Re: virus: Locker Room Talk

Eric Boyd (6ceb3@qlink.queensu.ca)
Fri, 26 Jun 1998 22:11:14 -0400


Hi,

"brandon fenton" <b_randum@hotmail.com> wrote:
> There's more than tow sides to every story.There's yours, mine,
> and the truth, which is nothing more than a perseption

In some cases, there are more than two sides, certainly, but in others
there are not. Either the man is dead, or he's not, right?

As to the truth, it is not so much "a perseption" (do you mean a
perspective?) as a model of the world (Objective Reality) which corresponds
to it (e.g. can predict it) in every way we currently know how to check.
The capital T Truth, of course, is a totally accurate model, which will
correctly predict the world even for situations we currently don't know HOW
to measure.

There is the possibility that two different models of the world will always
produce the same predictions about the same situations, and both are "true"
to the extent that we can verify. In such a case, I will concede that you
could call BOTH "true", however, if they are at all different (and if they
aren't then it isn't much of thought experiment), I suspect that at some
time in the future we will be able to eliminate one of them as no longer
the truth.

A long time ago, here on Virus, David McFadzean asked:

"Are true isosemantic statements about objective reality
non-contradictory? Yes or no?"

I answer YES. Does anybody want to play devil's advocate and argue no
against me? (or even any other position?)

ERiC
(isosemantic: where all the words are defined to mean the same things in
both of the models, i.e. no quibbles about the slippery nature of language
allowed)