Since a mini consensus seems to have been formed saying that you can't know anything for certain, I'd like to oppose that view. For those who said that we can't know anything for certain since our sense perception is our only true way of knowing: In order to know that the only true way of knowing were indeed sense perception, you would have to be seeing something outside of your sense perception to realize that fact in the first place. Even if your sense perception were the only way of knowing and you defied logic realizing that fact with ONLY sense perception, you would have a contradiction. If sense perception were your only way of knowing and you realized this, then your realization would be negated by your own claim to uncertainty, leaving room for absolute truth to exist because of your uncertainty to your uncertainty. Let me phrase this in another way that doesn't use the words "sense perception" so much: Say someone claims: "You can't know anything for certain!" Just ask this person, are you certain? If they say yes, then they have just completely contradicted them self. If they say no, then that leaves discrepancy in the original claim "You can't know anything for certain!" leaving room for absolute truth to exist. The same goes for similar truth claims to uncertainty: "Truth is relevant relative", "Truth is what you make of it", "What is true for you may not be true for me" And so on. What I would love to know, is if anyone has anything to say in opposition to this logic.
Well, the first thing that comes to mind: what logic?
I can say that a square has three sides, but that doesn't make it true, and it doesn't automatically make it logic because I say it is. If we analyze that statement logically it looks a little more like this:
Claim: A square has three sides
Logic: An object cannot be a square if it has any quantity of sides other than 4
Outcome: The claim is false
That's not a "formula" or anything for logic, just a nice organized layout of the analysis involved.
As for the other claims:
"Truth is relative"
Well, relative to what? First off, just because something is "relative" doesn't make it "false" or "unknowable." Secondly, you can't just claim that something is "relative." It has to be relative
to something. There must be some standard by which to measure it's relativity. Thirdly, truths
aren't relative. They are either true, or they are false. There is no in between for a truth or false. A concept or thing which is partially true can always be divded up into its true sections and false sections, for example:
The sky is blue because the ocean is blue. "the sky is blue" is true, but "because the ocean is blue" isn't. (I think it was CAFG who informed me of my error in this in some other topic about the cause being the blue oceans
)
"Truth is what you make of it"
All this means is that you can accept a truth and still act opposite. The sky is blue, but I can damn well say the sky is green if I want. It doesn't make me right, but if I say it loud enough and persistently enough, people might even listen. This also is not logic, it's a claim. Logic is what you apply to a claim, to decide the properties of the claim, and not the claim itself.
"What is true for you may not be true for me"
Well, duh. This only applies to certain cases, but:
Bob: I believe sea gulls are awsome. (true, because bob actually believes that)
Frank: I believe sea gulls are awsome. (false, because frank does not actually believe that)
With respect to the above claim, it is important to categorize the case, because something like 2+2=4 will be true for both of you, because you are not relevant to the validity of the equation, but in a case where you are relevant to the validity of a claim, then the "what is true for you may not be true for me" applies.
It is important to note that people can say anything they want: it doesn't automatically qualify as a valid claim or as logic. Sometimes, the use of an illogical statement can "stump" you simply because you don't realize that it's illogical, kind of like the 3 claims above. I think (but could be wrong) that you fell into this trap, Cecil, because you said "similar truth claims to uncertainty" at one point, then called it "in opposition to this logic" later.
For those who said that we can't know anything for certain since our sense perception is our only true way of knowing: In order to know that the only true way of knowing were indeed sense perception, you would have to be seeing something outside of your sense perception to realize that fact in the first place.
What about the realm of "concepts"? For example, you cannot "sense" some two. Two is not a thing or object. If you show me two shoes, I would say you have a pair of shoes, but that isn't "two" Two earrings isn't "two", it's a couple of earrings. Maybe "Two" is pretty rare then, so instead show me some "one." So you show me a single piece of cheese, or a shoe. Well that isn't "one," that's just a piece of cheese, or a shoe. Can I smell some "One"? Taste it? Touch it? Maybe I can hear it. You rap on a door, but that isn't just some "one", that was a rap on a door. One or Two is a quantity which can be applied to objects, but is not itself an object which we can perceive through our senses. Rather, it is rationalized. I struggle to find the best terminology for this, and perhaps the best analogy I can think of is comparing it to counting all the points on the line segment between 0 and 1 on an axis. You know all the points, but you can't count them, because there are infinitly many. Same with One or Two, you can't make them physically, but you know it conceptually. You can represent all the points by writing [0,1], and you can represent 1 or 2 by a shoe or pair of shoes, but you can't actually show every point on [0,1] or "1" or '2"
I think if you want some straight up truth, ask someone to disprove 2+2 = 4. If there are no truths (or the only truth is that there are no truths), 2+2=4 must be able to be disproven. And I wouldn't accept some BS answer like, well 2 dogs bang 2 other dogs and have 14 puppies, so 2+2=18, I want someone to show that if we juxtapose a quantity of 2 and another quantity of 2 that we don't have a sum of quantity 4.
Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on May 29 2009, 7:24 am by Vrael.
None.