jpbrooks

Granted. And the choice of standards is, of course, made on the basis of the values that one espouses.
But why should one adopt a standard of "truth" that stultifies (or at least, throws into doubt) one's ability to confirm truth, rather than one that doesn't?

Adrian Selby

"Furthremore, to test a method against reality would presume knowledge of reality without a means to have knowledge, which is a contradiction." Franc

Square this with your belief in correspondence theory, that propositions are true insofar as they correspond to reality. If you have no knowledge of reality how would you know if they correspond to it.

You'll have to clarify your point here, only all I've ever said regarding truth is that something is true IF it describes something that is true in reality. I don't have to know reality in order to make my statement, it will be discovered to be true by empirical observation no doubt.

Adrian

Francois Tremblay

I never said I had any kind of transcendent means of knowledge that I can compare propositions to. We've already discussed this extensively in another thread, and I'm not sure why you're rehashing it. All I was saying is that the notion of proving a method of proof entails contradictions, one of which was inherent in his presumed method.

NialScorva

You don't. Don't even try, it's a waste of time. What happens is we become metaphysical mercenaries, we find a system that works, and use it so long as it works for us. We don't try to prove it, we just throw it away when it stops working and create a new set of assumptions that do work. This replacement isn't usually very drastic, rather we replace a few bits and pieces that break, and keep the rest of our previous system. As you point out, proof in the strict sense is unnattainable, but you must also realize that proof and truth are only meaningful once you've accepted a system, so the desire for non-circularity once you've already priveledged a system.

Francois Tremblay

Very funny. Let me play a little gig for you. I'll call it the Epistemic Hop. <img src="graemlins/boohoo.gif" border="0" alt="[Boo Hoo]" />

That is not what I said at all. You must distinguish between validation and proof. Of course any such method must be validated by metaphysical axioms and so on - for example, it must be logical. So we don't just hop from one system to another when it suits us (any such whim would be irrelevant anyway). But proof requires a method of proof, which would be circular as I explained before.

[ February 04, 2002: Message edited by: Franc28 ]</p>

Draygomb

I exist. What method would that be. The proof is that I couldn't be thinking about my existence if I didn't exist but what method did I use to come to that conclusion?

rcs

Draygomb,

Induction. You first concluded (that is, internally deduced by you and not me) that you could think about your existance which is a specific fact. You then concluded from that specific fact a general conclusion - i.e., you existed.

Personally, though, I think you are a hallucination resulting from a bad Big Mac I had for luch. But you never know.

NialScorva

Not intended to be funny, but take it as you will.

Oh I understand the difference between validation and proof. You don't seem to understand that I was addressing exactly what you just said: axiomatic choice is necessarily arbitrary and intrinsically unprovable. Because of this arbitrariness, we can do nothing *but* modify axioms when they do not agree with reality. Your demand for a method of proof falls under this category as well, your proof will work fine, but it cannot be proven that your method of proof is 100% accurate. If it ever fails, you're left with little choice but to modify it to prove things that are empirically true.

Francois Tremblay

I never said axiomatic choice was arbitrary. That's an absurd statement.

Even if what you said was true, how do you judge when a method has "failed", without any fixed standard in the first place ? That's kindof ambiguous, don't you think ?

[ February 04, 2002: Message edited by: Franc28 ]</p>

NialScorva

Of course you didn't say it, I did. To generate an axiomatic metaphysical system, they you need a selection function. How do you choose the selection function? How do you choose how you choose your selection function? Infinite regress is considered reductio ad absurdum, so far as I know. Of course, to make the claim that reduction ad absurdum is bad, I must priveledge logic, but I'm not going to insist that you accept it. Not that I have much more to say to you if you don't, though.

One question: How can you rationally choose to accept rationality before you accept it?

Perhaps by the title of the thread: "Using a Methodology to (in)Validate Itself". If your system generates both P and ~P, then you tweak it till one of the two fall out. How hard is that?

How so?