Religion and Ethics Forum
General Category => General Discussion => Topic started by: trippymonkey on July 30, 2015, 04:57:32 PM
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Is it ever possible for a person to be 'right' about anything without somebody else being 'wrong'????
Need there always be some kind of 'casualty'? ???
This notion seems to permiate these forums like some perverse game certain people play here.
I HAVE to be right so that YOU must be wrong. ;) ::)
Nick
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Only in matters of obvious personal taste and opinion - it's obviously right that I love marzipan otherwise I wouldn't eat it, but it's equally obviously right that you can't stand the stuff, etc. Kant called this a subjectively sufficient but objectively insufficient mode of knowledge, i.e. it's just an opinion where no objective criterion is possible. There are objective facts about marzipan - that it contains sugar and almonds; that it's used to decorate cakes, etc - but as for whether marzipan is personally appealing or not, that's wholly and entirely in the subjective realm.
Matters of fact are a different game altogether, of course.
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I'm not sure 'right' exists. In some areas we can have a consensus - this is a tree, that's a table - and science has its facts and religion its rules. But is anything really, truly knowable? For that to happen we'd need to be certain about the facts around our existence, and I'm not sure that we are.
Liking marzipan is plain wrong though.
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It's quite hard to have a discussion if everyone takes the same side.
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I'm not sure 'right' exists. In some areas we can have a consensus - this is a tree, that's a table - and science has its facts and religion its rules. But is anything really, truly knowable? For that to happen we'd need to be certain about the facts around our existence, and I'm not sure that we are.
Aargh! Postmodernism at its worst.
Not being able to acquire the knowledge of which is right and which is wrong doesn't mean that there isn't a right or wrong. Either there is a man called Geoff scratching his arse at 8.06pm today in Doncaster or there isn't. The fact that it isn't knowable doesn't mean that there isn't an actual state of affairs. Geoff isn't like Schroedinger's cat, simultaneously existing in an arse-scratchng and a non-arse-scratching state. If I say it is happening and you say it isn't, then one of us is right and one of us is wrong.
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I'm not sure 'right' exists. In some areas we can have a consensus - this is a tree, that's a table - and science has its facts and religion its rules. But is anything really, truly knowable? For that to happen we'd need to be certain about the facts around our existence, and I'm not sure that we are.
Aargh! Postmodernism at its worst.
Not being able to acquire the knowledge of which is right and which is wrong doesn't mean that there isn't a right or wrong. Either there is a man called Geoff scratching his arse at 8.06pm today in Doncaster or there isn't. The fact that it isn't knowable doesn't mean that there isn't an actual state of affairs. Geoff isn't like Schroedinger's cat, simultaneously existing in an arse-scratchng and a non-arse-scratching state. If I say it is happening and you say it isn't, then one of us is right and one of us is wrong.
You are confusing true and false with right and wrong. The former is a factual argument, but the second is just a moral argument ... a matter of opinion.
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That's the trouble with English - "right" and "wrong" are polysemes, i.e. they have double meanings. "Murder is wrong" and "Berlin is the capital of Spain is the wrong answer" mean two different things, yet we often use the same word for both.
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I'm not sure 'right' exists. In some areas we can have a consensus - this is a tree, that's a table - and science has its facts and religion its rules. But is anything really, truly knowable? For that to happen we'd need to be certain about the facts around our existence, and I'm not sure that we are.
Aargh! Postmodernism at its worst.
Not being able to acquire the knowledge of which is right and which is wrong doesn't mean that there isn't a right or wrong. Either there is a man called Geoff scratching his arse at 8.06pm today in Doncaster or there isn't. The fact that it isn't knowable doesn't mean that there isn't an actual state of affairs. Geoff isn't like Schroedinger's cat, simultaneously existing in an arse-scratchng and a non-arse-scratching state. If I say it is happening and you say it isn't, then one of us is right and one of us is wrong.
You are confusing true and false with right and wrong. The former is a factual argument, but the second is just a moral argument ... a matter of opinion.
I'm not sure if Rhiannon's trees and tables, or Shaker's matters of fact, bear that out Len. I think we are discussing whether there has to be a right and wrong about factual matters, at least in part.
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It's quite hard to have a discussion if everyone takes the same side.
Yes
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It's quite hard to have a discussion if everyone takes the same side.
Yes
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No it isn't.
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Is it ever possible for a person to be 'right' about anything without somebody else being 'wrong'????
Need there always be some kind of 'casualty'? ???
Yes. If I try to unlock my house front door with a similar-looking but incorrect key, I will never succeed, other than in wrecking the lock. Similarly, imagine a doctor diagnoses someone as having viral hepatitis and treats them for that but it turns out that they actually have meningitis - the outcome could be disastrous. Another example: you are admitted to hospital with an acute problem and undergo an emergency operation, at the end of which the duty nurse counts up the equipment and states that all is present and correct. Later, in the room where they laod the autoclave, it is noticed that there is, in reality, one item missing, and it is traced back to being inside you (this happened to the guy who was my best man 6 or 7 years after our wedding. They had to reopen the incision to retrieve it, and he died of complications of that reopening)
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IMHO, You are confusing true and false with right and wrong. The former is a factual argument, but the second is just a moral argument ... a matter of opinion.
FIFY, Len. I would say that there is so much overlap between the two, as to make your black and white judgement unfit for purpose
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That's the trouble with English - "right" and "wrong" are polysemes, i.e. they have double meanings. "Murder is wrong" and "Berlin is the capital of Spain is the wrong answer" mean two different things, yet we often use the same word for both.
Unfortunately, the same applies in many languages, suggesting that there is a natural overlap.
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Is it ever possible for a person to be 'right' about anything without somebody else being 'wrong'????
Need there always be some kind of 'casualty'? ???
This notion seems to permiate these forums like some perverse game certain people play here.
I HAVE to be right so that YOU must be wrong. ;) ::)
Nick
Can you think of some examples where two people with opposite views can both be right? Unless you can, I don't think you should be so critical of the rest of us.
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But is anything really, truly knowable?
The square root of two cannot be expressed as the ratio of two whole numbers.
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That's the trouble with English - "right" and "wrong" are polysemes, i.e. they have double meanings. "Murder is wrong" and "Berlin is the capital of Spain is the wrong answer" mean two different things, yet we often use the same word for both.
Indeed, but most facts are demonstrably right or wrong, contrary to god beliefs.
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Indeed, but most facts are demonstrably right or wrong, contrary to god beliefs.
Do you have any evidence that what you call 'god beliefs' aren't demonstrably right or wrong, Len?
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But is anything really, truly knowable?
The square root of two cannot be expressed as the ratio of two whole numbers.
But that's meaningless unless someone is able to observe it. I'm not sure our perception of the self that observes is accurate. If that isn't accurate, nothing is.
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Indeed, but most facts are demonstrably right or wrong, contrary to god beliefs.
Do you have any evidence that what you call 'god beliefs' aren't demonstrably right or wrong, Len?
The only way to err demonstrate this, is to demonstrate that god beliefs are right or wrong. Good luck with that, because no-one through history has been able to do that.
As with the existence of god the only way to finally nail the argument is to prove god's existence since proving that something doesn't exist isn't possible (check Popper). The same is the case with objectivity/subjectivity. The only way to demonstrate that something isn't subjective is to prove it objectively.
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Indeed, but most facts are demonstrably right or wrong, contrary to god beliefs.
Do you have any evidence that what you call 'god beliefs' aren't demonstrably right or wrong, Len?
The Prof has already given an answer, Hope, and I can't improve on it.
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The Prof has already given an answer, Hope, and I can't improve on it.
A good answer as well; but not one that helps the debate since some here assume that evidence can only be physical.
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The Prof has already given an answer, Hope, and I can't improve on it.
A good answer as well; but not one that helps the debate since some here assume that evidence can only be physical.
If it isn't physical, then it will be emotional (feelings) ... notoriously unreliable.
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Is it ever possible for a person to be 'right' about anything without somebody else being 'wrong'????
Need there always be some kind of 'casualty'? ???
This notion seems to permiate these forums like some perverse game certain people play here.
I HAVE to be right so that YOU must be wrong. ;) ::)
Nick
'Fuzzy Logic' is a branch of Artificial Intelligence that can sometimes give surprisingly good results. Instead of assigning a result as TRUE/FALSE it has a range of values between these states.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuzzy_logic
And I think that the reason that the system works so well is because it mimics the way we think. We can rarely be 100% sure of the truth of anything and have to make decisions based on the degree of truth that we believe exists.
Hence, we can never be sure that we are RIGHT - BEST GUESS is the most we can ever hope for :)
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But is anything really, truly knowable?
The square root of two cannot be expressed as the ratio of two whole numbers.
But that's meaningless unless someone is able to observe it.
No it isn't.
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But is anything really, truly knowable?
The square root of two cannot be expressed as the ratio of two whole numbers.
But that's meaningless unless someone is able to observe it.
No it isn't.
Why?
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Doesn't it go along with some quote about....
If a pebble drops into a pool of water & nobody sees it, did it happen?
Or something along those lines. If not witnessed , who cares. If anybody has the correct quote...... PLEASE ?!!?!?!?!
Nick
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It's usually "If a tree falls over in a forest with no one to hear it, does it make a sound?"
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AAH Thanks YES That's it !!
I would say YES It Does make a sound because that's what happens even if there's nobody there to hear it. Doesn't make any difference.
N
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But does a mathematical law have any meaning if there is nobody to understand it?
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Are we mixing MEANING with USEFULNESS ????
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I don't know. How can anything have meaning if nobody is there to understand it? If we need to understand it for it to be 'true' and there is a doubt about whether we perceive our existence correctly, then there are no certain truths.
I think. :-\
As for the falling tree, yes it makes a sound, because it will be observed by the rest of the life forms in the forest. A tree falling in a desert with no other life forms around though?
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It wouldn't matter, would it? No lifeforms to fall onto.
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I don't know. How can anything have meaning if nobody is there to understand it? If we need to understand it for it to be 'true' and there is a doubt about whether we perceive our existence correctly, then there are no certain truths.
I think. :-\
As for the falling tree, yes it makes a sound, because it will be observed by the rest of the life forms in the forest. A tree falling in a desert with no other life forms around though?
It would still cause the same air-pressure waves (sound) whether somebody could here it or not.
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AAH Thanks YES That's it !!
I would say YES It Does make a sound because that's what happens even if there's nobody there to hear it. Doesn't make any difference.
N
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Likewise, the sound of a tree falling is in the brain of the hearer, more specifically in the auditory cortex.
Sound is a interpretive cerebral phenomenon that derives from patterns of airborne compression waves. The compression waves themselves are completely silent. Like everything else, sound is all in the mind.
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AAH Thanks YES That's it !!
I would say YES It Does make a sound because that's what happens even if there's nobody there to hear it. Doesn't make any difference.
N
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Likewise, the sound of a tree falling is in the brain of the hearer, more specifically in the auditory cortex.
Sound is a interpretive cerebral phenomenon that derives from patterns of airborne compression waves. The compression waves themselves are completely silent. Like everything else, sound is all in the mind.
Spot on!
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Re mathematical truths.
We can know whether mathematical statements are true or false because they are made within systems which we have defined rigorously, with known axioms. eg for Jeremy's example within the system of number theory.
Similarly with science, we build models trying to best represent the world that we experience, and can get predictive results using those models. Those results are correct or not (or sometimes undecidable) within those well defined models, but whether they are absolutely true or false, in reality, we can never know. In practice we develop a model and stick with it if it proves useful, until we find a more useful one.
Other philosophies are available.
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I don't know. How can anything have meaning if nobody is there to understand it? If we need to understand it for it to be 'true' and there is a doubt about whether we perceive our existence correctly, then there are no certain truths.
I think. :-\
As for the falling tree, yes it makes a sound, because it will be observed by the rest of the life forms in the forest. A tree falling in a desert with no other life forms around though?
It would still cause the same air-pressure waves (sound) whether somebody could here it or not.
But do the sound waves have meaning? If there is no mind (as Torridon points out) to experience and interpret them then is it really still making a sound?
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I don't know. How can anything have meaning if nobody is there to understand it? If we need to understand it for it to be 'true' and there is a doubt about whether we perceive our existence correctly, then there are no certain truths.
I think. :-\
As for the falling tree, yes it makes a sound, because it will be observed by the rest of the life forms in the forest. A tree falling in a desert with no other life forms around though?
It would still cause the same air-pressure waves (sound) whether somebody could here it or not.
But do the sound waves have meaning? If there is no mind (as Torridon points out) to experience and interpret them then is it really still making a sound?
Sound is simply our brain's way of interpreting the pressure waves caused by the tree falling. So it is still producing the waves but if there is no sentient creature with eardrums to perceive them, then you can say it is not making a sound.
Complicated, ain't it? :)
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Exactly. So mathematical truths have no meaning without minds to understand them. And given that we can't really be sure of the nature of our existence, it seems to me that we can't really know that mathematical laws (for example) really are true. But our perception is that they are, and we function better in our understanding of the world around us if we have these laws, so it is usually beneficial to act as though these are infallible truths.
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Exactly. So mathematical truths have no meaning without minds to understand them. And given that we can't really be sure of the nature of our existence, it seems to me that we can't really know that mathematical laws (for example) really are true. But our perception is that they are, and we function better in our understanding of the world around us if we have these laws, so it is usually beneficial to act as though these are infallible truths.
Curiouser and curiouser! I suppose maths is nothing more than a human conception helping us to count, and doesn't have any existence outside our brains! :o
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Dear Me,
What is this thread about! Anyway isn't maths a totally natural thing, without us it would still exist, nature uses it all the time, although a tree might call it a different name, yes I do believe tree's communicate.
What is the sound of one hand clapping ???
Gonnagle.
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Dear Me,
What is this thread about! Anyway isn't maths a totally natural thing, without us it would still exist, nature uses it all the time, although a tree might call it a different name, yes I do believe tree's communicate.
What is the sound of one hand clapping ???
Gonnagle.
I don't think nature uses it at all, Gonners. The tree growth molecules and all the rest of its genes just go about their business with no regard for maths.
I suppose the sound will be half a clap, but my imagination breaks down there.
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Dear Leonard,
I am thinking more about how a tree grows, how it divides, multiplies, a living cell does the same thing, the geometry of a snowflake, I think the shells of snails exhibit a certain symmetry made famous by a philosopher whose name escapes me.
Of course it is us who have gave names to these phenomenon but it would still exist without us.
One hand clapping, no such thing, and of course a tree falling does make a sound, the tree hears it :o
Gonnagle.
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Dear Leonard,
I am thinking more about how a tree grows, how it divides, multiplies, a living cell does the same thing, the geometry of a snowflake, I think the shells of snails exhibit a certain symmetry made famous by a philosopher whose name escapes me.
Of course it is us who have gave names to these phenomenon but it would still exist without us.
One hand clapping, no such thing, and of course a tree falling does make a sound, the tree hears it :o
Gonnagle.
It's all a great big "unknown" to us, Gonners. But we humans hate to admit we don't know, so we often invent answers, just to get the question out of the way. And if we can invent kudos for ourselves at the same time, so much the better! ;D
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Dear Leonard,
Absolutely no argument there old son ;)
Gonnagle.
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Dear Leonard,
I am thinking more about how a tree grows, how it divides, multiplies, a living cell does the same thing, the geometry of a snowflake, I think the shells of snails exhibit a certain symmetry made famous by a philosopher whose name escapes me.
Of course it is us who have gave names to these phenomenon but it would still exist without us.
One hand clapping, no such thing, and of course a tree falling does make a sound, the tree hears it :o
Gonnagle.
I believe much of creation follows mathematical patterns. But does it understand and observe the laws that govern these? Does a snail understand the spiral on its shell? And do we know better than it does?
What is 'sound' to a tree?
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Dear Rhiannon,
That is one of the wonderful things I like about science, a scientist can study just one discipline, what does sound mean to a tree, there are studies that suggest playing music to plants helps, what kind of music would a tree like? Mud! Trees like Mud :P
Gonnagle.
Gonnagle.
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I don't know. How can anything have meaning if nobody is there to understand it? If we need to understand it for it to be 'true' and there is a doubt about whether we perceive our existence correctly, then there are no certain truths.
I think. :-\
As for the falling tree, yes it makes a sound, because it will be observed by the rest of the life forms in the forest. A tree falling in a desert with no other life forms around though?
It would still cause the same air-pressure waves (sound) whether somebody could here it or not.
But do the sound waves have meaning? If there is no mind (as Torridon points out) to experience and interpret them then is it really still making a sound?
A brain is something that draws meaning out of the cosmic swirl around it. Patterns of compression waves become rendered into sound, patterns in electromagnetic radiation are translated into a sense of sight, chemical signatures on the tongue become something tasty, or not, as the case may be. Throw all manner of stuff at it, the brain sublimely, effortlessly, seamlessly makes a constant stream of multimodal experience out of it, forms of meaning with which we are all familiar from birth and which we accept unhesitatingly as an honest account to what is out there, although it is not, it is all derivative fabrication done in a manner which our particular brains have evolved and perfected over the ages. If we ever encountered intelligent aliens, we may well discover that they have brains that deliver forms of experience entirely unimaginable and uncommunicable to us. Scary thought for the day.
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But is anything really, truly knowable?
The square root of two cannot be expressed as the ratio of two whole numbers.
But that's meaningless unless someone is able to observe it.
No it isn't.
Why?
Why not?