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Truth: Capital “T” and Small “t”
Theologians and philosophers deal in the world of perfection, the ideal – capital “T” Truth. My degree is in Mechanical Engineering; I deal in the world of close enough – small “t” truths.
Tens of thousands of years ago, a great scientist observed that the sun rose in the east every morning and set in the west every night and concluded that the sun rotates around the Earth. And that was close enough to allow us to do some good stuff like navigating around our world.
Tens of thousands of years later, another great scientist, after making more refined observations, concluded that the Earth travels around the sun in a circular orbit while spinning on an axis. That was close enough to allow us to do even more nice things like navigating at night.
Many hundreds of years later, Kepler observed that the planets’ orbits are elliptical, and Newton gave us the mathematics to chart their movements. That was close enough to get us to the moon.
A few hundred years after that, Einstein made some adjustments to Newton’s approximation, which allowed us to do things that I don’t understand and don’t really care about because I’m an engineer living in the world of close enough.
Our succession – or progression – of small “t” truths should convince us that there is a capital “T” Truth out there somewhere because each new approximation is more useful than the last. We may get to that Truth someday or we may not. Either way, we can get close enough.
Published in General
I think @timh is an astrophysicist.
Actually, it does not matter to me whether we are in a simulation or computer game. My perceptions matter. And we have what works – what is useful.
It is obvious that there are lots of contrary beliefs that exist in the world that do not stop people from functioning. Why does there need to be one truth?
I choose to believe that G-d wants a relationship with me, and the Torah is G-d’s personal gift to me to teach me how to do that. So it is an absolute “truth” – yet for me and not necessarily for you.
This is a misstatement. Each person has their own version of what is fair; that does not make their version “the answer”.
The Torah is a guide. And other people and G-d are the relationships with which we need to engage. It is all about growth and seeking holiness.
Our theologies diverge here, so I’ll leave it.
You have taken leave of the English language.
Star Trek (original) asks “Is there no truth in beauty?” Now there are big ideas in philosophy and theology that teach of an ultimate unity of the good, true, and beautiful–which reminds me of the title of my next book.
But yeah–they are different concepts, at least on lower levels than the levels of those big ideas.
There may be some subjectivity in beauty; there certainly is in taste. But it’s not subjective that a Beethoven symphony is more beautiful music than “Hit Me, Baby, One More Time.”
As for the logic, it looks to me like iWe has a nice refutation of an argument Richard is not making–something along the lines of “Some views are more true than others, so truth comes in degrees, so there must be some possible view which has an unlimited degree of truth, and so there is absolute truth.” iWe gave a good counterexample–an argument having the same pattern of reasoning, but with true premises and a false conclusion.
It looks to me like Richard’s argument is quite different, though. It’s not an abstract argument about different degrees of truth; it’s a practical argument about different degrees of alignment between our ideas and objective physical reality.
That there are different amounts of truth in our ideas does not support the existence of an absolute truth–that’s the argument iWe rightly refutes.
But the fact that objective physical reality determines the accuracy of our ideas does support the possibility of some idea which would be 100% correct–which I take to be Richard’s argument. If there’s anything wrong with that argument, I don’t know what it is. (An argument that physical reality is not objective might succeed in undermining a premise of the argument.)
But I’m still hoping that iWe was being sarcastic.
This argument, it seems to me, would require one to reject the Theory of Evolution out of hand. How could organisms have adapted to a subjective environment?
I could live with that.
But anyway–an argument that physical reality is 100% subjective would be folly. An argument that physical reality is partially objective has a lot of potential. A little Heisenberg, a little reflection on the fact that physical reality is affected rather a lot by human activity–and you can get some Pragmatism going.
Sure. And that is why my kid who changed the cars tires a few weeks ago got a special reward while the kid who watched him got nothing. It’s also why dad gets to eat the last donut because it’s his birthday. That’s fair.
From your perspective. I’ll wager that your kids would not always agree. Mine certainly do not, which is why “fair” is a banned four letter word in our home. We tell our kids that nothing is fair, and they need to suck it up.
Perhaps. I confess I prefer the Hebrew word “emet” which means “good faith”.
I truly (in good faith) do not believe that there is a “true” objective reality that exists independent of perception. Neither do may physicists (all observation changes the thing being observed). That is in the realm of physics.
In the realm of humanity, insisting on a single Truth is usually quite counterproductive to productive conversation and growth. Each person’s perceptions and beliefs are their reality. And my conversations with people who disagree with me are far more productive and constructive if I start by acknowledging that they perceive and believe what they do, not insisting that there is only One Truth, and that I probably have the inside track toward getting there.
Indeed, if I am able to accept that others disagree with me, then they are in turn more able to accept that I can disagree with them. Both parties come away with more respect for the other and the willingness to actually hear what the other is saying, away from the alienating baggage of “I am right which means you must be wrong.”
This was my first and key point. The OP was not logical to me.
I do not see either the need for nor the existence of a physical reality that is objectively “true” regardless of observation (and subsequent human interpretation).
A glass is not a glass unless we call it one. The shape and composition of the glass is necessary but not sufficient to “make” it one. To other people it might be a projectile weapon, a single-use hammer, a rolling pin, a desk ornament, a plant potter. To physicists it remains 99% empty space. To chemists it might be a poor beaker. To biologists it might be a petri dish. There are infinite ways to describe the glass that are all true enough, without any of them being a comprehensive descriptor.
All organisms adapt to the environment they perceive.
Darwinian evolution isn’t based on the organisms’ perception of their physical environments. What you’re describing sounds more like Lamarckian evolution (e.g., I wear a hat in response to my environment, so my offspring are born with hats).
Abraham Lincoln often asked his audiences: “If you call a dog’s tail a leg, how many legs does a dog have?”
“Five,” was the invariable answer.
“No,” Lincoln would respond, “The correct answer is four. Calling a tail a leg does not make it a leg.”
The label we apply to an object doesn’t change the object, nor does the use to which we put it.
People often relabel things or other people to justify what they want to do with them. Slaves, for example, were labelled “sub-human” by proponents of slavery. Unborn babies are labelled “fetuses” or “non-persons” by pro-choicers. When the Nazis labelled Jews, “Untermensch,” did Jews physically change and become less than human?
Of course it is. An organism does not need to know the chemical structure of compound, or whether an atom is mostly empty space or whether the sun rotates around the earth. They need to know the available inputs: temperature, water, nutrients, toxins, biomarkers, etc. These are all measured only by whatever means the organism has for detection. Sounds like perception to me. There is surely no objective detection means available.
Of course it does. The Coca-Cola bottle in “The gods Must be Crazy” was anything but a coca-cola bottle to the natives.
I completely agree. That is why I say a neutered cat is not “fixed” – it is broken. Language is incredibly powerful.
In the eyes of the Nazis, of course they did. Recall, for example, that Nazis very rarely raped Jewish women. Beastiality is not attractive for most people. The application of language absolutely can make other people more or less human.
You are in fact making an argument from the premise that somehow what matters is the physical change. My point is that the physical shell that is a human body was not the primary characteristic of what makes a Jew – not to the Jews OR to the Nazis.
Does a soul exist? It does to me. It does not to most people. Neither of us can “prove” our assertion. But the belief that a person has a soul changes everything to do about a person. Labeling a person an animal changes them in profound ways, but with no physically measurable way whatsoever.
No. Viruses, like the earliest forms of life, have no sensory organs nor have they brains to perceive or evaluate sensations. Yet, they evolve. Darwin’s Theory of Evolution doesn’t posit that individual organisms morph to adapt to their environments. Rather, he argued that organisms whose random mutations happened to better fit them for their environments were more likely to survive and reproduce.
But their perceptions didn’t change the bottle. It merely changed how the bottle was used.
We’re arguing past each other. You’re saying that perception can change the way in which people act. I totally agree. I’m saying that perception cannot change an object, though I agree that perception can change the way we use an object. Once we use an object in a new way, that use can change the object. Using a Coke bottle as a hammer can cause it to break. Treating a person as sub-human could cause his death. But that change was not made by our perception of it, it was made by our actions.
Either way, you’re implicitly making my point by admitting that the Coke bottle exists regardless of how – or whether – we perceive it.
A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.
If we all stopped perceiving the world, would it stop existing?
The OP was misunderstood by you.
Whether you personally see the need for it is quite irrelevant to the OP’s argument.
Well, that’s a bit of Jamesian pragmatism. I have not the slightest objection to it.
But what sort of metaphysics is this? James recognized that our ability to make of reality what we want of it is constrained by the physical facts.
James also recognized that reality is not 100% physical, which seems to be the real significance of what you are talking about here. That these non-physical aspects of reality are shaped by our perceptions and preferences has no support whatsoever for the view that the physical reality itself is dependent on our perception and preferences.
Berkeley sort of thought so.
If “we” includes G-d, yes.
Well, it was his argument for the existence of God.