John Page

Congrats - fascinating to watch them figure out reality as they grow up!

John Page

LinuxPup & Bill:

Here's another point to ponder. The Law of Identity and the Law of Non-Contradiction contradict each other, how can there be contradictions if everything is just itself?

Cheers!

dostf

kim:

Enjoyed reading your post!(finally). Your use of logic is commendable.
That being said i offer a few things.
Without a long "thesis" on what i think as "truth", I will state that all expressable "truth" -no matter logic,science, mathematics, philosophical etc. are known by "human". I would submit they are a "part" or expression of that truth that is "human".

My definition of truth relies on my definition of reality: reality is the experience of continuity.
......and following explanation.
-this is a "time" based proposition. Is "time" always experienced in a "linear" fasion?
- an event/experience/sense perception/ remembered and compared from "memory" is often "not true".
- mentally ill people experience this continuity also, (senses,memory, etc.)what is "real" there?


For now i will not address all the points you have made further (time issues).
However, i suggest that "mind", always will attempt to categorize, organize, compare, and order, in an attempt to explain that which it cannot ie "truth". Logic and reason are a product of this "mind" and therefore incomplete.(but certainly useful to a point)

Endnote- I hope to get to your music thread soon, but as I could not answer this thread fully, it's going to be a challenge!

Kim o' the Concrete Jungle

Adrian Selby said:
You didn't describe a different context where a normal human being walked through a wall, you described a computer game where a simulation of a human being walks through a simulated wall.

The difference between reality and a computer game simulation of reality is a contextual difference. The trouble here is that you are trying to redefine my own terms out from out underneath me, and render them meaningless. If I can allow you your own definition of an axiom, why can't you allow me my own definition of context?

I've said this before, and I really consider it a waste of time having to say it again: you can get around the problem of context by incorporating context into your "true" statement, but I do not want to do this. I would prefer to consider context seperately and out in the open, where it is not going to be overlooked. You can call the combination of context+statement an "absolute truth" if you want, but I wouldn't because of "uncertainty", as I've defined it elsewhere in this thread.

I've never studied Plato, but not wishing to talk about the truth behind statements instead of the wording of them isn't a sufficient reason to doubt there is truth behind statements.

Do you really mean to suggest that the hypothesis that says "there is an ideal truth independent from our statements of truth" should be assumed, and the null hypothesis -- to which I prescribe -- should have to be proved?

With regard to Aristotle, I'm sure he formulated logical laws, but was the fact that something is itself and not another thing invented by him, or just some language that described that fact.

The language that describes the fact is the only thing that you can know, the only thing that you can write down or say or work from. Again, I do not want to step out of the human point of view to assume some "ideal form" of the laws of logic, because I cannot be other than human.

Finally, I'm not trying to get you do to anything, other than to point out things I'm not sure work in your theory. Surely that's the reason for posting this here, to accept critical scrutiny (good or bad) in order to ascertain the stability and internal coherence of your theory?

Do I sound frustrated? It's because I am. I would have welcomed some analysis of the functional aspects of the theory. Instead, I'm getting a bunch of hassle about my arbitrary decision to leave out "absolute truth", which has nothing to do with the functionality of my model. Perhaps I shouldn't have argued about why I made this arbitrary decision -- but then someone would have said: "my philosophical model is better than yours because it is absolutely true, whereas yours is just arbitrary, nyer nyer."

Personally, I think that arguing over arbitrary founding assumptions is a fairly bad way of assessing the viability or otherwise of a philosophical system. It leads to the kind of muddle this thread has become. A better method is to assume the model as given, and then look at where it leads you.

When I look at the "absolute truth" model, not from the context of its founding assumptions, but from the context of what it leads to, I find that it causes people to think that they are personally in the possession of an absolutely true statement (presumably because they have logically derived their statement from premises they believe absolutely true). This does not agree with my perceptions of people's statements. My perception is that a statement someone honestly believes true, is sometimes proven false by subsequent evidence.

Consequently, when I come to create my own model, I feel I have to leave room for "uncertainty". And if I must allow for uncertainty, then I cannot assume that people can possess absolute truths. So I leave absolute truth out of my model. Is that such a hard thing to grasp?

Bill Snedden wrote:
To my mind, "absolute truth" refers to something that is necessarily always true within the limits of human cognition. I admit, as do you, that human knowledge is necessarily limited, but even so, there are some things that we must accept as true and always true if we want to avoid solipsism.

The trouble is, when you state something as "absolutely true" you are inviting argument. To say something is "true" implies that you have proved it. So I say, "okay then, show me the proof." That way, madness (and infinite regression) lies.

You say, "the law of identity is necessarily and always true within the limits of cognition." To which I would say, what about a dynamic system, where A might transform into B? Let's say that A="a coffee cup", B="a pile of broken crockery", and condition C="a hammer applied with force." When is A not A? After condition C, that's when.

So you see, we end up arguing about the fundamentals and never get anywhere. So instead of saying, "It is absolutely true that...", it is better to say, "Let us assume that..." And if you are making a critique of a philosophical system, it is better to accept the assumptions (even if you only do so "hypothetically") and critique the model according to the results it produces.

In my system, I accept logic because it agrees with the perception of continuity. And I do it that way around, because I know that I perceived continuities long before I knew what logic was. Perception of sensory data is more basic to human being than abstraction. I don't understand why you all think I'm supposed to be arguing against logic.

As to solipsism, we avoid it, not by assuming absolute truth, but by agreeing on terms, which involves making arbitrary assumptions.

Adrian Selby

"my philosophical model is better than yours because it is absolutely true, whereas yours is just arbitrary, nyer nyer."

I take your point, I do realise I'm not focussing on your system per se. But I suppose being someone that thinks there can be context independent or objective truth, I have difficulty understanding why some people give up on it, or call sentences such as 'I perceive' arbitrary with regard to their truth. If indeed a system founded on absolute truths can exist, I think its worth the pursuit, even if people like myself, and people far more intelligent than myself fall short of proving it.

"The difference between reality and a computer game simulation of reality is a contextual difference. The trouble here is that you are trying to redefine my own terms out from out underneath me"

Well, you seem to be arguing that the truth about human beings and walls, in my example, is contextual. And that there could be a context in which it wasn't true, i.e. that such a statement's truth was arbitrary. My point was that I couldn't see how there could be a context in which 'real human beings can walk through solid marble walls' could be true. If I were only to say 'human beings can't walk through walls' then I suppose I haven't stipulated that they should be real, as opposed to on a computer, but given the stipulation, I'm asking how there could be a context where a real human being could walk through a real marble wall. If the context in which a real human being could walk through a real marble wall can be true if you simulate the two on a computer, then that's quite a trivial (in the non perjorative sense) point. For me, the two can't be compared.

If you're saying that it is true real human beings can't walk through marble walls but simulated ones can walk through simulated walls, then it is true in either case that real human's can't and simulated humans can. But in the real case in particular, if we can never have a real human being walking through a marble wall under these conditions, I think we have a candidate for an objective truth. The fact that it is in a different context to a truth about simulated things is apparent, but I'm not sure that the former is denied the status of objective truth by the latter, and I question whether we can refute the truth of this statement.

There is a hard skeptic view of statements about humans and marble walls, I could never prove that for all time humans will not be able to walk through such walls under these conditions, but I wonder at what point such a demand on objective truth becomes too harsh.

Adrian

WJ

"As to solipsism, we avoid it, not by assuming absolute truth, but by agreeing on terms, which involves making arbitrary assumptions."

I agree. That statement kind of reminds me of apriori-synthetic propositions about a some- thing. In much the same way a baby learns about the world, it is percieved that a some thing is true until it is experienced otherwise. And when it is experienced, the elements of subjectivity still rear their ugly heads, as it were.

Likewise, I think John Page mentioned contradiction viz. identitiy and lnc. My question would be regarding truth viz. the self-referential statements from the liar's paradox.
Not only is the paradox resolved thru perceptural experience, it proves (epistemologically) that at a snapshot in time, contradiction can and does exist.

I do still see a common 'thread' with regard to truth being epistemologically subjective, as the perciever must ultimatly make this [a]determination (infer or deduce) from whatever the objective principle might be, by in fact using his own cognitive abilities/function, which of course are subjective.

Does that mean we can't infer that, for instance, people don't universally/absolutely feel the same way about the basic needs of having sex, eating, food, clothing shelter? No, I don't think so. I think we can all safely assume a certain degree of universal truth to those needs. Nevertheless, the cognitive science people tell us that no-one person percieves the same object of desire in the exact same way, twice. So, through this statement of inference or inductive reasoning, I believe it. And if two agree to this concept, is it an absolute truth? No, because we can't get inside each others head's to verify how we are each perceiving the matter. Thus epistemologically, truth remains subjectivity.

You might say that if human's are subjects, but physically, are represented as an object, what is consciousness? That question perhaps goes back to Bill's question, of how do we know we exist? In our minds we exist, but what comprises our thought process? Some people (gnostics) infer that we are spiritual beings (thru metaphysical electrical forces/phenomena)living a physical life involving objects.

Sorry, but the mind-body 'problem' seems to be, in fact, quite a insoluble one.

Just my 2 pennies. I suppose we need another clarification of absolutes, universals, yada yada yada.

(?)

Walrus

[ April 04, 2002: Message edited by: WJ ]

[ April 04, 2002: Message edited by: WJ ]</p>

John Page

Hi Walrus!

FYI I don't think the Liar Paradox emanates from self-reference - circular reference perhaps. Maybe I'll start a thread on the non-self referencing version.

In place of "paradox resolved thru perceptural experience" I would suggest "paradox resolved thru an understanding of the process of perception". Also, I think it would be rash to believe we can resolve all paradoxes in this manner. One example is the <a href="http://www.magnolia.net/~leonf/sd/pd-brf.html" target="_blank">Prisoner's Dilemma</a> which might be considered a paradox.

Cheers!

WJ

Hi John!

Awsome! I should have known better. Leave it to you to bring about such conundrums <img src="graemlins/notworthy.gif" border="0" alt="[Not Worthy]" />

Well, let me say briefly this is exactly another example of the problem with logic viz. Being. Would you [all] agree that by simply doing nothing, that the problem of paradox goes away? If the answer is yes, it would not make sense.

As Beings, we simply can't do (think/act/be/exist) 'nothing' to begin with!

(Don't mean to steer the discussion in a different direction, but John seems to always bring-up interesting points.)

BTW, the liar's paradox is resolved aposterior, no? If so, it lends itself to 'truth' having a continuious relationship with experience.

Walrus

John Page

I think the reader of the Liar has a choice of context of the word "true". Let me suggest some contexts. Literally, the word "true" does not equal "sentence", but then neither does "false". Taken a posteriori and assuming the word "true" is a valid representation of a fixed abstract value "true" the Liar becomes a tautology (So using this context in the so-called weakened Liar the two tautologies contradict each other). Third, taking the word "true" as a representation of the result of a comparison, we have to find the two things to compare. This third context is the one used by propositional logic (and ontologic) and it (prop. logic) ends up comparing an 'abstract' value with a 'real value' to contradict itself.

I did start preparing the start of a Liar thread but got distracted by the following hypothesis. "The very act of cognition requires that our senses lie to us by filtering the uniqueness of the objects in external reality. For example, to see all the keys on the keyboard where I'm typing it seems my consciousness is assuming that, apart from their legends and positions, all keys are the same. This behavior is not consistent with the Law of Identity."

If so, this would be a huge irony. Why? Because the process of the mind would be violating an axiom of logic in order to perform logical analyses. I'd love to prove this, it would be so hilarious! (It would also enable me to respond to your second sentence by observing that we have a continuous experience with falsity also.)

Cheers!

[ April 04, 2002: Message edited by: John Page ]</p>

Bill Snedden

But one would never say that they are the same. The phrase A = A is merely a shorthand representation of the law of identity, which states "a thing is itself". It does not literally mean that the first A is exactly the same as the second A in the equation.

Your A = A' would read, "A is equal to A prime", or "A is equal to something other than itself." This is a violation of the law of identity.

No, the flaw appears to be that you are insisting that the representation of logical arguments be taken literally rather than symbolically as they are intended. A = A is a shorthand symbolic representation of the law of identity. It applies to concepts which are represented in the equation as A.

Let's use cows, as you did earlier. Substituting we get, "a cow is a cow". Notice that this does not refer to any particular cow, but to the concept of "cow". What it tells us is that a cow cannot be something other than what it is. A cow cannot be a pencil box, a cow cannot be a house, a cow cannot be an accordion, and so on. With this and the law of non-contradiction we can also know that no two cows can be the same cow.

This goes back to the original point Kim was making. Truth does depend upon context. When you try to remove the symbolic or representational context from mathematics or formal logic, the statements may become incoherent. However, this says nothing whatsoever about the underlying truth of the concepts within the proper context.

No, unfortunately not.

In addition, I'm confused regarding your second note about an apparent contradiction between the law of identity and the law of non-contradiction. In fact, there is no contradiction present; the laws are complementary.

If a thing is itself, then it cannot be both itself and something else. This is essentially what the law of the noncontradiction states

Regards,

Bill Snedden