someguy6382639 t1_j38lak7 wrote
Reply to comment by Mission-Editor-4297 in Occam’s Deepest Cut: Occam's Razor isn't a guide towards the truth—it *defines* the truth by NaimKabir
Thinking on this topic I've landed at this thought that truth, as we try to define it, doesn't exist. Epistemic uncertainty is always possible. The greatest minds in logic and epistemology tried to solve it and arrived effectively at a stalemate. In physics, we end up with uncertainty as a fact as well. In a nutshell, when you get down to a fine enough view, the act of observation becomes relatively large to the observation, enough so that the act of observing impacts the results, making a true observation simply impossible. These dilemmas, I reckon, don't have solutions. There isn't a new thought, method or technology that will fix it. It is impossible.
Yet occams then gives us a new definition of truth. Perhaps our old idea of it simply doesn't exist. It's not that we haven't found the truth; but, that the truth doesn't exist. The razor doesn't point at the truth. It points at function. Truth then is functionality. Which shows true in everything.
Take consciousness, the problem of the other, and all the metaphysical models. Like these topics, I feel we cannot find those answers. And I reckon occams is a decent compass there too. We can find "truth" in the absence of such a thing (as we like to think of it) by focusing on functionality.
Just some random thoughts. What you said was interesting and got me thinking this.
FrozenDelta3 t1_j38q55m wrote
Is reality exists then truth exists, so it depends on whether you (the observer) thinks reality exists or not.
While uncertainty in physics is a fact, it could be that this reveals more about the state of human knowledge than it does what’s seen as uncertain.
The act of observing at the smallest of scales is accomplished by interfering, so it very may well be that the interference is what is impacting results. I won’t say what is possible or impossible with regards to future technology because what we have today was considered impossible not that long ago. These dilemmas currently do not have solutions.
Mission-Editor-4297 t1_j38m0n1 wrote
I disagree. Truth exists, but it get complicated when we add levels of consciousness and conceptual purity to the mix. If objective reality exists, then so does truth.
someguy6382639 t1_j38sdcb wrote
But what if objective reality, for what that actually means and entails to us, doesn't exist in truth? Yet I'd suggest it does in function.
I feel like because of our use of language and inherent ideas, it goes both ways. I could not agree more in the sense that I have profusely expressed that objective reality exists many many times. I still stand by those statements; but, I think I may be using the same words in two different ways.
Some kind of objective reality must exist. Clearly. Yet it is our description that functions. We don't feel we've found the answers, or have the facts, positive statements that express more than nothing, simply by knowing objective reality exists. This, by itself, is useless. True. Yet it means very little until we form a description of that reality. That description is what we then say is truth.
Yet none of our descriptions of it are provably true. More than that. What I'm suggesting is that we can never prove the descriptions. Our descriptions aren't true by this nature. What is logically true is only that there is something. Not what it is; yet, we can still know the function of our descriptions quite well.
When we think about the recursion, aren't any of our descriptions that we seek to call truth only sensible if we place them within the psychological constructs of our minds? Would our ideas mean something to anything else other than ourselves? Would something else conscious that has no use, no emotional attachment or curiosity towards, a specific construct, be able to understand what our truth means when that specific construct is pivotal to our truth? And yet a truth, objective reality, wants to say we should have agreement, in that it is the truth.
Perhaps we can say truth exists in different ways. Bare logic gives us one, which is what yields that objective reality exists. Maybe occams gives us another form of truth, one that is useful when the other form of truth isn't?
It isn't true that x description is an undeniable universally understood (beyond just humans) objectively accurate description. It is true that all we can know is that x description yields y result/functionality. It is true that yielding our description to that functionality provides the same kind of direction we seek from our concept of truth, the same sense as if it were objectively accurate in some universal way.
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