Re: Universality as warrant for relative truth value

Neil W Rickert <rickert+nn@xxxxxxxxxx> writes:

Haines Brown <brownh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
Neil W Rickert <rickert+nn@xxxxxxxxxx> writes:
And,
yes, f=ma does not explain anything; it is a prediction based on a
generalization of experience.

Oh, no, it isn't any kind of generalization. It is a *definition* of
mass,

We are not disagreeing, at least not on the surface. It is, of course, a
definition, but it is also an abstract description of past experiments
that verified the truth of the relation of these variables. This
simple-minded conventional reply does not address the possibility that
you may be making a postmodernist point. However, if you intend one, I
can't respond unless you make it explicit. All you do is to deny my
statement, which in itself carries no weight.

Perhaps. In a scientific context, by theory I meant an exposition of
the general principles of a science or description of the organization
of a domain of our world that represents a broad consensus of experts
in the field, or an explanation of a situation for which there is a
consensus that it is as close an approximation of truth that we today
are able to achieve.

Apparently you use the word otherwise. What is your definition?

Theories come in different forms, so perhaps there isn't one
definition that fits all. But, generally speaking, what constitutes a
scientific theory is a set of empirical principles that serve as a
guide to scientists in that field (or subfield).

I find the word "empirical" here odd, for it would preclude the
unobservables that scientists regularly handle, such as gluons. So I'll
ignore it. You offer a definition that apparently refers to rules of
action (one meaning of the word "principle" and implied by "guide").

While I'd not necessary object to your definition, it is significant
that you disregard the three standard definitions of theory that I more
or less copied here from a standard authority that defined what the
term means to people and that might have the odor of truth value. Since I
happen to believe that theory can have truth value, I'd not be inclined
to drop the standard definitions and embrace only the one you
offer. This I would do only if you offer a convincing warrant for your
alternative, but for some reason you omit it. If you don't have one, you
are only "profiling" as they say here. Outside religious witnessing, to
agree or disagree is only a precondition for constructive discourse, not
a substitute for it.

There's a postmodern view that the authoritative weight behind an
established theory represents an imposition on the thinking of other
scientists in that it brings pressure upon them to conform.

To an extent, I agree with that. However, postmodernism takes that
too far.

What do you mean, "to some extent"? Do you agree with this bit of petit
bourgeois ideology (sorry for the provocative terminology, but it is
easy to argue that what I described as a postmodern view is simply
instance of that). So it becomes important just what your position is,
rather than merely say you agree and disagree simultaneously. To what
extent do you agree, and wherein do you disagree? You have not said
anything.

There's also a postmodern view that suggests that mind (logic,
language) is the sole foundation of knowledge, and I consider this
just as problematic as the old empiricist view that the world has that
function.

"Sole foundation" does not have a clear meaning to me.

My understanding of the postmodern position is that it holds the
operations of mind to represent the foundation of meaning (words or
logic the independent variable, if you will, while the world is a
dependent variable), and not the world outside the mind (as in
positivism) or the relation of mind and world (as in critical empiricism
or Marxism). Do you hold to one of these three positions, or, if yet
another, would you specify what it is?

Defining words as they are commonly used is indeed circular, but
instrumental. That's the purpose of a dictionary, to support effective
communications, not to convey conventional truth. Encyclopedias do
that.

I don't know about that "instrumental" part. I would be more inclined
to use the word "simplistic".

How can you suggest that when dictionaries facilitate communications by
offering conventional meanings for words, it is unrealistic
("simplistic")? It may be unrealistic, but you don't say why, and so
your point is without substance. When I said "instrumental" I was using
the word in the conventional sense of a means to an end. You cast doubts
on the appropriateness of the word, but since you don't say why, I am
forced to disregard your comment, not by choice, but by necessity.

To ascertain the generally held meaning of words we turn to
dictionaries.

That would be a mistake, IMO. For one thing, words do not have
meanings. People mean things, and use words to convey that. But the
meaning is not a property of words.

Well _finally_ you offer an unconventional point with some justification
for it, but I'm not sure the justification makes any sense, at least not
in conventional terms. When we say a word has a meaning we only
associate a meaning with a word and do not imply that the meaning is a
property of a reified word. The word is only a sign that points to
meaning. For example, when I say f=ma, the letter "f" is only a symbol,
and it is the force to which the "f" refers that has the properties.

If you disagree with this, please let me know why.

I might use a dictionary to get a preliminary idea as to what is meant
by the use of a particular word. But all I could get that way would
be a preliminary idea. I would need to study the scientific
literature, where that word is actually used, to get a better idea of
what is meant.

For example, I have a scientific dictionary that suggests that fact is
an event, phenomenon or fragment of reality that is an object of man's
practical activity or knowledge.

That sounds like a useless definition.

It is very useful, for when someone uses the word "fact," I've got some
idea of what they mean by it. Your point seems contrary to common sense
and is not accompanied by any justification, which means in principle
that it should be ignored. That is, if I said the moon consisted of
cheese, that would be an unconventional view, but if I don't offer any
justification for it, my statement means nothing except an indication of
my lunacy (if you excuse the pun).

fact refers to the object of knowledge, while knowledge is our
understanding of these facts.

That does not make sense to me. The "object of knowledge" would seem
to be the world. And facts are not the world. I see a fact as simply
being a true statement.

We are not disagreeing. An object of knowledge is an aspect of the world
or that portion of the world to which a knowledge refers. Yes, facts are
true statements about an object of knowledge. I did not say that a fact
_is_ the world, but rather an object of (true) knowledge. A hypothetical
rock on the other side of the moon never seen by man is real, but not a
fact until it is seen. Our discovering the rock does not create it, but
establishes it as a known fact.

Is it not the consensus today that "fact" is both subjective and
objective at the same time? Or so I thought.

I don't know what is the consensus. Typically, people take facts to
be objective. However, since facts depend on meaning, and since
meaning is subjective, facts cannot be entirely objective.

Again, you are not disagreeing. Who today suggests that facts are
entirely objective? When we say "objective fact", we don't mean they are
independent of consciousness, but, to the extent our consciousness of
them is constrained by the world, acquire truth value. Without that
constraint, facts don't exist; we have only fictions.

If you are willing to offer cogent and better definitions of fact
and/or knowledge, I'd be interested in knowing what they are. Since we
are speaking of the conventional meaning of words, I have every reason
to adopt them for myself unless an attractive alternative shows up.

I take "fact" to be just a true statement about the world. Currently
I am taking knowledge to be the ability to generate true statements
about the world, and to interpret statements about the world that are
received from others.

So where do we disagree?

I personally see action as the foundation of truthful knowledge, not
in the sense of a pragmatic test of the truth value of a hypothetical,
but as the beginning point and necessary condition for the
construction of truthful statements.

I can't work out what that means.

Sorry. What I was suggesting was that as we engage the world and thereby
learn about it, what we learn acquires truth value because this
interaction is a mutual determination; truthful knowledge is an emergent
property of the mind that arises because of this interaction (this point
is disputed by those who suggest that our knowledge of the world is
socially constituted. However, I believe this is a false distinction
because as "social beings" our engagement with the world is at the same
time a social engagement).

Incidentally I was careful to say "engage" the world rather than observe
the world. To posit a person as gaining knowledge from passive
observation seems an artifact of Cartesian ontology. Our aim is not just
to understand, but to change it (Marx, roughly).

What I was getting at was that action is the mechanism from which
knowledge emerges. We act first, and as a result acquire truthful
knowledge. One might argue that this is a dialectical process in which
there is no priority ("chicken and egg"), but my answer would be that we
historically started out as biological entities that acted without
consciousness, and so consciousness seems the emergent property).

My objection to pragmatism is that the truth-status of knowledge
acquired from experience remains uncertain or hypothetical until we
perform a future test or observe a future outcome. The substantial
difference here is that action implies processes, which in turn entail
unobservables (in a realist view), while the future outcome is only
the empirical qualities of an observed state, leaving the status of
unobservables uncertain.

If we mistakenly follow Descartes and assume that mind and body are
ontological categories, then perhaps one can't say there is a
determinant relation between them. But if we instead embrace a
materialistic monism, then that problem disappears, and facts are
those aspects of the world that are represented in the mind and that
we (a community) can agree are truthful because the sentence
corresponds to its referent.

I am not a dualist. However, there may be more problems with
materialistic monism than with Cartesian dualism.

I did not mean to imply you were. On the contrary, I suspect you respond
to the Cartesian contradiction by a reduction of world to mind. But
since you don't state your position, that's only a guess.

Most of the atoms that today constitute your body, will be gone within
a few months, replaced by other atoms. Thus you cannot be identified
with a set of atoms. Unless I misunderstand what you mean by
"materialistic monism", I think that's a problem for the view you
embrace.

Your point about the persistence of identity does not seem relevant to
the issue of materialistic monism. As an organic being, I'm an emergent
level that is not reducible to my constituents (atoms). In daily life,
people see persistence as the perpetuation in time of an association of
"essential" (vs. accidental) properties. While there are problems with
this, both scientific and philosophical, it does at least illustrate
that what I am that people see as being human is not my atoms, but
emergent properties that don't reduce to my atoms. To change the tire on
your car does not make it any less a car.

You seem to be uncertain about the materialistic monism that is the
consensus among scientists today. For this reason, your objection means
nothing without some kind of justification.

Monism is the metaphysical view that all reality is subsumed under one
fundamental category of being or existence. Off the top of my head,
there seem to be three possible monist ontologies: materialism,
objective idealism and supernaturalism. In the last, all observables and
unobservables are instantiations of a supernatural mode such as a
god. In idealism, matter and possibly the supernatural are
instantiations of objective ideas. In materialism, everything is an
instantiation of matter and emerges from it. But I'm only speculating
here on what the consensus view might be.

In any case, materialism holds that the only substance is matter, and
levels of reality emerge from its interactions. This, I believe, implies
that all things are systems and processes, which might also perhaps
distinguish materialistic monism from the other monisms. For example,
phenomena emerge from the relation of our senses and the world, and
consciousness is an emergent property of the brain. I tend to think that
what helps distinguish materialism is the point that all things are
contingent, are systems and processes.

A point about which I wish I was more certain is my presumption that
ontological modalities can't interact by definition. That is, efforts to
posit connections between the two modes in dualism seem to introduce yet
added modes of being that appear contradictory and problematic, such as
a demi-Urgos (Plotinus) or Great Chain of Being (as described by Arthur
Lovejoy). I believe Cartesian dualism has had the effect of positing a
mind-body dualism that such positions as critical empiricism try to
reconfile. It inherits a sense that consciousness and world are separate
categories in tension rather than merely two aspect of one catefory, of
one process. I would love to know reasons why this speculation is
unwarranted.

A materialist monism is the basis of science and is the consensus among
scientists as the metaphysic that is appropriate to science. A few
(Penrose, for example), are dualists, but even then they seem to put
their supernaturalism (and in the past, an occasional objective
idealism) into separate and isolated compartments of their lives, and so
it becomes more a personal solution than a coherent statement about the
world.

As you suggest, there may be problems with the metaphysic of a
materialistic monism, but it is so basic to our scientific practice that
it seems natural to most people. In any case, you once again only
question materialistic monism without offering any grounds for your
doubts.

As for your example, I suppose that what the Martian misses is a
meaningful context in which to understand the import of dots on paper.

Doesn't that amount to saying that you can only define "truth" for
those who already know what it means?

Yes, but not quite. There's a difference between the meaning of the word
"truth" and the possession of truthful knowledge. The Martian would not
know the word truth, of course, but presumably has truthful knowledge,
for otherwise it would not have successfully made the trip to earth.

Scientists send spaceships to satellites of Saturn. These space
probes send back information. We take that information to be true
because we have tested the equipment that gathers the information for
the accuracy of its processes. Once we receive the information, we
reach conclusions about the way things are on that satellite of
Saturn.

I take that as an example of where we assess truth based on our
conventions (as embodied in the instruments). And then we decide the
way the world (or the satellite) is, based on those true statements.
So we are using truth to indicate that the statements are consistent
with conventions, and we then use correspondence to establish what
reality is like.

I present that as an example of why I think it better to consider the
correspondence theory to be a theory of reality, rather than a theory
of truth.

But the instruments are not just "conventions" but also exist as the
result of our interactions with the world. We test the equipment for its
ability to yield truthful information, yes, and these tests involve yet
other instruments that have the same status. Circular? Yes. However not
when considered in real, i.e, historical, terms. That is, a particular
instrument relies on other instruments, but instrumentation has evolved
from simpler instruments and ultimately the crudest tools of Homo sap,
and at each step of the way, success in the past warrants our confidence
in our current instrumentation (note that I'm speaking of measuring
instruments, not a scientific theory as a whole, which is an
abstraction).

You have a certain confidence in the fact that your typing your message
will have a certain effect in your computer and eventually your words
reach the newsgroup. Now I could play the schoolboy and say that your
typing is an illusion in the mind of a god on Mt. Olympus, just as is
your computer, the newsgroup and the rest of the world. Nothing
illogical about such a suggestion, but people don't adopt it for good
reason; logic is not the foundation of truthful knowledge. Also, it
would, in effect, amount to a kind of suicide. Such a solipsism would
necessarily be meaningless to anyone but oneself, and since we are
social beings, a position that contradicts our own existence is by
definition meaningless.

--

Haines Brown, KB1GRM



.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Universality as warrant for relative truth value
    ... scientists in that it brings pressure upon them to conform. ... "Sole foundation" does not have a clear meaning to me. ... not to convey conventional truth. ... And facts are not the world. ...
    (sci.philosophy.meta)
  • Re: A quote (and question) about intuitionism
    ... |Is that a definition of truth? ... then, according to the meaning, the statement is sometimes ... considered appropriate by a lot of constructivists, ... fact that we have ways of discovering facts about the past. ...
    (sci.math)
  • Re: This is what the animals were at war with do
    ... him with facts, truth, logic, or reason. ... You don't just ditch your mates if they disagree with 2% of what you ...
    (rec.motorcycles)
  • Re: This is what the animals were at war with do
    ... him with facts, truth, logic, or reason. ... You don't just ditch your mates if they disagree with 2% of what you have to say do you? ...
    (rec.motorcycles)
  • Re: How to make photos for ebay?
    ... Don Lancaster wrote: ... simply disagree with most of it. ... I simply stated the facts. ... You may or may not see the way, the truth, and the light within a year ...
    (alt.marketing.online.ebay)
Loading