Thats why I tought it s such a good example
I think 'the sky is blue' is an everyday statement which contains several different (possible) truths
1) the sky is blue, as anything else that is blue or at least appears so
2) the appears to be blue under certain conditions
3) the sky is not blue at sunset, etc
of which none is absolutely certain
In fact, 'sky' and 'color' are rather fuzzy terms, as they represent some very broad phenomena that cannot
be easily measured nor quntified without losing their charm and the immediacy the meanings that they intend to convey
(is there an equivalent mathematical/exact representation of sky and color, I wonder
but I did not intend to interrupt the flow of your argument, sorry
ignore me
cheers
PDM
On 5/9/07, Waclaw Kusnierczyk <Waclaw.Marcin.Kusnierczyk@xxxxxxxxxxx
> wrote:Paola,
I was just reusing Ingvar's example with no will to discuss this issue,
but I don't think it is particularly wrong.
'X is blue' is best interpreted as 'X is such that we perceive it blue'.
Otherwise, would there be anything blue at all? Is my shirt blue?
Does it cease to be blue in the darkness? Haha.
We could argue over what sky is, whether clouds are a part of the sky or
not, and whether the sky is still blue when it is cloudy (we just can't
see it through the clouds, but ask anyone who sits on a plane flying
above the clouds). In this example, it did not matter. For an
ontological engineer who has to define 'sky', 'color' etc., it may matter.
vQ
paola.dimaio@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
> Good example!
> 'the sky is blue'
>
> haha the sky is not blue!, It just looks blue
>
>
http://www.sciencemadesimple.com/sky_blue.html
>
> (what may seem true and something to base a set of inferences from, may
> simply be
> a matter of perspective, or optical illusion).
>
> Never take anyting for granted..
> Paola
>
>
>
>
> On 5/9/07, *Waclaw Kusnierczyk* <Waclaw.Marcin.Kusnierczyk@xxxxxxxxxxx
> <mailto:Waclaw.Marcin.Kusnierczyk@xxxxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
>
>
>
> Ingvar Johansson wrote:
> > Waclaw Kusnierczyk schrieb:
> >> Ingvar Johansson wrote:
> >>
> >>> Being a fallibilist means
> >>> to accept that a theory may be empiricially adequate for a time
> without
> >>> being completely true. I think what (reading vQ:s mail) might be
> >>> pedagogically missing in Peirce and Sowa is a concept advertised by
> >>> another fallibilist, Karl Popper. He verbalizes it using three
> different
> >>> expressions: 'truthlikeness', 'verisimilitude', and
> 'approximation to
> >>> truth'. Theories are not just either true or false; truth can take
> >>> degrees. And very very much tells in favor of the view that most
> >>> empirically adequate theories have a rather high degree of
> truthlikeness.
> >>>
> >> i am not sure how much to like the 'partially true' and 'truth
> can take
> >> degrees' parts.
> >>
> >> clearly, if we think of a theory as of a set of statements, the
> theory
> >> is partially true if there is a subset of it with every
> statement being
> >> true. (every theory is partially true, since every theory
> includes the
> >> empty theory, which is vacuously true.)
> >>
> >
> > This is *not* what I mean. The intuition behind the notion of
> > 'truthlikeness' can be explained in the following way.
> >
> > Assume that the statement (1) "The sun is shining from a
> completely blue
> > sky" is simply true. Look then at the statements (2) "It is somewhat
> > cloudy" and (3) "It is raining". I would in this situation say
> that (2)
> > is *more truthlike* than (3).
> >
> > Another case. Assume that the statement (1') "There are four blood
> > groups plus the Rh factor" is simply true. Look then at the
> statements
> > (2') "There are four blood groups" and (3') "All blood has the same
> > chemical composition". I would in this situation sa that (2') is
> *more
> > truthlike* than (3').
> >
> > The fact that we can never know with *absolute certainty* that
> (1) and
> > (1') are true does not make the notion of 'truthlikeness'
> semantically
> > incoherent.
> >
>
> I would think that, irrespectively of (1) being true or false (in the
> sense of its correctly describing the state of the matters, as in some
> flavour of the correspondence theory of truth), any of (2) and (3) is
> either true or false. Their truthlikeness is not really a measure of
> how much they are true, but rather of how much we certain that they (or
> the initial assumption) are or are not true.
>
> If we assume that (1) is simply (?) true, then both (2) and (3) must be
> (simply?) false to us. That (2) appears more truthlike than (3) to you
> reflects your uncertainty about how accurate (1) is. (Not 'how true (1)
> is'.)
>
> If I am sure that (1) is true, then (2) and (3) are equally
> truthlike to
> me, in that I am sure that both (2) and (3) are false. This is of
> course completely irrespective of whether any of (1), (2), (3) is true.
>
> But if I have any doubt in (1), then (2) and (3) should appear at least
> plausible to me. And, as far as my experience reaches, the situations
> in which it is raining are only some of the situations in which it is
> cloudy, and all situations in which it is raining are situations in
> which it is cloudy (leave exceptions aside). So yes, (2) appears more
> truthlike than (3) to me, but this is only in virtue of my doubt about
> (1)s truth, and irrespectively of the truth; either (1) or (2) are
> true, but not both, and none of them is 'partially true'.
>
> Another thing is how likely it is that, given that the sky is completely
> blue, it won't be completely blue in a few moments. So you could say
> that, given (1) is true, it is more likely that (2) will soon be true
> than it is for (3). I would expect that becomes cloudy before it begins
> to rain, and that it may get cloudy and not raining, but not the other
> way round. So, given (1), (2) is more truthlikely to me; but still,
> either (1) or (2) is true now, and either (1) or (2) will be true later.
>
> Given a statement s, we should keep separate the truthness of s (s is
> either true or not) and our confidence in that s is true (here you may
> have degrees). I agree that talking about truthlikeness may be very
> useful, but it is not talking about truth.
>
> (In the case of (1') and the rest, I would rather subscribe to (3').)
>
> vQ
>
>
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