Is it self-contradictory to state 'there is no objective truth'?
Someone answered in another post 'No, it just means the claim that absolute truth is impossible is itself a contestable claim rather than unchallengeable' but I am struggling to see how that reasoning means that the claim is not contradictory.
A statement is either true or false. If it is true that 'there is no objective truth' then that seems like a contradiction.
If it is false that 'there is no objective truth' then that means objective truth exists, so the claim is not contradictory. So the only time that statement makes logical sense is when it is false, which is rather trivial. So what am I missing?
A statement is either true or false. If it is true that 'there is no objective truth' then that seems like a contradiction.
If it is false that 'there is no objective truth' then that means objective truth exists, so the claim is not contradictory. So the only time that statement makes logical sense is when it is false, which is rather trivial. So what am I missing?
Comments (295)
Thank you,
But to state that there is no objective truth already presents a contradiction.
But what is the definition of truth? Saying "it's objectively true that there is no objective truth" is an obvious contradiction. But what if I define "truth" in this context as "reasonable assumption". Then I am just saying " I don't see how we can reasonably assume an objective truth", which isn't contradictory because it's reference is only myself.
In the context of metaphysics, the object of the objective truth is hard to pin down.
Somebody that didn't believe in objective truth would not believe that, and hence would be liberated from a potential contradiction.
Of course they would also need to say "I don't believe in objective truth" rather than the "There is no objective truth" that you suggested, as the latter sounds like a statement that is intended to be taken as objective truth. But provided their position is the former and not the latter, there is no apparent contradiction.
I think it is the case that the statement 'there is no objective truth' is an abbreviation for one of the following:
- 'There is no objective truth including this statement'. This is contradictory as you say.
- 'There is no objective truth apart from this statement'. This is not contradictory.
What do you call objective truth? Something that everyone can agree on?
What do you call subjective truth? Something that someone believes?
How could you know for sure that no one will ever disagree with an objective truth, rendering it not objective truth anymore? Or that someone won't replace one of their beliefs with another, rendering their subjective truth not truth anymore?
It appears that truth has a temporary character rather than an absolute eternal one. Truth remains truth as long as something doesn't come and contradict it. And what I just said remains true as long as you don't find something that would somehow give you the knowledge that something would remain true forever, but then you could doubt the truth of whatever it is that gave you that knowledge.
Truth seems like an ideal that we can never quite reach. It seems there is just temporary beliefs and agreements. "There is no objective truth" would remain true as long as you don't find an objective truth, which itself would remain true as long as it doesn't get contradicted, and so on and so forth.
I think we want absolute truth because we want an absolute standard on which we can rely on no matter what, amidst the unpredictability of existence. But if that unpredictability can never be quite removed, maybe the better course of action is to accept it.
But that is just semantics really, to say you don't believe something to be true is interchangeable with thinking. And if a person added the caveat that it was just their opinion, that would suggest they have doubts about the veracity of their own statement, which makes it an unremarkable declaration.
Just work with truth.
I don't see how adding that caveat makes the statement less contradictory. For me to believe you I would have to believe that it is universally true that there is no objective truth, which is a truth. It still feels like a contradiction.
If they didn't believe in objective truth then they could not possibly believe in the veracity of their own statement.
So if is either false or contradictory then to state 'there is no objective truth'?
I have no idea how a person would determine objective truth, or truth if you will, but I can't deny that it exists just because I don't know how I would determine it.
"No statements are true" would be a self-contradictory statement. "There is no objective truth" or "No statements are objectively true" is not obviously self-contradictory, because the subject is qualified with "objectively" - whatever that means.
This, I think, is the core of this issue. Like most English words, truth has several meanings. Worse, in the case of truth and other similar (general) terms, it's supposed to have several meanings, because it is sometimes useful to refer generally to any/all of the related meanings that truth can have. And, of the meanings that truth can carry, "objective truth" is one of the more difficult ones. It refers to a concept we are convinced exists, but we have no means to verify such a truth. So, despite its apparent clarity, it is merely confusing to us humans.
Someone might advance the suggestion that there is no such thing as objective truth, meaning that we cannot recognise one?
So would that mean that the statement itself is not objectively true?
I agree with this but i would like to add that for simple things like does the sky reflect the electro magnetic spectrum (a particular frequency) that usually appears to be blue to most people or that 1+1 = 2, those things in fact are objective truth. That being said when you get into things that have millions of data points such as a compact disc (cd) or large compilations of statistical data the objective truth is much harder to come by. Compact discs appear to do a good representation of a recorded song because they have what is called a high sampling rate and how this pertains to objective truth is that when you increase the amount of data points you come much closer to reaching objective truth.
The greeks had what was called the greek method of exhaustion for solving calculus problems. In calculus you never actually in the purest form achieve your goal but you do come so close that it is deemed close enough. The greeks used the above method and just kept plugging away (it took alot of time) until they got close enough that they said they found the correct answer. You can watch a youtube on calculus if you would like.
Shouldn't it then be obvious to you that I'd not be saying that "There is no objective truth" is objectively true?
So then why would you claim something you didn't believe?
Which is another way of you saying that it's not obvious to you that I'm not saying that "There is no objective truth" is objectively true.
So now we need to diagnose why that wouldn't be obvious to you.
Do you make a distinction between truth and objective truth, or do you treat them as one?
Sure--a distinction in that "objective" is adding a category-error adjective to the term "truth."
It has to do with ontology. You asked about making a distinction between terms, however.
Maybe the point to the last question was that you treat the term "objective" as a null term, as if it doesn't signify anything and it's superfluous to even write it?
Any time someone makes a claim about some state-of-affairs that is the same for everyone - like the claim that there is no objective truth - then that is an objective truth claim. The claim defeats itself.
If there is no objective truth, then there is no subjective truth, as the subjective is simply a skewed, or incomplete, view of the objective.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Subjective truth would be an eyewitness's testimony, where the objective truth would be all of the facts of the case (which includes eyewitness's testimony) that coincide and support each other and lead to one conclusion.
What if the objective/subjective distinction isn't correlated to "the same/not the same for everyone"?
A common term for "the same for everyone" is "universal." "Uniform" would be another option.
"Varied" is a common term for the opposite of "universal."
i agree. This example of yours is the problem with saying there is no objective truth. As i said before objective truth can be very hard to obtain but i believe it is paramount that we except that absolute truth exists.
Cool. So if something were universal, would that make it true?
No. That has nothing at all to do with what makes something true.
If we both agree that we disagree, then are we both acknowledging the truth?
If we don't agree that we disagree, who is the one that is being true?
"Objectively true" is a category error. Truth is a property of propositions. Namely, a relational property. That relational property is a matter of making a judgment about the connection between a proposition and something else. Judgments do not occur extramentally. (And neither does meaning, which is a precondition for making the judgments in question.)
What is that "something else" other that some state-of-affairs that exists, which could be what is going on in your mind right now?
In claiming what you are thinking, are you not making a truth claim? If not, then why should anyone believe anything you type?
Depends on the truth theory an individual uses. For me, it's some state of affairs, since I use correspondence theory. If someone uses coherence theory, it's going to be the body of other propositions that they assign "T" to. If someone uses consensus theory, it's going to be the body of other propositions that there's a consensus to assign "T" to, etc.
People could try to interpret all of the truth theories as other truth theories instead. I don't think that matters for anything. We can just go with how the person in question thinks about it.
Which is just another state-of-affairs that we can talk about and would either be true or false based on the relationship of accuracy between the claim and the actual state-of-affairs.
"the relationship of accuracy"-- which can only obtain as a judgment that an individual makes about it.
Isn't this why science has something called experimentation and peer review - to eliminate the subjective skewing of what just one individual claims to be the "truth".
Quoting Terrapin StationExactly. Truth, as a property of propositions, is a property of coherence and consistency, and lacking any logical fallacies. For some proposition to be true, it must be consistent, meaning other people will arrive at the same conclusion given all the possible evidence.
If so, it's a completely futile effort. It's impossible to eliminate the need for someone to make a judgment about the relationship between propositions and other things.
You could have lots of someones making judgments, but that doesn't give any more weight to anything. Believing that it does is called the argumentum ad populum fallacy.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Which requires that someone assign meanings, assess those meanings, assess the relationships of those meanings to other things, etc.
Again, no one is saying anything about how universal or common anything is when they talk about objective/subjective. Those terms don't refer to commonality/universality versus their opposites.
Would adding the caveat of 'there is no objective truth, except for this statement' be non-contradictory?
Someone who thinks otherwise is, as we say in the trade, wrong. That is, they have a false belief.
"This thread is in English" is true.
There, a plain use of true without the need for absolute, subjective or objective.
i'm the one who wrote
Quoting curiousnewbie.
Let's see if we can flesh out a little the thinking of those who are truth relativists. Let me throw out a hypothetical approach in this vein. Let's say that in my experience of the world and myself, I've discovered that anything I observe or imagine or think or see other people observe has a curious habit of constantly changing its meaning in subtle ways every moment . If i read or repeat the word 'cat' over and over, each time, each moment it has a slightly different semantic sense than the previous. And the same effect occurs when I perceive an object in my environment. I conclude form this that I have discovered something that others haven't noticed, but is there for them also. they just don't see it because it is a subtle effect.
So I then form an explanation of objective truth that goes like this:people believe that there is such a thing as an object that has a certain permanence to it, that can be pointed to or referred back to as the same over time. People believe that self-identity, self-persistence, self-permanence are features of our world. We can find such attributes in the physical world, in our language concepts, in our memory, etc.
But I believe that we only think that such attributes as self-persistence, self-identity over time and permanence are what we are experiencing. I surmise that what we are really experiencing is phenomena that , as I said before, are subtly shifting their semantic meaning every moment of time. So we just assume meaning permanence, self-identity,etc where there is instead very tiny shifts and transformations in the semantic sense of object, percepts, concepts. In practical terms this isn't a big deal. We can understand each other, point to what for the most part is the same reality, and agree on our empirical descriptions and physical laws.
So would I then be able to say that objective truth does not exist? Well, first of all, I could agree with Heidegger and say that truth for me is just the way that each new moment of time unveils a slightly new semantic meaning for me. Truth is just the unveiling of new experience, not its matching up to a standard. So there is truth, but what about objectivity? So does objectivity exist? AlI I can say is that every moment I have to test myself, ask myself the question again. Do I this moment experience a thing that persists identically, be it a concept, a percept, a law of nature, a norm of any kind? IF each time I ask the question the answer is still no, then I can say that as far as I can tell, this moment, for me and apparently for everyone else that I've observed or thought about, reality doesn't sit still even for a moment, such as to allow persisting semantic self-identity or the self-persistence of any object.
I can say that when someone claim's that objective truth exist, they are absolutely right. Every moment there is a truth about the meaning of an object. And every moment that meaning changes very slightly, for everyone that I've observed. So I would want to rephrase that question to: 'does the objective truth about anything stay exactly the same for more than a single moment? What about my claim that objective truth never stays the same for more than a moment? Is this an objective claim? Well, it is me saying, at this moment and from my recollection, I do not now nor ever remember having an experience of self-identity or self-persistence of anything, physical , conceptual or otherwise. But others are welcome to keep asking me the question. I can tell them that I have a theory about why others believe they are seeing objective truth as stable, and that it is possible to miss the instability of reality without it in any way jeopardizing one's ability to do formal logic or science.
So , based on this argument, the relativist isn't really stating a negative claim(objecivity does NOT exist) so much as a positive one, that they are seeing something beyond, within, underneath, overflowing what those who believe in the semantic stability of objects(logical, perceptual, conceptual) arew seeing. Their claim should be: 'objectivty exists, but does a lot more interesting things than the objectivist is able to see). They are seeing dynamism where others are seeing only stasis. Is this dynamism 'objective'? Is it a theory, a principle? It is certainly a general claim. But , and here's the most important point, its not an objective claim as long as it doesn't turn 'radical dynamism ' into a stable object. It has to be modest in its claim. It has to say simply that each moment the question must be asked anew, because the very nature of radical dynamism is that there is no horizon beyond the current moment for any assertion. I can say that I anticipate that the next moment I will generally believe something very similar to what I am now asserting, because in my experience so far the world not only changes every moment but preserves a certain overall stability in its ongoing transformations. Each new moment is not a profound semantic break with the previous but only a very subtle one.
This is a post-objective claim, requiring a different method of test.
To test the claim of radical changeability in all objects of experience for everyone is to do two things:
1) it is to try to teach a believer in stable objectivity to see the underlying movement in supposedly static experience. How do you convince someone to see more than they see? Either they see it or they don't. Meanwhile, as relativist, you can leave them to their objectivism, knowing that it works for them, and isn't 'wrong' or 'untrue', just incomplete.
2)The believer in radical relativism must every moment of experience test their own perception(make it contestable) to see if this dynamism continues to appear very moment, everywhere for them.
That's strange that you interpreted my post in that way, when I never implied that.
Quoting curiousnewbie
How would you know that that is the only truth? It seems to me that in order to make that claim, there would be other true knowledge that you could point to that helped you arrive at the conclusion you are making now.
I can accept this because I consider "subjective truth" a contradiction (subjectivity is an incomplete or skewed notion of the truth), and "objective truth" a redundancy.
When one uses the term, "truth" they mean the way things are, or some state-of-affairs, for everyone. When someone claims that the apple is red, then the apple reflects a particular wavelength of EM energy. How we see it can differ because of the structure of our eyes can differ (color-blindness, etc.), but the apple will still be reflecting the same wavelength. When we claim that the apple is red, are we making a truth claim about the apple only, or about the apple AND our minds?
What's strange is that I'd have to explain to you how to read: S writes x. R responds to S with y. Not every sentence in y is necessarily going to be an interpretation of x by R. R can do many other things in y besides present an interpretation of x.
Was not your explanation of these theories true, or are you giving us the wrong explanation of these theories? Is it true that these theories exist and that Schrodinger and Penrose really existed and had these ideas in their heads?
And how do they go about discovering this then? If, in order to declare something is "true", one must first check if it is that way for everyone, that's going to severely curcumscribe it's use in day-to-day conversation.
I didn't notice that claim until now, but I have no idea why he'd think the above. I certainly don't agree with it.
First, when I use the term "truth," I'm referring to a property of propositions, and that's a standard thing to refer to in analytic philosophy. My analysis of it (which isn't standard) is that the property in question is the result of an individual judgment.
Aside from that, though, sticking strictly to states of affairs, I'm a relativist (or more precisely a perspectivalist for this issue), and I wouldn't say that states of affairs are the same for every reference point.
Are you saying that this property isnt the same for everyone. If I commit a logical fallacy as part of some claim that I make, how is that property not the same for everyone? If you call me out on "my" fallacy, then do you expect me to agree with you? Why or why not?
Quoting Terrapin Station
Which states of affairs are you talking about - the apple, or your perception of the apple? The apple is some state of affairs at any moment independent of any observer. An observer can have a different perspective because of their different location in space-time and different sensory organs, but the fact that there is something there for any observer to respond to must mean something.
The same can be said for Schrodingers cat. The state of being alive or dead can be in a state of flux, but the fact that there is a cat, and not some other species, or the fact that there is something in either a dead or alive state means that there must be constants in the world that we can perceive and agree on.
So we're really just talking about different effects as the result of different causes. Your perception is different than mine because of our physical differences. The apple isnt different. Our perceptions are because our perceptions are different effects, or states of affairs. Different causes lead to different effects, even if one of the causes is constant (the apple).
The apple is its own state of affairs that is a result of different causes, but the causes had to occur prior to our perception of it, as the apple is part of the cause of our perception of it. Your sensory organs are also part of this causal chain the leads to the effect of your perception. No apple or no sensory organs means no perception of an apple.
Take Terrapin's example. Are true propositions true for everyone?
The Relativist would immediately run into the objection that when he says "I don't believe in truth", he means to state something which is true - namely, that he does not have a certain belief. He cannot then say "I don't believe in truth", but must instead say something like "I don't believe that I don't believe in truth", but this will only face the same objection. I am not sure that there is any way out of this tangle for the Relativist. He cannot state his thesis, even with the lemma "I don't believe", without seeming to claim something to be true.
Perhaps his best option is simply to refuse to talk about truth all together, although any time he says anything, it will be natural to understand him as claiming something to be true, and hard to understand what else he might be doing. There isn't a contradiction there, but it certainly is hard to understand what the idea of Relativism is meant to be.
PA
Correct.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Aren't we no longer talking about truth there? In other words, it seems like you're suddenly changing the topic to "Is there anything that's the same for everyone?"
Quoting Harry Hindu
This, too. Is the topic changing to "must x mean something?" Let's keep focus and talk about one thing at a time.
This is a debate derail waiting to happen. Some adopt a mild definition for objective truth, as you seem to: unbiased or impartial truth. Others use a more rigorous one: accurate correspondence with that which is. I think this topic is mainly associated with the latter. :chin:
That would depend on how you define 'true'. If your definition of truth is 'that which everyone experiences' then a proposition which is true is true for everyone by definition. But that definition would require you to check with everyone before declaring anything to be true.
If alternatively you have another way of determining whether a proposition is 'true', then in order to answer your question you'd have to show how that method necessarily meant that it's result applied to everyone.
I haven't heard yet what your method is, if not asking everyone. How do you determine if some proposition is 'true'?
PA
Yes, I suppose one could if one wanted to hold 'true' to be 'that with which everyone would agree'. I suppose the sample size wouldn't have to be that large for any matter of real interest as it would not take long to find one person who disagreed and so be forced to reject the proposition in question.
As a definition of 'truth' I don't think it has much to commend it.
The statement is not 'I don't believe in truth' but 'I don't believe in objective truth'. The qualifier is critical and removes any self-referential or regression problem.
The speaker is not believing what she says to be 'objectively true'. Truth has a perfectly functional meaning in ordinary speech, which is something like what one believes*, and that is all that the person means when they make their statement.
*Consider the following conversation:
Mum: 'I heard you skipped school today.'
Jemimah: 'No I didn't.'
Mum: 'Is that true?'
Jemimah: 'Yes'
Mum is asking Jemimah about whether what she says is consistent with her state of knowledge. 'Objective truth', whatever that is, doesn't come into it.
Isnt that what we do? Scientists make claims and propose theories which then require their peers to perform experiments to then determine if the theory holds. Is it true that humans evolved from other organisms, or that the Earth is experiencing climate change?
I have also defined "truth" as the degree of accuracy between some state of affairs and some claim. Which claim has a higher degree of truth - that Earth is, or isnt, experiencing climate change?
Now, if we want to be more strict in the application of "truth" and only apply it to the form of some proposition (like its lack of logical fallacies) and not some state of affairs that the proposition refers to, then we end up with propositions that can be "true" but doesn't refer to anything real.
For example, the proposition, "Donald Trump is the most honest person alive." is logically consistent in form, but has no bearing on reality. How would you determine if the proposition reflects reality, or has some degree of accuracy, if not by asking others who have interacted with Trump about his honesty or lack thereof.
How do you know that you arent hallucinating at any given moment? Is it true that you are hallucinating at this moment, or that you are actually reading my post? How would you find out?
But that is scientific peers. You're missing something crucial to your definition of truth. You said it is correspondence to the reality that everyone experiences, but you're not talking about asking everyone (or a stratified sample of everyone), you're talking about asking a particular group - scientists. So what is it about this group which makes their opinion about what is "true" more important than any other? Obviously we're no longer using them as a sample of humanity, just to check we're all experiencing the same thing. If we wanted to check the proposition "this ball is red" we could give anybody a spectrometer, ask them to point it at the ball and read the result. That way we can check if the ball is 'red' for everyone (where we have defined 'red' as that which causes the spectrometer to respond in such a way).
So what is it, for you, that makes a scientist a better person to put in this role? Is it just that ordinary people don't have access to the measuring devices? If we all had personal ocean temperature data, would we no longer be need to consult meteorologists about climate change?
A second, unrelated question. How does your theory handle the seemingly counter intuitive problem of knowledge evolution? If that which the majority of (specialist?) recorders say they experience is what "truth" is, then was it 'true' that the earth was flat back when that would have been the report of most observers?
I would have thought that Mum, in saying "is that true?", is not merely asking Jemimah what she believes on the issue of whether she went to school, or even asking what is "consistent with Jemimah's knowledge". She is asking Jemimah whether some event actually occured. Mum will likely punish Jemimah if they say that they didn't go to school, and it wouldn't make any sense for Mum to punish Jemimah merely for believing that she didn't go to school. Mum sensibly punishes Jemimah for skipping school, not for having a belief about it.
Does that not show that "truth" in ordinary English invovles something the Relativist cannot accept?
Anyway I'm not sure that debates about the ordinary meaning of "true" are of much relevance. What is relevant is that your Relativist says "I don't believe in objective truth" and when he says it, he means us to understand it using (what you say is) the ordinary meaning of "true". So what he means to say is "I believe that I don't believe in objective truth". Of course, when he says [I]that[/I] he wants us to understand it in the same way.. and so we still have a regress which prevents us ever understanding what the Relativist means to say. He means to say something like "I believe that I believe that I believe that I believe.....ad infinitum.. that I don't believe in objective truth", but he does [I]not[/I] mean ever to assert the objective existence of any belief of his. Perhaps I'm just missing the point, but I just can't understand what is being claimed.
PA
I think she punishes Jemimah for lying, and lying is deliberately saying something you don't believe.
In everyday language, someone is telling the truth if they are saying what they believe. When talking about the truth in general, the idea seems to be that the truth is what most people would believe if they had witnessed whatever it was,
None of this has any bearing on 'absolute truth' or 'objective truth', which could be absolutely anything in the presence of Last Thursdayism or Descartes' demon.
No, it is you that is missing something crucial - namely the rest of the post that you only responded to part of, so it is no wonder that your complaints don't take into account the rest of the post.
People, like you and me, test scientific theories every time we use the technology they are based on. Does combustion work the same for everyone? This is unlike the theory of "god" where everyone has their own definition an can't agree on what "god" is. Science knows no contextual limitations.
I also defined "truth" in a way that is similar to the correspondence theory of truth - as a relationship between some claim or proposition and the way things really are.
Quoting Isaac
Sure, because I don't avoid answering questions like you do. There were several in my previous post that you ignored. Never mind that your example is about the majority of human's understanding of the world PRIOR to the scientific method being used.
I have defined knowledge as a set of rules for interpreting sensory data. Knowledge changes. What we thought we knew we find out that we didn't, so did we really know anything? Because we aren't omniscient, our understanding of the world can differ and fluctuate as we acquire new experiences of the world. We all attempt to make sense of these new experiences by integrating it with what we already "know".
So, when I said that truth pertains to what everyone can experience, what I meant was that world exists objectively, independently of the ways we think about it or describe it, and our thoughts and claims are about that world. Sure, we can get it wrong, but that is because we didn't do all the proper observations. The Earth was round even though most people thought it was flat because the world exists as it is independent of our claims about it. Didn't I say earlier that what is objective is true and what is subjective isn't? So in effect our lack of information created a subjective notion of the world being flat. Strange how it seems that in order to get at truth, we must look at the bigger picture. Instead of standing on the Earth as part of it, separate yourself from it and you will see with your own eyes that it is round. In other words, you must be more objective, and less subjective, in your thinking.
But this contradicts your distinction later thatQuoting Harry Hindu
We're not using the scientific method to determine that a scientific theory works by using its products. We're using the same everyday pragmatism used by those who thought the earth was flat.
Quoting Harry Hindu
If you did I missed it. What I picked up on was you defining it as that which everyone experiences. That which is "the way things really are" is even less useful. At least with your first definition we could at least theoretically ask everyone, with this definition, we might as well ditch the word entirely from the language. How could we ever know whether what we believe is "the way things really are", and if your answer to that question is some method (let's call it method A), then your definition of 'truth' is really "that which passes the test of method A" since everything passing that test is presumed to be "the way things really are" and therefore 'true'.
So what really matters for your definition of truth is method A. I'm asking for a description of that method.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Why are you talking about knowledge all of a sudden. We were talking about 'truth' not knowledge. I'm not following the link.
Quoting Harry Hindu
I don't understand how this can be. How can our thoughts and claims (verbal expressions of thought) be about something which is independent from our thoughts. How would we go about constructing a thought about something which is independent of the way we think about it?
And what would be objective about that? How do we objectively map a relation between a claim and a state of affairs?
I think there are still problems afoot here. Mum could well punish Jemimah for lying, but it would also make perfect sense for her to punish Jemimah for not going to school, would it not? Children are punished for lying sometimes, but also for their actions. And that presupposes that there is some objective truth about whether Jemimah actually attended school. Relatedly, defining truth as "what most people would believe if they had witnessed whatever it was" appears to presuppose that there is an "it" to be witnessed - an objective fact which is not just what someone believes (Of course, it also presupposes that there are people and beliefs).
It is right that sometimes we say that someone is "telling the truth" when they are saying what they believe, but I don't think you can properly generalize this observation into a general thesis about the meaning of "true", as you do above. We also have various other practices involving the word "true". For instance, if I am wondering about whether the Vikings raided Britain, then I am wondering whether a certain event actually happened. I am certainly not wondering what most people believe about it, or even what most people would believe about it were they shown bits of historical evidence.
But as I say, all this is really only a footnote, because even if the Relativist can appeal to the ordinary notion of truth, it doesn't change the fact that his position generates an infinite regress when you try to understand it.
PA
Rather than viewing the liar sentence as a proposition possessing inconsistent static meaning, instead consider it to be a performative speech-act that when repeatedly applied to itself creates a dynamic alternating sequence of unstable outcomes. This way the liar sentence is no longer interpreted as being in conflict with itself, but as merely yielding instability.
How do you make that out? How does one get a regress out of a person saying "I don't believe in objective truth". In what's above, the regress relied on the statement being the very different "I don't believe in truth".
We have an idea that truth in its fullest dimension must be objective because it seems illogical to think that truth could be subjective. If truth were subjective, the thinking goes, then something could be true for me and false for you, which seems absurd.
As examples of truths which are not merely a matter of opinion we have truths which are tautologous or true by definition and we have truths about the empirical world which anyone may confirm by checking. "Paris if the capital city of France", for example; we can go to Paris and check the truth of that statement; nevertheless such statements seem express truths or falsehoods which are more contextual or conventional truths or falsehoods than they are objective or absolute truths or falsehoods.
It also seems logically possible that anything we believe could turn out to be false, so this situation leads to the idea of objective or absolute truth which is beyond any mere human opinion. We don't know if there is such a thing, but we do know that nothing we believe is true could ever qualify or at least that we could never know if it qualifies.
So, the idea of objective truth becomes the idea of something that will remain forever beyond our ken, something we can have no access to. If this is so, then of what use could such 'truth' be, beyond serving as a kind of regulative principle; a reminder of our own inevitable ignorance in the face of something that both exceeds and includes our own epistemic limitations?
So, we do not have the knowledge to say that there are no objective truths; that remains merely a logical possibility, as does the contrary idea that there are objective truths.
Relativist: I don't believe in objective truth.
Objectivist: Of course you do! What you just stated is something you think is objectively true. You think it is objectively true that you don't believe in objective truth.
Relativist: No. My assertions should be understood using the ordinary notion of truth, not this new-fangled "objective truth" that you philosophers speak of.
Objectivist: What do you mean the "ordinary notion"? What is this notion?
Relativist: The ordinary notion of truth is something like what one believes.
Objectivist: Right. So, your assertion "I don't believe in objective truth", is to be understood as a claim that is true in the ordinary sense.
Relativist: Right.
Objectivist: So when you say "I don't believe in objective truth", you really mean to say "I believe that I don't believe in objective truth".
Relativist: Right.
Objectivist: But isn't [I]this[/I] assertion something you claim to be objectively true? Don't you claim that "I believe that I don't believe in objective truth" is objectively true as you assert it?
Relativist: No. I want this new assertion to be understood in the ordinary way as well. I don't mean to assert that it is objectively true. I mean to assert that I believe it.
Objectivist: So your assertion is... that you believe that you believe that you don't believe in objective truth?
Relativist: Good. Now you are getting it.
Objectivist: I'm not sure that I am. Your initial claim that you don't believe in objective truth seemed simple enough. But you want it to be interpreted so that it entails an infinite number of qualifications. You don't mean to say that it is objectively true that you don't believe in objective truth. You mean to say that you believe that you believe that you believe.... ad infinitum, that you don't believe in objective truth, and in saying this, you don't mean to assert the objective existence of any beliefs at all.
Relativist: You understand me completely. Tis too simple!
Objectivist: I really don't understand..
Perhaps I have put the wrong words in your Relativists' mouth.
PA
The link gives an example of a physical idempotent operator: an On button on an electric device. This contrasts with an On/Off toggle, whose effect depends on the initial state and on whether the number of times it is pressed is odd or even.
A mathematical example would be the operation of rounding to the nearest integer. Doing it once has the same result as doing it a million or infinitely many times.
Are we not testing the scientific method itself when using technology that some theory arrived at using the scientific method? I don't see how my explanation doesn't allow for mass delusions.
Quoting Isaac
That is the problem with knowledge that I explained.
Quoting Isaac
Do you have a short-term memory problem? That would explain a lot.
I was responding to this:
Quoting Isaac
And then in the same post that you ask why I'm talking about knowledge, you ask me how we know anything:
Quoting Isaac
So, it would seem to me that the word, "know" and "knowledge" need to be defined. And yes, we have been talking about "knowledge". Try your best to remember. We have evidence that you used the word even though you don't seem to remember. This is what I mean by objective. Because your words exist out in the world it is possible, for those that look, to find them.
Quoting IsaacDid you make a reply post to me independent of me ever reading it? If I never read your reply, did you really write it? Is your post in my head, or on the screen? If it were only in my head or yours, how can others read it? If you were to see something behind me and tell me that there is something behind me, should I look behind me, or in your head (or more specifically your mind?)?
Wouldn't that only be the case if you're trying to assert some connection between objectivity and universality?
How do we objectively map the meaning of words? How is it that we can even communicate if all of our words don't exist out in the world and we use definitions (an objective meaning of a word) to determine their meaning, and therefore the meaning of your post? Does your post have an objective meaning - one that everyone should realize if they read your post? What is the meaning of your post - what others interpret, or what you intended when you wrote them? We have a set of rules for interpreting words that we all agree on, just as scientists have a set of rules to determine the accuracy of some hypothesis.
The relativist saying "right" at that point would be very confused given what comes before that. They should say, "No. Remember that I just explained the the 'ordinary notion' of 'truth' is that it refers to what one believes, and that I'm taking 'objective truth' to be asserting something different than that, something independent of beliefs. What I'm saying in other words is simply 'I don't believe that truth is something independent of beliefs.'"
We don't.
Meanings are different than definitions. Definitions are sound or text strings or pointings to things. The sounds, text strings, pointings, etc. don't literally contain meaning. Individuals assign meanings to them. We communicate via more than one person assigning meanings to the same observables like sound and text strings in a manner that makes sense, that's coherent and consistent, etc. in the opinion of the individuals involved.
Meaning isn't objective.
And you have used the word 'memory' does that mean we're talking about memory now?
The topic is objective truth, your claim is that all truth is objective (or all objective knowledge is truth). I'm arguing that such a notion of truth can be deflated to simply saying that anything which passes the test by which we judge it to be 'objective' is therefore 'truth', since the objectivity (by your definition) of facts is itself a matter of judgement.
As such "truth" becomes a meaningless additional property of a fact to simply saying "I believe..."
No, not at all. Aren't you familiar with the general/special relativity, for example?
You said, "For something to be objectively true."
It's logically possible for there to be objectively true things but for them to not be universally true.
The objective/subjective distinction doesn't have anything to do with universality.
In my view nothing is objectively true. "Objective truth" is a category error.
I was simply asking why you were conflating universality with objectivity. The subjective/objective distinction doesn't conventionally have anything to do with whether something is universal.
So x is like F from reference point y, and like G from reference point z.
Does it make sense to call "x is like F" "universal"?
Couldn't we say that P is universally true, where truth is subjective?
If you can prove (to the same objective standard that you reference) either of these things, you will change the face of science and philosophy. But you can't. So you fall back on the topic-breaking Subjective/objective debate? How about we just stick to the topic?
I would change the second line to "A lot of our thoughts and claims are about that world." Certainly not all of them are. (Well, and the first claim should be "Much of the world exists objectively . . .")
I wouldn't worry about proving it. We can't prove empirical claims period. It's just a matter of whether there are good reasons to believe one option over the contradictory option there.
Can you prove that an empirical claim was made? If so, how do you do it if not empirically? Is it an fact that people make empirical claims and have feelings about things that influence their thinking? Is that a fact regardless of how people, or any mind, feels about that? Is it a fact of reality that you have feelings and preferences that may differ from others? Whenever we are referring to some state of affairs that we expect to others to agree if you cancel out our subjective differences (like our location in space-time and personal feelings and values), we are making objective statements about the world.
Oops! Sorry. My poor formatting made @HarryHindu's words look like they were mine. :blush:
I reformatted the original post to correct this.
No, you can't. And yes, that's an empirical claim. Since you can't prove empirical claims, you can't prove that an empirical claim was made.
Again, the take-away should be: "Don't worry about proof. Worry about the reasons there are for believing P versus ~P."
I'm not saying anything like that. Knowing that P in no way hinges on P being provable.
Truth as honesty? No, that's a different sense, just use the word "honesty" for that.
Truth as broad or universal agreement? No, because there are exceptions.
A much better indication of what truth is would be to point out that a truth can be stated by stating a true statement, and it resembles the expression of a fact or what's the case. This discussion is in English.
This discussion is in Japanese? No.
How about trying a more “down-to-earth” definition of what is true and what is false. For example: Any system of human thinking, doing, and governance which promotes and enhances the physical, biological, and mental health of the human race is true; those which do not are false.
Hopefully, this will get us away from focusing exclusively on overly abstract semantical arguments and dry propositional analyses.
Is this a joke? You've basically just described the fallacy of appealing to the consequences.
No Joke!! I would submit that I have, in fact, described the "false" criterion commonly used and accepted by most unsophisticated humans to distinguish the true from the false; whether one (the elitist logician) likes it, or not.
For example:
Isn't uncontrolled global warming due to climate change deemed "true" precisely because of the deleterious effects to humanity that would result from it?
And, by contrast, isn't uncontrolled warming due to climate change deemed "false" precisely because of the lack of deleterious effects to humanity that would result from it?
What else would be able to bring actionable meaning to this issue????
That's an interesting solution, but I'm not sure that "I believe that" really is an idempotent operator here. Saying that I believe that P does not mean the same thing as saying I believe that I believe that P. The former asserts that I think that the world is a certain way. The latter states that I think that I possess a certain mental state; that of thinking the world is a certain way. And of course, the more "I believe that"'s we add, the more the meaning will diverge from the original "I believe that P", until it gets so complicated that I can't understand it.
PA
What really counts, after all is said and done, is precisely truth "in the real world" among "the common folk,' as you condescendingly refer to them. The majority of humanity (those unaware of this fallacy) could care less for this "fallacy." And, furthermore, it is extremely presumptuous and elitist to think that one is, in fact, privy to the "real deal,".like a Gnostic logician, as it were. If one lives long enough, one realizes that no one is, or ever will be, privy to "the real deal," at least this side of the grave
I couldn't care less if the rest of humanity, or "unsophisticated humans", as you condescendingly refer to them, do not care about this fallacy (and it [I]is[/I] a fallacy, so scare quotes are inappropriate), because they must not care about the deep and fundamental questions of philosophy, whereas I do.
Good luck having any hope of getting close to the truth if you show a careless disregard for logic and reason.
It depends on what one means by 'I believe that P'.
In philosophy that sort of statement is a cliche and usually leads to boredom, but perhaps one can make something slightly non-boring from it here. We could investigate it a little by asking whether in order for 'I believe that P' to be true one must have held the proposition P in one's mind at one stage. If one says Yes to that then it could certainly be the case that one believes P but doesn't believe that they believe P because they have never held the thought 'I believe that I believe that P' in their mind.
I am inclined to the opposite interpretation, that holding the thought in one's mind at some time is not necessary for belief. I think belief can be non-verbal. Dogs and toddlers in happy homes believe that their humans love them, but are unable to articulate that thought internally. Perhaps even a person that has language may believe something without articulating it in their mind. We may feel that a person we have met is kind or hostile and hence implicitly believe that about them without having explicitly thought it.
Interestingly, this perspective seems to count against 'I believe that...' being idempotent. Somebody that is very arrogant believes that they are better than most people but would quite likely sincerely deny that they believe that. They believe they are better than others, but don't believe that they believe that.
I wonder then if it might be the case that the operator 'I believe that...' is one such that applying it twice can be different from applying it once, but applying it more than two times is the same as applying it twice. I imagine there are such operators but I need to ride to work now so I will leave it to other mathematically-inclined posters to find an example of such an operator.
I have forgotten how this relates to the thread but nevertheless I find it interesting. I apologise if my digression irritates.
Very odd!
Present in Absent-Mindedness
Philosophers fail to realize that they are creating a separate world that can fall apart if applied too closely to the real world. Russell's problem with "the set of everything that doesn't belong to a set" brings that out; it is a self-made contradiction, but it doesn't contradict the fact that he has abstracted his philosophical world from reality. The first rule must be existence; he forgets that his system exists only in his fearfully wandering speculations. It should only be viewed as an approximation to reality; its internal contradiction only proves that it is a temporary substitute and shouldn't be expected to be complete within itself.
Do These People Actually Want to Be Confused?
It is a defective statement. It cannot be stated unless it has the full form, "No statements are true except this one."
That's really what radical relativists are trying to say.
But it raises the question then what is the objective truth in our world?
If philosophers are doing this, I suggest they're doing it wrong. If philosophy does not relate to the world we experience, what use is it?
No, "Objective truth" describes a statement/proposition/etc that accurately and correctly reflects that which actually is. The word you have described is "opinion".
No one who is serious points to a bridge and says "this thing is as it is." Pointing at a belief and saying "this thing is as it is" is just as silly.
Maybe. Please don't state possibilities - even those you believe to be highly probable - as certainties. This is a philosophy forum, after all. :smile:
Focusing on certainty, as if it is or should be a goal, as if we need it to claim things, etc. is a big mistake in my opinion.
Knowing something doesn't imply certainty though.
Sorry, I tend to use "know" for what we certainly know, and "believe" for what we think we know. I forget not everyone uses that particular distinction. :blush:
Aren't the two intrinsically connected, however?
The standard analysis of knowledge in philosophy is that knowledge is a type of belief.
In the way that I use the words, everything we think correct is belief, even the things we're certain of, which are also known. Because belief is less than "know". So I agree that knowledge is a type of belief. But maybe that's not quite the meaning you intended?
I get what you're saying.
But considering we believe in what we know and know what we believe, I don't see how one is more certain than the other.
The feeling of spiritualism is a physical process of the brain, too. Ants don't get spiritual. Why? Because they don't have the brains for it.
Then I leave you in the ecstasy of certainty. Enjoy! :smile:
I'd say that we know that they're physical processes of the brain.
I wouldn't say that it's impossible that they could be something else.
But there would have to be good reasons--some evidence, whether good empirical evidence or some sort of sound logical argument--to believe otherwise.
Schrödinger's cat is dead.
Right, which there are for believing that mind is identical to brain, but not otherwise.
Yes, especially given that all evidence points to it.
Does it? The brain is colourless, odourless, meaningless matter, yet the mind experiences and assigns these things. It seems to be obviously the case that the mind and brain are different.
But regardless of that, if it is objectively the case that something exists, which it must be, then there must be objective truth that we are capable of knowing, right?
Wait, first, the brain is colorless, odorless?? Brains definitely have a color and would have an odor if you were to smell them. What that has to do with anything is another issue, but what are you thinking, that brains are transparent or something?
A brain in and of itself has no colour. It refracts light a certain way. This refraction is experienced in the mind as colour. How can something that has no colour as we experience it experience colour?
"It refracts light a certain way" is what color is.
Its colour is what we experience, in our minds. In purely material terms there is no colour, only light refraction.
"In purely material terms," light refraction IS COLOR.
Conflating that with the experience of color is just that--a conflation.
It’s only colour once someone experiences it, in their mind. Otherwise it’s just particles bouncing around.
Conflating color in general with the experience of color is just that--a conflation.
You want to keep repeating a conflation because?
It seems to me that you’re the one conflating. You’re conflating the material basis for our experience of colour with our experience of it.
If I'm telling you that the experience and the light refraction off the object are two different things, I'm conflating them?
You’re saying this:
I’m saying light refraction is only colour when it’s experienced in the mind, and that otherwise it’s simply particles bouncing around.
Which is you conflating color with the experience of color.
I'm not conflating color with the experience of color.
You’re saying instead that the material basis for colour is the same as the experience of it. This is patently false. It’s like saying the material basis for pain is the same as the experience of it. We know this is untrue because we can observe the material basis for pain in others without ourselves experiencing it. Also we can understand the material basis for colour without experiencing it.
First off, where did I write anything even remotely resembling that? Where did I write anything at all like the phrase "material basis" even?
You said this:
Light refraction is the material basis for colour, but is not itself a colour, which is a thing we experience in our minds.
It is itself color. Color is not identical to the experience of color. You're conflating color (in general) and the experience of color.
It's like I'm explaining this to a retard. How many times do I have to explain the same simple thing?
I didn't say anything like "the material basis of." That's you reading your own confused crap into what I'm saying.
It what sense is light refraction corresponding to the colour red a colour if no one experiences it? Why is it not simply particles, bouncing around?
It's not "corresponding to the color red," it is the color red. That's not to say that it's the experience of the color red if no one is experiencing it. The experience and what it's an experience of are not identical. "Simply particles bouncing around" is what the color red is (with the bit in quotation marks not exactly right, but that's close enough for jazz).
In what sense is it the colour red if it isn’t experienced?
Why would you equate anything with the experience of that thing?
That's such a ridiculous approach, to figure that everything is identical to the the experience of that thing.
Seriously, it comes across as if one is dealing with a two year-old or something, where they can't handle understanding the difference between the experience of something per se and what's experienced.
I’m saying experience and the material basis for it are distinct. In what sense is the light refraction for red a colour if no one experiences it?
The question makes no sense. Are you thinking that the only senses there are of anything are experienced senses?
I’m saying there is a material basis for our experience. I’m saying the material basis and our experience are distinct. I’m saying there is a distinction between the material basis for colour and our experience of it.
You say the material basis (light refraction) for red is the colour red. But the material basis for red does not look like red unless someone looks at it, because it’s simply particles, bouncing around. The redness appears only in our minds.
I'm not saying anything using the phrase "material basis" for one.
The light refraction is color.
The experience of color is different than light refracting off of an object.
Experience is a mental phenomenon, yes.
I know you’re not. I am. When I say “material basis for colour” I mean light refraction. I’m not introducing anything new, or anything you haven’t been saying, by saying “material basis for colour”.
Right. So how is it that the experience of colour is generated in something purely material? In something that is only light refracting particles?
The experience of color, and all mental phenomena, are identical to brain phenomena.
Or are you asking for something like the schematics of exactly what's going on in brains for this particular phenomena?
We’re able to observe brain phenomena. The person whose brain we observe has experiences based on those brain phenomena. How then are the experiences and the phenomena identical?
They don't have experiences based on those brain phenomena. They have experiences which are identical to those brain phenomena. The experiences are what it's like to be the brain in question.
How is the experience of redness identical to particles that are not themselves red?
Didn't I just explain over and over that the experience of a color is not the same thing as the color? So we'd not think that the experience of a color should be identical to the color, right?
The brain phenomenon of someone experiencing the colour red is not itself red. How then are the brain phenomenon and the experience the same thing?
Right. Because we understand that the experience of a color is not identical to the color, right?
So what, the colour red enters the brain and we experience it? Does the brain not interpret the light entering the eyes and produce whatever signals? Are these signals red? They must be if that’s what we experience, and the signals and the experience are the same.
It seems obvious that the redness appears only in the mind, and not in the brain. The brain produces signals, which generate images in the mind. Therefore the brain and the mind must be separate.
From where are we getting "the signals and the experience are the same"?
Please learn to spot a paraphrase. “Signals” = brain phenomena.
Why would we be supposing that the experience or the brain phenomena are red?
You say brain phenomena are identical to experiences. If you have an experience of redness, and your experiences are identical to brain phenomena, then your brain phenomenon must simply be redness. If that sounds nonsensical to you, then you get my point.
Is an experience of a color the same thing as the color?
Yes, colour is something we experience. It doesn’t exist apart from a mind’s experience of it.
Didn't we just go back and forth for a ridiculous length of time with me explaining that the experience of a color is not the same thing as the color?
And you wouldn’t answer in what sense you thought light refraction was the same as colour. It’s colour only in virtue of the fact that, when looked at, it will be experienced as colour. It is not in itself colour, because it is only particles. It is only when looked at that they generate colour, in the mind.
With respect to this, I said this and you ignored it, which is why it went no further. You can't ignore it, then: "The question makes no sense. Are you thinking that the only senses there are of anything are experienced senses? "
Maybe you can answer that now?
Yes. That is the definition of a sense.
Where in the world are you getting that idea from?
Our sense of sight is our visual experience of things. Our sense of smell is our olfactory experience of things. Our sense of hearing is our auditory experience of things, and so on.
So when you ask "And you wouldn’t answer in what sense you thought light refraction was the same as colour," you're asking me to say, "sight," "smell," "hearing," "touch" or "taste"? You're not asking about definitions/connotations?
There “sense” = manner. In what manner - or in what way - do you think light refraction is the same as colour? I’m saying it’s only in virtue of the fact that when looked at it will be experienced as such.
Light refraction is something we're naming "color." I'm not saying that it's the same as the experience of color. I'm saying exactly the opposite of that, which is important for the confusion you're expressing above, where you're expecting the experience to be the same as the color in some way.
If light refraction is different from the experience of colour, what makes a brain phenomenon the same as an experience of colour?
I don't know how that question makes sense to you, really. In the first case we're naming two separate things ontologically. In the second case, we're naming two identical things ontologically. I'm not sure how else to answer that. It's kind of like trying to answer, "If planets are not identical to stars, what makes the morning star identical to the evening star." How do we answer that? What makes the morning star identical to the evening star is that it turns out that both terms actually have the same thing as a referent (namely Venus). But that's just another way of saying that they're identical, no?
I’m asking you to demonstrate why you think brain phenomena and experiences are identical, not simply to insist that they are.
Then just ask that. Asking "what makes x and y identical" seems like you're asking for some sort of explanation of how it would work ontologically that some x and y could be identical.
All the evidence we have shows that mentality is simply brain phenomena. I can't list it all, of course, but it includes things like:
https://news.berkeley.edu/2011/09/22/brain-movies/
https://www.headway.org.uk/media/3999/psychological-effects-of-brain-injury-e-booklet.pdf
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29223975
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/01/070131135536.htm
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5649212/
I’ve been posing the problem of qualia to your position. The observation that redness is a quality that exists in the mind but not in the material world; that brain states do not exhibit redness, and that therefore the mind, which does exhibit redness to the person whose mind it is, must be different from the brain, and different from brain states. Brain states is a paraphrase of brain phenomena. This is one of the principle arguments against materialist theories of mind.
Once again, this is a simple confusion. "Redness" (or the property of being red) is NOT IDENTICAL to the experience of red(ness). So it's quite silly to expect the experience of red(ness) to BE red(ness). It's not. It's the EXPERIENCE of redness. It's not itself red(ness).
You're confusing the experience of something with the thing that's experienced.
You’re failing to understand that something does not appear red unless it is looked at.
Of course it doesn't "appear red," if we're using "appear" to refer to experience of it, unless it's looked at.
That doesn't mean that it's not red if it's not looked at. It just doesn't "appear red." Because that phrase refers to experience per se.
The point being, it’s only in the mind that anything ever appears red. A brain phenomenon does not in itself appear red, but generates redness in the mind. Therefore they can’t be identical. Simply insisting that they are identical is no good, you have to get around this problem.
Experience is mental, yes. What the experience is of isn't mental. The experience of x isn't going to be identical to x. Obviously, right?
Thus forwarding an argument where we act as if it's problematic that the experience of x isn't itself x is stupid.
Mind isn't identical to brain simply because we're insisting it. It's because all of the evidence points to it. Just ignoring the evidence and going back to a more or less retard-level argument doesn't help.
Holy shit, you are not making a major argument against ANY position! You are baffled, and should pay attention to what you are being told so you can learn where you are making semantic and philosophical mistakes. Good god man!
The lack of understanding is entirely your own, and Terrapin has laid it out very plainly. I do not know whats blocking your ability to comprehend the very very simple distinctions and results of those distinctions to the subject matter but its aggravating me and Im not even the conversation! If you are trolling, then hats off, you are showing true mastery!
Perhaps restate the argument I’ve been making, to see if you understand it.
Terrapin has simply been insisting without argument that the experience of colour and colour are distinct, and insisting without argument that brain phenomena and experience are the same thing. I’ve been giving reasons why that doesn’t make sense, which have been ignored.
By the way, even if the argument you're endorsing didn't rest on a completely inane confusion between x and the experience of x (a confusion where one is supposing that the experience of x should literally possess the properties of x for some unfathomably ridiculous reason), as an argument against materialism, it's even more inane, as it suggests the following:
An experience of x literally possesses the properties of x. And since physical things other than x don't literally have the properties of x (for example, brains aren't fire trucks), then the experience of x must be nonphysical, because . . . well, nonphysical things that aren't x literally have the properties of x (the nonphysical experience of a fire truck is a fire truck) based on . . . Well, who knows, as there's zero evidence of nonphysical things even, and the very idea of them is incoherent, but we're making this nonsensical shit up, akin to making up "God did it" to explain something we otherwise can't explain or that we're confused about, even though what we're making up not only doesn't explain anything any better, it introduces this additional incoherent garbage. Q.E.D. Bow and exit stage left while thinking oneself to be extraordinarily clever.
You already agreed with that. The only difference is that you're not agreeing to name a particular thing "color" that I'm naming "color" rather than the experience of color. That naming doesn't matter. It's still x versus the experience of x (with the latter bestowed with a unique name), which you agree are different.
Why then are our brain states identical to our experiences? As opposed to it being the case that we experience our brain states?
Earlier when you asked this--well, or something very similar to it--you claimed that you were asking for supporting evidence of it . . . at which point you proceeded to ignore that track once some evidence was given. Are you asking for evidence here, or are you now asking why some x and y would be identical? (Where presumably "because they're the same thing" should be the sort of thing that would count as an answer, but where that should also be obvious to anyone who understands the term "identical," so we have to wonder just what sort of response you'd be looking for.)
I’m looking for a response that doesn’t simply insist without argument your position to be the case.
I’m aware that when we experience something, something happens in the brain. What makes you think what is happening in the brain is identical to the experience, as opposed to the experience being of what is happening in the brain? You should give a logical reason why it is more plausible to believe the former.
For one, the fact that all of the evidence that we have points to this.
I asked for a response without a simple insistence that what you believe is true. Give examples of this evidence. Refer to it, show why it shows your position to be the more plausible. Don’t simply post links, I’m not here to argue against links, but against other people, on this, a philosophy forum, populated by people interested in arguing about philosophy, and not only stating what they believe over and over without support.
I did this the first time you asked. I gave you five examples that were hyperlinked. At which point you proceeded to completely ignore it. If you're interested in it, look at the evidence and comment on it. There's no need to repeat what it says. Look at it if you're sincerely wondering.
No links. Refer to what you have learned from those links. Don’t simply hide behind them.
Why no links? Why would I retype what is said there?
It’s very plain now that you do not yourself know or understand what is behind the links you posted. You’re posting them in order to assert your prejudice. It’s obviously not appropriate to refuse to argue in an argument, but rather refer the argument elsewhere.
You asked for examples of evidence. Those are examples of evidence. If you're interested in the evidence, look at the examples. If you're not really interested enough to bother with that, why should I care?
No argument. Prejudice and links.
Evidence is what matters here. If you just want an argument clinic because you like to argue for its own sake, I'm sure a lot of other people are looking for the same thing.
Oh, sorry. I didn’t realise that this was a prejudice and links-posting thread.
"Waah! I just want to argue! Waah! I'm not actually interested in information."
“Waah! I just want to post prejudice and links! Waah! I’m not actually interested in arguing.”
I'm definitely not interested in arguing. Correct.
At least not arguing for its own sake. Again, what matters for empirical claims like this is evidence. What's the case isn't determined by some stupid argument, just because it's an argument ( "If I claim to not otherwise be able to explain this, then God did it. I claim to not otherwise be able to explain this. So God did it. Modus ponens, bitch." )
If you're interested in the evidence look at it and comment on it. Otherwise I don't really care.
You neither know nor understand the “evidence” you’re referring to.
This claim is based on?
You post links but refuse to give examples of anything contained in them. The reason is because you can’t.
That's not going to work. Again, if you're actually interested in the evidence, look at it. How many times do I have to tell you, in order for you to finally learn, that if you're not interested enough to look at it, I don't care?
You neither know nor understand the “evidence”. If you did you would give an example of it and argue from that. You don’t, because you can’t.
I gave you a handful of examples. I couldn't care less that you either reason so poorly or that you have such ineffective psychological manipulation methods that you'd say that not performing as you'd prefer amounts to "not knowing or understanding it." That just tells me that you're kind of dim either way.
There's no need to "argue from the evidence." The evidence is the "argument." Either you're actually interested in the evidence or not. Again, I really couldn't care either way. As far as you matter to me at the moment, you're just some bozo who wants to argue on the internet.
You posted links. You have not given examples of what is contained in those links. You don’t, because you can’t.
Evidence of brain states corresponding to experiences is not evidence of the two things being identical. If that is not the kind of evidence contained in those links, say so, give an example of what is contained in them, and explain why it necessarily shows brain phenomena and experiences are identical. If you can’t, it’s because you can’t, and you’re free to stop responding.
Sure it is. Why wouldn't it be?
You're not appealing to the dumb idea that it's not proof of them being identical, are you?
Because you could conclude instead that we experience our brain states, in which case they would correspond in the same way.
What would be the evidence suggesting that the two are different? (By the way if you post a link I'll look at it instead of complaining that you should retype parts of it here, etc.)
That’s not the point here. You said the evidence shows the two are identical. I’ve just given a reason why that isn’t the case.
It's exactly the point. The evidence does not PROVE that the two are identical. But it does show that they are. As expected, you're appealing to the ignorant idea that the evidence doesn't prove something.
To believe a contrary claim, there would need to be evidence for it. Possibility doesn't suffice.
That brain phenomena correspond to experiences shows either that the two are identical, or that we experience our brain phenomena. You’re willing to accept the former without further consideration, but not the latter. Why?
The latter requires evidence that they're different. There is no evidence that they're different though.
What there is, however, is evidence that any change in one amounts to a change in the other. In lieu of evidence otherwise, that suggests that they're identical.
That a change in one amounts to change in the other shows either that they are identical, or that we experience our brain phenomena. You’re willing to accept the former without further consideration, but not the latter. Why?
Why would you figure that it shows either? Why wouldn't you figure that it maybe it shows that the two are completely coincidental?
That a change in one amounts to a change in the other shows either that the two are identical, that we experience our brain phenomena, or it’s complete coincidence. You’re willing to accept the former without further consideration, but not the latter two. Why?
If you're going to get OCD, I'm bailing.
Feel free.
Because you're going to be OCD now?
I'm explaining why, but by getting you to think so that you can realize the answer for yourself.
So why would you think either one of those possibilities rather than thinking that it's a complete coincidence?
That’s not the point here. You said the evidence shows the two are identical. I’ve given a reason why that isn’t the case. You’ve just supplied another.
My point at the moment is that you apparently do not realize how knowledge works in relation to empirical evidence, and you're appealing to the idea of proof without wanting to admit that.
So I want to help you figure out for yourself how it works.
So you think the idea that it's a complete coincidence is just as good.
That's fine. So, then the question is: do you think we can have evidence that any x and y are identical? For example, can we have evidence that the morning star is the evening star?
We’re talking about brain phenomena and experience. Your point is that the evidence shows they’re identical. I have suggested it could equally show that we experience our brain phenomena. You then suggested it may show a complete coincidence. You are willing to accept the former without further consideration, but not the latter two. Why?
Yes. And I'm trying to help you figure out how empirical evidence works in relation to knowledge, because that's turned out to be necessary to the discussion. Do you understand that?
You’re dodging the question, is what you’re doing.
Not at all. This is answering the question. But for you to understand the issues here, you need to understand how empirical evidence works in relation to knowledge--something that apparently you do not understand at the moment. So we need to go over this.
No it isn’t. Answering the question would be answering the question. This is a subject change. Answer it directly, and if I don’t understand the answer I’ll let you know.
I already answered directly and you already let me know that you don't understand how evidence works in relation to knowledge, because you're appealing to the fact that evidence doesn't rule out other possibilities, which is what proof would do.
Hence why we're going over this more systematically now.
I can't force you to go over it more systematically, but if you want to understand, that's what we need to do now.
You said the evidence shows that brain phenomena and experiences are identical. I suggested it could also show that we experience our brain phenomena. If the latter is an equal possibility, why insist on the former interpretation? If it is not an equal possibility, why?
No empirical evidence rules out any possibilities, does it?
Then why do you favour that former interpretation over the latter?
Because "ruling out possibilities" is otherwise known as "proof," but that's not at all what empirical evidence is about. That a category error, a red herring, an ignorant misunderstanding of what empirical evidence is and how it works.
Per your views, you'd not be able to conclude anything via any empirical evidence, right? Because no empirical evidence can rule out other possibilities, and you're trying to argue that if that's the case, empirical evidence can't show any one particular thing.
You’re changing the subject. You said the evidence has a particular conclusion where there are other possibilities. You will not justify why your chosen conclusion is best.
Nope. This is the subject (at the moment at least). What empirical evidence can show. You made that the subject.
You made the subject by claiming the evidence shows brain phenomena and experiences are identical. I suggested the evidence could equally show we experience our brain phenomena. You will not justify your chosen conclusion.
It only equally shows that we experience our brain phenomena if you think that all empirical evidence equally shows every possibility related to it (including that it's only a coincidence, etc).
That's appealing to proof, because only proof rules out the other possibilities.
But empirical claims are not provable. Period. That's a category error.
And given your argument, to be consistent, you'd have to say that no empirical evidence can support any particular conclusion, period.
This is a major problem, because at the moment you're committed to saying that no empirical evidence can support any particular conclusion.
We’re not talking about all empirical evidence. The evidence in question can be interpreted in more than one way. Which is the best way could be discovered perhaps through more empirical evidence, or through some logical justification. You have chosen your preferred conclusion in this case, but will not justify it.
So give me an example of empirical evidence that you believe couldn't be interpreted in more than one way, where you believe the empirical evidence in question supports a particular conclusion (while ruling out other possibilities)
Subject change. The point is still your claim that the evidence in question supports a particular conclusion, that you have proven unable to justify.
It's not a subject change. Again, the issue here is understanding how empirical evidence works with knowledge claims. Your objection here could be given for any empirical claim whatsoever. That's a problem.
But you just said it couldn't be applied to any empirical claim whatsoever. So let's put that to the test. If you're right, we'll drop the idea that this is a problem. What empirical claim do you think couldn't be interpreted in more than one way, where you believe the empirical evidence in question supports a particular conclusion? I'm not even requiring that it's a claim about x being identical to y, or a claim about causality or anything like that. Just any empirical claim whatsoever. That should make a counterexample easy, right?
The point is that where there is more than one possible way of interpreting of some evidence, the chosen interpretation should be justified. You have not justified your chosen interpretation. I’m not giving a parallel example because you will simply use it to dodge the point.
It was justified, but the justification wasn't accepted, because you're appealing to proof, not evidence.
What you're doing could be done with any empirical claim or any justification whatsoever, with the upshot that we can have no empirical evidence of anything.
If you want to claim that that's not the case, you need to demonstrate how it would not be the case.
Here's one: "I’m saying a human being’s life starts at its conception."
What would be evidence of that as opposed to the possibility that a human being's life begins at birth instead, and how could you justify a particular conclusion so that it's not just as well a conclusion for any of the logical possibilities re when a human being's life begins?
What was the justification you gave for choosing that former interpretation over the latter?
That a change in one is a change in the other and there's no evidence whatsoever of the two being different.
Also, the idea of nonphysical existents is incoherent.
No subject changes. The justification is all I want, then I’m out.
The subject is how empirical evidence supports claims.
That could still be interpreted as experiences being based on brain phenomena.
So says you. You have qualia, rationality and intentionality to deal with there. Perhaps you’re right, but the claim simply on the back of that evidence that brain phenomena are identical to experiences is too much.
Because that's a possibility and empirical claims are not provable.
Right?
Didn't we go over that already?
Hence the whole point of this being a problem because what you're doing--appealing to proof (apparently without being able to realize this), could be done with any empirical claim whatsoever. So per this tactic, we can have no empirical evidence of any particular claim, period.
Re "so says me" sure, and no one says anything different, because absolutely no one even makes the slightest attempt to make the notion of nonphysical existents coherent.
I wasn’t appealing to proof. I was asking for a legitimate justification for your chosen conclusion. The best you’ve given is that the notion of immaterial things is incoherent. Yet the first argument I gave in this thread was about qualia, about the quality of redness existing in the mind but not in the material world. But that’s there already and I don’t want to go back to it.
Yes, you are. You're talking about possibilities not being excluded. That's another way of describing the notion of proof.
No. I’m not talking about excluding possibilities. I believe the mind is immaterial. I do not therefore think the materialist possibility has been excluded. You can justify a belief without definitively proving it; this is what I was asking from you. Not proof. Justification.
But you were saying that the evidence wasn't evidence for something because there's another possibility, right?
No. It could be evidence for what you say. But it seems to me - in the case of this particular evidence, not for evidence in general, and without knowing anything else - that there is an equally valid alternative explanation, which is that our experiences are simply based on our brain phenomena, rather than being identical to them.
Would there be possibilities that aren't equally valid explanations in your view?
Looking back over my posts I have said in some that it isn’t evidence for your claim. I should have been saying that it’s not necessarily evidence for your claim.
Yes. Coincidence seems ludicrous given the probabilities involved.
What would you be basing probabilities on?
For the same brain phenomena to occur alongside the same experiences all the time by chance would, I’m only guessing, be unlikely.
How is a probability "guess" not just arbitrary?
Mate, coincidences are by their nature unlikely. If you’re going to depart from common-sense like this (and if you’re going to now scoff at the notion of common-sense) then let’s just call it a day.
Am I alone here in thinking that evidence can be strong or weak, and that weak evidence is not enough to justify a conclusion?
Because there's such a thing as educated guesswork. Our guesses aren't random, but they are also (very) far from Objective. But a guess remains a guess, no matter how educated.
How would you define the distinction between strong and weak evidence (preferably in a way that doesn't make it purely a subjective judgment)?
Quoting Pattern-chaser
And our education fueling probability guesses for which there is no frequency data would be?
Strong evidence leads to a robust conclusion. A justified conclusion. Weaker evidence may point in the direction of the conclusion we seek, but does not justify it.
Quoting Terrapin Station
If I understand you correctly: guesswork.
How are "robust" and "justified" any clearer re objective properties?
Quoting Pattern-chaser
Guesswork is educated if it's based on guesswork, but not if it's just guesswork???
Yes, well, I had a lot of trouble parsing this:
Quoting Terrapin Station
Maybe I misunderstood, as I implied in my answer. What does the above sentence mean? :chin:
So we were talking about making guesses in the way of probability statements.
You said that we could have educated versus non-educated guesses.
So I was asking what we could be educated about that would enable the sort of probability statement being made. Because one of the big problems is that there is no frequency data.
So just what sort of education is behind the probability guesses being made, so that there's any distinction between an educated probability guess versus a non-educated probability guess.
Behave. By Robert Sapolsky. I believe every philosophy major should take at least one serious neuroscience class. This book is a good (and very readable) substitute.
Ah, I see. You asked me before what strong and weak evidence were, and now you're asking what educated guesswork is. Hmm. I'm autistic, and my ability to tell whether you are sincere or not is ... guesswork. I don't have that skill. So I'm going to assume you're sincere. :chin:
Describing evidence as strong or weak is common, and (I think) well understood. And so is the concept of educated guesswork. No, it doesn't refer to a particular form of education. It just describes guessing based on what information we have, perhaps especially where the amount of information we have is much less than we might prefer. I think its purpose is to distinguish itself from random guesswork, which is based on no information at all, just a metaphorical (or even literal) dice roll.
If "objective reality" means mathematical model, as you said, this sentence is trivially false: it is false that there is no way to show that a proposition is true in all models. In fact, all mathematical theorems that have a demonstration are true in all models.
But probably by "objective reality" here you mean "physical reality" or "physical universe". So, the sentence becomes "there is no way to show that a proposition is true in the physical universe". In this case it depends of what you mean by "proposition" and "to show".
If you interpret "to show" as to perform an experiment and "proposition" as a description of a physical experiment, than the sentence is again false, because it is possible to perform experiments in the physical world with a result of "true" or "false" (only that it is not guaranteed a priori that the same experiment gives always the same result).
But if you want to interpret "to show" and "proposition" in the mathematical meaning (as a purely formal system of rules based on axioms) and you want to take as model for the variables that appear in the proposition objects of the physical world, then in my opinion the proposition is ture: you cannot make demonstrations using formal logic referring the variables to objects of the physical world: the porposition can be true or false depending on which particular object of the physical world you are referring to, but there is no way to specify to which physical object you refer using a formal language. So, every proposition interpreted in this sense is not demonstrable, meaning "not true in all models".
This is my opinion, but probably I missed something important because i didn't read all posts from the beginning.. :-) Please say me if I missed something important.