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Absolute truth?

 
 
Cyracuz
 
  1  
Reply Tue 12 Oct, 2010 12:59 pm
@kennethamy,
Yes, the answers are straight, thanks for indulging me.

But they do not really answer the question, just point towards the answer.

Quote:
The sentence, "Snow is white" is true if and only if, snow is white.


Not only. We also need an universal agreement that "white" shall be the name of that characteristic of the substance in question, and we also need to universally agree that the distinction "snow" is meaningful in relation to other types of atmospheric water phenomena. Why are we not referring to it as crystallized H2O? Or as frozen mist?
The answer is simple: Because these descriptions do not invoke the emotional familiarity that gives the concept snow it's meaning.

Perhaps you could try explaining snow to someone who has never seen it or otherwise experienced it. It wouldn't matter what you called it, he wouldn't have been able to add meaning to that word before he had established a personal relationship to the concept, and the deeper the emotional involvment of that relationship, the more "true" the concept becomes. But there is no external "actuality" that we conform to, since such an unconceptualized reality cannot exist, be expressed or referred to in any way. If you doubt it, just try.
kennethamy
 
  1  
Reply Tue 12 Oct, 2010 02:13 pm
@Cyracuz,
Cyracuz wrote:

Yes, the answers are straight, thanks for indulging me.

But they do not really answer the question, just point towards the answer.

Quote:
The sentence, "Snow is white" is true if and only if, snow is white.


Not only. We also need an universal agreement that "white" shall be the name of that characteristic of the substance in question, and we also need to universally agree that the distinction "snow" is meaningful in relation to other types of atmospheric water phenomena. Why are we not referring to it as crystallized H2O? Or as frozen mist?
The answer is simple: Because these descriptions do not invoke the emotional familiarity that gives the concept snow it's meaning.

Perhaps you could try explaining snow to someone who has never seen it or otherwise experienced it. It wouldn't matter what you called it, he wouldn't have been able to add meaning to that word before he had established a personal relationship to the concept, and the deeper the emotional involvment of that relationship, the more "true" the concept becomes. But there is no external "actuality" that we conform to, since such an unconceptualized reality cannot exist, be expressed or referred to in any way. If you doubt it, just try.


But you asked the question what "true" mean. The answer I gave you means that truth is a property of sentences, and that property is a bi-relational property between: 1. A sentence, and 2. a fact or a state of affairs in the world, such that the sentence corresponds with that fact of state of affairs. (This is called, "the correspondence theory of truth"). The sentence is true if, and only if the sentence and the fact correspond. So far, so good. The next question is, what does it mean for the sentence and the fact to correspond. And if you are really interested you can read all about it here:

http://www.iep.utm.edu/truth/

Of course, if you are not interested in what those who have studied the question seriously say about it, but you merely want to express yourself about it, that is a different matter.
fresco
 
  1  
Reply Tue 12 Oct, 2010 02:48 pm
@kennethamy,
Thanks for that reference. I note you only cite the "coherence theory of truth" when in essence many theories are compared and contrasted. Nor does the article does not touch on levels of discourse with respect to the phrase "absolute truth".
kennethamy
 
  1  
Reply Tue 12 Oct, 2010 03:05 pm
@fresco,
fresco wrote:

Thanks for that reference. I note you only cite the "coherence theory of truth" when in essence many theories are compared and contrasted. Nor does the article does not touch on levels of discourse with respect to the phrase "absolute truth".


The correspondence theory. Not the coherence theory. What else besides citing the correspondence theory should I do?
fresco
 
  1  
Reply Tue 12 Oct, 2010 03:17 pm
@kennethamy,
Sorry!
You do not cite the coherence theory, especially the post modernist version. Nor do you cite pragmatism. Note also the end of the article about the attitude of scientists to the word "truth".
Fil Albuquerque
 
  1  
Reply Tue 12 Oct, 2010 03:44 pm
@fresco,
The attitude of scientists concerns KNOWLEDGE on Truth, not Truth...
kennethamy
 
  1  
Reply Tue 12 Oct, 2010 03:46 pm
@fresco,
fresco wrote:

Sorry!
You do not cite the coherence theory, especially the post modernist version. Nor do you cite pragmatism. Note also the end of the article about the attitude of scientists to the word "truth".


Is not citing the other theories a fault? Neither of them seems to be plausible.
Fil Albuquerque
 
  1  
Reply Tue 12 Oct, 2010 04:00 pm
Given meaning itself heavily rely´s on correspondence, what is it that actually can correspond without being true ???
0 Replies
 
fresco
 
  1  
Reply Tue 12 Oct, 2010 04:04 pm
@kennethamy,
To me they are highly plausible ! They reflect the work of Kant, Piaget, Bohr, the later Wittgenstein, Kuhn, Foucault and Rorty.
0 Replies
 
fresco
 
  1  
Reply Tue 12 Oct, 2010 04:10 pm
@Fil Albuquerque,
Quote:
The attitude of scientists concerns KNOWLEDGE on Truth, not Truth...


Quote:
Is The Goal of Scientific Research to Achieve Truth?
Except in special cases, most scientific researchers would agree that their results are only approximately true. Nevertheless, to make sense of this, philosophers need adopt no special concept such as “approximate truth.” Instead, it suffices to say that the researchers’ goal is to achieve truth, but they achieve this goal only approximately, or only to some approximation.

Other philosophers believe it’s a mistake to say the researchers’ goal is to achieve truth. These “scientific anti-realists” recommend saying that research in, for example, physics, economics, and meteorology, aims only for usefulness. When they aren’t overtly identifying truth with usefulness, the instrumentalists Peirce, James and Schlick take this anti-realist route, as does Kuhn. They would say atomic theory isn’t true or false but rather is useful for predicting outcomes of experiments and for explaining current data. Giere recommends saying science aims for the best available “representation”, in the same sense that maps are representations of the landscape. Maps aren’t true; rather, they fit to a better or worse degree. Similarly, scientific theories are designed to fit the world. Scientists should not aim to create true theories; they should aim to construct theories whose models are representations of the world.
Internet Enc. of Philosophy.
Fil Albuquerque
 
  1  
Reply Tue 12 Oct, 2010 04:28 pm
@fresco,
I am glad you and your post actually agrees on the problem of knowing what is or is not true...anything else there ?
north
 
  1  
Reply Tue 12 Oct, 2010 08:58 pm
@Cyracuz,
Cyracuz wrote:

So... Can anyone name an absolute truth?


it is absolutely true , hence a absolute truth , that your very existence depends that you have air to breath and water to drink
0 Replies
 
fresco
 
  1  
Reply Tue 12 Oct, 2010 11:31 pm
@Fil Albuquerque,
No....you are still doing your "independent truth" thing.(Kant's Noumena).
If you read Rorty, the word "truth" is irrelevant to epistemology. There is no "fixed frame" or "fundamental substance". The point is that "life" (humans) is a dynamic processes which adapts to perturbations to their structures. (assimilation-accommodation). Part of such adaptatation is at the social/paradigmatic level involving negotiation with others. The history of such continuous adaptations is called "acquired knowledge". An arbitrary snapshot or single frame of such state transitions is as far as you going to get with a concept of "fundamental truth".
Cyracuz
 
  1  
Reply Tue 12 Oct, 2010 11:53 pm
@kennethamy,
No, the question was what determines truth if not universal agreement, not what "true" means.
0 Replies
 
north
 
  1  
Reply Tue 12 Oct, 2010 11:58 pm
@fresco,
fresco wrote:

No....you are still doing your "independent truth" thing.(Kant's Noumena).
If you read Rorty, the word "truth" is irrelevant to epistemology. There is no "fixed frame" or "fundamental substance". The point is that "life" (humans) is a dynamic processes which adapts to perturbations to their structures. (assimilation-accommodation). Part of such adaptatation is at the social/paradigmatic level involving negotiation with others. The history of such continuous adaptations is called "acquired knowledge". An arbitrary snapshot or single frame of such state transitions is as far as you going to get with a concept of "fundamental truth".



perhaps

but the " aquired knowledge " is not based though on the change of the without , just on our greater awareness of the without

so that water is still water , air is air for example , we just have a deeper understanding both , an absolute truth
fresco
 
  1  
Reply Wed 13 Oct, 2010 12:48 am
@north,
No. "Water" is not still water. You are being fooled by the abstract persistence of the linguistic token we call a "word". In some culture there are different words for "water that you cross" and "water you may drink" and it is taboo to mix them up. Words change their connotations with respect to culture and time. What matters is the functionality of the linguistic token. What you call "deeper understanding" is a value judgement about modifications of functionality which imply greater control. Such control is about interaction of your "within" and "without" NOT merely about "the without".
kennethamy
 
  1  
Reply Wed 13 Oct, 2010 08:37 am
@Cyracuz,
Cyracuz wrote:

If there was no rain in New York that day that is a fact, and I am pretty sure that you understand that if you were to say that to someone even just a thousand years ago, they wouldn't have found any meaning in it, and it would have been discarded as nonsense.


What makes you think I was talking about the sentence, and not the fact. Obviously, the sentence would not have been uttered then, but who claimed that it would have been? Two trillion years ago there was no Moon. And two trillion years ago there were no people to utter the sentence, "There is no Moon". But what has that to do with whether or not there was a Moon two trillion years ago? (Rhetorical question).
kennethamy
 
  1  
Reply Wed 13 Oct, 2010 08:42 am
@fresco,
fresco wrote:

No. "Water" is not still water. You are being fooled by the abstract persistence of the linguistic token we call a "word". In some culture there are different words for "water that you cross" and "water you may drink" and it is taboo to mix them up. Words change their connotations with respect to culture and time. What matters is the functionality of the linguistic token. What you call "deeper understanding" is a value judgement about modifications of functionality which imply greater control. Such control is about interaction of your "within" and "without" NOT merely about "the without".


But water is water independently of whether or not the sentence "water is water" is spoken, or even exists. Confusion between facts and language. Neutrinos are neutrinos even 100 million years ago. But the sentence, "neutrinos are neutrinos" did not exist 100 million years ago. So what?
fresco
 
  1  
Reply Wed 13 Oct, 2010 09:30 am
@kennethamy,
Quote:
water is water independently of whether or not the sentence "water is water" is spoken.

Naive realism rides again ! Laughing
You just don't get it do you. Is-ness is contingent on Us-ness.
0 Replies
 
Fil Albuquerque
 
  1  
Reply Wed 13 Oct, 2010 09:35 am
@fresco,
...and yet you fail to explain how this "Social process" is possible in the first place...

...either you are a solipsist and think that the entire Reality is on your head, in which case there is no Social, or if to actually believe in a "Social process", you must then explain what is it that you share...how else wise could you communicate concepts and meaning ? how would anyone understand, even if symbolically, to what were you at, when you speak ? Necessarily meaning and language do need a mechanic model...
Thus the assumption that there must be "something" that goes through...and I am not implying that this something must be a "material substance", once I can´t tell any more, what "material" means or addresses...nevertheless, that something must be, it must.

Some seam to think, that bottom line, all there is is "language" in several layers of code build upon each other and representing each other through pattern repeating between systems of functions...thus that a representation is merely to have the same thing (pattern) but smaller in length...and that perspective is build upon how my own pattern/s relate locally, spatially and temporally, with other gravitationally close by "systems of patterns", thus building more patterns and more complex functions and algorithms... and that this goes on from atoms to people (DNA) to stars etc etc...
Then of course, all of this is only possible, on considering that communication as relation comes to be a fundamental unifying Universal Property to that which is True...

Relation, imply´s form recognition, and guess what Form itself imply´s eh...yeah, a rules system confinement...Definition as Truth !
 

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