Kevin's Watch

+JMJ+

Zarathustra wrote:Sure, truth is knowable. In other words, we can verify whether or not factual statements are true (in principle). But verifying that statements of fact are true has nothing to do with making an absolute claim, because an absolute claim (in this context) is always made about a value, which is an opinion, not a fact.

That seems self-contradictory (though perhaps I'm reading you wrongly).

Facts are only so after an absolute claim is made (i.e. that truth is knowable), a principle which you have just admitted in your bolded text.

All facts are theory-laden.

Wosbald wrote:+JMJ+

Zarathustra wrote:Sure, truth is knowable. In other words, we can verify whether or not factual statements are true (in principle). But verifying that statements of fact are true has nothing to do with making an absolute claim, because an absolute claim (in this context) is always made about a value, which is an opinion, not a fact.

That seems self-contradictory (though perhaps I'm reading you wrongly).

Facts are only so after an absolute claim is made (i.e. that truth is knowable), a principle which you have just admitted in your bolded text.

I have no idea what you're saying here. Facts are only facts after an absolute claim is made? The assertion that truth is knowable is an absolute claim? I think we're using these words in completely different ways.

In terms of "absolute Truth," people are usually talking about things like, "Murder is Evil," or "rape is sin." The absolutist claim is made to distinguish these judgments from mere subjective whims like, "chocolate ice cream tastes best." The value (or lack thereof) of murder or rape is supposed to be more than a human whim like which flavor of ice cream is best, but instead a Truth that is true in all situations/contexts, regardless of whether some humans think murder or rape is no big deal. These are supposed to be judgments that transcend culture or education, which are Absolutely Wrong whether you're black or white, male or female, President or burger flipper.

None of the three judgments above are factual claims. They are all opinions. That's why I can point out that murder, rape, and vanilla aren't universally Evil, they are only bad (or good) according to individual humans, depending on which ones you ask. In other words, they aren't absolute. Rape and vanilla are a matter of human preference, no matter how strongly one feels about the former compared to the latter. So, "murder is wrong," is not a truth that can be known, because it's not a factual claim, but a value judgment. An opinion.

For me to 'admit' that truth is knowable in no way commits me to any absolute claim like the judgments above. It is only to say that factual claims can be verified as true or false. "Murder makes society unstable" is a factual claim that can be verified as true or false, i.e. known. This does not mean that there is Truth in the sense that people treat their value judgments.

All facts are theory-laden.

No, I don't think so. Perhaps you're thinking of Karl Popper's assertion that all observations are theory-laden?

Even if what you say is true, it doesn't help your argument. It would be just another way of saying that there aren't absolute facts (much less Truth). If facts are dependent upon theory, I suppose they would be relative in a sense, but this isn't the same we've been using, i.e. "dependent upon subjective human opinions."

Perhaps you could say that all facts are contingent. I'd agree with that. They depend on initial conditions, changing variables, etc. For instance, "water boils at 100 C" is only true at sea level. But that wouldn't mean this fact is unknowable, just that we must include the variables and context in our verification process.

Funny thing is, my feeling that chocolate ice cream tastes best is not at all a matter of whim. I have no choice in the matter. I didn't decide to prefer it, and can't decide to prefer vanilla. No more than I can decide to believe God exists.

+JMJ+

Zarathustra wrote:

Wosbald wrote:Facts are only so after an absolute claim is made (i.e. that truth is knowable), a principle which you have just admitted in your bolded text.

I have no idea what you're saying here. Facts are only facts after an absolute claim is made? The assertion that truth is knowable is an absolute claim?

Yes. Here, at the level of principle, theory and self-evidency are one-and-the-same. And if you affirm the self-evident principle that truth is knowable, then a whole new world of judgements (beyond the empirical) is open to you. Judgements based on Truth, not just Will acting all by its lonesome.

Fist and Faith wrote:Funny thing is, my feeling that chocolate ice cream tastes best is not at all a matter of whim. I have no choice in the matter. I didn't decide to prefer it, and can't decide to prefer vanilla. No more than I can decide to believe God exists.

But tastes can change. There's nothing absolute about them. Sometimes it takes several tries to like something. That's why it's important to keep introducing veggies to kids as they grow older, even after they've rejected them previously, because our palate develops.

Maybe "whim" isn't the best word to describe one's favorite flavor. However, we could easily imagine better examples where 'whim' is more accurate, like deciding between chocolate cake, chocolate ice cream, chocolate candy, etc. Or just deciding what meal to eat tonight.

Wosbald, 'truth is knowable' is not an absolute claim. Nor is it a self-evident Truth. It's quite possible (in principle) that truth can't be known. There is nothing self-evidently true in the evidence of our senses.

At best, it's a theory we can test. In as much as truth is reached, it is reached through explanation.

But again, I think we're using all these words in many different ways. You speak of judgments beyond the empirical based on Truth. I'm not using 'truth' in that way. So when I say 'truth is knowable' I'm only committing to the idea that factual claims can be verified as true or false. This in no way implies judgments beyond the empirical based on Truth.

Anyway, like many of our discussions, this one is going nowhere. I'd like to close this round of debate by resolving the issue with which it began, namely, the implication that I've made an absolute assertion in my rejection of Absolute Truth. Hopefully, you can see from all my clarifications that I've done no such thing.

I've seen this type of argument many times, and it always suffers from the same mistake. You imagine I've contradicted myself, but only because your usage of these terms is ambiguous, nebulous, and conflates several different meanings. My rejection of Absolute Truth is not a value judgment, so there's no possible way it can be of the same type of claims which it rejects (hence, there's no contradiction as you've tried to imply). "There is no Absolute Truth" is not itself an Absolute assertion of some Truth. It's a denial of it. If this really were a contradiction--if I really were asserting Absolutely some Truth--then we'd have to reduce the phrase in question (i.e. 'Absolute Truth') to the bare-bones, minimum content of "affirming that a statement X is true." If that's all it means, then there's no need for the qualifier, "Absolute," and nothing to distinguish it from relative truths.

+JMJ+

Zarathustra wrote:Wosbald, 'truth is knowable' is not an absolute claim. Nor is it a self-evident Truth. It's quite possible (in principle) that truth can't be known.

… factual claims can be verified as true or false.

Oh, well. Carry on.

Zarathustra wrote:

Fist and Faith wrote:Funny thing is, my feeling that chocolate ice cream tastes best is not at all a matter of whim. I have no choice in the matter. I didn't decide to prefer it, and can't decide to prefer vanilla. No more than I can decide to believe God exists.

But tastes can change. There's nothing absolute about them. Sometimes it takes several tries to like something. That's why it's important to keep introducing veggies to kids as they grow older, even after they've rejected them previously, because our palate develops.

Maybe "whim" isn't the best word to describe one's favorite flavor. However, we could easily imagine better examples where 'whim' is more accurate, like deciding between chocolate cake, chocolate ice cream, chocolate candy, etc. Or just deciding what meal to eat tonight.

Yes, this is all what I was getting at. Tastes can change. I can think of times when mine has. As a kid, I always went for vanilla shakes at McDonald's. One day, I wanted chocolate, and I haven't looked back in 40-something years. Also as a kid, I didn't like peaches. As a teen, I was reading Richard Bach's Illusions. There's a moment when Richard is watching Don eat canned peaches with a pocket knife. He noted that that's not an easy thing to do. But as I read it, I instantly knew that, though I hadn't tried them in a long time, I now liked peaches. I have ever since. (For the record, the one food I cannot stand, never could, and can't imagine I ever will, is beets. Hideous, evil things. It boggles my mind how most of you love them so much.)

But none of that involves choice. Yeah, which chocolate thing I'll eat is choice. I'll even go for a vanilla thing now and then. Not like it's bad, by any stretch.

Wosbald wrote:+JMJ+

Orlion wrote:

Wosbald wrote:We all accept, as a self-evidency, that Truth is Knowable.

I don't. Not capital-T Truth anyway. Lowercase t truth like "sometimes, I enjoy a good black raspberry ice cream", sure. But that's not the sort of truth you're talking about, correct?

I placed it in capitals in order to underscore the principle involved. We all believe, as a self-evident principle, that Truth is Knowable. It underlies every claim we make, even when we are claiming to deny the principle.

Except it doesn't. The "facts" and "truths" we "know" change dependent on our environment, frame of reference, and tools we used. Disease was caused by evil spirits until the microscope revealed bacteria, which we found out doesn't cause all disease once viruses were discovered... and then we found out about genetics that just give out and so on and so forth.

Same thing with stars, planets, pretty much all knowledge. It has changed, and as our instrumentation and techniques and culture change, so will our knowledge. (Why, homosexuals were once labeled sexual deviants within the past hundred years. Now it is just a normal variety)

It even occurs within religion! Blacks are the cursed decedents of Cain/Canaan... and now they're not! Pope is the head of the church, until he magically declares himself Infallible, then he becomes something more. Circumcision is necesary...no wait, just for Jewish converts...no wait, we can eat pork now so no one needs to circumcise themselves...wait, hold up, do it anyway because it's healthy! Whoops, sorry, turns out there are no health benefits to circumcision and, in fact, it can lead to painful complications.

It's much more likely, given the reasonable observation, that Truth is not self-evident (if it even exists). And that's not even an absolute because we do not know how accurate or precise our perception and study of the universe can be! You know why? Because we do not know what it is! We can't compare our knowledge with absolute Truth because we do not know it, so we have no idea how close or how far we are from what is actually going on. All we have are assumptions. Penicillin is good, because it is observed to kill infections. Well shit, looks like it actually kills a subset of humans. At least it helps those that aren't allergic to it. Well shit, the bacteria is growing immune to it.

Our knowledge is relative to its utility. The knowledge that "Truth is self-evident" is one that adds nothing for me, and so I discard it.

Any particular truth can never be self-evident to all. It's an abstract concept that relies on the subjectivity of the observer; two people can both claim to know the truth yet both argue that the other person's truth is untrue.

Truth is at best a personal opinion that others also subscribe to.

Logical truths are self-evident, via logical necessity. But those are tautologies, and don't express any truth about the world.

One's own existence or consciousness is self-evident.

Some analytic statements are self-evident.

"Truth is knowable" is merely contingently true. We know it happens to be true in as much as our explanations work and we gain power over the world. Whatever truth we apprehend in these instances are still only partially or imperfectly known, though we can increase and improve our understanding.

Zarathustra wrote:Logical truths are self-evident, via logical necessity

To a certain extent yes, but within a closed system can you really prove anything definitively? Godel's incompleteness theorems suggest that you cannot prove anything as an observer within that closed system.

Logic is probably the best thing we have to determine what 'truth' really is, but then there are so many who don't feel the necessity to scrutinize their own truths, so to them they will remain as truths, regardless of any logic that point to them not being so.[/code]

michaelm wrote: To a certain extent yes, but within a closed system can you really prove anything definitively? Godel's incompleteness theorems suggest that you cannot prove anything as an observer within that closed system.

Not exactly. Godel showed that in any closed/axiomatic system there will be true statements in that system which cannot be proven using only the axioms as your starting point. We know that statements like "there is no largest prime number" are true but we can't really prove it other than by finding larger prime numbers every time we find a large prime number.

"Truth" is a lot like "reality" in that "truth" will remain true whether you believe in it or not. Most of people's problems with understanding Truth (capital T) is that Truth can still be subjective, ephemeral, or both. "I love my wife" is a true statement but it wasn't true 7 years ago because I wasn't married to her then. "Killing human beings is wrong" is a Truth to many people but ask them what they would do if someone else is threatening to kill their child--would they kill to save their child?

Outside of science or math looking for Absolute Truth is probably an exercise in futility. That being said, I won't discourage anyone from looking but I will advise that you probably won't ever get to your destination.

michaelm wrote:Godel's incompleteness theorems suggest that you cannot prove anything as an observer within that closed system.

So how did Godel prove his theorem?

The "closed system" in this context is a formal system like arithmetic. Observers are not within that system.

michaelm wrote: To a certain extent yes, but within a closed system can you really prove anything definitively?

Godel's incompleteness theorems suggest that you cannot prove anything as an observer within that closed system.

On the first---yes. In fact, closed systems might be the ONLY places you can prove things definitively.

With Godel, there are plenty of things you can prove---it's just that those systems will contain true-but-not-provable things IN ADDITION to the provable.

And there is the definite possibility that reality isn't a closed system at all.
It is certain that there are many sub-sectors that are closed, and certain that we can know those systems, and we can know the unknowables within them by using OTHER systems.
We aren't part of formal systems.
I don't think the universe is a formal system...which increases the size of both the knowable and the unknowable, and necessitates other ways to approach the latter.