Does a Universal Truth Exist?
- Thread starter Sui Generis
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jeps
Arcadefire
one last universal truth - david bowie has groovitational pull.
Sui Generis
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warpus
Sommerswerd asked me to change this
You dont' know much about mathematics, then.
When we say 1 + 1 = 2, each and every term in that sentence is clearly defined.
1 is defined, + is defined, 2 is defined, and = is defined.
1 + 1 = 2 is a statement that's universal because we've taken extra care to define each one of the terms. You'll get 2 as a result no matter where you are.. or when. or whatever.
You coudl easily redefine what + means and get a different answer.. In fact, this is often done with vector spaces and multiplication.
Sui Generis
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Even so, that is not the universal truth... or at the very least, we can not know whether it is or not.
And yes, I know nothing about math
Fifty
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I'm not assuming jack crap, Its a plausible thesis about the nature of mathematical relation terms and abstract objects!
You can always say "I doubt x!" for any proposition x, but that's more of a statement about you then about the content or truth value of x!
The truth conditions of "knows" are not as high as you think they are. If you think they are, then YOU HAVE TO ARGUE FOR THAT POSITION. Our normal way of thinking about the term "knows" does not entail that it has truth conditions so high that statements of math are in doubt. If you are advancing the thesis that the term "knows" requires extremely high standards, YOU HAVE TO ARGUE FOR THAT POSITION, otherwise we have no reason to believe its plausible.
More necessary truths:
Necessarily, a bachelor is an unmarried male.
Necessarily, the number of planets = 8 (this one, famously, is only true under a certain disambiguation of the term "the number of planets")
Necessarily, 900000000>49
Necessarily, A triangle has 3-sides (restrict the domain of discourse to 2-space or whatever if theres some technical math stuff on triangles that I dont know)
What do you mean by everything? What do you mean by "true for"? If you provide a definition for everything, then that definition is trivially a true description of everything. But is that what you mean by true for?
Sui Generis
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I am not talking about necessary truths. I am talking about a universal truth. Does it exist? Can we know it? Sorry i'm so inept at philosophy, but I am curious about peoples position on this is.
Maniac
Apolyton Sage
You fool! Those truths aren't universal! These truths are a consequence of certain definitions we have to make first. Circular logic.
A universal truth is: "A is true"
Your examples are all: "Assuming A, then B is true"
Sui Generis
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Yea, I walked into that one. I guess I have no idea what I am trying to posit. Guess I got to meditate on this more and come back to this thread.
Fifty
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
When I asked you what you meant by the term "universal", you said "true in all possible worlds", which just is what it is for a truth to be necessary.SO WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY UNIVERSAL!?
Maniac said:
I can't make heads or tales of this, other than to say that you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.
A bachelor IS an unmarried male. There are no assumptions there. Its just a freakin' fact. Note that I'm not saying:
a "bachelor" is an unmarried male
a bachelor is an "unmarried male"
a "bachelor" is an "unmarried male"
Im saying a bachelor is an unmarried male. Its not about words, its about the referents of words.
Sui Generis
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I don't know, I gotta think about what I am trying to say and formulate it in a logical manner instead of putting a one liner I didn't think of before typing. Thanks for bearing with me though, lol.
SO WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY UNIVERSAL!?
Maniac
Apolyton Sage
Of course you don't. Then you wouldn't be able to stay vague and avoid the issue anymore.
IMO a universal truth should say something about the universe (ie reality) that is always objectively true. Do you have a different definition of universal truth?
Your statement says nothing about reality. It is merely a definition. Of the word "bachelor". Therefore, "A bachelor is an unmarried male." always automatically means "A "bachelor" is an ""unmarried" "male""." It's just because most people, like you apparently, lack a good grasp of the universe, they fail to recognize this as a self-contained definition. The "" are of course left out in daily use, but for correctness they should be placed around everything you say, every concept you use.
If you're talking about the physical universe, then it's the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
Fifty
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Of course it says something about reality. I'm not talking about the word "bachelor", or the words "unmarried male", I'm talking about the things referred to by the words! I can point to a thing, a bachelor, in any possible world, and correctly say of it "you instantiate the property of being an unmarried male!"
The thing, a bachelor, just is an unmarried male. That is a thesis about the universe. It may be true analytically, but that doesn't mean its about words.
If you want a non-analytic necessary truth, here's one: water = H2O
Maniac
Apolyton Sage
In the interest of clearly stating my position up front, instead of intentionally staying vague like Fifty always likes to do:
I think there is one "Reality". So the universe is universally true, you could say. Truths about the universe can be approximated can by the scientific method for instance. However they can only be approximated - we can never know the full truth, we can never observe objectivally - we always observe with a certain framework.
So the second law of thermodynamics is not a universal truth. It is a scientific theory, somewhat inaccurately trying to describe the universal truth.
Second part. Universal moral truths. Those don't exist at all. I'm a moral non-realist, using Fifty's definition from another thread.
Fifty
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
You could say that, but you'd be wrong. The universe is a thing. Truth-values are instantiated by propositions. A thing is not a proposition, therefore the universe does not have a truth value.
Name something to which it does not apply.
Gustave5436
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General relativity is a theory describing the "universal truth" of gravitation.
The second law of thermodynamics is a law. Systems tend to increase in entropy as time goes on. This is, like gravitation, an observable truth.
Maniac
Apolyton Sage
'Bachelor' is the name for the concept of 'unmarried male'. Your statement is only true because you have first invented the concept of 'unmarried male'. You are simply defining a thing. 'A = B' (definition) instead of simply 'A'.
'Unmarried males exist in this universe.' Now that is a fact/truth about *this* universe. Well, at least, as long as no one suddenly kills them all.
I don't see how this is any different from your definition of bachelor. You're simply saying two definitions are the same.
No. The Second Law of Thermodynamics is probably the closest you can possibly get to a universal truth. Seriously. It's more true than God is to the most fundamentalist Christian. Energy tends to go towards disorder. That's the most true statement about reality that you can do that's not something about identification or other philosophy stuff.
Unlike something like gravitation which might possibly break (such as being part of a single force at high energy levels), the second law of thermodynamics is true on all scales of all reality.
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