RE: The Rise of Pluralism and the Supremacy of Truth (A Mathematical and Scientific Approach)

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The Rise of Pluralism and the Supremacy of Truth (A Mathematical and Scientific Approach)

in philosophy •  8 years ago  (edited)

Hi melek, some reactions to this:

It seems to me that what you are mostly focused on in your writing is human perception, and on that point I will have to agree — not only are our physical capabilities in experiencing reality crude, they are also prone to mistakes (our minds are not exact machines, and can play tricks on us all the time). From this perspective a third-party observer, or better yet a higher quality device such as a camera can indeed correct our perceptual discrepancies and rectify our data.

However what is a different story altogether (and indeed the topic of my article at https://steemit.com/philosophy/@sergeypotapov/you-are-at-the-center-of-the-universe-and-you-have-the-whole-thing-to-yourself) is the existence of a fundamentally objective reality, completely separate from any observer whatsoever.

In your examples you list such things as high-definition cameras and the perception of warmth emanating from a the box with the cat, etc. But these are all observational methods, and even if they are recorded by a device, their end destination is that of a conscious being, for purposes of evaluation.

But the most important aspect to consider here, is that we are still talking about very crude, very rough perception of what we consider to be reality. Let's take your example with the car. You observe it one way, somebody else in another. An HD camera can clear all misunderstandings on that level. However that is only on the level of describing the outside of the car. What about the interior of it? Well, perhaps an x-ray machine could come to the aid of the HD camera, and help sort that out. Alright, but what about the composition of the paint of the car? The materials used in building it? As you wish to know more and more "truth" about a structure you need more and more techniques to get it. Eventually you will be asking questions about its structure on the atomic and subatomic levels, and this is where things get tricky. Because we are now trying to describe the car on a subatomic level, we experience quantum effects, and foregoing all the details as to how and why, this eventually means that our observing of the car will have an effect on the car itself, thus we as observers are fundamentally linked with the observed.

While we can describe truth on our crude and rough levels and find an optimal solution as to what the objective truth is on our human scale, there is simply no way to do that in an all-encompassing manner when it comes to describing the more minute details of existence.

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I think we sort of agree on that. On the human scale we can't understand an infinite truth. My supposition is that even though we can't see or understand it, entire truth still exists outside of ourselves.

Thanks for a great response. I think we might be down to a difference: measurement.

Anyone who hasn't read @sergeypotapov (the article in his response above), it is an interesting read.