/sci/ - Science & Math

I don't know what you mean by "objective". This word is generally the problem of all these discussions. U need to avoid it. http://lesswrong.com/lw/nu/taboo_your_words/

I think the notion/concept of truth is problematic.

In an operative way, you probably can construct tautologies and then the answer is yes.
Like if I construct the equivalent to "this sentence will end on the letter G"
then that will be true.
Other than that, I don't think there are truths in the real world.
Putting the two points made above together, if I say "electrons exist.", then the sentence is alway true if I read it in a way that an electron is what I define to be the reason for all the observations which "have to do with electrons". That is, if two people talk about a concept, then the concept exists and so it's difficult to deny that concept, electrons in that case. As far as *really exists, like in nature, like the actual things*, i.e. "an sich", then you'll never be able to find an answer. I guess you can always construct chinese room types of simulated reality arguments againt the idea that you can know absolute truths.
There are many linguistic problems going on

We don't even know if the universe is comprehensible.

I don't know 'bout science, but mathematics does indeed.

>>4615814
It most definitely is not.

Absolute certainty is unattainable. And that doesn't bother me at all.

We have evidence, and probability estimates derived from evidence about whether a given idea is correct. This relies on some assumptions and we only ever have finite evidence, so nothing is known with perfect certainty, but so what? That doesn't mean you don't have any information.

>>4615814
We don't know whether it is FULLY comprehensible to US.

But science acts on the assumption that the universe is at least partly comprehensible to us, and it's working out really well so far.

>>4615825
Yes, i find this rather obvious. Apparently, not so many other people do. Btw, it is called fallibilism.
http://www.iep.utm.edu/fallibil/

>>4615803
Yes, sorry, I meant "truth" outside of us and language. As in what really IS.

>>4615821
How exactly?

>>4615839
Is it not an objective truth that the Mandelbrot set is an intrinsic piece of raw mathematics and is therefore somehow bizarrely connected to physical reality?

>>4615845
What makes you so sure that all possible mathematics has application to some aspect of reality?

Can't you make mathematical systems based on axioms that just don't have anything in common with reality?

>>4615837
I read some of the section on fallibility and justification, and I couldn't roll my eyes hard enough. Of COURSE there's no such thing as perfect justification of a belief. What the hell are philosophers wasting their time on?

>>4615857
>I read some of the section on fallibility and justification, and I couldn't roll my eyes hard enough. Of COURSE there's no such thing as perfect justification of a belief. What the hell are philosophers wasting their time on?

Mathematicians often think that their proofs are '100% certain' and 'cannot be wrong' etc. Some people claim the same about they themselves existing (cogito ergo sum) etc.

>>4616906
Well, there's two huge gaping holes: Your perception of your logic's consistency may be wrong (along with everyone else's feedback), and math relies on axioms which cannot have perfectly certain connection with anything real.

I mean, I don't really worry about these things, but I don't pretend I have perfect knowledge. The one that gives me pause is about whether I can be tricked or misguided such that the Cogito is wrong. That one is perplexing. But who's to say that my logic isn't just perverse and wrong? Who's to say that my ideas of "exist" are meaningful at all?

>>4616922
This sounds like ur first time doing epistemology. I can tell becus ur using "logic", "meaningful", "perfect knowledge" the way u are.

Anyway, for the reasons mentioned many places, humans are never absolutely certain about anything, not even their own existence or basic arithmetic truths etc. I do not find this particularly worrisome, but again, as mentioned before, many mathematicians (for instance) think that they cannot possibly be wrong about their theorems etc. History seems to show otherwise. For how many centuries did the try to square the circle?

considering it is always us that does the interpreting

>>4616979
>sounds like your first time
>continue to agree with everything I've said without adding anything helpful
Thanks, I guess.

>>4617013
I don't know what u were saying, so i don't know if i was agreeing or not. That is what happens when on uses unclear terms like "perfect knowledge".

>>4617023
That's seriously unclear to you? You couldn't even make a guess as to what I meant? I'm talking about having perfectly justified, absolute certainty that a given belief is true.

From evidence we can estimate the probability that a given claim is true, but you can never justifiably assign a probability of 1 to any ontological claim (that would require infinite evidence).