[ExI] What can be said to be "wrong", and what is "Truth"?

Lee Corbin lcorbin at rawbw.com
Mon Oct 13 17:27:23 UTC 2008


Stefano wrote  (Sent: Friday, October 03, 2008 5:32 AM)

> Lee wrote:
> 
>> Yet, when we, especially in the west, do stumble upon certain
>> kinds of "things which had been veiled", e.g., the speed of light,
>> should we really be blamed for claiming that we have advanced,
>> that we now have better maps, that the accuracy of our beliefs
>> is improved?
> 
> I think that if we do that with due caution and qualifications, we shouldn't.

Agreed.

So long as we resist the temptation to affirm that what we have
found is beyond criticism, we are entirely justified in believing
our beliefs that have survived serious criticism, and
especially those that can be reproduced publicly.

> Also because after all "discovery" and "invention" have exactly this
> meaning, and both ultimately refer in a certain kind of cultural
> framework, which we may tentatively call
> scientific/western/relativist, to what "works", or at least appears to
> work to a growing number of people, to the detriment of possible
> alternate worlds inhabited by a handful of aboriginal shamans or
> Tibetan monk-lords or postmodern scholars.

Quite right. But don't you confess that on a day-to-day basis, the
real Stefano goes around with a conviction *nearing* certainty
that (a) he's alive (b) the city around him is definitely real (c) someone
did say in fact what you most clearly and certainly heard him to say
(d) that if you drop your newpaper, it will fall to the ground, and so on
and so on?

It's only at odd moments that you call these beliefs about daily life
into question, (e.g. the entirely actual possibility that we are living
in a simulation). Normally, it is quite useless when driving home from
work to wonder whether the light ahead is red or is merely a perception
by a possibly non-existent being, blah, blah, blah.

Therefore, I make this compromise with the non-realists: just assume
that your working model of the universe is "correct", simply for 
expediency. Almost always, they'll go along with that.

Lee




More information about the extropy-chat mailing list