I don't understand why we can't have a hierarchical knowledge/understanding/model scheme that defines an asymptotic unreachable bottom?


Now 'encouraging clarity' is a bit ambiguous. Clarity depends on purpose and context.

Imagine we are building a model of a house for the purpose of enabling someone to recognise the house when they see it from the front yard. A suitable model would be a photograph... this encourages abstraction by removing unnecessary detail like how many bathrooms the house has etc. We can encourage clarity in our photograph model by making important properties more visible (and using abstraction)... so if the side of the house isn't as important since we're looking at the house from the front yard, the photo should emphasize the front of the house.

This model has a high degree of clarity in the sense that it easily allows a person to use it to recognise a house and hence satisfies its purpose. But it wouldn't have a high amount of clarity for a thief who wants to find out whether the back door has an easily breakable lock.


I know this is slightly different to the OP in that I'm talking about modelling a real object with another object rather than modelling reality by scientific knowledge or general perception. But I think similar principles apply - the difference is that science holistically tries to eliminate abstraction as much as possible. Anyway I do agree that clarity for most people and purposes is essentially a filter for reality.

I will definitely chime on on this topic very soon, because I probably think thoughts along the lines of these over really anything else.

Because if there's no bottom, how can any proposition be said to be "true"? It would only be in reference to some other proposition, and if there is no "bottom" proposition that is self-evident that all the other propositions can refer back to, then you essentially just have a bunch of propositions that are interconnected but none of which can be said to actually be true. Say you're building a house for instance, you have to make an assumption that there is a such thing as a wall. But this assumption is not self-evident, and if you look closer and closer you find that a wall is just a way way way generalized concept that doesn't actually have to do with the physical nature of a structure, but rather the psychological context in which certain structures present themselves, etc. So you have to make an assumption like walls exist, but if there is no bottom to our representations then any assumption you make is unprovable, and hence all the other propositions in your system which rely on this assumption are also unprovable--they are only provable in the context of your system, which makes no guarantee at corresponding with reality.

Firstly, I hope you can forgive me for having no real knowledge of philosophy... everything I'm saying is based on a bit of my thinking and skewed understanding of things and it probably sounds ridiculous... anyhow:

In the real material world, can humans really evaluate a proposition as being definitely true? As you said, we define a bottom which consists of base propositions (or axioms) and we can build more complex propositions from those. But since we didn't invent the system of reality, can we really assert that our bottom is correct? I mean, I'm sure almost nobody in a normal state of mind would dispute it and I'm sure that it's empirically sound... but does that make it true? Even if it isn't true, it has served us well enough in our existence, hasn't it?

Conversely, we have mathematics which is a system contrived by humans and thus we can invent axioms and prove theorems and build propositions based on those regardless of whether our perception of reality holds true.

I think the thread is derailing more than a little bit here. Cardboard, I can see where you are coming from, but it makes little sense from a practical point of view. 99 point something percent of the time, people tend to think : "This is a wall. It stops things from coming through it and it can support weight." .. For most practical purposes, that is sufficient.

What I suggest in the original post is that people try to belive in something that resembles the truth rather than something that removes them from it (I'd also like it to be a little kick in the side for those who go "shopping for religion" if you know what I mean). You have ideas about why science may also remove you from what's true, but your thinking is so extrapolated and spaced out that anyone actually believing and adhering to everything they experience by that kind of thought should basically feel like their entire existence unravelling and that's just a little impractical.

What I'm saying is that this thread is about what people believe in - what influences their subjective reality .. Not arguments that could possibly turn science on it's head if you sit down and think hard about it. I just don't think they have enough "mainstream appeal" to be important. Every day we see the fruits of science, for example the computer you're using. People can make computers now because we know more about how stuff works - we are a little closer to the truth than we were 100 years ago.

edit :

I understand why your argument could be seen as important, but it's turning the thread into a discussion on science itself which was not really the point. How would you reply to the original post if you hypothetically thought that science does bring us closer to the truth?

I don't believe there is any 'ultimate truth', and when people talk about it I usually have a hard time following what they actually mean by it. If there was an ultimate truth I imagine it would be utterly incomprehensible to humans, and as a human construct, our language would never be able to articulate such a transcendental idea.

So of course, if a religion professes to contain the ultimate truth, then its believers are operating in their own subjective reality. This is why I am an atheist, because science is not operating on the flawed agenda that it knows the answer to everything.

But I don't think religion is a bad thing, if only because it marks our first attempts to understand our world in a greater sense. And our ability to have faith in abstract concepts is a fairly basic tenet of the human condition, it isn't necessarily a weakness.

Your last paragraph is pretty weak, sure divisions can lead to conflict, but would you prefer we all lived in a society so homogeneous there weren't any differences we could argue over?


I agreed with Cardboard Adolescent's first post, but he gradually lost me as he furthered his argument. I think it stems from the fact that I don't see science reaching for any 'ultimate truth', it proves things that we can call true in the context of human experience.

We build some pretty huge particle generators to look for particles that we, as humans, are not able to "experience" as such other than in a theoretical sense. But I think I get what you mean roughly - good science is provable and possibly there are parts of the ultimate truth that are just not testable in any such way and so we won't know for sure.

None of us can actually know if a tree would make a sound in the forest if it fell and nothing was there to witness it. Although we roughly agree that it should do, maybe the ultimate truth is that it doesn't. We won't ever know because as soon as something is there to record or observe the phenomena, you've already failed the experiment.

I'll argue again, though, that although parts of the truth may be unprovable, some parts are provable and as long as scientific breakthroughs let us do stuff in new ways, that itself proves that we are piecing together more of the truth .. even if at some point we find out there that we can't get any further.

It's all a matter of perspective, really. From the standpoint of an engineer I could say that since science lets us do things we weren't able to do before, it must be giving us a better understanding of reality. Not only this, but this understanding is good, since it allows us to make life easier and even prolong it. If, on the other hand, I take the position that science focuses on the "illusion" of life and rather than resolving it, expands it, then I would also see these "practical consequences" of science as leading one away from the "truth" of life. For Schopenhauer (forgive me for resorting to quoting philosophers) the ultimate goal of life was to recognize its meaninglessness, and to overcome the will to live... give away all your possessions, become an ascetic, and eventually die. From most viewpoints, this is decidedly impractical, but practicality is also a viewpoint, and one that can only be justified through fear.

It's impossible for a human being to understand any sort of ultimate truth because we, humans, are limited as a species due to the inefficiency of our bodily senses (we can only perceive a small % of the actual stimuli around us) and that it is rediculously difficult for most humans (scientists) to measure or observe anything in a perfectly objective way since there is an ever prevalent presence of bias and subjectivity in the way people approach something.

What is truth? What is reality when not filtered through the feeble perceptions of a human being?

We'll probably never know the answer to either of those questions.

Cardboard adolescent, thanks for a well-written reply. Anteater, you also make a solid, well-written point although it has been made earlier in this thread by several, including myself. Most seem to agree on that one.

I don't think Schopenhauer is right. Biological theory and understanding is explaining a lot of what philosophy has been trying to explain earlier. One of my friends who I first met during my biology bachelor already had a masters in philosophy, but started over again with biology for this very reason.

We are here because our lines have persisted. At some point, life was probably little more than advanced molecules able to replicate themselves. There would be many different versions of these and they would compete for shared resources. The ones that were most efficient, probably at replicating themselves, getting resources, possibly destroying their competitors etc. persisted while the others died away. This is a kind of driving force that is still with us today. Unless you're a mutant, you have an inbuilt desire for self-perseverance and reproduction (at least sex, evolution may not have caught up with the idea of preventatives just yet). Although our genes "know" this, our brains don't always and our cognitive abilities have given us the luxury of asking what the point of it all is.

http://img36.picoodle.com/img/img36/...Rm_4a4376d.jpg

This point of view has a lot of scientific backing and with it comes a certain practicality. How to persist and replicate are problems with practical solutions, many that are instinctive for us. According to Schopenhauer, there may not be a point in taking care of your kids, but we still do it. It's programmed into our very nature and while we are certainly able to reflect on his thoughts, I don't think we can actually rise above our nature and fully rid ourselves of every natural urge like eating food, protecting our children or not jumping off tall buildings.

So what I'm saying is that practicality is more than just a viewpoint, it's built-in and it makes sense for us to follow it.