From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Tue Feb 10 2004 - 14:26:51 GMT
Hi David M,
Paul Turner has the best understanding of truth that I know:
"Truth is the static aesthetic of intellectual harmony."
That's hard to beat for "economy of explanation."
Regards,
Platt
> Hi all
>
> I would like to put forward a position
> on truth to see who agrees/disagrees.
>
> I think we can take truth in a very simple way.
> There is only one world, one truth. Is there a cat
> behind the wall? Answer: yes or not. Does gravity
> pull on bodies according to distance in an inverse
> square law? Answer: yes or no. Which hole did the
> electron go through? -Well, neither actually, so there
> is something wrong with the question.
>
> Now to have any understanding/knowledge of the truth
> requires an appropriate language applied to patterns
> that we suspect operate in certain repeating ways.
> Hence, all knowledge is a human creation, therefore it
> is utterly fallible, and subject to all the epistemological problems
> the post modernists suggests. However, the truth remains.
> We can test our knowledge against nature, even though nature
> is a very elusive conversational partner. She drives us mad.
> We cannot just ask is there a cat behind the wall?
> She does not answer that question. We can put some milk
> behind the wall and nature will give us an empty saucer back.
> We might be on to something. We send some mice in and they
> rarely make it back again, etc. We build up theories of entities
> (cats) and their behaviour under different controlled conditions.
> We name things, we describe patterns, and on we go. It can go very
> badly wrong, but we make overall progress. After a while we revise
> things and discoveer curious entities, maybe a cat-fish that can also swim.
> And an entity is only a set of patterns under certain conditions, a human
> being is a certain way of looking at the patterns of a particular
> configuration of molecules, and that again as patterns of atoms, or going
> the other way certain organic material becomes a human and then gets fed
> back to bacteria and round the food chain pattern it goes. All different
> levels of patterns, all exhibiting the most amazing fullness of potential,
> from quantum particles to become atoms, to become suns, to become
> molecules, to become seas, to become plants, to become food, to become
> animals, to become a horse and cart, to become human, to become writing, to
> become music, to become emotions, etc etc ...
>
> Agree/disagree?
>
> regards
> David M
>
>
>
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