Hi Ingvar,
If it was possible to have any type of statement that was without any qualifications completely true - I believe this would require numbers and mathematics, and may not be possible using words. The "tidy end of the spectrum" as Pat said, with an acceptable degree of ambiguity to facilitate interpretation, convey ideas, and look at similar relationships in different ways.
Parts of reality that are not in need of editing is a super tough question. I can only imagine short instances like playing with a puppy that is bound to grow up soon, holding hands watching a sunset kind of thing - temporary. Sustainable, reusable reality made into truth over long periods of time requires examination and editing... the editing process makes ideas stick, unedited messy reality slips away sooner or later, is too large to consider, eventually forgotten and replaced with whatever is new on the radar.
Debbie
On 5/18/07, Ingvar Johansson <ingvar.johansson@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> wrote:Deborah MacPherson schrieb:
> Yes Pat - Nailed it. Thank you.
>
> Debbie
He didn't nail it completely. What about your statement "Reality is
messy and long"? Can it (to quote Pat below) "only describe a
limited part of the actual world of reality"? If you say 'yes', then
there may be parts of reality that are not in need of "editing" in your
sense. And if you say 'no', then you have an example of a statement that
is without any qualifications straightforwardly true.
best,
Ingvar
>
>
>
> On 5/17/07, *Pat Hayes* <phayes@xxxxxxx <mailto:phayes@xxxxxxx>> wrote:
>
>
>
> If I may intervene here (before someone starts up
> a fan) I think that everyone here in fact agrees,
> but they are using the terminology in exactly
> opposite senses. Let me try to state what I think
> is the agreement in neutral terms.
>
> There is a world out there. It is quite amazingly
> big and complicated, however you look at it. If
> you think of it as physical then every cubic cm
> of it in the immediate vicinity has about 10|14
> atoms in it all buzzing around in a quantum
> dance, not to mention all the photons. If you
> think of it as social then it has hundreds of
> millions of people engaged in all sorts of
> activities every few seconds, all from different
> cultures and zeitgeists and so on. If
> biologically, just the lichens are enough to make
> you feel dizzy. However you think of it, its WAY
> too big to describe fully or to even think about
> without getting a headache. And anyway, in order
> to think about it, we have to use some way to
> describe it to ourselves. We have to think about
> it using some set of ideas or concepts or
> thoughts or words, or whatever these things are
> that we have in our heads and use to think with.
> And these - call them our ideas - are both
> limited and limiting.
>
> *They can only describe a
> limited part of the actual world of reality*:
>
> there is just too much of it to think about it
> all. Moreover, we can't think about reality
> "raw", as it actually IS, without using some set
> of ideas. So what we think about it - reality,
> that is - is always in some sense colored, and no
> doubt distorted, by the ideas that we have to
> think about it with. Indeed, if there are some
> aspects of reality about which we have no ideas -
> and there almost certainly are, for all of us -
> then we can't think about that part or aspect of
> reality at all. And we may not all have the same
> set of ideas, so our thoughts may be
> incommensurate with one another.
>
> (Now, one position is that since we can only
> think with ideas, and cannot ever get hold of raw
> reality uncolored by some mental framework, that
> even to postulate the existence of a reality is
> wrong or maybe unnecessary or un-Ockhamist. All
> there are are the thoughts that we all have.
> We've had that particular argument on this list
> already: I mention it only to show how it fits
> into this picture, or at any rate into the
> picture frame.)
>
> I think that what Debbie means by the above is
> only this: that reality is large and messy, but
> that 'truth' is always the truth of some
> idea/thought/ontology/assertion, so is always at
> the tidy conceptualized, thinking end of the
> spectrum. And Bill and Don are puzzled, because
> they are living at the tidy end and think of
> truth as a relationship to reality, so the word
> used alone seems to them to be more concerned
> with the reality than the concept or thought. But
> the only sensible way to talk about truth,
> surely, is that it is a relationship BETWEEN
> concepts/thoughts/ideas/assertions and reality.
> If you chop off either end of this relation, the
> notion of truth isn't really meaningful any more.
> If there is no reality, then truth has nothing to
> be true with respect to. And if we aren't talking
> about some conceptualization, then all there is
> is the actual world, and of course that is
> 'true': but that statement is vacuous.
>
> Pat
> --
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> *************************************************
> Deborah L. MacPherson
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--
Ingvar Johansson
IFOMIS, Saarland University
home site:
http://ifomis.org/
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