Hate to say "I told you so", but that was what Popper was banging on about.
He replaced 'absolutes' with 'propensities'. works just as well, and avoids
all those infinite regress-thingies. And it does mean that so-called
'objective truth' whilst jolly useful, isn't quite as 'absoluteley
objective' as many proponents would like. There may be some other,objective,
absolute truth out there....but we couldn't know it.
cheers
ppl
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jonathan B. Marder" <jonathan.marder@newmail.net>
To: <moq_discuss@moq.org>
Sent: 12 February 2001 12:48
Subject: The non-ontology of Truth (was Re: MD criticisms of DQ)
> Hi Platt, Rick, Elephant, Horse and all,
>
> I have been avidly following the discussion on the nature of Truth and
whether
> or not it is absolute.
> I was going to write a substantial post on the subject, but decided that a
> short one is a better idea.
>
> 1. "TRUE" is a relative term - we must always ask "true to what?". If
there is
> no standard or reference (accepted "facts", rules or axioms), then the
word
> "true" is meaningless. Thus, we can only talk about "absolute truth" in
terms
> of compliance with an "absolute standard". At that level, what is
considered
> absolute becomes an issue of the universally accepted standard - not some
> standard that is itself intrinsically absolute.
> (To put it mischievously, even absolutes are relative!).
>
> 2. The absoluteness (or not) of Truth is a non-issue in the MoQ. A few
words
> from Elephant and Rick
> make it clear why we cannot regard Truth as an ontology:
>
> > ELEPHANT (to Rick):
> > Interesting that you say that "Nobody is arguing that
self-contradictions
> > can be true (a strawman if I've ever read one).". . .
>
> Of course! self-contradictions and other logical fallacies are not TRUE,
but
> they *are* REAL (otherwise we wouldn't be able to discuss them). Truth and
> reality are not the same. Truth is subordinate. The REAL TRUTH is the
truth
> that is closest to our CHOSEN picture of reality. To put it another way,
we
> choose the truth that has the greatest quality/utility.
>
> Now, what did I miss? (Elephant - I'm waiting to be trampled . . .)
>
> Jonathan
>
>
>
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