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Jan 16th, 2004 04:29 PM
kellychaos I wouldn't want to live in a world where everyone were exactly alike and experienced an identical truth like a bunch of automotons. I like the fact that there are a few "monkey wrenches" in my machinery. It makes it all the more interesting when I find those that have similiar wrenches, even if their wrenches are metric. Close enough.
Jan 15th, 2004 06:56 PM
theapportioner Yeah, either OAO is utterly, hopelessly confused and self-contradictory, or he is Captain Obvious.
Jan 15th, 2004 06:52 PM
The One and Only... You always seem to confuse the two.
Jan 15th, 2004 06:44 PM
Brandon
Quote:
Originally Posted by The One and Only...
(some bullshit about logic and reason)
Thanks for the recap.

Quote:
Remember, there is a difference between practical truths from which we operate, and real truth.
Well no fucking shit. I love how you act like every sentence you type is a major revelation that will have philosophers creaming their pants.
Jan 15th, 2004 06:23 PM
The One and Only...
Quote:
Originally Posted by ArtificialBrandon
Christ, radical doubt and radical rationalism piss me off.
Christ cares.

Quote:
No, we can't know for sure whether or not this reality is all an illusion forged by a "Master Deceiver." But so fucking what? We seem to be bound to the illusion anyway, and we're not going to find out whether we've been conned or not in this lifetime. Also, if you're so radical in your doubting, why do you still accept the primacy of logic? That wacko Descartes even believed that logic could be another ploy of the deceiver, making someone believe that 2+2=4 when it really equals 5.
Logic is simply the study of how to make valid arguments can be made through reason, and reason is "the faculty by means of which or the process through which human beings perform thought." Without thought, no conclusions can be brought forth - to be more precise, we know of no other way to draw conclusions. So while I cannot truly accept the primacy of thought because I do not know that it is necessary to think in order to draw conclusions, I must do so because I do not know of any other way.

Mathematics is based on axioms, or more appropriately, incredibly well-established inductive truths. Because of this, it cannot provide absolute knowledge.

Quote:
Also, is the mind really as reliable as you make it out to be? Consider distorted memories, disorders like schizophrenia, and denial. If the mind were an infallible source of truth, surely the idea that you could forget something or even reconstruct an event in a different way would be impossible.
I never said that the mind was a reliable source of truth. I simply say that all knowledge must come from reason; I did not say that we actually could know anything.

Remember, there is a difference between practical truths from which we operate, and real truth.
Jan 15th, 2004 05:18 PM
kellychaos My much prayed for puppy never arrived that Christmas and I have been a bitter man ever since.
Jan 15th, 2004 05:13 PM
Brandon
Quote:
Originally Posted by kellychaos
In the case of synthetic truth, I was talking about objectively agreed upon empirical reality, the laws that govern such reality and fact that such reality is proven time and again by repitition and the laws of probability. If this isn't part of the some philosopher's ideal vision of reality, it's good enough for me until something better comes around. I guess I'm a bit of a pragmaticist in the way that, since the absence of a supernatural "reality" hasn't seemed to have lost me any points, I'll get along just fine without it.
OAO doesn't deal in "practicality." He might lose some of his grandiose sense of self-importance if he had to lower himself to the herd mentality of "usefulness."
Jan 15th, 2004 05:09 PM
kellychaos In the case of synthetic truth, I was talking about objectively agreed upon empirical reality, the laws that govern such reality and fact that such reality is proven time and again by repitition and the laws of probability. If this isn't part of the some philosopher's ideal vision of reality, it's good enough for me until something better comes around. I guess I'm a bit of a pragmaticist in the way that, since the absence of a supernatural "reality" hasn't seemed to have lost me any points, I'll get along just fine without it.
Jan 14th, 2004 08:05 PM
Brandon
Quote:
Originally Posted by The One and Only...
Aren't synthetic truths paradoxical? How can anything be compared to reality when we don't even know what reality is?
Christ, radical doubt and radical rationalism piss me off.

No, we can't know for sure whether or not this reality is all an illusion forged by a "Master Deceiver." But so fucking what? We seem to be bound to the illusion anyway, and we're not going to find out whether we've been conned or not in this lifetime. Also, if you're so radical in your doubting, why do you still accept the primacy of logic? That wacko Descartes even believed that logic could be another ploy of the deceiver, making someone believe that 2+2=4 when it really equals 5.

Also, is the mind really as reliable as you make it out to be? Consider distorted memories, disorders like schizophrenia, and denial. If the mind were an infallible source of truth, surely the idea that you could forget something or even reconstruct an event in a different way would be impossible.

At the end of the day, radical doubt amounts to intellectual masturbation. It's a useless philosophy that breeds useless intellectuals.
Jan 14th, 2004 08:02 PM
mburbank Has any one ever mentioned to you that you're just the teensiest bit irritating?
Jan 14th, 2004 06:31 PM
The One and Only... Truth is not what we consider truth to be just because we consider it to be such.

Yeah, I could get into my principles of innate, subconscious induction again, but... no. I'll spare this thread.
Jan 14th, 2004 04:43 PM
kellychaos
Quote:
Originally Posted by The One and Only...
Aren't synthetic truths paradoxical? How can anything be compared to reality when we don't even know what reality is?
Not if they are objective and agreed upon by an overwhelming majority. Hence, when little is disputed by the "we" , then it must be true. I can concede to those beliefs when not only do I see but most others do as well ... otherwise, you look a little like a crazy loner.


Do the voices answer you, OAO?
Jan 12th, 2004 11:22 PM
theapportioner Shitgoth, as I recall, was basically advocating eugenics etc. Hilarious.

Ror:

Kant actually holds that a priori truths are synthetic. Although modern logical positivism holds that a priori truths are analytic.

Onto Quine. Kant's separation of the two truths is based on the idea that the predicate necessarily follows from the subject. Though Kant would disagree, many others would say that 4 necessarily follows from 2+2. However Quine argues that the separation is limited to that subject-predicate relation, and that there is nothing that justifies assuming that a subject contains the predicate.
Jan 12th, 2004 12:39 PM
Protoclown That "ubermensch" comment about Shitgoth made me laugh. Now THAT guy was entertaining.
Jan 12th, 2004 12:27 PM
The_Rorschach "The sun is still composed of a plasma."

The sun is a mass
Of incandescant gas
A gigantic nuclear furnace
Where Hydrogen is turned into Helium
At a temperature of thousands of degrees
Whoah-Ho its hot!
The sun is not
A place where we could live
But here on Earth
There'd be no life
Without the light it gives



And that's one to grow on!

So we're debating priori VS posteriori? To what end? Ultimately, as much as I see Kant's reponse to the question of Absolute Truth to be equalitive with an alchoholic in denial, I have to admit I've yet to come up with anything to debase his assertions. It's just a gut instinct which tells me both are dichotomous, it is self evident, at least in this now, that analytic truths can be drawn from synthetic suppositions/assumptions.
Jan 11th, 2004 07:30 PM
Helm haha I remember him resurfacing once, but he was before my time. Outline his philosophical personality a bit if you aren't too bored.
Jan 11th, 2004 07:17 PM
theapportioner Yeah but that gets old, and he's boring. God I miss the 'ubermensch' chagroth...
Jan 11th, 2004 07:14 PM
Helm We don't need to discuss philosophy when we can discuss OAO's lack of sexual drive.
Jan 11th, 2004 06:58 PM
theapportioner Not trying to get any particular piece of information - just a thought exercise, and I wanted to see what people thought of it. This is a philosophy etc. board but usually there is very little actual philosophy discussed on it. Yes the ideas are quite old, and usually the distinction is taken as given. But WVO Quine criticized this distinction, showing that the boundaries are actually quite porous. I'd have to re-read the argument as I don't quite remember it, but I'm sure it's online somewhere.
Jan 11th, 2004 06:36 PM
Helm Hi CLAsp.

Your 'synthetic' truths are what classic philosophy refers to as axioms, I think. And, yeah, they and more advanced suppositions (your analytic truths?) are verifiable in different ways. In fact, axioms are not verifiable logically. They are considered emyrically evident. Logical axioms create certain self-referential fallacies and as any postmodernist would tell you any argument with logical foundation is invalid at certain levels of description due to this. All this is very basic I don't know what you need to know.
Jan 11th, 2004 05:19 PM
ziggytrix So what?

2+2 still equals 4.

The sun is still composed of a plasma.

I still have to go to work in a couple hours.
Jan 11th, 2004 12:59 PM
theapportioner So you affirm then, that there is a distinction between analytic and synthetic truths?

You can contradict yourself with analytic statements (here is where paradoxes lie), but for synthetic statements, they are either right or wrong. Reality, for the matter of argument, is defined here as the observable world. According to some, the verifiability of a synthetic statement depends on its correspondence to facts about the world. They are not true or false in the sense that analytic statements are, but there are ways of verifying synthetic statements (for instance Peirce takes 'truth' to be the asymptotic limit of agreement by those investigating a certain area of inquiry). Although proving a hypothesis in biology is different from proving a mathematical theorem (obviously you could never know if the biology hypothesis is 100% true), these two are also different from unprovable beliefs and moral statements.

This is the analytic / synthetic distinction.
Jan 11th, 2004 12:52 PM
Anonymous
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dictionary.com
Reality

n. pl. re·al·i·ties

1. The quality or state of being actual or true.
2. One, such as a person, an entity, or an event, that is actual: “the weight of history and political realities” (Benno C. Schmidt, Jr.).
3. The totality of all things possessing actuality, existence, or essence.
4. That which exists objectively and in fact: Your observations do not seem to be about reality.
Jan 11th, 2004 11:50 AM
The One and Only... Aren't synthetic truths paradoxical? How can anything be compared to reality when we don't even know what reality is?
Jan 11th, 2004 11:06 AM
theapportioner
Analytic / Synthetic Distinction
Synthetic Truths - truths that are grounded in experience or fact. Truths that must be verified by comparison to reality - for instance the theory of evolution.

Analytic Truths - truths that are not grounded in fact, but are necessarily true by virtue of linguistic convention. Its truth or falsity is independent of experience. For instance, mathematical truths.

Distinct dichotomy or no?

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