I don't think that mathematical statements are *true* per se. I thoroughly reject the Platonic ontology of mathematics in favor of one that describes mathematics in terms of a human social network.
Truth is a rather sticky subject, as the logician Godel established in 1931 with his incompleteness theorem for axiomatic systems. In fact, the logician Tarski established the undefinability of arithmetical truth in 1936
To my understanding this concerns generalization of math into sociology and humaniora, including some branches of philosophy, not the clean math per se. At any rate, the math example here was more a joke than anything else.
I think that knowledge is relative. Just as Einstein discovered that space and time are relative, dependent on the gravity and speed, there is no absolute time that is correct everywhere. There is also no absolute truth that is correct everywhere, it depends on who is telling the story, what has been forgotten or misread, etc.
....which is not far from the conclusion above that absolute truth would require positive test results for an infitite time
Truth is... what is. It remains true independent of any observer.
Truth is... what is. It remains true independent of any observer.
Sure. The problem remains though how to "translate" this to human beings like you and me. When doing that it will always require tests. Unfortunately, those tests would have to extend to infinite time to yield a CERTAIN result. Moreover, the testing methodology will often affect the issue being tested so that the result could be biased!
Rather like Heisenberg's uncertainty principle - our measurements or perceptions of things can never be totally accurate. I think the key, mentioned above, is that everything in 'our universe' is relative, and that that 'relativity' is contained within a closed system, pointing to something greater than, and outside, and independent of, anything within this system of molecules and atoms.
Kant says the following regarding what is "real". He speaks of "inner" and "outer" senses (after having established that time and space must exist due to "intuition") in his chapter titled "Transcendental Aesthetic (II)",
"In confirmation of this theory of the ideality of both outer and inner sense, and therefore of all objects of the senses, as mere appearances, it is especially relevant to observe that everything in our knowledge which belongs to intuition - the feeling of pleasure and pain, and the will, not being knowledge, are excluded - contains nothing but mere relations; namely, of locations in an intuition (extension), of change of location (motion), and of laws according to which this change is determined (moving forces). What it is that is present in this or that location, or what it is that is operative in the things themselves apart from change of location, is not given through intuition. Now a thing in itself cannot be known through mere relations; and we may therefore conclude that since outer sense gives us nothing but mere relations, this sense can contain in its representation only the relation of an object to the subject, and not the inner properties of the object in itself"...
Our conscious apprehension of things limits us, and allows us to make sense of things which would, without the inherent filters/doors of perception/inhibitors, overwhelm our senses. I therefore believe that absolute truth will elude us until a certain change takes place. The question is, what will that change be, and how will it be realized?
Thanks for the comments ivandh, Phobetrix, Jilvin, thetrainer, marke570.
"'relativity' is contained within a closed system"
Says who? And if there is something outside the universe, who is to say that it, too, is not influenced by its own relativity, or that of something outside the thing that is outside our universe?
These are the points raised against the idea of an absolute time, but I think they can apply here. I suppose you could say that there is an absolute time and and absolute truth- but that we can never perceive them without some relativistic distortion. Which then begs another question: does it matter if something exists that we cannot know, i.e. does the tree in the forest make a sound, and should we care if it does?
To derive his 1917 cosmological model, Einstein made three assumptions that lay outside the scope of his equations. The first was to suppose that the universe is homogeneous and isotropic in the large (i.e., the same everywhere on average at any instant in time), an assumption that the English astrophysicist Edward A. Milne later elevated to an entire philosophical outlook by naming it the cosmological principle. Given the success of the Copernican revolution, this outlook is a natural one. Newton himself had it implicitly in mind in his letter to Bentley (see above) when he took the initial state of the Cosmos to be everywhere the same before it developed “ye Sun and Fixt stars.”
The second assumption was to suppose that this homogeneous and isotropic universe had a closed spatial geometry. As described in the previous section, the total volume of a three-dimensional space with uniform positive curvature would be finite but possess no edges or boundaries (to be consistent with the first assumption).
To derive further results, Einstein combined his redefinitions of time and space with two powerful physical principles: conservation of energy and conservation of mass, which state that the total amount of each remains constant in a closed system. Einstein's second postulate ensured that these laws remained valid for all observers in the new theory, and he used them to derive the relativistic meanings of mass and energy.
...there is a beginning and end to time in Friedmann's version of a closed universe when material expands from or is recompressed to infinite densities.
[Source: "Cosmos." Encyclopædia Britannica. Deluxe Edition. Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica, 2008.]
I think you just did, vamp, with your absolute logic.
Yet, it does not take 100% of people, or even a majority, to make something true.
Also, you cannot even discuss truth without making statements that you determine to be true.
The person who states that there is no absolute truth has just made an absolute statement.
"I think i can state absolutely that absolute truth only exists if you absolutely believe that the statement is the absolute truth"
Do you believe that absolutely?
Ken, in the sense of physics, a closed system neither influences nor is influenced by anything outside it. So in that sense, if there is an absolute truth outside this closed system, it doesn't have anything to do with us.
Earlier in the thread I think we departed from beliefs. If beliefs are included in this discussion, then we can go anywhere and it's no longer interesting (in my view) because of the uncontrollable diversity.
Ken, in the sense of physics, a closed system neither influences nor is influenced by anything outside it. So in that sense, if there is an absolute truth outside this closed system, it doesn't have anything to do with us.
Well, although that's an interesting thought it would imply that we (="us") live/are in a closed system, which is not the case. A "closed system" in physics is - simply - a model, but in reality all systems are open.
^ Which is what my original point was.
^ Which is what my original point was.
I am sorry, I missed it (please quote the post number).
Kenneth said in the first paragraph of #29 that relativity is contained in a closed system, and in the following post I said that isn't necessarily the case.
I agree that relativity is not confined to closed systems. But this thread is about "absolute truth", which can be reached by the scientific approach only by an infinite series of tests. That does not mean "never", only after an infinite time
However, if the absolute truth is to be reached by belief, you can have it right now. That's why religious beliefs make life so much simpler.
Sorry Ken, could not resist