Another Failure at Explaining the Truth

[xanderman]

Does A = A?

The world may be considered one giant, incredibly complex information set. From that we create a subset of information in our brain. Does our information set correspond with the world?

If you read the description on the back of a paperback book would you have the same information that you would if you read the whole book. No. In any summary there is information loss. Our subset will always be lacking. We can ask a few questions about this. How important is that lost information? How much of a difference will that lost information make? As best the summary on the back of the paperback book is an accurate representation of the contents of the book.

So lets try to look at this. Is our truth (information subset) an accurate representation of the Truth (total information set)?

Well our truth is going to be incomplete. The piece of the whole is always less than the whole. But it gets worse. Then we further summarize all of the information in our brain into a smaller summary. We summarize information into language. So how much degradation of information do we have in these two steps alone, from World to Mind, and then from Mind to Word? Too much.

Truth is the original information set. As a subset of the Truth all of our information, no matter how extensive, is never quite the Truth. The full Truth remains forever beyond our grasp. Our hands are never big enough to get it all. All of our information subsets will be imperfect representations of that complete set.

So this is the quest, for a better representation of the Truth. Along the way we can be confident that we will always be in error.

With science we can oust our old shyster representations and replace them with better and better ones. Yet even the best of them is a conman, winning our confidence through trickery and deceit. He offers to give us what we can never possess, he offers us everything, and just about everyone falls for that promise.

[Kennethamy]

@xanderman

. The piece of the whole is always less than the whole.

And even that isn’t true. The set of even numbers is equivalent to the set of even and odd numbers. Thus a proper subset is numerically equivalent to the set of which it is a proper subset.

[detrop]

Xanderman:

The full Truth remains forever beyond our grasp.

I agree.

That’s very Kantian. If you notice the nicely constructed bridge between this skeptical empiricism and the noumenal rationalism of Kant, you will see how that paradoxical statement is resolved.

If the Truth is forever beyond our grasp, how do you even mention such a thing?

It is done analytically in the mind. It sort-of transcends the empirical in a freaky Husserlian way, I think. Kant’s concepts of apriori knowledge are intriging.

I dunno. I’m still learning alot.

[xanderman]

@xanderman

. The piece of the whole is always less than the whole.

@Kennethamy

And even that isn’t true. The set of even numbers is equivalent to the set of even and odd numbers. Thus a proper subset is numerically equivalent to the set of which it is a proper subset.

It was even more of a failure than I realized.

Kennethamy, you are using math at a level beyond my limited experience.

I was actually looking at data compression when I wrote this. I was thinking of the mind as a lossy codec and language as yet a further lossy codec applied to the already compresssed data. It looks like I was using the terms “Set” and “Subset” incorrectly.

Now I would call math an abstraction, it is another representation of all information. So in and of itself all of math is already one step away from the Truth. It is close, but no cigar.

[Al1 (Al)]

It hurt my head when I learnt that there are different kinds of infinity in maths.

[xanderman]

@détrop

If the Truth is forever beyond our grasp, how do you even mention such a thing?

I mention it because I have the Word. What is this word “Truth”? It is a smear of ink, or a projection of pixels or a complex hiss of modulated breath.

The Word is nothing significant by itself. It is with my intention that I connect with Word with something. Then because my intention has connected the Word to the something then the something is also now connected to the Word. Since I have power over the Word then I also have power over the something. When I manipulate the Word so can I manipulate the something too. It is fundamental sympathetic magic.

I want to master the something and I used my Word as the tool to master the something.

The something that the word Truth tries to connect to is far beyond it. It is like trying to lasso the Sun. The lasso is often too short to get near. Or if it was massive enough then it would be destroyed as it approached it.

The eye can see what the hand can never grasp. So too the eye of the mind can visualize what the mind itself can never contain.

I can look out my window and see tiny mountain on the horizon yet my hand can never pick up those tiny mountains that I see. When I journey to the mountains then they dwarf me. As I get closer to them I am forced to admit their magnitude and my own insignificance in comparison. When I had only a representation of this titans they seemed to be easily mastered. Yet as that representation gets close to the actual then I realized how erroneous my representation was. It was incomplete in ways that were completely unapparent.

If I stay in my building far away and only look at my representation of the mountains that it is easy to imagine reaching out to control them. Yet only when if I tried to do this would I realize the significance of my error. Then the Truth of the mountains annihilates my little truth.

[Al1 (Al)]

@xanderman

With science we can oust our old shyster representations and replace them with better and better ones. Yet even the best of them is a conman, winning our confidence through trickery and deceit. He offers to give us what we can never possess, he offers us everything, and just about everyone falls for that promise.

Science is not a conman and ‘he’ doesn’t offer everything. He just says ‘I am the best method you have for getting even remotely close to the Truth. Take the little pearls I give you and make what sense of them you will.’

[xanderman]

Al,

I was not in the metaphor comparing science to a conman. I was comparing the [representation of the truth] to the conman.

Science is more like Scooby Doo and the gang peeling away the rubber mask of ignorance to reveal the genuine, yet each mask pulled away reveals yet another thinner mask behind it.

[Dunamis]

Xander,

Does A = A?

Iterability alters. - Derrida

Dunamis

[arendt]

@xanderman

So lets try to look at this. Is our truth (information subset) an accurate representation of the Truth (total information set)?

Well our truth is going to be incomplete. The piece of the whole is always less than the whole. But it gets worse. …

…All of our information subsets will be imperfect representations of that complete set.

So this is the quest, for a better representation of the Truth. Along the way we can be confident that we will always be in error.

Xanderman, I like your ideas. Very nice post.

So it seems the default is that we are in error, and so we put the effort—this whole philosophy----into getting closer to perfection. Isn’t the “quest for a better representation of the Truth” presupposes that we can know, and have an idea, of what Truth is? So, how is it possible that we are always in error yet we can recognize what Truth is?

How about this? Let us narrow down our reality so it includes only what we can achieve, what we can grasp, what we can know. Philosophy either stretches or shrinks what constitutes reality, and this seems to be the point of contention among philosophers (theorists).

[xanderman]

Dunamis,

I have this vision of you in my head. I see you as the maverick uncle who, while the parents are distracted, gives a lit firecracker to his young nephew. Just a little firecracker, nothing that will leave the kid with a lifelong nickname like ‘Lefty’ just enough to give him a hell of a fright and a nice burn if he holds onto it for too long. Then you just set back and see what he will do with what you have given him.

You write wonderfully dangerous material.

-xander

[monad]

perhaps the dialectic of truth requires that truth itself be forever incomplete; considering that truth may be a kind of genetic entity which generates survivable variations of it’s own class. Therefore it can be spoken of but never as something consummated or perfect.

[Dunamis]

Monad,

“considering that truth may be a kind of genetic entity which generates survivable variations of it’s own class.”

Instinctively I like this. I think that genealogically, ideologies and values are prime candidates for this line of thinking. Truths are always found within ideologies, and ideologies may be seen as evolving super-organisms.

Dunamis

[Dunamis]

Xander,

Derrida’s Iteribility is a bit more dangerous than it seems. Light it, and one might loose more than a few fingers.
A good toss and whatever Identity it hits is leveled.

Dunamis

[monad]

Well put!

Truth is a kind of entity which requires infection to become active. Truth depends on catalysts of impurity. I never imagined it as a crystallized integer.

[Kennethamy]

@monad

perhaps the dialectic of truth requires that truth itself be forever incomplete; considering that truth may be a kind of genetic entity which generates survivable variations of it’s own class. Therefore it can be spoken of but never as something consummated or perfect.

This is what happens when the rarified air of abstraction is substituted for reality. You stop making any sense at all. As Wittgenstein put it, “Back to the rough ground!”

[monad]

This is what happens when the rarified air of abstraction is substituted for reality. You stop making any sense at all. As Wittgenstein put it, “Back to the rough ground!”

If you can “really” explain what truth is, then you are a better man than I. As for quoting Wittgenstein, not a good choice who in his ground breaking attempts to break the back of needless abstraction became his own victim. He was aware of this. Truth becomes mystical when absolute.

[Al1 (Al)]

@monad

Truth is a kind of entity which requires infection to become active. Truth depends on catalysts of impurity. I never imagined it as a crystallized integer.

I’m not sure that ‘Truth’ is any kind of thing at all, let alone any kind of entity that needs an itch in order to scratch itself

[pragmatist]

Despite the many philosophical attempts to define “truth,” it seems that there is already an agreed upon definition of the term. “Truth” is the degree to which something conforms to a standard of measurement.

When an archer hits the bulls-eye, we say his aim is true. When a method has been shown to always give us the desired result, we say it is “tried and true.” When somebody tells you something, and it can be corroborated by established authoritative sources, you say it is true. (Of course, if you doubt the legitimacy of the authority, that is another matter.)

We all generally use the term “true” in this fashion.

If you want to say that the set of all information in the universe is “the Truth,” then you are basically saying that the universe itself provides the ultimate standard of measurement. However, there is the possibility that the universe does not consist of a complete and consistent set of information. The only way to know that the universe is a complete and consistent set of information is to experience and describe the totality. Unless and until that is possible, we cannot make conclusions regarding the set of all information in the universe.

You may then say this means we cannot know “the Truth.” But what if the whole is a fractal? If the whole is a fractal, then a subset can be said to contain the information present in the whole.

Whether or not the universe is a fractal (or fractal-like), we can say that we can learn about certain parts or aspects of the universe, and use them as standards of measurement. Thus, we can build clocks and practice archery. The integrity of our notion of “truth” does not depend on our knowledge of the entire universe.

Furthermore, much of our knowledge is quite useful even though it makes no reference at all to the universe. Mathematical and purely logical knowledge, for example, allow us to discuss truths which are measured only with respect to axioms. Mathematical truths are such regardless of what information is present in the universe.

Kennethamy,

The set of even numbers is equivalent to the set of even and odd numbers. Thus a proper subset is numerically equivalent to the set of which it is a proper subset.

Don’t fall for inductive reasoning. It will more than likely lead you into error.

The integers and the real numbers are both subsets of the set of all numbers. Yet, the set of integers is not numerically equivalent to the set of real numbers. The latter is uncountably infinite, while the former is countably infinite. So, not all proper subsets are numerically equivalent to the set of which they are a proper subset.

[jamespetts]

@xanderman

Does A = A?

Yes, where “A” represents the same thing in each instantiation, as is the convention.

The world may be considered one giant, incredibly complex information set. From that we create a subset of information in our brain. Does our information set correspond with the world?

That question is far too generalised to be meaningful. Firstly, it is not meaningful to conceive of “our brain”, rather than “our brains”, each of which individual brain has a distinct information set. Secondly, there is no reason to believe that it is useful to ask whether the whole set corresponds with that of the world with which it purports to correspond, as distinct from individual propositions.

If you read the description on the back of a paperback book would you have the same information that you would if you read the whole book. No. In any summary there is information loss. Our subset will always be lacking. We can ask a few questions about this. How important is that lost information? How much of a difference will that lost information make? As best the summary on the back of the paperback book is an accurate representation of the contents of the book.

Or, in other words, nobody knows everything.

So lets try to look at this. Is our truth (information subset) an accurate representation of the Truth (total information set)?

You misconceive what truth is. Truth is not that total set of data that is all of the universe: it is a property of propositions, that they correspond with that of the world with which they purport to correspond. That a set of propositions is an incomplete description of the world does not make any of the individual propositions any less true.

Well our truth is going to be incomplete.

It is not the truth that is incomplete: it is the set of true propositions. They are not the same thing.

The piece of the whole is always less than the whole. But it gets worse. Then we further summarize all of the information in our brain into a smaller summary. We summarize information into language. So how much degradation of information do we have in these two steps alone, from World to Mind, and then from Mind to Word? Too much.

Too much for what, exactly? Does the above claim amount to anything more significant than that humans are fallible in understanding and communicating information?

Truth is the original information set.

As stated above, that is to misconceive what the nature of truth is.

As a subset of the Truth all of our information, no matter how extensive, is never quite the Truth.

See above: that a set of true propositions is incomplete in some way does not entail that any of the individual propositions is any less true than were the set complete. The usefulness of a set of propositions is not identical to the truth of any one.

The full Truth remains forever beyond our grasp.

What do you mean by “the full truth” here, exactly? Anything other than “omniscience”?

Our hands are never big enough to get it all. All of our information subsets will be imperfect representations of that complete set.

Do you mean by this anything more significant than that human understanding of the world is in some respects incomplete and fallible?

So this is the quest, for a better representation of the Truth.

Truth is not the kind of thing that can be represented: it is a description of the accuracy of the representation of propositions.

Along the way we can be confident that we will always be in error.

We cannot be confident that we will always be in error: only that we always may be in error. As stated above, incompleteness is not identical to inaccuracy.

With science we can oust our old shyster representations and replace them with better and better ones. Yet even the best of them is a conman, winning our confidence through trickery and deceit. He offers to give us what we can never possess, he offers us everything, and just about everyone falls for that promise.

Where is the deception in genuine and improving, but incomplete and fallible, understanding?