truth” with respect to communication.

    The problem is a statement such as this, from the OP:
    Glyph wrote: »
    I mean, people's personal biases and subjective reasoning are going to play out no matter what sort of information they're receiving anyway, correct?

    Like that's how it works, you can report the facts but immediately people are going to interpret them in their own way

    That statement, itself, seems to be trying to do more than articulate a personal bias or subjective interpretation. If we take Glyph’s claim to be X, then his post is not “I subjectively bias an interpretation of X as personally, subjectively meaningful” but rather he takes himself to be stating that X is, in fact, the case. He goes beyond a statement of personal bias and claims, “that’s how it works.” Said another way, his claim that all understanding is biased and subjective is not, itself, biased or subjective; he’s gone beyond a limitation to his own interpretive framework and so claimed, “that’s how it works” as a universal claim about the structure of reality.


    That’s the sort of internal tension someone like me will point to in these debates. If a person states that “truth does not matter” we have to ask what that statement, itself, is. Presumably, it’s a kind of truth claim that is meant to undermine or negate all other truth claims, and so goes against that which the claim, itself, stated. When one claims that "truth does not matter", we have to ask whether that claim is one of truth, personal interpretation, or something else. If it is true that truth does not matter, and that matters, then we've a problem.

    Of course, someone might try to get around the tension by stating that “truth does not matter” is not a truth claim. But then we have to try to puzzle out either what it Means, or how it is being used, without its being true.

    For my part, though, the statement “that’s how it works” seems to be a truth claim, a statement of how the world IS, independent of any particular person’s bias or interpretive framework. And since Glyph can make the "that's how it works" move, he obviously cares about truth, insofar as he's utilized truth to argue against truth...which would seem to indicate that truth matters.


    TL;DR: If it is true that truth does not matter, then does this matter?

    _J_ on
  • electricitylikesmeelectricitylikesme Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    Yar wrote: »
    I'm hoping that the point between us where we might agree is that the concept of absolute zero is a valid concept, I've never tried to argue that it isn't a useful, valid, meaningful concept to leverage, but it is a concept defined using that which we know to be impossible, and it is meaningful precisely because of its own impossibility. And hence I retain a meaningful objection to a supposed truth that calls it possible. I'd rather say it is a lower bound on possible temperatures. And as I said a while back, I'm fine with shortening that to "lowest possible," but not fine claiming this to be an example of a truth that doesn't require any assumptions or qualifications.

    You know I think I'm finally getting what Yar was saying, in so much as we were talking past each other.

    I am super-not agreeing with your various claims about the present day origin of absolute zero and the Kelvin scale, even if, historically, they are accurate.

    But, on truth, I think this is an interesting point - re: assumptions and qualifications.

    To me this seems like a definition of truth which is, in and of itself, impossible to meet. I don't see how it's possible to have a true statement be true without qualification or external explanations to support it and that would seem to go all the way back to the first tenet of logic that a thing must be what it is - i.e. A == A (or however formal logic people write it).

    electricitylikesme on
  • CptHamiltonCptHamilton Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    Yar wrote: »
    I'm hoping that the point between us where we might agree is that the concept of absolute zero is a valid concept, I've never tried to argue that it isn't a useful, valid, meaningful concept to leverage, but it is a concept defined using that which we know to be impossible, and it is meaningful precisely because of its own impossibility. And hence I retain a meaningful objection to a supposed truth that calls it possible. I'd rather say it is a lower bound on possible temperatures. And as I said a while back, I'm fine with shortening that to "lowest possible," but not fine claiming this to be an example of a truth that doesn't require any assumptions or qualifications.

    You know I think I'm finally getting what Yar was saying, in so much as we were talking past each other.

    I am super-not agreeing with your various claims about the present day origin of absolute zero and the Kelvin scale, even if, historically, they are accurate.

    But, on truth, I think this is an interesting point - re: assumptions and qualifications.

    To me this seems like a definition of truth which is, in and of itself, impossible to meet. I don't see how it's possible to have a true statement be true without qualification or external explanations to support it and that would seem to go all the way back to the first tenet of logic that a thing must be what it is - i.e. A == A (or however formal logic people write it).

    I'm pretty sure that a statement which is true without any external support is impossible. The very concept of a 'statement' requires some sort of language or symbology underlying it, which is going to either required explanation or be, itself, an explanation.

    CptHamilton on
    PSN,Steam,Live | CptHamiltonian
  • _J__J_ Pedant Registered User, __BANNED USERS regular
    edited June 2011
    Yar wrote: »
    I'm hoping that the point between us where we might agree is that the concept of absolute zero is a valid concept, I've never tried to argue that it isn't a useful, valid, meaningful concept to leverage, but it is a concept defined using that which we know to be impossible, and it is meaningful precisely because of its own impossibility. And hence I retain a meaningful objection to a supposed truth that calls it possible. I'd rather say it is a lower bound on possible temperatures. And as I said a while back, I'm fine with shortening that to "lowest possible," but not fine claiming this to be an example of a truth that doesn't require any assumptions or qualifications.

    You know I think I'm finally getting what Yar was saying, in so much as we were talking past each other.

    I am super-not agreeing with your various claims about the present day origin of absolute zero and the Kelvin scale, even if, historically, they are accurate.

    But, on truth, I think this is an interesting point - re: assumptions and qualifications.

    To me this seems like a definition of truth which is, in and of itself, impossible to meet. I don't see how it's possible to have a true statement be true without qualification or external explanations to support it and that would seem to go all the way back to the first tenet of logic that a thing must be what it is - i.e. A == A (or however formal logic people write it).

    I'm pretty sure that a statement which is true without any external support is impossible. The very concept of a 'statement' requires some sort of language or symbology underlying it, which is going to either required explanation or be, itself, an explanation.

    Your conversation seems to be headed towards Gödel's incompleteness theorems.

    _J_ on
  • CptHamiltonCptHamilton Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    _J_ wrote: »
    Yar wrote: »
    I'm hoping that the point between us where we might agree is that the concept of absolute zero is a valid concept, I've never tried to argue that it isn't a useful, valid, meaningful concept to leverage, but it is a concept defined using that which we know to be impossible, and it is meaningful precisely because of its own impossibility. And hence I retain a meaningful objection to a supposed truth that calls it possible. I'd rather say it is a lower bound on possible temperatures. And as I said a while back, I'm fine with shortening that to "lowest possible," but not fine claiming this to be an example of a truth that doesn't require any assumptions or qualifications.

    You know I think I'm finally getting what Yar was saying, in so much as we were talking past each other.

    I am super-not agreeing with your various claims about the present day origin of absolute zero and the Kelvin scale, even if, historically, they are accurate.

    But, on truth, I think this is an interesting point - re: assumptions and qualifications.

    To me this seems like a definition of truth which is, in and of itself, impossible to meet. I don't see how it's possible to have a true statement be true without qualification or external explanations to support it and that would seem to go all the way back to the first tenet of logic that a thing must be what it is - i.e. A == A (or however formal logic people write it).

    I'm pretty sure that a statement which is true without any external support is impossible. The very concept of a 'statement' requires some sort of language or symbology underlying it, which is going to either required explanation or be, itself, an explanation.

    Your conversation seems to be headed towards Gödel's incompleteness theorems.

    I don't think so. Godel was talking about systems of logic and self-referentiation. I'm talking about symbolic systems. To even make a logical statement you must have a symbolic language, or invent one in the creation of the statement.

    Saying
    o = o
    is creating the concepts of entity and identity, which, if understood by the reader, are implicitly explaining the statement that a thing is itself. If you accept the statement as an absolute truth (or any kind of truth), the statement itself is still not true without explanation of what the symbols composing it mean.

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  • MrMisterMrMister Jesus dying on the cross in pain? Morally better than us. One has to go "all in".Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    _J_ wrote: »
    TL;DR: If it is true that truth does not matter, then does this matter?

    flawless victory
    I think the response on the part of your opponent here has to be something like: I accept that truth doesn't matter, and I accept that it's true that truth doesn't matter, and if I didn't accept the latter then I wouldn't accept the former. But the attitude of acceptance is distinct from the attitude of belief in of that it's not governed by norms of truth; instead, acceptance involves some sort of non-cognitive planning state or orientation towards the world. Because of this distinction I can both accept that truth doesn't matter and accept that it's true that truth doesn't matter without implicating myself in any sort of contradiction.

    Or something. The goal is basically to make it turtles all the way down, so there's no place where you can stop and ask insistently 'but is it true?' I don't sanction this myself, but it seems like the road you have to go down when truth stops mattering, and I think e.g. Rorty said something like this.

    MrMister on
  • _J__J_ Pedant Registered User, __BANNED USERS regular
    edited June 2011
    I don't think so. Godel was talking about systems of logic and self-referentiation. I'm talking about symbolic systems. To even make a logical statement you must have a symbolic language, or invent one in the creation of the statement.

    Saying
    o = o
    is creating the concepts of entity and identity, which, if understood by the reader, are implicitly explaining the statement that a thing is itself. If you accept the statement as an absolute truth (or any kind of truth), the statement itself is still not true without explanation of what the symbols composing it mean.

    Do we create the concepts of entity and identity? Some would contend that we either discover them, or have them already.

    If you grant that we start with these concepts, you could still say that we have to artifically, arbitrarily, subjectively, or otherwise not-absolutely link a concept or understanding to some symbol or linguistic / communicative utterance. So, even if we start with a concept of the quantity of four, you could claim that "four", "4", and "...." are symbols to which that concept must be linked via some system other than the number itself. That's your claim that we have to link a symbol to its meaning.

    But I'm wondering what your argument for that is. And not the argument of "Hey, different countries use different words for '4'." but, rather, why is it impossible for there to be a symbolic system the meaning of which is self-evident and non-ambiguous? Why can there not be a symbol that is universally understood as the manifestation of the understanding of a particular absolute truth?

    People try to argue that "2+2=4" is not an absolute truth, but rather something else given that the symbols utilized to express the truth are somehow arbitrary or subjective. So, even if the MEANING is a universal, absolute truth, the symbolic thingy is arbitrary, societal, cultural, whatever. That seems to be where you are headed with your claim that we always have to have some other system to explain our symbols.

    But is that necessarily the case? To answer that question, you have to figure out whether you think all thinking or understanding is, itself, symbolic or representational.

    _J_ on
  • MrMisterMrMister Jesus dying on the cross in pain? Morally better than us. One has to go "all in".Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    Saying
    o = o
    is creating the concepts of entity and identity, which, if understood by the reader, are implicitly explaining the statement that a thing is itself. If you accept the statement as an absolute truth (or any kind of truth), the statement itself is still not true without explanation of what the symbols composing it mean.

    I think that there's a danger here of confusing the order of priority. It's not that the proposition gets its meaning from the symbols used to express it, but rather, that the symbols gain their meaning from the proposition which they are used to express.

    Or, in other words, the proposition expressed by A = A is true and was always true long before there was an English alphabet, despite the fact that 'A,' '=,' and 'A' are all characters in the English alphabet. A = A didn't need English to be true, and it itself is not contingent on English.

    MrMister on
  • CptHamiltonCptHamilton Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    _J_ wrote: »
    Do we create the concepts of entity and identity? Some would contend that we either discover them, or have them already.

    I didn't mean that we created the concepts so much as we create a symbolic representation of the concepts (as you say below).
    _J_ wrote: »

    If you grant that we start with these concepts, you could still say that we have to artifically, arbitrarily, subjectively, or otherwise not-absolutely link a concept or understanding to some symbol or linguistic / communicative utterance. So, even if we start with a concept of the quantity of four, you could claim that "four", "4", and "...." are symbols to which that concept must be linked via some system other than the number itself. That's your claim that we have to link a symbol to its meaning.

    But I'm wondering what your argument for that is. And not the argument of "Hey, different countries use different words for '4'." but, rather, why is it impossible for there to be a symbolic system the meaning of which is self-evident and non-ambiguous? Why can there not be a symbol that is universally understood as the manifestation of the understanding of a particular absolute truth?

    People try to argue that "2+2=4" is not an absolute truth, but rather something else given that the symbols utilized to express the truth are somehow arbitrary or subjective. So, even if the MEANING is a universal, absolute truth, the symbolic thingy is arbitrary, societal, cultural, whatever. That seems to be where you are headed with your claim that we always have to have some other system to explain our symbols.

    But is that necessarily the case? To answer that question, you have to figure out whether you think all thinking or understanding is, itself, symbolic or representational.

    My argument for it is that there are no universal symbols. There's no symbol which means the same thing to everyone that observes it, uniformly. Even something basic like two identical dots separated by a symbol meant to indicate identity could be construed to mean any number of things. Identity (A is A), equality (A is the same as B), changelessness (A is still A), or something iconographic and entirely unrelated to the above.

    I'd further argue that a universal symbol is a contradiction. Symbols are, by definition, representations of things or concepts which they are, themselves, not. If there were a symbol for "an entity" which embodied the concept so perfectly that it could be instantly and unambiguously recognized by any viewer for what it was then I'd argue that the 'symbol' is no longer a symbol at all but has become the thing which it was meant to represent. It's a big vague with a purely conceptual thing like entity, but consider a person or a chair. The only way to perfectly, unambiguously represent that thing symbolically would be with a 'symbol' that was indistinguishable from the person or the chair in question. Any ambiguity in the representation would leave a margin for misunderstanding. And if the viewer were not aware of the existence of other persons/chairs then even a perfect representation of the thing being symbolized would be potentially insufficient as it would fail to convey the concept that it is identifying a single thing (this chair) rather than a class of perfectly identical chairs of which the viewer was previously unaware.

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  • CptHamiltonCptHamilton Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    MrMister wrote: »
    Saying
    o = o
    is creating the concepts of entity and identity, which, if understood by the reader, are implicitly explaining the statement that a thing is itself. If you accept the statement as an absolute truth (or any kind of truth), the statement itself is still not true without explanation of what the symbols composing it mean.

    I think that there's a danger here of confusing the order of priority. It's not that the proposition gets its meaning from the symbols used to express it, but rather, that the symbols gain their meaning from the proposition which they are used to express.

    Or, in other words, the proposition expressed by A = A is true and was always true long before there was an English alphabet, despite the fact that 'A,' '=,' and 'A' are all characters in the English alphabet. A = A didn't need English to be true, and it itself is not contingent on English.

    Oh, I don't disagree. The language which expresses the statement is completely irrelevant to its truth value. I was arguing against the possibility that there exists any statement which can be made in any language which is true in itself without any necessary supporting explanations as to the precise meanings of the symbols used to make the statement (and then explanations of the explanations and so forth).

    Edit: I suppose "self-evidently true" would be better than "true in itself".

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  • _J__J_ Pedant Registered User, __BANNED USERS regular
    edited June 2011
    MrMister wrote: »
    _J_ wrote: »
    TL;DR: If it is true that truth does not matter, then does this matter?

    flawless victory
    I think the response on the part of your opponent here has to be something like: I accept that truth doesn't matter, and I accept that it's true that truth doesn't matter, and if I didn't accept the latter then I wouldn't accept the former. But the attitude of acceptance is distinct from the attitude of belief in of that it's not governed by norms of truth; instead, acceptance involves some sort of non-cognitive planning state or orientation towards the world. Because of this distinction I can both accept that truth doesn't matter and accept that it's true that truth doesn't matter without implicating myself in any sort of contradiction.

    Or something. The goal is basically to make it turtles all the way down, so there's no place where you can stop and ask insistently 'but is it true?' I don't sanction this myself, but it seems like the road you have to go down when truth stops mattering, and I think e.g. Rorty said something like this.

    That response works so long as the individual limits their claims to "I accept" claims that have only to do with their own web of acceptance. With acceptance, they could get enough wiggle room to claim, "I accept both X and ~X" without contradiction. But they would have to specify that they do not believe X and ~X, or think both X and ~X true.

    The problem is that Glyph claimed, "that's how it works". He wasn't making an acceptance claim, or articulating a personal belief. He was stating that the world, reality, in itself, functions in a particular manner, and that this functioning was not simply his own bias or interpretation. He's gone beyond his own web of beliefs by making a claim that is not limited to his own interpretive framework.

    And, yeah, Rorty probably said some stupid shit like this and completely failed to realize the problematic nature of the claims.

    _J_ on
  • _J__J_ Pedant Registered User, __BANNED USERS regular
    edited June 2011
    My argument for it is that there are no universal symbols.

    Leibniz is not pleased with you.

    In your post you got to where I want to go in writing a reply, but I want to get there by first asking a question: Is all thought / thinking / understanding symbolic?

    If yes, then we simply disagree.

    If no, though, then we can get to what you wrote:
    If there were a symbol for "an entity" which embodied the concept so perfectly that it could be instantly and unambiguously recognized by any viewer for what it was then I'd argue that the 'symbol' is no longer a symbol at all but has become the thing which it was meant to represent.

    That's kind of the direction I want to go, only I want to maintain a distinction between, say, the extended chair and the idea of the chair. Here's how we do it: I'll grant that there are different symbolic notations for "chair" or "four". But if you, I, and someone who languages in Chinese encounter the same chair, is our pre-linguistic, pre-symbolic mental conceptualization / understanding / knowing of that chair the same?

    If that pre-linguistic, pre-symbolic mental conceptualization / understanding / knowing is the same across cultures, then there seems to be a universality into which one could tap in constructing a symbolic system that referred to those mental states.

    Someone like Rorty would call this hogwash, b/c all understanding is cultural and that goes into the contradiction we've talked about. But if we can get to a uniformity / universality of mental content, then we could get a universal symbolic system up and running given that all of the symbols would be those mental contents, that are the same in all persons.

    Edit:
    I was arguing against the possibility that there exists any statement which can be made in any language which is true in itself without any necessary supporting explanations as to the precise meanings of the symbols used to make the statement (and then explanations of the explanations and so forth).

    What i'm wondering is if you have an argument against self-evident or evident-in-themselves symbols, or if it's just "We haven't found any such symbols yet." Is such a symbolic system impossible in principle, or is it unsupported in practice?

    _J_ on
  • CptHamiltonCptHamilton Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    _J_ wrote: »
    My argument for it is that there are no universal symbols.

    Leibniz is not pleased with you.

    In your post you got to where I want to go in writing a reply, but I want to get there by first asking a question: Is all thought / thinking / understanding symbolic?

    All thought/thinking/understanding? No. At some level we simply recognize things as a part of our pre-conscious pattern recognition skills. When seeing the same chair twice we recognize it as the same chair without any symbology being involved. We can recognize an image of the chair as being our chair. I think every animal that uses sight as a primary sense has that ability and the majority have my (apparent) capacity for understanding symbolism.

    Our symbolic reasoning capacity, I think, comes as an extension of this pre-symbolic recognition. I recognize my chair, even if the light is different or my eyes are blurry. I recognize a photo of my chair when it's grainy or poorly exposed. If it captures enough of the shape, I recognize a drawing of my chair. A simple drawing that is similar enough can then be a symbol to represent my chair.
    _J_ wrote: »
    That's kind of the direction I want to go, only I want to maintain a distinction between, say, the extended chair and the idea of the chair. Here's how we do it: I'll grant that there are different symbolic notations for "chair" or "four". But if you, I, and someone who languages in Chinese encounter the same chair, is our pre-linguistic, pre-symbolic mental conceptualization / understanding / knowing of that chair the same?

    If that pre-linguistic, pre-symbolic mental conceptualization / understanding / knowing is the same across cultures, then there seems to be a universality into which one could tap in constructing a symbolic system that referred to those mental states.

    Someone like Rorty would call this hogwash, b/c all understanding is cultural and that goes into the contradiction we've talked about. But if we can get to a uniformity / universality of mental content, then we could get a universal symbolic system up and running given that all of the symbols would be those mental contents, that are the same in all persons.

    Edit:
    I was arguing against the possibility that there exists any statement which can be made in any language which is true in itself without any necessary supporting explanations as to the precise meanings of the symbols used to make the statement (and then explanations of the explanations and so forth).

    What i'm wondering is if you have an argument against self-evident or evident-in-themselves symbols, or if it's just "We haven't found any such symbols yet." Is such a symbolic system impossible in principle, or is it unsupported in practice?

    I think it's impossible in principle. A symbol requires context precisely because it symbolizes something else. The pre-symbolic recognition part of our brains can allow us to recognize the same symbol being repeated in various places at various times and maybe generlize across small variations in its presentation, but that's about it.

    This appears to be roughly analogous to the qualia problem. I can't convey to someone to experience of seeing a color because there is no language which will cause the parts of the optical processing center in your brain to fire that are required to give you a complete understanding of what it is to see that color. I can't give you a symbol that will let you understand the meaning behind that symbol without the symbol being the thing which it is intended to represent. And when the thing in question is in any fashion non-physical, I think that's an impossible task.

    Perhaps there is some method by which one could carry out a direct transfer of memories between people, making the chunk of memory which encapsulates the concept of identity a self-evident 'symbol' for identity, but given how tightly our memories are coupled to the physical construction of our brains and how dependent neural geometry is on experience I'm not confident that such a thing is even hypothetically possible.

    I don't think that this is a problem, though. Symbols are only useful for their communicative purposes. If your goal is communication then there is no reason not to try to provide enough context to make your meaning clear. I do think that, for sufficiently basic concepts, it is possible to exhaustively contextualize a symbolic representation such that the viewer knows exactly what you mean.

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  • YarYar Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    Hells yeah this discussion is good now.

    Yeah, we were touching on Godel there. One way to define truth is to say that it is a value given to a statement (or piece of information) in one logical system if the statement is shown to be consistent to its equivalent statement in another logical system. Many might say, "it's true if it can be independently verified" though I tend to shy away from that because "independent" there implies a lot of different things.

    So, like, a statement in mathematics is evaluated as true by showing it's consistency within a series of statements in symbolic logic. Or, information we receive through our senses is deemed true if it matches our reasoning. Or, something we predict through our reasoning is deemed true when we observe it. I reason that the sun will come up tomorrow, and that reasoning is evaluated true when I see it rise. I observe a pink elephant flying through my room at night, and that observation is evaluated false when I reason that I was dreaming. Theoretical formulas are deemed true when the data support them. And, often to our detriment, data is often deemed true only if it supports accepted theory. Statements made by the accused are deemed true when a jury believes those statements are supported by the evidence. And so on.

    Godel said that no system can be both complete and internally consistent. Basically what I said above. A single system can't ultimately resolve truth by itself. You can't have a truth evaluation if you don't have two distinct systems you're working with. You can have consistency within a single system, and that can be called truth to some degree, but when you resolve it all out, the truth either rests on some assumed axioms that makes the system (and the truth) incomplete, or else without such axioms, the system can't possibly be entirely consistent.

    Consistency can equate to utility. If you can use a piece of information, without failing the system, then the information would seem to be true, until it is shown how it fails the system and an alternative truth is more consistent. For example, if you can use a scientific theory to successfully predict the results of an experiment, that theory gains truth. If repeated experimental data is not consistent with the theory (i.e., you can't use the theory to predict results), it loses its truth. It loses its truth even further when a different theory arises which can be used to predict (or is consistent with) all of the data the previous theory could predict, as well as the data it couldn't.

    The relevant question IMO then, is what sort of utility is the most important, i.e., what sort of system of evaluation is the one most basic to our existence and which most thoroughly encompasses all other systems of truth we have?

    And as many of you know, I believe truth to be utility within happiness. That which we believe we can consistently use to make ourselves happy, or that which we can argue is the most consistently useful means to happiness (in the broadest sense), is the most basic variation of what we will call truth. It still can't be complete, it still relies on an axiom that broad, general happiness is good, and should be sought, and it's opposite is bad, and should be avoided. I can't prove such things and I don't think I can suggest another system within which I can evaluate the truth or consistency of this.

    That's the base case to _J_'s ever-present challenge. No, I don't and can't claim that anything I said above is objectively true without qualification. No, I can't claim that the sentence before this one is objectively true without qualification. Nor can I on the sentence preceding this one. And so on. Why? Because the objective truth you're supposing is itself an impossible, inconsistent notion. It supposes a thing that is logically impossible. No system, or set of systems, can internally validate one another in a complete and consistent manner, so that sort of notion of objective truth is illogical. Is that objectively true? Of course not, the logic used to prove it is itself an incomplete system, per what I just said. There is only the best, most useful argument.

    Reason itself is incomplete. And I think the best argument I've seen is that we are incapable of pursuing the completeness of truth any further than what we find in the pursuit of happiness.

    Yar on
  • _J__J_ Pedant Registered User, __BANNED USERS regular
    edited June 2011
    Yar wrote: »
    the objective truth you're supposing is itself an impossible, inconsistent notion.

    At best, the only claim you could make, in your system, is that the objective truth I am supposing is neither the best nor most useful conception of truth for you.

    _J_ on
  • jothkijothki Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    _J_ wrote: »
    In your post you got to where I want to go in writing a reply, but I want to get there by first asking a question: Is all thought / thinking / understanding symbolic?

    Of course all thought isn't symbolic. All thought is chemically weighted neural networks. It may or may not map nicely to symbols, but that doesn't actually make it symbolic.

    jothki on
  • YarYar Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    _J_ wrote: »
    Yar wrote: »
    the objective truth you're supposing is itself an impossible, inconsistent notion.

    At best, the only claim you could make, in your system, is that the objective truth I am supposing is neither the best nor most useful conception of truth for you.
    Not quite, and depends on what you mean by "at best." I can show it to be logically inconsistent. In your own system, I can show it to be, at best, an incomplete notion, but more likely a notion founded on wholly inconsistent premises. But sure, if you want me to reduce it to my most basic notion of it in my own system, it might be: "Arguments showing that the objective truth you are supposing is neither the best nor most useful concept of truth to anyone, seem to me to be better arguments than any opposing arguments." Or perhaps just "that notion of truth seems not the most useful to you or me or anyone else seeking truth." Which, even more simply, is just saying, "it's wrong/not true."
    _J_ wrote: »
    I was arguing against the possibility that there exists any statement which can be made in any language which is true in itself without any necessary supporting explanations as to the precise meanings of the symbols used to make the statement (and then explanations of the explanations and so forth).

    What i'm wondering is if you have an argument against self-evident or evident-in-themselves symbols, or if it's just "We haven't found any such symbols yet." Is such a symbolic system impossible in principle, or is it unsupported in practice?
    The very notion of such a truth existing defies even the most objective notions of truth that we have. Godel! Saying that a statement or symbol or system can prove itself true defies the very meaning of truth being used there. Logically, truth is consistency between independent systems, it is always thus. Independent verification. Out-of-band support. Like I said before, math is true when symbolic logic proves it. Theories are true when data support them. Observation is true when reason supports it. Reason is true when observation supports it. And so on. And there can never be completeness and consistency throughout any system or set of systems, so there can never be truth without qualification. Logically, a statement must rely on some base assumption of incompleteness (meaning it is true, with qualification), or else there must be some inconsistency in the structure of the statement (meaning it isn't true). Forget my notion of utility, any notion of "truth" must adhere to these basic requirements - I don't see what possible alternative rational meaning you suppose the word "truth" to have.

    IIRC you adhere to a "truth is what is" definition, but that is just being vague to point of meaninglessness. You're still saying that truth is when we confirm reason with observation.

    Yar on
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