Trust, but verify (reply to David Deutsch)

Back in the early days, before Trump Derangement Syndrome set in, I did a post entitled:

Are the laws of physics mere social conventions?  No, they are social conventions.

The basic idea was that theories are beliefs, but not “merely” beliefs.  There is nothing more important in the entire universe that mental states such as beliefs. Now, after a delay of 7 years, David Deutsch has left the following comment:

The astronomy example puzzles me; how closely our model reflects objective reality is somewhat orthogonal to whether “objective reality” exists in the first place. Elsewhere, the author asks if a model that is right 99.8% of the time is “false” while one that is right 99.99% of the time is “true” (or something to that effect). Truth is quantitative/probabilistic, not binary; some models are more “true” than others, but their level of “truthiness” is still an objective fact.

If this well known piece by Asimov has not been referenced yet, I’d be surprised, but here he sums it up quite well:

“When people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together.”

http://chem.tufts.edu/answersinscience/relativityofwrong.htm

I have no idea if it is the David Deutsch, one of the smartest writer that I have ever read, but in the off chance that I have been honored with a comment from him, then I really need to offer some sort of response.  First, a bit of context.  I was defending Richard Rorty’s views on truth (sometime summarized as “truth is what my peers let me get away with”).  Or perhaps one might say, true things are things that are regarded as true. Not surprisingly, this drives lots of people crazy, because we all see things that others regard as true, which clearly don’t seem true, and there are things that we see as being obviously true.  Is this Rortian stuff too much relativism?

I don’t see it as relativism at all.  I don’t see it as the world of fuzzy post-modern philosophers attacking the virtuous hard sciences.  It’s important not to get confused by semantics, and focus on what’s really at stake.  In my view, Rorty’s views are most easily seen by considering his denial of the distinction between objective truth and subjective belief.  In order to see why he did this, consider Rorty’s claim that, “That which has no practical implications, has no theoretical implications.”  Suppose Rorty’s right, and it’s all just belief that we hold with more or less confidence.  What then?  In contrast, suppose the distinction between subjective belief and objective fact is true.  What then?  What are the practical implications of each philosophical view?  I believe the most useful way of thinking about this is to view all beliefs as subjective, albeit held with more or less confidence.

Let’s suppose it were true that we could divide up statements about the world into two categories, subjective beliefs and objective facts.  Now let’s write down all our statements about the world onto slips of paper.  Every single one of them, there must be trillions (even if we ignore the field of math, where an infinite number of statements could be constructed.)  Now let’s divide these statements up into two big piles, one set is subjective beliefs, and the other pile contains statements that are objective facts.  We build a vast Borgesian library, and put all the subjective beliefs (i.e. Trump is an idiot) into one wing, and all the objective facts (Paris is the capital of France) into the other wing.

Now here’s the question for pragmatists like Rorty and me.  Is this a useful distinction to make? If it is useful, how is it useful?  Here’s the only useful thing I can imagine resulting from this distinction.  If we have a category of objective facts, then we can save time by not questioning these facts as new information arises.  They are “off limits”.  Since they are objective facts, they can never be refuted.  If they could be refuted, then they’d be subjective beliefs, not objective facts.

But I don’t want to do that.  I don’t want to consider any beliefs to be completely off limits—not at all open to refutation.  That reminds me too much of fundamentalist religion.  On the other hand, I do want to distinguish between different kinds of beliefs, in a way that I think is more pragmatic than the subjective/objective distinction.  Rather I’d like to assign probability values to each belief, which represent my confidence as to whether or not the belief is true.  Then I’d like to devote more of my time to entertaining critiques of highly questionable hypotheses, than I do to less plausible hypotheses.

Thus if someone tells me that I really need to read a book showing how 9/11 was a CIA plot, my response is, “No, it’s not worth my time.” It’s possible that it was a CIA plot, but so unlikely I don’t want to waste limited time trying to refute the view that Al Qaeda launched the attack.  It’s not that I believe Al Qaeda’s culpability is an objective fact; rather my subjective belief that it was Al Qaeda is so strong that I don’t want to waste time on it. Ditto for my view that 1+1 = 2.  On the other hand, at some later date new information on 9/11 may arise and reach the headlines of the New York Times, where I see it.  Now I may want to read that book.  Similarly, I can imagine a physicist not wanting to read some idiot’s crackpot anti-Newtonian model in 1850, but finding anti-Newtonian models quite plausible after the work of Einstein.

The subjective/objective distinction would only be useful if it put some ideas off limits, not open to questioning.  There are certainly some ideas where it’s a waste of time to question them, but I don’t like this as a general category, because I don’t know where the boundary lies between claims that should be beyond questioning, and claims that should be open to question.  So it’s simply more pragmatic to regard all statements as being beliefs about the world that are open to question, and then assign probability estimates (guesstimates?) to the chance that these claims will be overturned.

The other point of confusion I see is people conflating “the map and the territory”. Then they want to view “objective facts” as aspects of the territory, the underlying reality, not (just) beliefs about the territory.  I don’t think that’s very useful, as it seems to me that statements about the world are always models of the world, not the world itself.  Again, if it were not true, then theories could never be revised over time.  After all, Einstein didn’t revise reality in 1905; he revised our understanding of reality–our model of reality.

Reagan said “Trust, but verify”.  That means it’s OK to believe that certain things are true, but always be open to evidence that these things are not true.

PS.  Recall this statement I made above:

Rather I’d like to assign probability values to each belief, which represent my confidence as to whether or not the belief is true.

Rorty was criticized when people pointed out that one often hears something like the following:  “Although most people believe X, I believe that Y is actually true.”  If there is no objective standard to determine whether X is true, then what can this statement possibly mean?  I seem to recall that Rorty said something to the effect that when people claim Y is actually true, despite most people believing X, they are actually predicting that in the future Y will eventually be regarded as true.  Or maybe it’s a claim that, “If other people had seen what I saw, then they would also believe Y is true.”

PPS.  Back in 2013 I mentioned Deutsch in a post:

David Deutsch likes to sum up his philosophy as:

1.  Problems are inevitable.

2.  Problems are solvable.

The horrible nationalism sweeping the world was inevitable, and it’s solvable.  Good times will return.

PPPS.  I had a discussion of Deutsch’s views on quantum mechanics, and well as Eliezer Yudkowsky’s views, back in this 2013 post.

 


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68 Responses to “Trust, but verify (reply to David Deutsch)”

  1. Gravatar of Major.Freedom Major.Freedom
    4. December 2016 at 13:44

    “Truth is quantitative/probabilistic, not binary; some models are more “true” than others, but their level of “truthiness” is still an objective fact.”

    Once again, age old attacks on Rationalism leading to self-detonating arguments but are still masqueraded as subtle and complex insight on the nature of our minds.

    That argument on what truth is, that all truth is “probablistic”, ITSELF presupposes a “binary” structure of truth apart from the ostensive “objectivity” of the “level of truthiness”. Namely, it is making a definitive claim about the binary, objective truth of our minds; that our minds are definitively structured in such a way that every thought we could ever have cannot be definitively and non-probabilistically true.

    It is one of those argument that if true, becomes false to think as true by its own terms.

  2. Gravatar of JimP JimP
    4. December 2016 at 13:51

    Scott

    You really ought to read Donald Davidson’s response to Rorty. There is nothing left of him when Davidson is done – nothing. I can send it to you if you would read it.

  3. Gravatar of ssumner ssumner
    4. December 2016 at 14:01

    JimP, I read one book where a philosopher debated Rorty, and he lost badly to Rorty. Lots of people seem to have trouble understanding what Rorty is actually saying, and they attack views that Rorty does not hold. But I’d be glad to take a look, if you can send me a link.

    If you think there is “nothing left”, then you underestimate one of the most important philosophers of the 20th century.

  4. Gravatar of Major.Freedom Major.Freedom
    4. December 2016 at 14:03

    “In my view, Rorty’s views are most easily seen by considering his denial of the distinction between objective truth and subjective belief.”

    Then his denial is itself merely a subjective belief of his, and has no basis in the reality of other people’s minds. Why should anyone think as objectively true about knowledge, what are by his own account merely his own subjective beliefs?

    Moreoever, the argument that there is no distinction between objective truth and subjective belief, is itself yet another appeal to objective truth. To argue everyone’s minds are “this” (capable of no more than personal beliefs) and not “that” (capable of knowing objective reality), is itself an argument about the objective reality of the ability of the human mind.

  5. Gravatar of JimP JimP
    4. December 2016 at 14:06

    Scott

    Here is a dreadfully long paper on Davidson v Rorty on objective truth – truth independent of us -. Davidson claims truth must be entirely independent of us if it to be even remotely interesting. Otherwise it is mere belief and no more.

    Use a word search on “objective”. That way you will not have to read the whole thing.

    http://faculty.umb.edu/steven.levine/papers/Rorty,%20Davidson,%20and%20the%20New%20Pragmatists.pdf

    Jim

  6. Gravatar of Anon39 Anon39
    4. December 2016 at 14:16

    Dr Sumner,

    I think one of the reasons people go insane reading your posts is because you don’t outline your moral philosophy. Of course the truth is that you have, and you’re a strict utilitarian. But reminding readers of your moral framework in every post would, in a better world, blunt criticism.

    Some of these commenters have different moral frameworks, and the comments section went from fascinating discussions of economics to people shouting past each other.

    Utilitarianism and cosmopolitanism demands that nationalism be viewed as evil. You and I could never like Trump, based on this basic moral framework. If people understood that they could at least put your (justified) criticism of Trump in context.

    You can remind your readership, on every post about Trump, that America First is an amoral policy. We have no duty to other Americans that isn’t Trumped by utilitarianism and globalism. We owe nothing to racists in Indiana. And marginal dollar value should be the lens for how we can help other people. (Hint: Americans won’t get any tax dollars or protection).

  7. Gravatar of Major.Freedom Major.Freedom
    4. December 2016 at 14:52

    “…one of the most important philosophers of the 20th century.”

    That is a subjective belief, is it not?

    Do you know the most important philosopher of the 14th century? Who cares who is important on a century basis? What matters is the quality of their ideas, and Rorty is low quality, but extremely “useful” to make work philosophy departments struggling for funding, and governments who need intellectual justification to spread lies and propaganda. People are too stupid to low objective truth anyway, so lying to them is nt really lying, but rather only contributing to the “truthiness” of all political discourse.

    Trump becoming elected is a direct outcome of the very philosopher you promote. Let that sink in.

    “But I don’t want to do that.  I don’t want to consider any beliefs to be completely off limits—not at all open to refutation.  That reminds me too much of fundamentalist religion”

    How about THAT conviction right there? Is that conviction up for refutation? Oops!

    And there it is folks! The actual reason Sumner peddles Rorty is because Rationalism looks and feels too much like religious fundamentalism. Not surprising at all. Most attackers of Rationalism do so out of their stance towards religion. The danger is too great, isn’t it? Don’t you search for truth, because religious fundamentalists have brought great harm to people, and they believed they had truth about man on their side, instead just believe me to be telling you the truth.

    Well, guess what? Your supposed solution is also fundamentalist. It is fundamentalist in its very stance towards the ability of the human mind, and in so doing, presenting the world with an internally contradictory creed that tells people not to trust their own minds, but to somehow trust the minds of the people who say the human mind cannot be trusted. “As a human you are categorically unfit to know objective truth, and you are a danger if you think otherwise”……a statement from and by a human.

    Rorty is “useful” you say? Useful to whom? Not to me!

    Useful to exactly who? Who would actually benefit more and more, if more and more people distrusted their own minds and started to take on faith what the attackers of the human mind say and do? Didn’t Orwell warn us of this?

    Rortyism is an anti-social weapon that arose out of the emptiness and fear that resulted from an abandonment of Rationalism. It can only ever be used to persuade people to intellectually self-disarm, to become impressionable, all of which ends up, unintentionally or otherwise, as being “useful” to power seeking cabals who preach a secular form of social engineering and domination.

    The Rortyists, who know social reality better than the rest of us saps, are to be protected and made safe and secure by the institutions of power, and relied upon for “pragmatic” solutions to social problems, which by design is based on falsehoods and deceit. After all, nobody can know truth…except the Rortyists.

    Don’t anger the Gods=States! Appease them by weakening and sacrificing entire populations.

    Against all this still stands Rationalism. It has not fallen. Rortyism is an echo of the perennial attacks on the human mind. Frightened haters have been around for millennia. They prey on the frailties and imperfections of people.

    Anybody who tells me to distrust my own mind is an enemy not a friend. Show me how I am wrong by appealing to my reason, not your fears or my fears.

    “The horrible nationalism sweeping the world was inevitable, and it’s solvable.”

    With the tools you currently have at your disposal, destroying nations can only lead to world statism.

    Is that what you want? A world state? Are you a globalist, Sumner? Do you want the populations of India and China to determine world governance? Or do you prefer for an electoral college style format where the US population can determine US governance? Don’t answer that, it will probably make your head explode if you tried.

  8. Gravatar of AL AL
    4. December 2016 at 15:01

    ‘Usefulness’ in this context is an interesting way to frame questions about objective reality…but you’re really saying “useful for resolving good-faith disputes between elites”.

    The worrier in me is terrified of a Presidency that uses Orwellian tactics to batter elites senseless with a post-truth reality, to the cheers of the masses.

    So maybe not so useful, after all?

  9. Gravatar of ssumner ssumner
    4. December 2016 at 15:08

    JimP, You said:

    “Davidson claims truth must be entirely independent of us if it to be even remotely interesting. Otherwise it is mere belief and no more.”

    We have no access to truths that are beyond belief, so those truths are of no relevance to humans.

    And the adjective “mere” should never be applied to belief. What is more important than human mental activity? Is anything more important?

    Einstein believed in Special and General Relativity. Aren’t those beliefs really important? I think so. Suppose I believe that I love someone? Isn’t that belief important? Again, I’d say so. Now think about a universe with no life (or God). Is a fact about a rock in that universe of any importance? I doubt it.

    Did Davidson write that paper? The author refers to Davidson in the third person.

    Anon39, Many of my commenters have contempt for non-whites, or non-Americans. They can’t be persuaded by me, only by the narrative arts.

  10. Gravatar of Scott Freelander Scott Freelander
    4. December 2016 at 15:26

    Scott,

    How is this Rortian perspective adding any value? Scientifically, one must always say there is uncertainty. Even if string theory, for example, turns out to be a final theory of fundamental physics, testing 100% correct against observation for 2 billion years, one should not have 100% confidence in the theory. T

    here’s simply no reason to believe there’s such a thing as unchanging laws, and even with a well-tested, self-consistent theory, all permutations of which have been verified empirically to any theoretically imaginable necessary precision, there could always be some new phenomenon that springs up, contrary to theory.

  11. Gravatar of Emericus Durden Emericus Durden
    4. December 2016 at 15:59

    An excellent post. It’s great to see Rorty’s pragmatism show up in the context of this so-called ‘post-truth’ era.

    One point I would like to make (and I’ve made it in my own writings) is this: we must each remain agnostic on the existence and nature of ‘objective reality’ IF we first assume that all our knowledge of the world derives from the subjectivity of our five senses (or extensions thereof like telescopes and microscopes). And don’t all empirical scientists assume just this, by definition? After all, how else can they acquire data except through their own highly fallible subjectivity?

    Individual scientific theories and empirical science as a whole may be internally consistent (I believe they mostly are) but we can never know whether any of those theories correspond to ‘something else’ that is independent of and not distorted by our human senses.

    This is a purely philosophical point that is lost on many scientists – or they are in denial over it: the social practice of empirical science spins a web interpretation that, at some point, is ASSUMED to be objective reality, but in fact all it ever can be is a logically coherent story or narrative. This has never bothered me, but I know from a great many debates with practicing scientists that it never sits well with them. Though a trained PhD-scientist, I long ago abandoned scientific research because I found other non-empirical routes to the truth that encompass science and yet move beyond it. Discussing those are probably off-topic for this blog.

  12. Gravatar of B Cole B Cole
    4. December 2016 at 16:44

    I particularly enjoyed a Scott Sumner quote about 2013 vintage, and I take some liberties: “The way we do things here and now, and what believe here and now, is the right and best way.”

  13. Gravatar of Major.Freedom Major.Freedom
    4. December 2016 at 17:49

    Sumner, you wrote:

    “We have no access to truths that are beyond belief, so those truths are of no relevance to humans.”

    You are AGAIN contradicting yourself. The argument that humans have no access to truths that are beyond belief, is ITSELF a claim to a truth of the objective nature of the human mind that is beyond belief. Surely you don’t intend that argument to be merely your belief that could be wrong. No, it is being presented as a final, argument stopping truth. It is a rather sad and weak minded description, a false description, but an attempt at an objective truth nonetheless.

  14. Gravatar of Major.Freedom Major.Freedom
    4. December 2016 at 17:59

    “And the adjective “mere” should never be applied to belief. What is more important than human mental activity? Is anything more important?”

    Important to who? To a deceitful person who wants to take advantage of others, “for the greater good”, perhaps beliefs are all they want their fellow humans to have.

    To me, it is more important that beliefs have fidelity with reality, I.e. they transcend being mere beliefs and become knowledge.

    You are not engaging in any science by LABELLING every thought we could have as “belief”, which never has fidelity with objective reality. It is a self-contradiction to do so anyway.

  15. Gravatar of Major.Freedom Major.Freedom
    4. December 2016 at 18:08

    Emeritus:

    “It’s great to see Rorty’s pragmatism show up in the context of this so-called ‘post-truth’ era.”

    It is horrible to see that the idea of “post-truth” to be taken for granted as a description of the world.

    HR 5736 was a bill that legalized government propaganda in the news.

    The rise in the attack on “fake news” in the last couple of years, and has been accelerated post-election, is in fact a political strategy of justifying attacks on news institutions that reject the spread of propaganda and instead report the truth. The globalists need a dumbed-down populace. There are many bloggers volunteering to serve as being “useful idiots”.

  16. Gravatar of Major.Freedom Major.Freedom
    4. December 2016 at 18:21

    “One point I would like to make (and I’ve made it in my own writings) is this: we must each remain agnostic on the existence and nature of ‘objective reality’ IF we first assume that all our knowledge of the world derives from the subjectivity of our five senses (or extensions thereof like telescopes and microscopes). And don’t all empirical scientists assume just this, by definition? After all, how else can they acquire data except through their own highly fallible subjectivity?”

    Having some knowledge of objective reality is not nullified by the fact that we make mistakes. Even knowing we make mistakes, is only possible if we had the ability to know objective reality.

    Seemingly paradoxically, but the notion that the human mind must first as a prerequisite have no knowledge of what it is like to make mistakes, before any notion of knowing objective reality can be seriously regarded as possible, would in fact be a reality where we could NOT know objective reality at all. In order for us to know objective reality, and to experience it, we must also experience making mistakes.

  17. Gravatar of Major.Freedom Major.Freedom
    4. December 2016 at 18:41

    B Cole:

    “The way we do things here and now, and what believe here and now, is the right and best way.”

    Hegel, who was the main influence on Marx, who was the main influence on Communism, wrote that “Everything real is rational, and everything rational is real”.

    Totalitarians like Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot loved having the populace believe in it.

  18. Gravatar of Anon Anon
    4. December 2016 at 18:47

    The fact that the NYT is where you wait for new info to appear explains a lot about your views during the election cycle…

    What should we expect happens to reporting when many mainstream journalists have decided that Trump is likely the next Hitler? Once they’ve adopted that subjective lense, do we think they’ll continue reporting things fairly and giving you both the positive and negative news about the person they’ve decided is the next Hitler?

    When one fails to look also at alternative media (e.g. Breitbart) in the current environment, it means letting a bunch of twenty-something SJW-indoctrinated “reporters” decide what you see and don’t see.

    Polarization has made getting facts to form one’s subjective opinions harder. The best solution is to go both to the right (Breitbart, Drudge) and the left (NYT, CNN.) From what I can tell those two sides are about equally error-prone.

  19. Gravatar of mbka mbka
    4. December 2016 at 18:56

    Scott,

    “I believe the most useful way of thinking about this is to view all beliefs as subjective, albeit held with more or less confidence.”

    The purest expression of this statement I have come across is in ET Jaynes’ “The logic of science”

    https://www.amazon.com/Probability-Theory-E-T-Jaynes/dp/0521592712/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1480906088&sr=8-1&keywords=the+logic+of+science

    Jaynes starts with probability theory and Bayesian belief. He sufficiently enlarges it to show that all science can be expressed as belief systems where “truth” is simply a justifiably strong degree of belief. Popper’s falsification approach is shown to be a limit case, where falsification weakens belief, but does not destroy it. In practical science, a single failed experiment does not invalidate a strong and corroborated theory. But the more dissenting experiments emerge, the weaker our belief becomes.

    What’s nice about Jaynes is that he is a hard core physicist, and none of his approach starts with morality, utility, or even philosophy at the outset. The philosophy emerges from his logic.

    If you have the time to read it, this is very good stuff.

  20. Gravatar of Benoit Essiambre Benoit Essiambre
    4. December 2016 at 19:30

    I had missed that 2013 post. I just happen to recently read Richard Feynman’s quantum mechanics for laymen book (QED). That post was a great followup. I need to read Yudkowski’s series.

    “And the adjective “mere” should never be applied to belief. What is more important than human mental activity? Is anything more important?”

    This reminds me of George Santayana’s “Life of Reason”, a brick about philosophy of aesthetics I read a long time ago.

    “Perhaps religion provides objective truth about ethics. But my solution is to meet the problem head on, and admit that everything we believe in both science and ethics is a social convention.”

    This is also one of Santayana’s main theme. He was an atheist, but viewed religion and science as supreme forms of aesthetics.

  21. Gravatar of Scott Sumner Scott Sumner
    4. December 2016 at 19:37

    Anon, You said:

    “When one fails to look also at alternative media (e.g. Breitbart) in the current environment,”

    Oh, I’ve looked at Breitbart. That’s precisely why I have such a low opinion of the alt-right Trumpistas like Steve Bannon. It’s a Drudge-like media sewer.

    Thanks mbka and Benoit.

  22. Gravatar of Major.Freedom Major.Freedom
    4. December 2016 at 20:04

    “Oh, I’ve looked at Breitbart. That’s precisely why I have such a low opinion of the alt-right Trumpistas like Steve Bannon. It’s a Drudge-like media sewer.”

    But how can these sources be “sewers” if so many people believe they are good sources? 45 million read Brietbart and many millions more read Drudge.

    According to your Rortyian metric, Brietbart and Drudge are less of a sewer than this blog.

  23. Gravatar of dtoh dtoh
    4. December 2016 at 20:49

    Yawn

  24. Gravatar of Daniel Ivan Harris Daniel Ivan Harris
    4. December 2016 at 22:04

    The quotation I like to use to explain Rorty is the following: “Truth cannot be out there—cannot exist independently of the human mind—because sentences cannot so exist, or be out there. The world is out there, but descriptions of the world are not. Only descriptions of the world can be true or false. The world on its own unaided by the describing activities of humans cannot.”

    The world is out there, but truth is all about models. I think it effectively shows how he’s not a relativist, but rather trying to sidestep what he calls the “tiresome pendulum swing” between dogmatism and scepticism.

    Still, I must confess I’m more of a fan of W. V. O. Quine, who talks about much the same thing, but I think in a more… sensible manner. Here’s how he concludes “Two Dogmas of Empiricism”:

    “As an empiricist I continue to think of the conceptual scheme of science as a tool, ultimately, for predicting future experience in the light of past experience. Physical objects are conceptually imported into the situation as convenient intermediaries not by definition in terms of experience, but simply as irreducible posits comparable, epistemologically, to the gods of Homer . . . For my part I do, qua lay physicist, believe in physical objects and not in Homer’s gods; and I consider it a scientific error to believe otherwise. But in point of epistemological footing, the physical objects and the gods differ only in degree and not in kind. Both sorts of entities enter our conceptions only as cultural posits.”

  25. Gravatar of ChrisA ChrisA
    5. December 2016 at 01:49

    I am going to look like a jerk I am sure for entering this debate over the nature of truth which has lasted for thousands of year, by arguing that it is actually fairly simple, but here goes.

    First we must clarify what the debate is about. Is it to provide some guide as to how to act in some way based on other people’s claims? In other words what are the best heuristics for evaluating claims for decision making? Or is it a discussion over the definition of the word “true”?

    Your except from Rorty about what is “true” for instance is simply a definition, not an argument about reality. You could for instance define “true” to mean the only thing that can be “true” is statements that can be mathematically proven from simple arithmetic axioms by yourself. Everything else is provisionally “true”. A wider definition of “true” is one where some repeated physical experiment has been made by trusted authorities, an empirical truth if you like. An even wider definition of true is where the vast majority of society or those experts who have studied a claim believe it is true, perhaps based on observational data. And so on.

    This isn’t the same as saying “truth” is societally decided, relative or subjective – unless that is how you define being “true”. For instance the statement that 2+2 is is “true” if you define “true” as being something that is is clearly following and constructed from basic arithmetic. But if you define “true” as being something that is commonly accepted by society and society decides for whatever reason 2+2 is 5, then it is definitionally “true” that 2+2 is 5. Of course if your definition of “true” means that it cannot be changed, it will be disquieting to discuss something with someone who believes that “true” is something generally accepted by society, as things that he believes are true will change over time (e.g. a high fat diet makes you fat…). But that’s because you are using different definitions of “true”.

    The conflict between you having some special knowledge vs society leading you to claim that something is “true” when society claims it is not, just disappears when you think of it as a definitional problem. In this case you are defining “true” to mean something that is generally accepted by society except where you have special knowledge that society is wrong.

    It’s the same with the idea of “objective truth”. Please define what you mean by “objectively true”, and then we can decide if some claim is in fact an “objective truth”. If you struggle to provide a definition for this – how can you claim that some is “true” by this definition?

    I see many people struggling with the approach to “truth” because of the literal way people process language. A good example of this is the test where a color is flashed up on a screen with the name of a different color written on it. You are told to select a tab at the bottom with the actual color of the block, but it is really hard to do this and ignore what is written on the block. Like in morality, you have instinctual responses to things which overwhelm your reasoning system. So when I say that something isn’t “true” by my definition of true this causes an emotional response rather than a reasoned one by the person listening.

    If this debate is about heuristics for decision making when data is uncertain – then may I recommend speaking to engineers (like me) who often need to understand somehow whether some claim is valid or not before we invest time and money incorporating the implications of the claim in our work. One way we do this is to use references of course – ideally we can find a working version somewhere. This is perhaps our definition of “true”. But sometimes we will use uncertain claims, but we should always try to evaluate the probabilities, risk factors and provide contingency in those cases. If it turns out that the consequences of the claim being wrong is trivial and/or our experience or commonsense suggests it is unlikely to be wrong then we won’t invest much resources in proving the claim or providing contingencies.

    One thing I have learned as an engineer is that surprisingly “bottoms up logic” absent evidence is not a very good guide to whether something is valid or not. Working through the details of any logical claim usually is not possible, generally speaking there are too many variables and implied assumptions, even if you could be expert enough (and intelligent!) in enough subjects to be able to follow and critique the logic. And and as well as this being the case for a layman, it also often the case for people making the claim – people are often making claims for something where they don’t even understand the logic. So I treat logical or theoretical claims with great suspicion where I am investing resources or taking non-trivial risks even if they are strongly advocated. This skepticism includes models that cannot be easily tested, like economic models or climate models. Observational data is also suspect – its a cliche, but correlation is not causation and people love to make narratives about how different data are connected.

  26. Gravatar of André André
    5. December 2016 at 02:14

    “truth is what my peers let me get away with”

    I’m one of the persons driven crazy by this statement hehe.

    I guess I prefer “truth is what evidence tells us turth is”.

    I mean, we will never know 100% sure about what “truth” or “the right model” is. But if evidence always show that your model is inaccurate, you can say it is not right.

  27. Gravatar of Daniel Daniel
    5. December 2016 at 02:51

    The horrible nationalism sweeping the world was inevitable, and it’s solvable.

    Last time I checked, humans were still tribalistic apes.
    How do you plan on solving that ?

    Good times will return.

    Good times for whom ?
    There is no final revolution, every change makes someone worse off.

  28. Gravatar of J.V.Dubois J.V.Dubois
    5. December 2016 at 04:43

    To be honest, this seems to be rather confusing article. You try to defend the claim that “true things are things that are regarded as true”. Which I deeply disagree with. Or to have more favorable treatment, I would say “It depends on what epistemology drives most people ideas about what is true”

    And we open another can of worms in there – for instance, how to discern “true belief” as opposed to belief that on publicly professes because one may face harsh punishment or social isolation if she does not conform to widely held views.

    I think that the word “truth” is very practical and useful thing in relation to our thought process. It describes the relationship between our belief and underlying reality. Of course it is very useful to define these concepts and I like how Yudkowsky desccribes them:

    Belief is a thing that decides my experimental predictions
    Reality is a thing that decides my experimental results

    So “truth” describes a degree to which experimental prediction correlates with experimental results in a particular area. It does not correlate with amount of likes you gather posting it on facebook or if holding a specific beliefs will result in promotion or pay rise.

    So once we establish a process to differentiate truth and untruth we can then start amassing knowledge about stuff and putting it into neat groups such as “likely” or “not very likely” – with relation to how these views are supported by experimental evidence as opposed to anything else.

    Also I do not agree with your sentiment that things that we consider as very likely are not worth investing time into. It is not about absolute probability – but about relation of [experimental] evidence with how they likely they are percieved as true. It is exactly as in economics and price discovery. The more the price is out of equilibrium, the more pressure is there on the market to bring it into balance – because agents are rewarded for such actions. So falsifying a theory that is widely held as true has much more information value compared to falsifying a random hypothesis that was seen very unlikely since the start.

    Unfortunately in real world it is not always that people are rewarded by searching for truth, you have to create a system that incentivizes them to do so. Hence for instance the idea of Market Monetarists to you know – to employ markets to find out what is the best way to conduct a specific policy as opposed to committee of people who may have other motives.

  29. Gravatar of Njnnja Njnnja
    5. December 2016 at 05:22

    Excellent post. I would just emphasize the “map is not the territory” problem a little more. The fact that “real reality” is always mediated – by our models, by our tools, and ultimately by our senses – and therefore is less worth talking about than our mediated sense of reality, is an important point. Another way of saying what you said is that the main problem with map/territory confusion is that we actually live on the map!

  30. Gravatar of Student Student
    5. December 2016 at 05:30

    @daniel,

    If every change makes some better off and someone worse off, why do people ever trade? Earth to the alt-right… the universe into zero sum.

    @sumner, interesting post. So you are a Bayesian…

  31. Gravatar of Art Deco Art Deco
    5. December 2016 at 07:42

    The horrible nationalism sweeping the world was inevitable, and it’s solvable. Good times will return.

    There is nothing ‘horrible’ about nationalism. If everyone is your brother, no one is. The replacement for ‘nationalism’ is not peace-love-and-brotherhood. It’s neo-Bourbonism, with Alvin Gouldner’s New Class occupying the social role of the old continental royalty and nobility.

  32. Gravatar of Christian List Christian List
    5. December 2016 at 07:52

    I agree (close to) 100% with Rorty and Sumner on this one. I don’t even understand how someone could see it substantially different. It’s a bit like a déjà vu: Rorty and Sumner write what I have in mind about this topic as well. Of course they write it down more thoughtfully and eloquently but still. So far all the other opinions about this topic that I’ve read in my life are not as persuasive.

  33. Gravatar of ssumner ssumner
    5. December 2016 at 07:58

    Scott, You asked:

    “How is this Rortian perspective adding any value?”

    He’s telling us not to waste time on methodological fundamentalism.

    Emericus, Yes, Tyler Cowen links today to an article that makes a case that gravity does not exist, at least in the way we visualize it. Rather, gravity-like effects are an emergent phenomenon, the product of the interaction between matter and dark energy—or something like that.

    dtoh, Get some sleep.

    Daniel, Excellent, That first paragraph is much better than anything in my post.

    Chris, I agree that part of this is about how people think about definitions. I’d suggest reading Rorty if you want a sense of what his views are. Because our entire language is based on the notion that there is a difference between subjective belief and objective truth, it’s hard to explain Rorty’s insights. Rorty might say the difference is between subjective beliefs and better justified subjective beliefs.

    And no, you don’t look like a jerk—have you seen my Trump comment sections?

    JV, You said:

    “Of course it is very useful to define these concepts and I like how Yudkowsky desccribes them:

    Belief is a thing that decides my experimental predictions
    Reality is a thing that decides my experimental results”

    I agree, but the real question is how to interpret those experimental results. That goes back to belief.

    Thanks Njnnja. Or you might say our minds experience the map.

    Student, I don’t know a lot about Bayesian epistemology. When I read about Bayesian ideas, I sometimes think: “What other approach is there?”

  34. Gravatar of ssumner ssumner
    5. December 2016 at 08:00

    Christian, It’s one of those vase/profile things, people see it one way or the other. Like free will/determinism, or is Trump an idiot?

  35. Gravatar of Student Student
    5. December 2016 at 08:04

    “What other approach is there?” I find myself asking the same question.

    I think everyone is a Bayesian, they just pretend their subjective decisions from a modeling a modeling point of view are objective and so fail to quantify that uncertainty.

  36. Gravatar of Student Student
    5. December 2016 at 08:05

    *isnt zero sum in my above at 05:30.

  37. Gravatar of Travis Allison Travis Allison
    5. December 2016 at 08:40

    I think your post would be clearer if you added something that said you believed in an objective reality outside of human beliefs. But that that all beliefs can be challenged because beliefs are models and all models can fail ultimately — though with perhaps some sort of probability — based on the amount of support from our interactions with objective reality.

    Or at least I am assuming that you believe the above, otherwise your reference to claims being overturned doesn’t make sense.

  38. Gravatar of mbka mbka
    5. December 2016 at 08:52

    Scott,

    “I don’t know a lot about Bayesian epistemology. When I read about Bayesian ideas, I sometimes think: “What other approach is there?” ”

    If you’re interested in Bayesian epistemology, that’s exactly what ET Jaynes does in the work I referenced above. It works exceedingly well, it comes across as an almost iron clad elaboration on common sense. I say almost, because in my opinion the one weakness of this approach is that it depends on priors which in practice are often ill-defined. With some sleight of hand you could call the required priors a kind of glorified prejudice. Still: it’s more convincing as an explanation of science and perception that anything else out there.

    Art Deco,

    ” If everyone is your brother, no one is.”

    What brother? The guy 3000 miles away with the same passport is more of a “brother” to you than the guy 100 miles away, across an imaginary line in the land, kept indentured by a different government to yours that gave him a different color passport? It’s all in your head.

    Nationalism = imaginary community.

    https://www.amazon.com/Imagined-Communities-Reflections-Origin-Nationalism/dp/1784786756/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1480956075&sr=8-1&keywords=imagined+communities

  39. Gravatar of Art Deco Art Deco
    5. December 2016 at 09:09

    What brother? The guy 3000 miles away with the same passport is more of a “brother” to you than the guy 100 miles away, across an imaginary line in the land, kept indentured by a different government to yours that gave him a different color passport? It’s all in your head.

    The guy 100 miles away from me lives not across an imaginary line, but on the other side of a river which runs over an impressive waterfall. And on the bridge connecting the two, are armed guards who want to know where you were born and if you’re carrying any whiskey.

    Most people’s loyalties are concentric.

    As it happens, people on the other side of the St. Lawrence Seaway speak English and generally don’t give you a hard time unless they’re the issue of Canada’s universities (and, of course, there are plenty of haut bourgeois suck-ups from the American side willing to slam their own). In certain ways, they likely are closer than the chap in Los Angeles. Southern Ontario is pleasant, Los Angeles isn’t.

    The question is rigged, though, because Anglophone Canada and the United States are as close as two countries can be (Australia and New Zealand excepted). Canada has it’s own common narrative. It’s not ours. And, ultimately, that’s what makes them foreigners. The leadership segment and the professional-managerial bourgeoisie have a sense which binds them to their own wage earning element (think Teddy Roosevelt), or they are bound to each other (think Mary Robinson). Teddy Roosevelt was admirable and Mary Robinson’s a ghastly public nuisance.

    I cannot, of course, explain flower gardens to the color blind, to you or to Bryan Caplan.

  40. Gravatar of engineer engineer
    5. December 2016 at 09:17

    “Nationalism = imaginary community.”

    A sense of community is very important to the human psych. Most Blue states are filled with transient people with no real sense of community, drawn by employment opportunities. The Red states tend to be places where that sense of community is still strong. I would say the nationalism is even more important in our global community, since a nation is now the equivalent to local community. It is a place where there is a great deal of shared human experience and values. Expectations of freedom, liberty, and human dignity are common traits that bind the American nation.

    I can imagine no nation … but it is not world that I would be comfortable living in.

  41. Gravatar of mbka mbka
    5. December 2016 at 09:49

    Art Deco, engineer,

    I grew up with the same received wisdoms and feelings about nations. I just happen to have lost them later in life, through my own movements over the planet. I now find most of the related feelings a poor shadow of real community. I completely agree that human beings crave feelings of community, legitimate feelings, without which none of us can live. The lack of meaningful local, or concentric, community, is what breeds the larger and more imaginary communities. It also breeds very local but nefarious communities such as gangs.

    I don’t mean to argue away the need for community but I argue strongly against accepting diffuse Ersatz communities, which can be nations, or countries, or political parties, or religions, instead of the real thing. A real community is a personal thing where you know your people. I believe it’s a lack of this kind of fulfilled community in their own private lives that pushes people into nationalism or religious extremism, or into any other world-saving activity that promises them to connect them to the wider world for that matter. I’ve felt this kind of real community in tightly knit work groups, expeditions etc. I strongly believe this is what soldiers feel in war and why they feel so devastatingly alone once they return to “their country”. Their real country has become their buddies. This is real community, and under extreme stress. Not the flag. And back in “their country” they have none.

    Nations to me are some of the most absurd and abstract human constructs. The modern nation didn’t even exist until around the French Revolution. The US as a nation, some would have it, originates with Lincoln. Yet people talk about nations as if they were timeless and ethereal.

    I feel much better about shared culture btw. I do far less so about the embodied culture of nations that you are talking about. And I feel nothing about the supposed community that a shared ethnicity is supposed to provide, the thing that the racists are talking about. Since culture and nation are dependent on origin (not genes), but can be changed by migration and upbringing, to me there is nothing left to argue against free movement of people save the practical modalities, the conditions, allowed flows etc. I’m perfectly fine with some form of reasonable management of migration flows but I find the underlying emotional propaganda and practical ignominities repugnant.

  42. Gravatar of Art Deco Art Deco
    5. December 2016 at 10:39

    Most Blue states are filled with transient people with no real sense of community, drawn by employment opportunities. The Red states tend to be places where that sense of community is still strong.

    I think you’ve mistaken a professional managerial segment in coastal cities for the whole re the Blue states. That’s a key element of the Democratic vote pool. The other elements would be ethnic segments (blacks, Puerto Ricans, California chicanos, and Jews), trashy single mothers, young singles generally (who lack family responsibilites and are vulnerable to branding), and miscellanous bourgeois employed in education, social services, and law. Most of these people are not ambitious migrants to coastal cities. Also, you have places subject to a great deal of demographic churn which vote Republican (Alaska) and places with fairly settled populations which vote Democratic (New England outside of Boston).

  43. Gravatar of Art Deco Art Deco
    5. December 2016 at 10:41

    Nations to me are some of the most absurd and abstract human constructs.

    Sorry about your autism-spectrum problems, but I really cannot help with that.

  44. Gravatar of Scott H. Scott H.
    5. December 2016 at 14:22

    The earth is flat. It’s space and time that are curved.

  45. Gravatar of JimP JimP
    5. December 2016 at 14:32

    Scott

    No – Davidson did not write the paper. The paper I am thinking of is in a book of essays on Rorty. I have the book somewhere in my house. I will try to find it.

    Jim

  46. Gravatar of ssumner ssumner
    5. December 2016 at 14:50

    Travis, I’m an agnostic about reality. What would “not reality” look like?

  47. Gravatar of mbka mbka
    5. December 2016 at 18:44

    Art Deco,

    ” ‘Nations to me are some of the most absurd and abstract human constructs. ‘ Sorry about your autism-spectrum problems, but I really cannot help with that.”

    I attempted a non confrontational and candid comment above. You didn’t make any attempt at reading and understanding it. Or else, you’d realize that quite the contrary, it’s the alienated who crave belonging they do not have. The homesteading farmers of the middle ages were no nationalists. That’s a feature of industrial age man.
    But you don’t have the foggiest sociological or psychological intuition.

    People like me are fine and don’t need nationalism because we have real community in our lives. People like you tend to hate their family, be suspicious about their neighbors, and distrust their local councilmen. But they pontificate about God and country (because they’re far). All you can do is spew insults at anyone real and concrete because you’re basically alone in life.

  48. Gravatar of Major.Freedom Major.Freedom
    5. December 2016 at 20:00

    “the real question is how to interpret those experimental results. That goes back to belief.”

    No, the real question is to what are you referring when you say “belief”. Belief is of something.

    You cannot be agnostic about reality, since to be anything is to exist in reality.

  49. Gravatar of edeast edeast
    6. December 2016 at 08:33

    2017, Whitehead’s works begin to be published by Edinburgh University Press. Wikipedia tells me he had an influence on pragmatism. He’s a big deal for me currently.

  50. Gravatar of J Mann J Mann
    6. December 2016 at 08:44

    IMHO, I would prefer to keep true at the common definition, and let Rorty define a new term or phrase for his idea. I think it helps with clarity.

    Is it “true” that at the moment I finish this sentence, there are an odd number of stars in the universe? Well, it’s probably true or false, although there’s a possibility that it’s neither true nor false. But I’d estimate that its likelihood for any reasonable definitions approaches 50%.

    It’s also unknowable, but if we let Rorty take the word true for his own pragmatic purposes, then we need a new word for “an accurate statement of unknowable facts”, and we have to waste time negotiating a common understanding of true with every new person with whom we want to use the word.

  51. Gravatar of Art Deco Art Deco
    6. December 2016 at 10:03

    I attempted a non confrontational and candid comment above. You didn’t make any attempt at reading and understanding it.

    I’ve understood it perfectly, mbka, I just did not take it seriously.

    MBKA, you’ve engaged in a project of intellectualizing to come to a point where you understand something less well than you might on inspection. I’d suggest that you make an effort to understand why people build the bonds they do with each other and why they are loyal to some constructs and not others instead of telling them they’re being ‘irrational’. You may trust your judgment, but no one else has any reason too.

  52. Gravatar of Art Deco Art Deco
    6. December 2016 at 10:09

    The homesteading farmers of the middle ages were no nationalists.

    So what? They were pre-occupied with their struggle against the elements and with the give and take between the seigneur and themselves. They seldom traveled more than 40 miles away from where they were born, and they commonly were bound to the land. We do not have political bonds derived from fealty, much less muti-layered fealty. We do have national bonds. It is those bonds you’re complaining about.

  53. Gravatar of ssumner ssumner
    6. December 2016 at 11:11

    J Mann, Rorty is saying that when people use terms like ‘objectively true’ they don’t understand what they are actually saying. They are trying to draw distinctions that do not exist, or if you prefer, are not useful.

  54. Gravatar of ssumner ssumner
    6. December 2016 at 11:12

    Art, No one cares about nationalism that is equivalent to being Chicago Cubs fan. That’s fine. What we object to is where nationalism leads to bad public policies, as with Trump’s Carrier fiasco.

  55. Gravatar of Art Deco Art Deco
    6. December 2016 at 12:24

    Art, No one cares about nationalism that is equivalent to being Chicago Cubs fan. That’s fine. What we object to is where nationalism leads to bad public policies, as with Trump’s Carrier fiasco.

    Except you do, care. Concentric loyalties militate against population replacement policy and against tranference of discretion from elected officials to unaccountable cadres. You haven’t been in a state of emotional upset concerning Brexit because of the possibility of some piddling tariffs.

    And I’d suggest you ponder what mbka is on about.

    Oh, while we’re at it, the assembled should read Tyler Cowen’s commentary today on the National Endowment for the Arts.

  56. Gravatar of Major.Freedom Major.Freedom
    6. December 2016 at 14:12

    It is evident that Rorty didn’t understand what Rorty meant when Rorty used the term “objectively true”.

    For he kept appealing to objective truth in the process of describing the ability and efficacy of the human mind.

  57. Gravatar of Major.Freedom Major.Freedom
    6. December 2016 at 15:10

    It is evident that Rorty didn’t understand what Rorty meant by the term “objectively true”.

    For he kept appealing to objective truth in his description of the ability and efficacy of the human mind and the meaning of “subjective belief”.

    —————-

    Scott Freelander:

    “There’s simply no reason to believe there’s such a thing as unchanging laws, and even with a well-tested, self-consistent theory, all permutations of which have been verified empirically to any theoretically imaginable necessary precision, there could always be some new phenomenon that springs up, contrary to theory.”

    Action would be impossible in a world without unchanging laws. In order for you to accomplish anything, through time, requires and implies no change in the causal relations between external factors, from the moment you think of what to do, to the time of you doing so, to the time of learning whether your action was successful or unsuccessful. A universe without unchanging laws would be an existence of complete and absolute chaos.

    You could not even begin to have the belief of “there is no reason to believe there is such a thing as unchanging laws” without unchanging laws. Moreover, even your appeal to historical experience of previously established models and hypotheses being “falsified” utterly fails to prove anything, not only because “proof” implies a regularity in nature, but also because to claim a model or hypothesis is “falsified” also implies a regularity in nature. You cannot claim a model or hypothesis proposed in the past, can be confirmed or falsified in the present, unless you tacitly carried from the past a truth about the universe to the present, that is, thinking in terms of constancy in nature.

    To say “there is no reason” to believe this or that, is also an appeal to a constancy in nature, namely, the nature, or more precisely the nature of the human mind, always lacks that special precise reality in which believing this or that *would* have a reason. What you are doing, not realizing it, is that you are making a claim that there is an unchanging nature of the human mind which consists of whatever is left over after denying there is the capacity to discern unchanging laws in both the mind and of nature. In other words, the unchanging natural law of the human mind that makes it categorically unfit to understand or perceive unchanging laws in nature.

    Rorty did this.

    All haters and attackers of the human mind do this.

    The law of non-contradiction for example is and always will be a component of any reality. Quantum mechanics depends on it. Classical mechanics depends on it.

    In the simplest possible terms: The fact that there even exists attempts in the universe to understand, to acquire knowledge, be it in your mind or my mind or anyone else’s mind, is absolute proof of the existence of unchanging laws.

  58. Gravatar of Don Geddis Don Geddis
    6. December 2016 at 20:42

    @J Mann: “Is it “true” that at the moment I finish this sentence, there are an odd number of stars in the universe? Well, it’s probably true or false, although there’s a possibility that it’s neither true nor false.

    You tried to leave yourself an out, with “neither true nor false”, but it’s clear you didn’t really expect it. And yet, ironically, you happened to pick an example that is not well defined.

    “The moment”, as you described in your first sentence, is not a thing that can possibly be applied to the whole universe. Relativity shows us that simultaneity is not well defined across space-like distances. So it isn’t possible — even in theory — to fix all the universe’s stars (much less count them) at “the moment” you had in mind. There is no such universe-wide “moment”.

    I wonder if this ironic failure of yours has any impact on your feeling about the ill-defined concept of “objective truth”.

  59. Gravatar of ssumner ssumner
    7. December 2016 at 06:07

    Art, You said:

    “You haven’t been in a state of emotional upset concerning Brexit”

    Emotional upset? You think I care about Brexit? Seriously? I’m more upset about how the Green Bay Packers are doing. In an earlier blog post I said that 10 years ago I probably would have supported Brexit.

    I’m not even emotionally upset about Trump, although I’m 100 times more appalled by Trump than Brexit.

    Only fools get emotionally upset by politics. For me it’s all a crazy spectacle, only worth laughing at.

    Don, He also ignores the fact that it’s not at all clear what a “star” is. There’s a continuium between stars and proto-stars.

  60. Gravatar of Art Deco Art Deco
    7. December 2016 at 07:24

    motional upset? You think I care about Brexit? Seriously? I’m more upset about how the Green Bay Packers are doing. In an earlier blog post I said that 10 years ago I probably would have supported Brexit.

    I’m not even emotionally upset about Trump, although I’m 100 times more appalled by Trump than Brexit.

    Only fools get emotionally upset by politics. For me it’s all a crazy spectacle, only worth laughing at.

    You might, at some point in your life, try to do without blatant displays of artifice.

  61. Gravatar of J Mann J Mann
    7. December 2016 at 07:29

    Don – I think I captured that with my “reasonable definitions” out.

    If you prefer – do I have an even or odd number of living second cousins at the time I finish this sentence. (Disclosure: I don’t have any idea.)

  62. Gravatar of Travis Allison Travis Allison
    7. December 2016 at 09:38

    Thanks for the response Scott. Sorry for saying, “..it would be clearer…’ 😉

    What do you mean about being an agnostic about reality?

    Do you think there isn’t a distinction between a belief about X and X itself?

    If not, then what does it mean to talk about some beliefs being more useful than others? What is making Einstein’s belief about gravity more useful than Newton’s belief about gravity?

  63. Gravatar of Don Geddis Don Geddis
    7. December 2016 at 15:53

    @J Mann: I’m surprised that you’re not second-guessing yourself more, given your failed example. For something that was supposed to be so easy, you actually made (at least) two different mistakes (compared to objective reality): (1) you assumed time was the same everywhere, and (2) you assumed that “star” was some sort of natural kind, where objects could be cleanly sorted into “yes star” or “no star”.

    Keep in mind that nobody (here) is disputing the existence of objective reality. The dispute is about “objective truth”, and whether that is a useful concept that captures anything in human experience (even potential, or hypothetical, experience).

    I see you’re now trying to back off, and head into essentially definitional and mathematical truths. You’re now continuing down a philosophical path that has also been well worn. Sure, math “truths” seem “objective”, in some intuitive sense. And for the first few thousand years of human history, you might have had a plausible argument about math. But then came the surprise of non-Euclidean geometry. And in the last century we got Russell’s paradox, and the controversial axiom of choice, and finally the shock of Godel’s incompleteness theorem.

    I suspect you’ll eventually find that trying to retreat to mathematics, in order to find some kind of “objective truth”, is eventually not going to be satisfying either. All you can ever get (as Sumner originally stated), is human conditional truths that have more or less probability. But probabilities never go to 0% or 100%. So “objective truth” is a label that has no referent in the real universe.

  64. Gravatar of J Mann J Mann
    8. December 2016 at 07:14

    Well, speaking of second guessing, Don, I really don’t think I’m backing off. You’re certainly right that people have different definitions, which is why I included that caveat in my original post. (After reading some on the relativity issues you discuss, I still think if we nail the definitions down, the probability that the statement is true approaches 50%).

    Aren’t all statements definitional? That’s a factor of using language, IMHO. If I say “it’s raining outside right now,” we have to nail down what I mean by raining, outside, and right now, and there may be some implied definitional issues that I haven’t thought of but that we could resolve if relevant. At that point, I think the naive idea that the statement is capable of being true or false (once defined) is useful.

  65. Gravatar of ssumner ssumner
    8. December 2016 at 08:50

    Art, Don’t make the mistake of assuming that everyone has the same emotions as you do. You and I are very different. The entire universe seems slightly absurd to me. Especially you.

    Travis, You said:

    “What do you mean about being an agnostic about reality?

    Do you think there isn’t a distinction between a belief about X and X itself?”

    I mean that I am agnostic as to what it means to talk about X, apart from our beliefs about X. I am claiming that all we know about X is our beliefs, so anything more is pure speculation.

    I simply have no opinion on “reality”. It could be anything, most likely something my mind cannot comprehend.

    Einstein’s theories are more useful because they more accurately predict the movement of objects through space.

  66. Gravatar of Art Deco Art Deco
    8. December 2016 at 08:58

    Art, Don’t make the mistake of assuming that everyone has the same emotions as you do. You and I are very different. The entire universe seems slightly absurd to me. Especially you.

    Me being told by an arrested-development case in his sixties that I’m ‘absurd’ is the maraschino on top.

  67. Gravatar of Don Geddis Don Geddis
    8. December 2016 at 11:03

    @J Mann: I still think you’re wildly overoptimistic about the feasibility of “nailing down the definitions”. You write as though this is something trivial, that you just haven’t bothered to complete yet. “Proof left as an exercise for the reader,” that kind of thing. Instead, however, this is at the core of the problem: it actually isn’t possibly to “nail down definitions” sufficiently to exactly match objective reality.

    we have to nail down what I mean by raining, outside, and right now” And you will never succeed, in any way that is an exact match for the real universe. All you will ever have, is an internal mental model (the “map”), which has more or less correspondence to the real universe (the “territory”). You never get access to the territory itself.

    I still think if we nail the definitions down … we could resolve if relevant” You seem extraordinarily confident, for something you have never demonstrated success in yourself, and for which professional philosophers have failed for thousands of years.

    If you want to continue to explore this, here’s a specific example for you: can you prove two particles are identical?. It seems likely that a person with your intuitions would very naturally claim: “You haven’t found an experiment yet that distinguishes these two electrons. But who knows, you might find a new experiment tomorrow that does.” But you would be wrong. Here’s the question to imagine instead: “But what kind of universe could you possibly live in, where a simple experiment can tell you whether it’s possible in principle to tell two things apart?” Very few non-physicists can even imagine that it might be possible to live in any universe, where you could acquire evidence to conclude that no future experiment involving future technology will still ever distinguish electrons. And yet, the real universe appears to be “stranger than we can imagine”.

    The confidence of your (and everyone’s) intuition, has been shown (in the end) to be wrong so many times, that it’s clearly not a reliable guide to “objective truth”. Hence we have no access to any such thing, and the concept isn’t valuable.

  68. Gravatar of J Mann J Mann
    9. December 2016 at 07:59

    I propose that “can you prove two particles are identical?” is very different from “can you work through the definitions sufficiently that ‘it is raining outside right now'” is capable of being true or false for ordinary use?”

    I don’t know anything about particles. As you’ve described the scenario, my intuitions do contain a possibility that all current physicists are completely wrong on any issue. I currently think it’s a fairly small probability if all physicists are agreed and extremely confident, but I’ll never move any probability of being mistaken to zero.

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