Clutch

Vorkosigan, thanks.

I think that's an idiosyncratic view of philosophical argument, mind you. Are you talking about purely formal proofs? There your claim would be more natural: without an interpretation, the significance of any such proof is unclear. Though in this case, I've provided the interpretation. Really? I might have thought that most people here are committed to the idea that all or most beliefs are provisional -- that is, defeasible in principle. But it's a much stronger claim that truth itself is provisional; it sounds a bit like the sort of thing you have to talk freshman students out of... you know, "true for me", "true for you" and so forth? I don't know how strongly you intend your notion of provisional truth to be taken.

Maybe you're right about the majority view hereabouts, though.

tronvillain

Well, I am committed to the concept of provisional truth, in that while there may be an absolute truth, it can only ever be approximated. Even if your belief happens to be absolutely true, you won't be certain that it is.

Synaesthesia

Two facts strike me as overwhelmingly obvious:

1. I don’t understand how argument works.

2. My failure to understand is directly related to the qualifications of O, namely it being “factive” and “distributive”. I would be very interested in learning what these mean. Clearly both fact 1 and fact 3 are directly related to the meaning of these words.

One other point strikes me. The aquisition of some pieces of knowledge is mututally exlusive. All 20 chess moves may be open to me in principle, but when I make my mistake, I must carry it out to the very end. This suggests to me that, even in my ignorance of the basic meaning of the argument, knowledge is NOT ‘such a notion’.

John Page

Syn:

From the Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics:

factive: (Verb, etc.) whose use commits a speaker to the truth of a subordinate proposition. E.g. know or realize: to say She doesn't know (or She hasn't realized) that it has stopped raining is to commit oneself to the truth of 'It has stopped raining'. Think, by contrast, is non-factive: one makes no such commitment if one says She thinks it has stopped raining.

distributive: Indicating reference to each individual member of a set. E.g. a language might contrast a distributive plural and a collective plural: schematically, girls-distr brought present 'The girls each brought a present' vs. girls-coll brought present 'The girls as a group brought a present'.

Cheers, John

Vorkosigan

Vorkosigan, thanks.

I think that's an idiosyncratic view of philosophical argument, mind you. Are you talking about purely formal proofs? There your claim would be more natural: without an interpretation, the significance of any such proof is unclear. Though in this case, I've provided the interpretation.

I don't think it is very idiosyncratic in terms of the actual behavior of people, who don't pay much attention to what philosophers say about the world. And philosophers themselves pay close attention to science....why would they do that if proofs were so powerful they could stand on their own?

Really? I might have thought that most people here are committed to the idea that all or most beliefs are provisional -- that is, defeasible in principle. But it's a much stronger claim that truth itself is provisional; it sounds a bit like the sort of thing you have to talk freshman students out of... you know, "true for me", "true for you" and so forth? I don't know how strongly you intend your notion of provisional truth to be taken.

To elaborate, I would bet good money that most people here believe that there is something out there, and that we get closer and closer to it with science. That's what "provisional" means. It does not mean "relative."

Vorkosigan

Clutch

tronvillain, vorkosigan,

If there's something "out there", then all that's provisional is our confidence in the long-term warrant of our beliefs, which may approximate to the truth. It seems a confusion describe this view as one on which truth itself is provisional.

Syn,

With respect to our schematic operator O, factivity is:

If Op, then p

and distributivity is:

If O(p & q), then Op and Oq.

tronvillain

Clutch, that's essentially what I said. While absolute truth may exist, in practice it is provisional, in that we only attempt to approximate the truth.

John Page

If you pesuppose 'p' it doesn't mean that 'p' has any better relation to reality than any other 'p'. Vorko was right on the money by stating 'p' is "provisional", an assumption if o will.

Provisionality aside, you cite the case of:
The absurdity results from assuming that two-valued logic can be used universally. Here tron made the relevant observation that (knowledge) outcomes can be considered probabalistically.

My comments may have been obscure but I am saying (human) truth is arrived at as an approximation by comparing the data that comprise our perception of the subjects under consideration.

For something to be absolutely true IMO you would need to have violated the Law of Identity. It seems to me that it can never be absolutely determined if O or ~O for the same reasons as above. You might be interested to compare with the <a href="http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=56&t=000130" target="_blank">Liar Paradox</a> which results in a contradiction when using conventional symbology and method of prepositional logic. If you follow the link I provide above, there is a treatment of "truth" which, when applied to to the outcome 'p' will show that a "factive O" is pretty much like a liar - pretending you know an absolute truth doesn't make it so.

Cheers, John

Cheers, John

[ June 29, 2002: Message edited by: John Page ]

[ June 29, 2002: Message edited by: John Page ]</p>

Mr. Sammi

Very strong words Mr. Clutch, (I am hoping the provisional truth I set up in my first statement will actually approximate to the truth,say in a day or 2). Is this an example of localised-truth in a closed domain of intercourse (hoping you may eventually turn out to be a nice looking gal with decent behavioural patterns and all that) (a truthful joke OR an eventual painful experience).

I guess it must be hard to break (retool) all those freshpeople out there.


To be a little more precise in my intention, after daring to say, I needed some time to think about your content, I hardly see the paradox,in saying, "all truths will be known", except if you wish to use the factive : `"all things known will be the truth".

Are you with me OR did I begin without you.

Sammi Na Boodie ()

Clutch

Sammi,

I'm not with you. Perhaps you started without me. It's not clear to me that you've started at all.

Vorkosigan,

Thanks for your comments.

Doesn't "provisional" in this context also mean "relative"? That is, relative to time, or to state of information?

Think of freshman relativism as Atemporal relativism:

-- "Some people say a god exists."
-- "Well, that's true for them."
-- "But others say that no god exists."
-- "Ah, but that's true for them, too."

Yuck. But is it really any better to adopt "provisional" relativism?

-- "In 1870, the rationally warranted view was that space and time are physically distinct."
-- "Right; that space and time are physically distinct was true in 1870."
-- "But nowadays space and time are not regarded as independent."
-- "Yes, nowadays it's true that space and time are not independent."

Again, yuck. If space and time are not independent, then they were not independent in 1870, either. The idea that our *beliefs* are only provisionally warranted and open to revision -- an idea to which I am deeply committed -- is very different from the idea that truth itself is provisional upon our transient states of information.