What could Pascal have meant?

What is erroneous, first and foremost, is your misreading of Pascal.

Pascal says: "the perceptions of our senses are always true," especially in the context that "man naturally cannot see everything." He is not saying that it's true that we have perceptions, nor is he conflating that with the idea that our perceptions are true, which is what you are doing.

The perceptions of our senses aren't always true, as demonstrated in my example.

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Does winning an argument that way really produce truth

This assumes that the winner would win by the merits of truth, and not by coercion, and that the winner perceptions of the truth was valid. Remember that scientific fact is just updated error.

I think Pascal's words can be boiled down to this: Instead of arguing for arguing sake take the time to understand other the person's point of view so you can effectively help them see your point of view on the matter.

I am not sure what the criterion is for winning an argument?

Is it that your opponent concedes? Why could not your opponent concede (so that you win) but still, you have committed a fallacy that your opponent has not noticed so that your argument is unsound?

It was never an error that germs cause disease, and it is not an error now. It is a scientific fact.

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I am not sure what the criterion is for winning an argument?

Nor I. I wonder who makes that determination.

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Is it that your opponent concedes? Why could not your opponent concede (so that you win) but still, you have committed a fallacy that your opponent has not noticed so that your argument is unsound?

I'm guessing this often happens. I know I only see a few trees in the forest of reality and existence, this hampers my knowledge of truth. I have to assume if this is true for me it is also true for others.

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It was never an error that germs cause disease, and it is not an error now. It is a scientific fact.

You'd be hard pressed to find someone to argue this topic with, but I bet if you posted it as a question you probably could get someone who'd bite.

Sun does not move around the Earth I am right in thinking they were wrong. So, if I had argued with them, I would not have been arguing for argument's sake.

It is my firm belief that there is a really low probability of changing a person's mind.

Well, it is pretty easy to find out whether what you believe to be true others also believe to be true. Just ask them.

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Sun does not move around the Earth I am right in thinking they were wrong. So, if I had argued with them, I would not have been arguing for argument's sake.

Today the heliocentric perspective is dominate, but when Galileo proposed his theory it was only conjecture. If you read Feyerabend's book "Against Method" you'll find that there was no really good reason to prefer heliocentrism at that point, and that Galileo couldn't prove many of his conjectures, and had to rely on rhetorical trickery to displace geocentrism.

I think he is saying that even if what we are looking at is not blue, so that if we say that it is blue we are wrong, nevertheless, it is true that it looks blue to us, and we cannot be mistaken about how it looks to us.

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I think he is saying that even if what we are looking at is not blue, so that if we say that it is blue we are wrong, nevertheless, it is true that it looks blue to us, and we cannot be mistaken about how it looks to us.

Taking this reading of what Pascal is saying, how then can he use this idea as the basis of pointing out to someone that he errs, if someone cannot err about what he perceives?

A great example of this works is found in looking at African tribal cultures. Their worldview is that there is a zero sum of goodness in the world. Which means if tribe person Joe has a crop and tribe person Sam has a crop and Joe's crop does much better than Sam's crop then the cultural belief is that Joe took some of Sam's allotted goodness. Sam can assert to the village that Joe is a witch and his claim will be taken seriously. Joe is proved to be a witch (by virtue of his wealth) he could likely loose his land, and possibly his life. European relief workers sent to this tribe to increase the village's crop yield don't realize this core belief. Their use of pesticides, irrigation, and fertilizer on Joe's field only reinforces the tribes core beliefs of zero sum goodness. When the relief workers leave the crop production will fall back to the levels it always has been.

From this understanding of culture we can see that people's beliefs are culturally based, and discussions about truth need to be normalized to this understanding.

Even in spite of the validity of your argument do you agree that people who become fixated on truth loose sight of the big picture? And do you not think people who defend their perception of truth miss the point the other person is making? I think in part this is what Pascal is trying to communicate.

Pronounce wrote:

A great example of this works is found in looking at African tribal cultures. Their worldview is that there is a zero sum of goodness in the world. Which means if tribe person Joe has a crop and tribe person Sam has a crop and Joe's crop does much better than Sam's crop then the cultural belief is that Joe took some of Sam's allotted goodness. Sam can assert to the village that Joe is a witch and his claim will be taken seriously. Joe is proved to be a witch (by virtue of his wealth) he could likely loose his land, and possibly his life. European relief workers sent to this tribe to increase the village's crop yield don't realize this core belief. Their use of pesticides, irrigation, and fertilizer on Joe's field only reinforces the tribes core beliefs of zero sum goodness. When the relief workers leave the crop production will fall back to the levels it always has been.

From this understanding of culture we can see that people's beliefs are culturally based, and discussions about truth need to be normalized to this understanding.

Apologies if this question seems "dense" or the answer obvious, but exactly how did relief workers' actions reinforce the tribe's core beliefs of zero sum goodness?

I'm not being intentionally pedantic, I really didn't "get" it. I am stuck in Western understanding. I don't "do" Eastern philosophy because I can't translate it into Western concepts which I can understand.

rebecca

You're not going to change people by attacking their core beliefs with statements like "they seem to need to learn Western science". Westerners come off as narrow minded bigots to the rest of the world, because of their self assured "always rightness" and lack of consideration for others beliefs.

[/i]"kennethamy"]
I may not. But then again, who knows? But that is not the point. The point is that there are no witches, and even if telling that tribe that there are no witches does not change their beliefs they are still wrong, and their other beliefs based on that belief is still false. Let's keep that in mind. Tolerance is fine in its place. But its place is not to believe (not even a little bit) what we know to be false. I can have consideration for a child's belief in Santa Claus, but that doesn't mean (I hope) believing in Santa Claus myself.