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#4938·Dennis HackethalOP, about 13 hours ago[W]e have no way of verifying that our conceptual carvings track or pick out entities and relations in reality. … [This] definitely rules out absolute truth.
I don’t see how it does. That we have no way to verify our theories (“conceptual carvings”) doesn’t rule out absolute truth. It does sound like we have different notions of ‘absolute truth’ in mind. For mine, see #4894.
Ironically, your idea that theories can be “more true than others” rules out absolute truth in the sense that truth leaves absolutely no room for deviation. Absolute truth is a binary: true or false. Nothing in between.
I completely agree with the definition in 4894. But to verify absolute truth you would need to know every possible criticism of an idea. Without a god’s eye view, you can’t know if your ideas are fallible to a criticism you haven’t detected.
A better framing of what I mean might be «closer to truth». If the theories are consistent with more perspectives (big objects, people, small objects etc.), it is closer to truths. Newton’s theory is in that sense closer to truth than Ptolemy’s geocentric theory.