FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Tue May 09, 2023 2:55 pm
Note here how you are not able to tell the story about this without resolving it.
I didn't tell a story without resolving it, because these are the stories we tend to hear about in the past. IOW they are not controversial, but for periods of time they were not resolved. Yes, some stories get resolved, but even in these non-controversial situations we move forward with contradictory facts. There are thing s that we consider paradoxical in science The assumption is they will get resolved. But that is an assumption. We don't give up one of what we consider facts.
You already tell me that there are people contradicting each other but you aren't saying that both are right, only that both say they are right.
I'm saying we don't know. And the experiment I listed is considered to say that both people are correct. We have two people who have witness the same event and correctly see it differently. And nicely on topic it is even written about in terms of facts.
As I wrote the claims are in need of resolution, but that is not the same as both being true while entailing untruth to the other which is a story you probably cannot put together coherently if you try.
I'm black boxing that. And, again, that precisely what that experiment showed.
There was a reason why I used the word "simultaneously", and broadly the same reason forced you to use the words "at different times". Again, this comes down to the difficulty (perhaps the impossibility) of putting together a meaningful story where the fact is true and false at the same time without the need to resolve the contradiction.
Again, the experiment. And I am not arguing that people don't have a problem with this, they do. I'm arguing that we should be more flexible in relation to this. I also think it happens. In the Black Hole information paradox scientists went forward holding both sides as facts in contexts where they needed to or felt they did. Sure, anomalies and contradictions bother scientists and they seek to resolve, but they don't at the same time give up what they've got. We don't have to decide.
Why must one pick a winner? In specific situations it may be best to work with one assumption. But that's different from deciding things now in general.
SoI don't really care about the science, this is an ethics sub.
OK, well you can ignore those parts.
The point I am making is that nobody is able in human languages to describe this whole thing as contradictory truth without providing resolution. It breaks the rules of language and logic to do otherwise.
That certainly how many
relate to language and conclusions, but we don't have to, and we are certainly free to black box resolving contradictions when we have strong evidence for both conclusions.
It resolves apparent contradictions, that was my only point. The science sub can handle any other matters.
Well, I'll leave in science here. It seems relevant to the entire objectivity tangent that has gone on for months. If you want to ignore it, ignore it.
That would be a long segue if you haven't read the Philosophical Investigation. But put in shortest possible order: Wee use language to convey meanings of thoughts, and it only works because we mean more or less the same things by these words as other users of the language. The key thing is that the concpets we construct our sentences out of are public, you don't choose what a word means, it means to youy what it means to everyone or else you happen to be mistaken not everyone else (think of the thing where Age tells everyone he doesn't believe anything because his version of "believe" is private, so nobody understands him).
Along with the concepts being public, so are the rules of the language games in which they are used. Think of a game of chess where one of the white pawns is missing so you substitute the hat from a monopoly set. If the white player then rolls a die and sends his hat clockwise for up to 6 squares and tries to buy the square he lands on, that move didn't have any meaning within the rules of chess.
So in general, whatever anyone tries to do, the words they use only have meaning if they conform to the understood rules ofthe language game in which those concepts are used. Thus the following sentence can only have any meaning at all if it is untrue: If X is true then Y is false, if Y is true then X is false, X is true, but Y is also true.
Certainly the part of my post opening up the issue of a possible different kind of ontology from the one most people have, would lead to those words being different, in part. And, again, the reason that research got the attention it did was in part because it put into question our public use of the word 'fact.' The focus here has often been around facts and if it turns out that two facts can be true that contradict each other, modifications in the language may need to be made. This happens also. Language is in flux. Also it would likely change only where necessary. There would be different uses of these words in different contexts, which is already true.
That sentence, if uttered with intent, could only be expressed in a private language. There's a second argument to be made about whether a private language would contain any meanings at all, but strictly speaking that arg is overkill.
I disagree. Again, I think there is a way you are treating this as 'we must have a final truth now or here is how we have to talk about it.' I don't think we have to rush to clean it all up. If it turns out that what we would have called facts can refer to the same event/pattern and contradict each other, then we can start looking at how to speak about things. Perhaps we are in transition around that.
Here, I am proposing that two different things. 1) In a situation where we do not know at given points in history if fact 1 and fact 2 are correct. They contradict each other or seem to. We don't have to stop considering one or both as facts. We can move forward following both, being aware of the issue but using the information where they work. We black box the resolution. I think we do this in science, for example. The Black Hole information paradox was one where we didn't give up either end, were bothered, continued to look at it. 2) But then also 2, perhaps at an ontological level reality is not fixed in the way we think it is.
I commonly deal with databases spread across many systems. It is quite normal for the value of an object to be one thing when reported by one host and another when the report comes from a seperate one. We scale and design these systems for eventual consistency.
You seem to be thinking that I am asserting there are no contradictions. There are contradictory expressions of fact, but the existence of a contradicitroy expression places the current statement in need of resolution. Every. Single. Time.
Needs are human things. I recognize that people have this desire. And also that it is very useful to do this in many contexts. But here we are in a philosophy forum and we can explore things at a level that would be the same as dealing with databases in a workplace.
You think that's why you mentioned time. But the real reason is that you are no more able to conceive of a true situation whereby contradictory facts are similtaneously both true than anyone else is. So you introduce time as a way of having an apaprent contradiction along with the necessary resolution required to make the concept meaningful.
1) Don't tell me what I am thinking.
2) No, that's not why I introduced time. I introduced time because it fits one of the two DIFFERENT POINTS I am making.
One point has to do with the potential for ontological (to us) oddities where there actually can be two different contradictory truths about something. That's my more controversial point. The other point has to do with how we deal with contradictions whether they must actually all be resolved or must in fact be only be at most one fact. I was orginally responding I think to PH to where an idea was put forward that we need to resolve immediately or consider both tentative. Or not treat them as facts. In response to that I am bringing in the time issue. That we are in the middle and that we do not need to do what was being asserted.
If we have competing fact claims, and each insist the other is untrue, then neither is true by definition.
I don't think that's true even in traditional logic. That's the description of a disagreement. Certainly in cases of disagreement one side can be right. But perhaps there's a typo in there.
We already know that facts other than those which are true by definition are subject to review in light of new information. That's a normal part of their being empirical and we don't need to sacrifice essential chunks of logic to permit that.
Yeah, I don't think we need to sacrifice essential chunks of logic. One way to put this, the more practical issue of dealing with what seem like two JTBs is to not rush to judgment. We can sit with that, even for decades. That's not all I'm saying, but that's part of it.