Can one know "the truth"?

[Zelig]

Math is not "truth". Math is a tool for examining and labeling. You cannot take math, in and of itself, and prove itself, on the nature of itself. Numbers are not real, they're a system of comparison.

Lots of numbers are real: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_number

And seriously, from the information we know now, there are pretty decent odds that your assertion is false.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/07/130715070138.htm

If you study the philosophy of mathematics, you could even convince yourself that mathematical truths would exist independently of humans or even the entire universe.

 

[Adjuvant]

I'd say it's nice you believe in math that way. I happen to believe a man came back from the dead about two thousand years ago.

From the outside looking in, it's about the same, I figure.

 

[Kyriakos]

@Timtofly: re idealism, the fundamental premise of it is not nihilistic*, it is not a claim that we cannot think of anything correct or in a correct way; it is only that we cannot know a reality of anything external to our mental world which is forming the system of observation and expansion of understanding.

*some thinkers have presented idealism as nihilistic, and of those the most famous one would be Nietzsche. But his own notion of what idealism is does not accurately present that premise in its totality. I alluded to various degrees of idealism; one can think that he can expand the complexity and inner logic of his thoughts/examinations perpetually, and gain from that, but still not near any "reality" of something external to those. He would be an idealistic. One can think that no one else has a world of thought or is even conscious. This solipsism also is an idealism, just another variation of it.

Edit: I just checked the wikian version of a definition for idealism, which is decent and general, so:

In philosophy, idealism is the group of philosophies which assert that reality, or reality as we can know it, is fundamentally mental, mentally constructed, or otherwise immaterial. Epistemologically, idealism manifests as a skepticism about the possibility of knowing any mind-independent thing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idealism

 

[Zelig]

I'd say it's nice you believe in math that way. I happen to believe a man came back from the dead about two thousand years ago.

From the outside looking in, it's about the same, I figure.

Well no, minus the planet Earth ever having existed, there are still seven planets, and zero zombie jesuses.

 

[Adjuvant]

Well no, minus the planet Earth ever having existed, there are still seven planets, and zero zombie jesuses.

edit: edited to be nice, although it's good to see when I bend, you can be classy.

 

[Tahuti]

Lots of numbers are real: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_number

That's a genetic fallacy.

And seriously, from the information we know now, there are pretty decent odds that your assertion is false.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/07/130715070138.htm

If you study the philosophy of mathematics, you could even convince yourself that mathematical truths would exist independently of humans or even the entire universe.

Maths are still pretty much abstract concepts. Maths are used as a layer you can plaster over reality to get a better picture of it, but I wouldn't dare to say if mathematical truths exist independently of the universe or not.

 

[Zelig]

That's a genetic fallacy.

That's a joke.

Maths are still pretty much abstract concepts. Maths are used as a layer you can plaster over reality to get a better picture of it, but I wouldn't dare to say if mathematical truths exist independently of the universe or not.

Well, independent of the universe is up for debate, and isn't a debate that I find particularly interesting or relevant, I'm just pointing out its existence. However, independent of humanity is a pretty strong case.

 

[eduhum]

Math is to the universe what the soul is to our body.
It exists, but it exists only to fulfill this question: Why? Not what, nor how, but why?

Taking as true the traditional rules of logic, every cause has an effect. And so every question has an answer.
I think that the mere ability, be it intellectual or even physical to ask ourselves
'Why? Not how, but why the universe would exist'
Proves the existence, better said, the 'being' of maths.

 

[Krogan Doctor]

One can definitely know the truth.

 

[Borachio]

How do you know this?

 

[BvBPL]

The premise presented in the op that one who is close to the truth cannont know it is plainly adsurd. Yesterday I had lamb for lunch. I know this to be true exactly because I was involved and close to the lunch. Had I been distant From the event I would have no idea of the veracity of any statement about what was served. It is only in b3ing close to the thing at hand that allows meto kn8w the truth.

Check I even know the true value of pi. It is the circumference of a circle divided by its diameter. That I am unable to express that value fully in a decimal system is a failing of that system, not of my ability to understand the true value of pi.

Sent from my SM-T210R using Tapatalk

 

[Kyriakos]

The premise presented in the op that one who is close to the truth cannont know it is plainly adsurd. Yesterday I had lamb for lunch. I know this to be true exactly because I was involved and close to the lunch. Had I been distant From the event I would have no idea of the veracity of any statement about what was served. It is only in b3ing close to the thing at hand that allows meto kn8w the truth.

Check I even know the true value of pi. It is the circumference of a circle divided by its diameter. That I am unable to express that value fully in a decimal system is a failing of that system, not of my ability to understand the true value of pi.

Sent from my SM-T210R using Tapatalk

I don't agree with this view, cause it is a particular reading of my (most excellently refined, obviously ) OP: true, you know what lunch you had, and you were close to the actual lunch. This does not have much to do with you being able to know what lunch you had if you were unable to surround yourself with any number of false statements, beliefs or views. The quote by Kafka seems to me to very prominently refer to the "truth" being something (as mentioned by myself later in the first page of the thread) in the realm of the mind, so to refer to basic external phenomena and knowing they are true is not against that premise (which is exactly why i myself mentioned pi, due to it being a mental calculation).

Idealism, afterall, is not about someone claiming you cannot know what you ate last night. You clearly can (unless you were eaten by something? don't know). It refers to the view that any sort of knowledge we have is based on a system which is seperated from anything external to it; ie our mental world. Kafka's quote seems to refer to a sort of limit in the attempt to know truth, formed due to us needing the non-truth to even focus on a concept of truth.

 

[warpus]

It would seem to me that people do not want the truth, because they cannot accept it. So throwing all of it out and starting over seems to be what humans have done. Maybe I am misinterpreting your statement.

You are. The suggestion that I was responding to is that we assume that everything is true and then start crossing off things as false when we realize they are false.

That is an unworkable and not very good way of doing things, since you'll start off with an infinite amount of statements that you assume to be true - a lot of them contradicting other ones, for example "God is red" and "Gord is green" and even things like "In the centre of Mars there is a blueberry pie" and "In the centre of Mars there is an apple pie"

Not a very good way of keeping a list of what's true.

Well, truth doesn't really exist in a meaningful sense anyway, since it is contradistinguished from false at best. Truth is the likeliest form of "maybe". How many scientific theorems that were long considered to be undeniable facts ended up being proven false? I don't know any precise numbers, but I'd say a lot.

I don't disagree with any of that, but if we're going to go with "Assume everything is true, go from there", you're going to get a list of things that are true, things that are maybe true, and the vast majority of statements in your "truth hat" are going to be completely random things that are most probably false, such as "After death you turn into a zebra and get ice cream"

A much better system would be to start off with a list of "maybes" in your "potential truth" hat and a list of "probably trues" in a "probably truth" hat. You don't need to put "Invisible unicorns eat cherries at midnight" in any of the hats, it would just make the whole system of keeping track of what's true and what isn't very inefficient.

 

[Ayatollah So]

Now as an aside, as I read Kafka's "actual quote" which you've generally paraphrased from the beginning, "There are only two things. Truth and lies. Truth is indivisible, hence it cannot recognize itself; anyone who wants to recognize it has to be a lie."

The beginning of that quote does help to explain it, thanks. Not that I think it gets Kafka much closer to the (ahem) truth

 

[Kyriakos]

You are. The suggestion that I was responding to is that we assume that everything is true and then start crossing off things as false when we realize they are false.

That is an unworkable and not very good way of doing things, since you'll start off with an infinite amount of statements that you assume to be true - a lot of them contradicting other ones, for example "God is red" and "Gord is green" and even things like "In the centre of Mars there is a blueberry pie" and "In the centre of Mars there is an apple pie"

Not a very good way of keeping a list of what's true.

[...]

Not only that, but even if one could supposedly prove this sort of thing (eg that when you die you do not turn into an alien sand-fungus) he still could not prove that this statement is not true for any other moment which may be limited only by the actual time of your death. It seems highly plausible/logical to assume that the multitude of false statements is vastly larger than the multitude of true statements (although it may be crucial that not all types of phenomena have only one true statement about any of their seperate qualities; ie the atomic and the cosmic will not be easy to include in the same theories).

 

[warpus]

Surely the number of false statements in existence is an infinite set. That alone sort of settles it for me.

 

[Kyriakos]

Surely the number of false statements in existence is an infinite set. That alone sort of settles it for me.

Not sure if it is actually infinite though (in the mathematical sense). Wouldn't that sort of require that everything is infinite? (can a finite world have an infinite number of reflections about it, stemming from a finite number of beings - human or alien)? And that is only as long as the world is finite, or infinite but in some sort of relation to the sentient beings in it (ie canceling idealism). If it is not, then i suppose that the false statements are anyway smaller than those in theoretical existence (from a non-sentient being's point of view).

 

[warpus]

Not sure if it is actually infinite though (in the mathematical sense). Wouldn't that sort of require that everything is infinite? (can a finite world have an infinite number of reflections about it, stemming from a finite number of beings - human or alien)? And that is only as long as the world is finite, or infinite but in some sort of relation to the sentient beings in it (ie canceling idealism). If it is not, then i suppose that the false statements are anyway smaller than those in theoretical existence (from a non-sentient being's point of view).

It's infinite because you can come up with a new concept no matter how many concepts already exist. So, let's say "gnorking", that's a new concept. It's when you flap your wings sideways while orbiting Jupiter on a Tuesday while riding a gnork.

I'm not really sure how to prove that you can come up with an infinite number of these, other than proving that it's possible to come up with an infinite number of names for concepts. For that part you just create a context free grammar that does such a thing - a very easy thing to do.

But let me dilute my statement to say "There are many many many many more craploads of untrue statements than true statements" for a second, because it frees me of the obligation to prove things while still making the same point.

 

[Kyriakos]

But let me dilute my statement to say "There are many many many many more craploads of untrue statements than true statements" for a second, because it frees me of the obligation to prove things while still making the same point.

I agree with that. Just did not really like the term "infinite" being thus used.

There is a nice story by Borges about a similar idea*, called The Library of Babel. You might like it

*Vast numbers of false variations of something, with only one real object. Still not infinite variations (at least this is the general view of the narrator).

 

[Zelig]

Surely the number of false statements in existence is an infinite set. That alone sort of settles it for me.

So is the number of true statements.

1. This is a statement.
2. Statement 1 is a statement.
3. Statement 2 is a statement.
etc.