Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

rejectednocomments t1_jbgs6l2 wrote

Reply to comment by LifeOfAPancake in There is nothing to say about truth, admits Simon Blackburn. Here he presents the deflationist approach to truth – one that aims to put an end to the search for a theory of truth, which Blackburn now recognises is futile by IAI_Admin

Well, I want some term which is correctly applied to a statement in case things are as that statement says they are.

If you want to use “truth” in some other way, I guess I can’t stop you. But I still want a term with such a meaning.

12

OuchYouHitMe t1_jbij2td wrote

If there is no way to differentiate the two, then no meaningful distinction can be expressed. Your comment provides no response to this and continues off the challenged premises.

You wanting a term is not an argument in this context. There is a difference between simple practical speech and philosophical terminology dealing with concepts such as truth. So much recognizes Blackburn himself.

2

frnzprf t1_jbiqil3 wrote

Schrödinger's cat experiment is often misunderstood to mean that just because we don't know whether the cat is dead or alive, it is actually half-dead and half-alive.

This has nothing to do with quants though. The same could be said about the shell game: I don't know whether there is a pearl under this shell or not, so it's half-there.

The point of Schrödinger's cat is to connect the actual half-facts (according to popular interpretation) of the quantum world to the macro world.

So, what is my opinion on the shell game? I'd say there is an actual reality independent of my knowledge. I can look under the shell afterwards and learn whether there was a pearl even before I looked. I mean - that's certainly the most popular, "naive" interpretation of reality, isn't it?

Would you say that "the universe" has no opinion about whether there is a pearl under a shell, or about how many fingers I'm holding behind by back, as long as you don't know anything about it?

I admit, it wouldn't cause any problems. It's unfalsifiable whether things really happen that nobody will know about or whether only things happen that people directly or indirectly observe.

Another game: In Germany it's called "Topfschlagen" - "pot hitting". One person gets blindfolded and the other people have to guide them to a pot by shouting "hot" and "cold". The blindfolded person doesn't know where the goal is (if we assume that the others don't help them). I think that means that at least things can exist when one person doesn't know about them - because other people still do. It could theoretically be the case that the pot stops existing once everybody puts on blindfolds.

1

rejectednocomments t1_jbj0l51 wrote

The objection was why care about truth if we can’t get to it?

Now, I never said all truths are inaccessible, only that perhaps some are.

So the objection is: why care about truth if some truths may be inaccessible?

My response is: this doesn’t change whether or not the way some things are might be inaccessible to us, and so we want a term for the way things are which applies in the those cases too. I think the term for that is “truth”, but I’ll go with another if you really insist on using it differently.

1

Hedgehogz_Mom t1_jbj83cg wrote

To my mind, the meaningful distinction is that I am capable of knowing that what I know to be true is not the extent of what may be possible to be true. It removes a limitation of absoluteness. It allows for the limitations of my own conceptual and intellectual abilities. It acknowledges and allows for the real limitation of confirmation bias to which all humans are subject, without closing the door behind what may be possible.

1