Truth and Knowledge

public hermit

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Would those 'three' principles also be 'true' in the case of someone with a mental illness who's reality is occasionally delusional? If not, how can that be, if the truth really exists independently from the set of all human minds?

I'm not sure what you hope to gain by using these instances as counter-examples. That someone with mental illness might argue that "something is not itself" is no argument against the obviousness of the law of identity. Moreover, as trivial as the law of identity may seem, it is what marks the difference between sameness of meaning and equivocation.

Why do those so called 'principles' then, seemingly, deliberately discard their minds from that set of human minds which actually came up with the meanings of the words they use to communicate?

Before we go off on the "word salads" of others, do you mind trying to help me make some sense out of what you're trying to say here? Principles don't discard their minds, as far as I can tell. When you say "set of human minds" are you referring to intersubjective agreement, possibly?

Scientists do not adjudicate on the meaning of 'truth' based on such opinions, beliefs or truisms. Therefore the meaning of scientific truth is different from what those three 'principles' cite. Science can never test them (as I cited).. yet when a scientist speaks of truth, other scientists recognize what that scientist means .. and its not based on any of those three so-called 'principles' simply because they aren't objectively testable.

As I pointed out, when someone (let's say a scientist) says something and the other person knows what they mean (and let's assume their understanding of what they mean is correct) then the law of identity is working because an equivocation has not occurred. But, more to your point, in general scientists and virtually everybody else functions under the basic assumption that statements are either true or false. Yeah, there are some shady moments when we might say a statement is both true and false, but invariable it will not be both true and false in the same way, and at the same time. And, again, the fact that you understand what I am typing means that you, even with your stated incredulity, use these principles in your everyday thought processes. This isn't rocket science, or even basic science. It's basic logic.

Now, it may be that your assumption that these principles are not objectively testable is a bit premature. I think there is a live debate as to whether the law of excluded middle holds on the quantum level. Heisenberg, at least, seems to have thought it might need to be modified. But, for you and I on the macro-scale of things, either I am now typing on my computer or I am not. It just so happens as I type these words, I am.

Edge.org

What I originally wrote in that post relies on logic. I concur that logic is closely related to those philosophical principles .. yet science comes up with a different meaning of 'true'. Science deals with reality. Philosophy doesn't appear to .. in spite of the thousands of years it has been grappling with its own believed tenets which now apears to be distilled into those three so-called, (useless IMO), 'principles'. They are useless in isolation of science but when used by science's objective method, they then acquire their usefulness (eg: as they are in the math models of physics).

Yeah, now you're equivocating. First, these principles have no relation to science. Now, science gives them credibility. Whatever. Let's be clear, When I brought up the law of noncontradiction in my original post, I was using it in the context of logic. Philosophy is not logic. Philosophers may use logic, and there is a philosophy of logic. But philosophy is not identical to logic. See, law of identity. It just keeps becoming more useful as we go along.
 
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Akita Suggagaki

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So here is a thought. Descartes, "I think therefore I am." As if we can at least know that we are. But I think in a Buddhist sense even that is mistaken. We are taking the phenomena of our sense perception as a reality of self when there is actually nothing other than the phenomena. If I have the Buddhist view right.

I tend to like a intuitionism where in it is possible to ave an insight or noesis as some fundamental basis. A self realization different from both Descartes and Buddhism. It is more an aspiration or revelation than anything else.
 
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FrumiousBandersnatch

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I'd say that there is a single objective truth. Whether or not we can find it is another matter. But that truth is there.
That depends on what you're considering/measuring/observing. For example, in Special Relativity, whether two independent events occur simultaneously depends on the observer; i.e. there is no universal truth of simultaneity...
 
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Michael

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It has been a long time since I read any epistemology but it seems to me that knowledge is awareness of truth. But truth is hard to come by because it is not always the same as belief. It seems to me that mathematical truth is the closest we can get to objective truth.

Unfortunately even that assumption is dubious when you look at history. For instance, Ptolemy was considered to be 'objective truth' for something like 18 centuries after Aristarcus of Samos first proposed a heliocentric model of the solar system. Such an assumption was mostly based on mathematical models of 'epicycles' which produced reliable results in terms of predicting planetary positions. It turns out however that such mathematical epicycle models were *not* actually 'objective truth', nor anything close to objective truth, so even "mathematical truth' isn't necessarily "objective truth", even when the mathematical model is 'objectively popular' for long stretches of time.
 
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FrumiousBandersnatch

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Unfortunately even that assumption is dubious when you look at history. For instance, Ptolemy was considered to be 'objective truth' for something like 18 centuries after Aristarcus of Samos first proposed a heliocentric model of the solar system. Such an assumption was mostly based on mathematical models of 'epicycles' which produced reliable results in terms of predicting planetary positions. It turns out however that such mathematical epicycle models were *not* actually 'objective truth', nor anything close to objective truth, so even "mathematical truth' isn't necessarily "objective truth", even when the mathematical model is 'objectively popular' for long stretches of time.
By 'mathematical truth', one usually means truths within mathematics, not truths about models of the world. Mathematical truths are tautological, true by axiomatic definition.
 
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SelfSim

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I'm not sure what you hope to gain by using these instances as counter-examples. That someone with mental illness might argue that "something is not itself" is no argument against the obviousness of the law of identity.
What is 'obvious', is that such a mental patient has altered what they mean by reality if they argue 'something is not itself'!

Completely ignoring the observation that their mind is at play in doing that, demonstrates the fault that is unique to the thinking which produces 'whatever is, is'! The observational fact is that different people think in different ways, and we have hard work to do in order to decide what counts as 'true', or 'what is' .. and "what isn't". None of those are just 'givens’. Its up to us to decide.

In fact the unevidenced assertion of 'whatever is, is', completely erases that observation by attempting to replace it with unobservable, untestable circular reasoning - a truism.
public hermit said:
Moreover, as trivial as the law of identity may seem, it is what marks the difference between sameness of meaning and equivocation.
Really? How exactly that does that come about when a circular reference of: 'Whatever is, is' becomes the basis of this supposed distinction? The same word in the phrase, 'is', is used for making its own claim, for goodness sake! Word salad is what it is .. completely useless for making progress on distinguishing reality .. (Note: which doesn't necessarily rule out its usefulness in detecting contradictions).
public hermit said:
Before we go off on the "word salads" of others, do you mind trying to help me make some sense out of what you're trying to say here? Principles don't discard their minds, as far as I can tell.
Yet that particular one, completely erases what it took to make its claim .. (ie: a thinking mind).
public hermit said:
When you say "set of human minds" are you referring to intersubjective agreement, possibly?
I am talking about all human minds.
public hermit said:
As I pointed out, when someone (let's say a scientist) says something and the other person knows what they mean (and let's assume their understanding of what they mean is correct) then the law of identity is working because an equivocation has not occurred.
What do you mean by 'the law of identity is working'? Working for what? Where do you say this supposed 'law' came from? Maybe it was (sort of) discovered floating around in space perhaps, (like say, an asteroid does), and then imposed itself upon humans, who then just sort rolled over and decided to willingly 'obey' it(?)
public hermit said:
But, more to your point, in general scientists and virtually everybody else functions under the basic assumption that statements are either true or false.

Yeah, there are some shady moments when we might say a statement is both true and false, but invariable it will not be both true and false in the same way, and at the same time.
Ok.. let’s consider an example of how 'truth' evolves: Ptolemy's geocentric model of the solar system was tested by a millennium of cultures who used it, and it was found to be satisfactory, so those minds regarded the model as "true." This is a matter of historical fact. But the only mistake there was when those minds also regarded it as a mind independent truth, rather than recognizing it for what it was: a decision to regard something that fitted its purpose of being provisionally and contextually 'true'.

As usual, the problem only appears when one makes metaphysical assumptions about the meaning of "truth", assumptions that no scientific thinker ever needs.

My point here is demonstrating that 'truth' is assignable within a stated context .. and not something set in concrete (or suitable for regarding as a basis for some kind of absolute 'law', or principle, which must be obeyed when thinking).
public hermit said:
And, again, the fact that you understand what I am typing means that you, even with your stated incredulity, use these principles in your everyday thought processes. This isn't rocket science, or even basic science. It's basic logic.
.. as I have already concurred ..

Logic on its own, never does anything but find the tautological equivalences of its predicates and postulates. Science however, isn't like that at all.
public hermit said:
Now, it may be that your assumption that these principles are not objectively testable is a bit premature. I think there is a live debate as to whether the law of excluded middle holds on the quantum level. Heisenberg, at least, seems to have thought it might need to be modified. But, for you and I on the macro-scale of things, either I am now typing on my computer or I am not. It just so happens as I type these words, I am.
The latter of which is objectively testable by many means .. and it wouldn't be considered as objective truth (provisionally and contextually) until the results were also verified by independent means - something logic doesn't require in order to track its equivalences.
Truth is not some absolute .. its up to us to decide what it means by following at least two dissimilar known processes (logic or science).
public hermit said:
Yeah, now you're equivocating. First, these principles have no relation to science. Now, science gives them credibility. Whatever. Let's be clear, When I brought up the law of noncontradiction in my original post, I was using it in the context of logic. Philosophy is not logic. Philosophers may use logic, and there is a philosophy of logic. But philosophy is not identical to logic.
Ok .. agreed. Science however deals in objective reality .. and this is a science forum .. not a philosophy forum.

Logic is purely symbolic, and its truths are purely structural, but we aspire to something more .. we aspire to understanding some kind of meaning. This aspiration comes with a price, and Einstein hit that nail on the head:
- 'As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality'.
(.. so much for regarding scientific statements as logical truisms or falsehoods!) Logic is just our tool for making sense, and reality is the sense we make. What it is making sense of, is just more sense. We struggle so hard to understand why the universe makes sense, but when we realize that what we mean by 'the universe', is just the sense we make, the whole question goes away. Ironically, it is more when the universe does not make sense that we are forced to confront the gaps in our understanding, and that's when we conjure absolutes like mind independent beliefs to plug those gaps .. in classic 'god of the gaps' tradition.

We could instead just realize that we never completely understand the meanings of our own words, our statements carry an illusion of preciseness, echoing the false precision of some absolute mind independent reality notion. After all, what could possibly be more precise than 'the one true way' that the universe actually is, amid the infinity of possible alternatives? That's some kind of record for untestable precision .. but science is about testable imprecision.
public hermit said:
See, law of identity. It just keeps becoming more useful as we go along.
Not useful in distinguishing objective reality/existence (ie: 'what is') by way of making meaningless self references which conceal the role we play in deciding what is real, or what isn't .. and what is true, and what isn't.
 
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public hermit

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Ok .. agreed. Science however deals in objective reality .. and this is a science forum .. not a philosophy forum

Look, I'm not trying to argue against science. I'm not even sure how my response to the OP opened the flood gates to your rant against philosophy, except that I took a philosophical approach to the question. The OP didn't specify that only answers based in science were allowed.

But, since you brought it up that this is a science forum and not a philosophy forum, I agree, they should re-open the philosophy forum. In fact, if they would do that, I could discuss worthless philosophy over there and you wouldn't have to be bothered by it. So, if philosophy is such a thorn in your side, then please join me in asking the powers that be to please re-open the philosophy forum. I will keep my worthless interests over there, and you won't have to waste your time with me. What do you think? Will you help a misguided philosopher find a safe space from anti-philosophy rants?
 
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SelfSim

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Look, I'm not trying to argue against science. ..
I recognise that, and I concede that wasn't your approach in this instance. I'm not directing anything at you, personally, and where I've given you that impression, I apologise.

That being said, this forum abounds with arguments rooted in an inconsistent view on the philosophy of science, and science's take on reality. Logic is frequently confused with science. I don't have clue where discussions on the philosophy of science appropriately resides on this site, but I do know that it requires persisent attention here in order for science to make the consistent sense it does. This is my only motivation.
Cheers
 
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public hermit

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I recognise that, and I concede that wasn't your approach in this instance. I'm not directing anything at you, personally, and where I've given you that impression, I apologise.

That being said, this forum abounds with arguments rooted in an inconsistent view on the philosophy of science, and science's take on reality. Logic is frequently confused with science. I don't have clue where discussions on the philosophy of science appropriately resides on this site, but I do know that it requires persisent attention here in order for science to make the consistent sense it does. This is my only motivation.
Cheers

I understand it's not personal. There's a thread under "Suggest New Forums" titled "Philosophy Forum," which is a plea to have the forum re-opened. If you are so inclined, you could reply there to have it re-opened, and explain that philosophy is cluttering up other forums and it needs its own space. Any support is greatly appreciated. :)
 
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SelfSim

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I understand it's not personal. There's a thread under "Suggest New Forums" titled "Philosophy Forum," which is a plea to have the forum re-opened. If you are so inclined, you could reply there to have it re-opened, and explain that philosophy is cluttering up other forums and it needs its own space. Any support is greatly appreciated. :)
I can empathize with your interests there .. my own, in this instance however, are about giving science the context which allows it to reveal its extraordinary consistency ... which requires the context of a philosophy consistent with science.

Please understand, what I'm addressing are major misconceptions about what a consistent philosophy of science looks like .. and not what other philosophies might endlessly have to say about that.

I think the above conversation appropriately resides here (and always did).
 
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sjastro

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By 'mathematical truth', one usually means truths within mathematics, not truths about models of the world. Mathematical truths are tautological, true by axiomatic definition.
To take this a step further it only applies to pure mathematics.
The sciences use mathematical models which by definition are not rigorous and not subject to proof or "truth".
Einstein summarised it by stating the left hand side of the field equations was made from marble, the pure maths of the equation, the right hand made from straw, the brilliant physical insights.
Similarly quantum mechanics is built around Hilbert spaces or linear vector fields yet the canonical commutation relationship where the order of application of the position x and momentum p operators to an eigenvector is fundamentally important is also based on a physical insight.
QM.jpg
 
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Michael

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By 'mathematical truth', one usually means truths within mathematics, not truths about models of the world. Mathematical truths are tautological, true by axiomatic definition.

From the perspective of "truths within mathematics", I do see your point, but the moment one tries to apply mathematical models to physical processes, it's a whole different ballgame.
 
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Kylie

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That depends on what you're considering/measuring/observing. For example, in Special Relativity, whether two independent events occur simultaneously depends on the observer; i.e. there is no universal truth of simultaneity...

And that would be an objective truth, wouldn't it? :p
 
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Ophiolite

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I agree but pitabread also has a point in that we most likely have to start with some basic assumptions. And maybe probabilities. "My car started this morning." But did it? I probably was not hallucinating...not lying. So I pretty well know that it happened. Like some kind of functional level of phenomenal probability tantamount to truth.
I have tried to eliminate "truth" from my vocabulary. Rather than being a well-defined, easily recognised, universally agreed thing, it is surrounded by ambiguity and embedded in obfuscation. I view "belief" in much the same way. (Except in the colloquial sense: I believe I shall have a smoked salmon sandwich).

I take a pragmatic approach, accepting that if something looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck and lays duck eggs it is either a duck or a remarkably skilled animal impersonator. (In the latter case hire it immediately and make fortune.) Which is another way of reflecting Kylie's requirement of independent, multi-faceted, off-repeated verification. However, I'd just as soon not call that "truth" since I might, indeed, be hallucinating.
 
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SelfSim

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I have tried to eliminate "truth" from my vocabulary.
...
I take a pragmatic approach, accepting that if something looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck and lays duck eggs it is either a duck or a remarkably skilled animal impersonator. (In the latter case hire it immediately and make fortune.) Which is another way of reflecting Kylie's requirement of independent, multi-faceted, off-repeated verification. However, I'd just as soon not call that "truth" since I might, indeed, be hallucinating.
.. and the thing to notice about every 'thing' you just hypothesized about there, is the mind dependence of any 'truth' value in any of them .. (Hallucinations however, may produce inconsistencies, but they still require a mind .. and that mind may well replace what we regard as 'reality' with those hallucinations).
Any truth in what you said, comes from the meanings of those words .. and never 'the something' being referred to (like a duck, a quack, eggs, etc).

Outright rejection of the meaning of 'truth', or 'belief', is the same as rejecting the meanings of all those words. There is work to be done in understanding what 'truth' and 'belief' and 'real' means in conversations .. avoidance of that just limits understanding.
 
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Ophiolite

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.. and the thing to notice about every 'thing' you just hypothesized about there, is the mind dependence of any 'truth' value in any of them .. (Hallucinations however, may produce inconsistencies, but they still require a mind .. and that mind may well replace what we regard as 'reality' with those hallucinations).
Any truth in what you said, comes from the meanings of those words .. and never 'the something' being referred to (like a duck, a quack, eggs, etc).

Outright rejection of the meaning of 'truth', or 'belief', is the same as rejecting the meanings of all those words. There is work to be done in understanding what 'truth' and 'belief' and 'real' means in conversations .. avoidance of that just limits understanding.
I admire your consistency in concatenating words, clauses and sentences that give the impression of making sense, perhaps even being profound and yet fail to do either. It's amusing that in a post where you reference meaning the semantic content is null. Don't give up your day job.
 
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SelfSim

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I admire your consistency in concatenating words, clauses and sentences that give the impression of making sense, perhaps even being profound and yet fail to do either. It's amusing that in a post where you reference meaning the semantic content is null. Don't give up your day job.
(Insult noted).

More importantly however, I fully understand your confusion, as the concepts I present, (ie: a philosophy consistent with the scientific method), often require untying the mental knots created by an unquestioning, blind acceptance of Philosophical Realism being 'true' (aka: a belief) ... and that doing science, is all about justifying that untestable belief.
 
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