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comment by mk
mk  ·  3541 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Why Our Children Don’t Think There Are Moral Facts

    Those sound like code words for "no truth at all."

Not at all. It is a statement that regards the nature of the truth, not the quality of it.

    But they are not absolutely tidy, they are relatively tidy.

I agree here. Everything in the physical world must be described in relative terms. There is no such thing as an independent quality. Thus all qualities are dependent upon the quality of the relationship by which a definition of state is to be made.

    The fact that we can't perfectly apprehend the truth does not make us doubt that it exists.

I think this may be where we see things differently. I do not assert that a boiling point of water exists beyond the degree to which it may be measured. It's a fine point, but IMHO it is of crucial importance. We can plot the boiling point of water, at one atmosphere, we might say that water boils at exactly 100°C. Although useful for most experimentation, in actuality that definition mischaracterizes boiling for what it is. In truth, there is a point to which you become close enough to 100°C whereby you cannot physically discern where boiling actually begins. That is because boiling is a macro phenomenon that results from micro phenomena that are not perfectly relatable to 'boiling'. This is something that is true of all physical phenomenon, and there is often confusion when definitions are applied beyond their scope. Thus, we can say that water at one atmosphere boils at 100°C, and as far as we are concerned with boiling of water, it is correct and reproducable. However, to conclude that water does begin to boil at exactly 100°C (but that we cannot measure it) simply does not describe a physical reality.

Pi is similar. There is no exact value for Pi. What we have are calculations that approximate the value of Pi. However, the universe makes no such calculations and no such value need exist, nor can it exist.

    Suppose I exhibit two actions. In my view, Action A is virtuous and Action B is evil. I choose extreme examples to make the point clear; we don't need expensive thermometers to make a judgment. I say, "Action A is better than Action B," do you agree? Does my statement have a truth value? You may have utilitarian values, or you may follow some kind of Kantian rule system, but I have selected exhibits such that we are pretty sure to agree.

Yes, your statement absolutely has truth value. It might be a truth rooted in cultural context rather than physical reality, but it absolutely has value. To me, it might be more valuable than a truth rooted in physical reality.

The color green exists only because my nervous system has the capacity to interact with photons of a wavelength of ~500nm in a particular manner. Does that make trees any less green? No. Trees are green to me, and that can be a very important truth to me. That that truth of green is not shared by a dog, a rock, a blind person, or anything in the majority of the time since the Big Bang where there were no eyes to see it, it doesn't mean that it does not exist for me, or have meaning to me.





wasoxygen  ·  3541 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I haven't yet decided if we strongly disagree, or we agree on a level deeper than I can fathom.

    There is no exact value for Pi.
Would you say the same of the square root of two, or one-seventh, or thirteen?

Regardless, I conclude that you deny the following statement:

For every real number q, it must be the case that q < pi, or q = pi, or q > pi.

I conclude that, if I describe two circles that each have a radius of 1, you will not know if they have the same area.

mk  ·  3540 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    Would you say the same of the square root of two, or one-seventh, or thirteen?

I guess I should clarify, that in the language of mathematics pi can be said to have an exact value. However, it cannot be realized in a physical sense, that is, printed as an exact value in decimal form.

Math can have absolute axioms, but the physical world has only approximations.