Truth

My defense of necessary and a priori truths and logical proof of there a priori necessity!

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• truth
• metaphysics
• contradiction
• philosophy
• transcendental
• logic

[EverettsVLOG]

i see a way in which this video may be wrong... now obviously this is the truth 101 cannon and it is for a reason (its hard to defeat)... but let me give it a shot...

you have presupposed that logical contradiction implies something about how *reality* has to be rather than something about how your thoughts have to be. So, (i) must be qualified to read P or ~P with respect to our *thoughts*... NOT w.r.t to *anything*... so you will merely conclude that your thoughts have bounds.

[LordImmolation]

Hmm firstly, I think that it is a pretty strong intuition that motivates the law of non-contradiction as applied to reality. And if you don't accept it, you may run into infinite regress.

So hold that Possibly NOT "P OR ¬ P" and so, "¬ (P^¬P) OR (P OR ¬P). Of course now you cannot except the second claim either because it is essentially the first.

So you fall into regress. Also, I think the "reality"/"thoughts" distinction is Kantian and therefore wrong.

[EverettsVLOG]

1.) we obviously have an intuition that motivates that logic applies to reality but we have an intuition of free will also

2.) the claim is that our catagorizations and reasoning may fail w.r.t. reality so proving an infinite regress or contradiction when considering reality does not seem to help matters.

The reality/thought distinction? you definitely cannot deny you have thoughts... and if you think they can correspond to something independent from your thoughts, then thats 'reality'.

[LordImmolation]

1) The motivation for logic applying to reality is almost inescapable. If you hold that the law of non-contradiction doesn't apply to reality I can argue that it does, and you have no basis for dismissing my claim because you cannot invoke the law of non-contradiction. I on the other hand do have a basis to dismiss your claim.

2) You are still making reasoning about reality by making such statements, if you say the law of contradiction does not apply this is a statement about reality

[LordImmolation]

[cont]

The reality/thought distinction you are making is suggests there are WHOLLY mind-dependent properties, which invokes a dualism similar to that of Kant.

[coolioto]

You have not begun to think.

[hyperseauton]

Rorty

[glueandchem]

You can only prove that there are truths without experience after you have clearly defined, beyond any shadow of a doubt, exactly what you mean by "experience". Until then, nobody knows what you or Kant are talking about by "experience". All these "a priori" truths are just abstractions of seemingly universal empirical elements. I'll admit we need one thing: the ability to synthesize and a functioning memory in order to cognize and recognize. That's it.

[Canteatpancakes]

How about, "all unicorns have horns?"

Does that reasoning still apply?

[otonanoC]

Not only are there a priori statements, but it's worse than that even. There is an entire edifice of discourse that can be referred to as A PRIORISM.

I think that what the greek philosophers of antiquity were doing (as a whole, on the whole) can be labelled as a giant discourse of A PRIORISM.

The greek philosophers were not utilizing sensitive measuring equipment as an ingredient of their discursive actions. In fact, they did not even have the modern apparatus of science we have now.

[pyrrho314]

I started making replies, won't be able to get them up till early next week thought fyi... cheers, lots to cover

[LennyBound]

In such an instance, would we say that we were mistaken in the past, and that no "fish" ever existed, or would we revise our concept of what constitutes a "fish" and form a new conception? In other words, would our old concept of "fish" achieve intertheoretic reduction or outright elimination.

It seems to me that the concept of "fish" (or any other concept for that matter) is embedded within a theoretical framework that could (potentially) turn out to be entirely non-referential.

[LennyBound]

Interesting... but I still feel such definitional "truths" are not immune from conceptual revision.

For example, imagine that tomorrow we discover that "fish" (as we currently conceive of them) don't actually exist, and they are, in fact, an entirely different class of animal with radically different properties. (I have no idea how we could be so mistaken, but for the sake of argument let's just say that we were.)

[EverettsVLOG]

2.) if i catagorize fig newtons less than 10 grams more th 10 g, then i have made a distinction and reason about the two groups as i may. similarly, i am making a distinction between the concepts of "thoughts" and "things that are defined as independent from thoughts". I have said nothing about whether it is all the same 'stuff' etc. so dualism has nothing to do with this issue. If there is something independent of my thought, i see no reason for it to follow the rules of my thoughts (logic).

[EverettsVLOG]

1.) this point of yours seems to be ignoreing my acutal argument in order to refute it easily. i am not saying that the law of non-contradiction doenst describe the capacity of our minds. it does. i am saying that i have no reason to believe that it also describes the capacity of the universe or other universes. logic is a description of how the mind catagorizes and draws inferences. you are just assuming that this ability is boundless in its application and i am not.