Truth poll

[ciphergoth]

I should really post this on a Monday but I might as well do it now. A whole bunch of assertions to do with truth that it occurred to me to poll about...

[Poll #1365485]

Comments

[andrewducker]

My theory is that to things are possible:
1) My mind is not actually accessing anything through sense impression - it's just making shit up (or having made-up shit fed to it). In which case the only thing I can know is that my mind itself exists (cogito ergo sum).
2) The sense impressions I get _are_ from an outside world, but are imperfect.

In either caee the mind itself exists. And has some form or other that is 'actually' doing something. In the latter case I can examine my sense impressions, compare them with the sense impressions of others, design experiments, and test this outside world.

Either things happen, or they don't. I may, or may not, experience them in any way like they actually happen, but _something_ is clearly happening. And that something is The Truth of the universe - the actual event/shape of it.

Option (1) is always possible (and some would say it's statisitcally likely for any one obersver), but even in that case, recurse down the simulations far enough and you'll find the actual universe, wherein something is going on.

[keirf.livejournal.com]

Case 1 is just a special case of 2 in which the "something" is your mind. But in case 2 isn't there the possibility that you can recurse down infinitely, in which case where is your Truth? Or what if we had some hypothetical way of observing the actual universe, but it changed every time it was observed - what happens to Truth then?

[andrewducker]

Or what if we had some hypothetical way of observing the actual universe, but it changed every time it was observed - what happens to Truth then?

This does seem to be the case with the actual universe - and it just means that that's part of The Truth.

[keirf.livejournal.com]

If Truth is something that may or may not be consistent and complete, or even rational, and in any case we can't observe it or if we can we can't know that we have then I don't see much point to it other than a historical part of philosophy. It's kind of up there with phlogiston and the ether.

[drdoug.livejournal.com]

Interesting.

My line on (the overwhelming majority of) Matrix/brain-in-a-vat/universe-simulation arguments is that they're worse than useless. They're not even wrong, as the phrase goes. They make absolutely no observable difference to the world as we can experience it. By definition.

(The same's sometimes true of some people's conception of God, but often only when you've backed them in to a corner in an argument.)

I'm really pretty convinced that the weaker versions of those arguments (where extraordinary intervention sometimes happens) are also false. I'd be open to evidence of those, but it'd need to be pretty damn good evidence. If Laurence Fishburn and Hugo Weaving starting showing me wacky stuff, my first guess would be they were messing with my head alone, rather than with the fabric of the universe.

[andrewducker]

They make absolutely no observable difference to the world as we can experience it. By definition.

Or at least not observable difference...so far!

To be honest, the simulation argument is one that I mostly store at the back of my brain, only coming out when discussing the nature of reality. It's there, along with The God Hypothesis, as an example of something that cannot be ruled out, and makes for fun fiction, but doesn't actually affect my day-to-day life in the slightest.