If Darwinism fails then supernatural causes are back on the table and should be included in science.
I do not think there can be a science of the supernatural.
I do not think that if Darwinism fails that supernatural causes will become acceptable.
If the hope of ID is that supernatural causes will be allowed back into science if they can only just get rid of Darwinism, ID is doomed.
The tools and methods of ID cannot differentiate a supernatural cause from a natural cause anyways.
Thoughts?
If your theory of truth is “Reality is true” then it doesn’t actually say anything worth saying. And that’s about what the correspondence theory says, which is why I see the correspondence theory as empty (saying nothing).
If you look at technical uses of truth in analytic philosophy, then you need “true” in your logical reasoning. If you look at technical uses in science, again you need “true” in logical and mathematical reasoning. For that to work, “true” needs to be a property of syntactic statements. Meanings of terminology must be fixed first. Then you form propositions, which are syntactic expressions using those previously fixed meanings. And “true” is then used for those syntactic expressions (assuming the established meanings).
When I say that truth derives from human convention, I have in mind the meaning conventions that establish the meanings of the terminology. When I say that truth is a human invention, my main point is that it derives from human invented meanings.
Once you decide to make “true” a property of semantic expression, instead of a property of syntactic expression, you run the risk of falling back to “reality is true” as your only account of truth. That’s okay for ordinary discussion between people, but it is not adequate for technical uses of truth.
When we look at a scientific theory, an important role of the theory is to establish meanings of the terminology. So it falls outside the use of truth for syntactic expression. We don’t really have criteria for establishing meaning, except perhaps falling back to pragmatics. And that’s why I say that a theory should be considered neither true nor false. At least for technical use of “true”, we need to establish the meanings first.
When you talk of adjusting conceptual schemes — there we are adjusting both meanings and syntactic expressions that use those meanings. It is really pragmatics — we want the end result to work — that is important here.
I very much disagree with that. I see truth as a community property, not as an individual (personal) property.
Truth involves correspondence with statements, assertions, beliefs, propositions. Without the latter, nothing would be true. So in a sense, it’s person-dependent. But so are tar and comic books.
Just relativism of a different kind. It was true that the world was flat at one time.
What are both arguments?
EEAN says we evolution cannot get us true beliefs, only fit actions. But we do have true beliefs due to God’s design, so we conclude naturalism is false. (The argument is fancier than that but I think that captures the gist).
Hoffman says (as I recall) that evolution cannot get us truth, only fitness, but naturalism is acceptable, so we just stop and say evolution tellsus we cannot get true beliefs about reality.
It’s all that happens physically. There could be all kinds of other things going on.
peace
You are right about theories needing semantic content to acquire philosophical truth.
Philosophers say that theories have semantics because the theories/explanations involving unobservables are to be taken as literal claims about those unobservables. The theories are not just short forms for a set of predictions of human-sensory level observables resulting from experiments. This latter idea is part of the now mainly rejected logical positivism.
Even those like van Fraassen who reject scientific realism do nonetheless accept that theories have semantic content. But he says we should make no claims about their truth (he rejects IBE as used in no-miracles arguments).
I am not saying anything about truth in standalone math. Of course, scientific theories expressed in math gain semantics through the science.
Terms in science are defined by their role in theories.
I never said truth is reality. Or at least, I never meant to say that. I agree there needs to be small “c” correspondence for truth, while still rejecting a metaphysical Correspondence relation as empty, as you do.
Anyway, I feel like we’re revisiting some of our previous exchanges, so I will step away for now.
You are most welcome
The entire new testament would be good to look at from a perspective of political theory. For folks like the levelers it was a blueprint for a better more equal and just society. Seditious in the extreme.
Peace
I agree that is where the rub is.
We do know that things like irrational numbers are not reducible to physics in a finite universe. I believe there are other things as well as demonstrated by the thought experiment.
The key is to show that it is not logically possible to reduce a particular phenomena to the physical in that way.
peace
Very interesting. Thanks for that one.
It’s more of a bottom up answer than I would give.
For me it’s obvious and self-evident that persons are not reducible to physics but not so obvious why specifically not.
peace
I try not to get too personal here but you have got to read this sermon from the last Puritan CH Spurgeon entitled The Kingly Priesthood of the Saints.
It’s the reason that I call myself Fifth Monarchy Man
http://archive.spurgeon.org/sermons/0010.php
I’d provide a money quote but I can’t bear to cut it short. The entire thing is amazing good and it is very relevant to what you are thinking about as far as the Protestant take on politics.
Stick with it till the end
peace
My view of a theory, is that it establishes a logical or mathematical model of some aspect of reality. In particular, it maps observations into entities within the model. This can often require defining the observations to be made.
This seems to be particularly obvious for classical electromagnetic theory. The statements of the theory are pretty much the definitions of measurements, except that they are abstracted away from using specific units.
The terms get their meanings from the observations that they define and map into the model. But the terms of theory can often be new, as they are for electromagnetic theory. So there are no prior criteria for assessing truth. We judge the theory on the usefulness of the model, which is a pragmatic way of judging.
If we accept the theory (i.e. the model), then we will see the statements of the theory as analytic truths, because they are basically the definitions of the terminology. If we don’t accept the theory there is no reason to see any of it as true.
It is in that sense that I see the theory as neither true nor false.
We started out with an aspect of reality that we could not talk about because we had no terminology. We ended up with terminology that allowed us to talk about that aspect of reality, and to model it mathematically and make good predictions. I don’t see the point of saying that this is anti-realist. I can see why somebody like fifthmonarchyman might want to take it as anti-realist, because in his understanding of the world all names and meanings come from his god. But, for the rest of us, we should just take it to be real (in my opinion). So we should not pin our ideas of realism on whether theories themselves can be said to be true.
Neil Rickert,
Thank you for this — I found it very helpful. I feel better now about the conversation I had with my physics teacher re “What is the permittivity of free space? What does it represent?” I wasn’t being a complete idiot, and he wasn’t blowing me off.
I never had a problem with that one. I was an electronics hobbiest, so I knew about permittivity well before I got to Maxwell’s equations. But it is a good example of a completely new term that allowed us to make observations that nobody had made prior to electromagnetic theory.
The one that got me, was where I found a very simple formula in a book. This was for making a inductor (as used in high frequency circuitry) in the form of a new coil. The formula was how to calculate the inductance from the number of turns and diameter (or something like that). I wondered where that came from. And it turned out to come straight from the definition of the basic electromagnetic units.
Take it to be real on faith??
peace
Not all names and meanings just correct (ie true) ones.
Do you think that our inability to talk about something means that it does not exist?
How about an alternative??
I would say that naming is a human thing but giving meaning to the name is a God thing. There is no reason that the two activities should be seen as mutually exclusive.
They are both part of the process of revelation.
quote:
Now out of the ground the LORD God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name.
(Gen 2:19)
end quote:
Notice that here God reveals a previously unknown aspect of reality to man and then man gives it a name to which God supplies a seal of affirmation.
It has all the elements of your scenario but with the added benefit of connecting to objective reality instead of being suspended on a foundation of limited biased error prone subjectivity.
It’s relational just like your take but the relation is with the only possible link to objective reality instead of simply other limited biased error prone humans.
peace
No, of course I don’t think that.
My take is that meaning is biological, although science does extend that.
We don’t so much give meanings to names — it is more that we give names to meanings.
Perhaps I should clarify. For technical terms, such as in science, mathematics, even in philosophy, we sometimes start with words and it is a struggle to work out what they are supposed to mean. But for most of ordinary life, we start with meanings and then find ways to communicate those meanings with words.
I think that that when that struggle finds it’s target it’s a supernatural encounter with the divine.
When you finally “discover” the correct word or when a difficult meaning is really understood for the first time it’s pretty special.
It’s certainly not something that could be reduced to physics IMO.
peace
So you do know what truth is. Yet you deny that you know what truth is. It’s very difficult to take anything you write seriously. Can you perhaps somehow flag your posts with some indication of how you rate their truth value?
I agree with that sentence, but not on the other stuff you said.
That sentence is the reason I said the other stuff.
The other stuff follows necessarily once you adequately understand the sentence.
peace
Fixed that for you
Is it actually true that it’s whack-a-doodle religious nonsense?
😉
peace
Gödel showed that there can be undecidable questions in mathematics. Why should we be surprised that there can undecidable questions in real life?
Pretty sure Neil’s take on what truth is has nothing to do with the fact that there’s no logic in your argument above. That’s a silly comeback on your part as usual.
For someone who boasts logic all the time you seem to be logically illiterate
Pretty sure you are wrong. 😉
The “argument” is that my take can provide actual validity for a statement an his can’t.
Something he implicitly agrees with by the way
peace
Undecidable within the system.
God on the other hand uniquely provides a perspective outside the system of the universe. So for God and only for him nothing is undecidable.
He can in turn reveal the decision to us if he chooses
That is exactly the point.
peace
Can we be mistaken about whether He choose to or not?
Only if we assume whack-a-doodle religious nonsense like “god is truth”.
I don’t know if Neil’s theory is tenable or not, but yours is not even wrong.
Except for some mathematical questions, right? or are you going to treat us with another of your logic fails?
Are you really this dense or are you just playing around?
The first incompleteness theorem states that no consistent system of axioms whose theorems can be listed by an effective procedure (i.e., an algorithm) is capable of proving all truths about the arithmetic of the natural numbers. For any such consistent formal system, there will always be statements about the natural numbers that are true, but that are unprovable within the system.
The second incompleteness theorem, an extension of the first, shows that the system cannot demonstrate its own consistency. : Except for some mathematical questions, right? or are you going to treat us with another of your logic fails?
Are you really this dense??
quote:
The first incompleteness theorem states that no consistent system of axioms whose theorems can be listed by an effective procedure (i.e., an algorithm) is capable of proving all truths about the arithmetic of the natural numbers. For any such consistent formal system, there will always be statements about the natural numbers that are true, but that are unprovable within the system. The second incompleteness theorem, an extension of the first, shows that the system cannot demonstrate its own consistency.
end quote:
from here
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del%27s_incompleteness_theorems
peace
Peace
What is “providing actual validity for a statement”?
fifthmonarchyman,
The way I understand all this is:
To say “mathematical questions” is to assume we’re working within a formal system. Godel’s proof shows that some statements (or questions) are unprovable within the formal system. Those statements are system dependent, they only make mathematical sense within the formal system of axioms.
If you mean to say that God can prove those statements outside the formal system, then you’re talking nonsense as usual
As I understand, Godel proved that, for any formal system sufficiently rich to express the Peano axioms, there will be syntactically correct expressions that are “undecidable” (neither the sentence nor its negation can be proven). That’s why the formal system is “incomplete.” One can prove the sentence (or its negation) only by introducing additional axioms.
Notice, by contrast, that first-order logic is complete — one can prove within first-order logic that any syntactically correct expression is either true or false.
Thanks KN
That’s the first thing I googled when I learned about Godel’s theorems. It seems an obvious question, does this apply to logic? I don’t understand the formal details though
It doesn’t apply to what’s called first-order logic, which is the predicate logic that’s taught in upper-division symbolic logic courses. I’m afraid that I don’t understand the details myself, though I did make a concerted effort at studying them while in grad school.
We can be mistaken or we can be certainly correct. The choice is entirely his.
peace
God knows if a statement is actually valid or not and he can reveal that knowledge to us if he chooses.
peace
No that is not what I’m saying. God does not need to prove anything. I have no idea where you got that idea.
God can know the validity of statements that we can’t because he is outside the system that is our universe while we are not.
And because he is God he can reveal that knowledge to us.
peace
You mean true? (Validity is a property of arguments.)
[Also I have no idea what “reveal that knowledge” is supposed to mean. You mean, like, tell you that “yeah, it’s true”?]
What do you think working within a formal system means?
Do you think you are an actual mathematical term Instead of a person who manipulates mathematical terms?
peace
Right, and additional axioms are just what we are talking about.
check it out
https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/15525/how-is-first-order-logic-complete-but-not-decidable
and
http://kilby.stanford.edu/~rvg/154/handouts/fol.html
peace
We are not discussing arguments but statements. I was talking informally and informally valid equals true when it comes to statements. At least where I live.
God being omnipotent can reveal anything that can be revealed.
In this instance we are discussing whether X is true. Since God is omniscient he knows if X is true and since he is omnipotent he can reveal that to me.
peace
You might ask FMM if the role of God is to tell us whether or not a proposition corresponds with reality (veritas est adaequatio intellectus et rei), and if he thinks that it’s impossible for us to make that determination for ourselves.
I’m probably unusual among philosophers in thinking that both realism about ethical values and a correspondence theory of truth can be explicated and vindicated within a naturalistic, scientific metaphysics. There aren’t too many hills I’m willing to die on but those are two of them.
I’m talking about mathematical proofs, evidently.
Not these kind, unless God can violate logic.
derp
Really? LOL. It simply means to work with the definitional set of axioms of the formal system, and work your way from there
2+7=9 is true if decimal arithmetic
2+9=11 is also true, if octal arithmetic
I think you like turtles. Or something
and then some other statements within the system are still unprovable, which is to say unknowable
Cheryl Misak in Aeon writes on some of the topics that Neil and I discussed: truth, pragmatism, logical empiricism:
” For Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle, much of philosophy was mere nonsense. Then came Frank Ramsey’s pragmatic alternative.”
https://aeon.co/essays/what-is-truth-on-ramsey-wittgenstein-and-the-vienna-circle
I think FMM is saying something a bit stronger in that it applies to all logically possible worlds:
God knows both of the following
1. For any given logically possible world W and a given logically consistent statement S that can be modeled in W, then God knows whether or not S under a given model is true in W. (By modeled, I mean reference given for names and predicates).
2. For any logically consistent statement S, God knows all logically possible worlds where S has some model and is true under that model for the world.
Those seem to be reasonable necessary conditions for omniscience. There may be more to it than that, though. I don’t know.
I like the idea, but I am not clear how you accept both Peircean truth and correspondence theory for truth for scientific realism.
I do have the intuition that some kind of small c correspondence is needed for scientific realism because realism requires ontology and reference. But I also think that truth as the end of “right” type of inquiry makes sense as a way to understand truth.
I think one might be able to reconcile these two by taking correspondence as representation in the sense we have discussed for mental representation and somehow finding commonalities in
1. single person cognitive inquiry by perception/action to form accurate mental representations, and
2. intersubjective inquiry in a scientific domain to build true theories.
That is pretty vague, but it is the best I’ve got.
For ethics, I am not sure if naturalism requires correspondence theory or indeed any ontology at all.
Impressive achievements in such a short life.
I find these types of questions easier to understand when expressed using Truing machines. That is, even though it is not quite the same issue technically as Godel Incompleteness*, for me it is easier to ask this: “Can God solve the halting problem? That is, does God know whether or not any program will halt for given input?
I think the answer is yes: God can solve the halting problem. I think that is the case because I think God is not limited to using only the “effective computing” that Turing machines are defined to be limited to. In particular, God can create or even embody a halting oracle, which is a black box answering the halting problem for any case, and might work eg by using hypercomputation.
And just to show that TSZ has mysterious links, EricMH believes that intelligence uses halting oracles to create the appearance of design in natural selection (since he believe he has proven that NS cannot do so using natural processes which for him are what Turing machines do).
————————————–
*As outlined here, it is possible (roughly speaking) to derive Godel’s incompleteness results from Turing’s results.