Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

LifeOfAPancake t1_jbkuf0o wrote

Reply to comment by frnzprf 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

I’m not proposing an idealist theory of Truth. Your case of the red ball has an important nuance. It is not about the present indeterminacy of the red ball being there or not. This is something that CAN be checked, it is a falsifiable theory. If you were to add as a premise that the box is indestructible and that it is impossible to verify whether there is a red ball or not, then we have an issue where we have to banish the possibility of objective Truth.

There might in fact be an objective Truth, the ball is there or it isn’t, but what good is it to us if its impossible to have the truth one way or another? If I correctly guess that the red ball is in there (assuming the objective Truth is the red ball is there), I will never be able to benefit from the objectivity of this truth, because for me it will always be doubtful, so it is inevitably reduced to the level of belief. So what good does it do me what the objective truth is? Even if I am holding the truth in my hand, I don’t benefit from it.

This indestructible box example is a better metaphor for your question of the consciousness of another being (AI, or even another human), because as far as an outsider is concerned, we can only make educated guesses based on intuition about the existence of a consciousness in another mind. Strictly speaking, you have never directly seen concrete evidence of another person’s mind, and so based on a theory of 100% certainty, you might as well be solipsistic. But we operate without having to know absolute truth. I operate on the basis of a very strong intuition that other minds are conscious, without a certainty about it. I have banished the need to know the objective truth here and allowed myself to be satisfied with an uncertain, but accessible and functional, subjective truth.

1

frnzprf t1_jbm11n8 wrote

> So what good does it do me what the objective truth is?

I don't disagree that true propositions that aren't known to me, aren't useful to me.

I just don't draw the conclusion that "true" and "possible to know" is the same concept. Maybe that depends on what possible means. Like "theoretically possible" vs "practically possible".

> There might in fact be an objective Truth [...] assuming the objective Truth is the red ball is there [...]

This looks to me like you agree that unknowable truths can exist.

You say there are propositions that can be true without anyone knowing them as it happens to be, such as a particular person is a philosophical zombie - a biological robot, or there being water on a planet beyond the observable universe.

You say that there are no true propositions without anyone knowing them because they are impossible to know, by principle, such as undetectable ghosts existing or them not existing.

Is that correct? That would be less controversial than if propositions of the first category couldn't be true either. I'm not sure, maybe the philosophical zombie belongs in the second category. Consciousness is weird anyway.

Can you think of good examples that people really care about in the second category - principally unknowable, and therefore impossible to be true or false claims?

Supernatural claims often just propose alternative physics. People say that ghosts act against the laws of physics, but they could theoretically exists and if they turned out to exists, the written laws of physics would need to be adjusted to accomodate them.

The existance of the judeochristian god is a weird claim. It depends how he is actually defined. Maybe god according to an unfalsifiable definition would occupy this space of neither true or false.

Is god's existance an example of unknowable claim? Does it make the claim neither true nor false or just false?

You can ignore the rest if you don't have much time.

"Possible" is an interesting word. I have a theory that possibility as opposed to certainty always has something to do with incomplete knowledge. In a universe without conscious humans with blind spots, there is no "possibility". It's not an inherent property of a shuffled deck of cards to be random. It can just be random to an observer. That's my weird theory.

If I'm correct then there is no difference between a fact that is impossible to know and a fact that I just happen not to know. Everything that is not actually the case, is impossible and everything that is the case, is impossible to be different. Possibility only arises when you don't know some facts or ignore them.

Well, maybe there are levels of impossibility. I can get to late to work, because I didn't set an alarm. Given that fact, it is impossible to arrive on time - but this excuse won't impress my boss. If I had to break the laws of physics or even logic, that's an arguably deeper level of impossibility.

1

rolyfuckingdiscopoly t1_jbsbd9o wrote

An interesting question is: why does the truth have to be immediately useful? Why would it be that truth must benefit you, or me, or any of us?

And- if it must be useful— is it not useful to have an idea, an inexact but working model, of the way the world exists independent of ourselves?

1

LifeOfAPancake t1_jbu3n2m wrote

It doesn’t have to be ‘immediately’ useful, it doesn’t have to be useful at all. But, if we are to care about truth, we care about truth FOR some reason. The question “why do I care about Truth” presupposes that it might be possible to answer “I don’t.” So it is not intrinsically necessary that we care about Truth, so it is up to us to justify our desire for it.

I think truth is useful to many people. You want your romantic partner to truly love you, you care about the truth of their feelings. Many examples where we care about truth. So then how do we get truth? You’re right, an inexact but working model of it is the best we can do. Thats what I was also getting at with my idea that we don’t care so much about absolute Truth, but only subjective truth.

1