Fallibilism vs. Cynicism
Log in or sign up to participate in this discussion.
With an account, you can revise, criticize, and comment on ideas, and submit new ideas.Our ideas can be 100% true in the sense of absolute truth. It’s possible to come up with true ideas. There’s no criterion of truth to tell that they’re true, but they can still be true.
I think you run into the problem of definitions. An idea cannot be absolute, perfect truth without total, perfect, complete definitions for its terms. This isn't required for knowledge - the terms can be rough because the ideas are tentative. But for absolute truth, the boundaries of meaning of your terms must be completely determined. But, as the postmoderns pointed out, this requires infinite information - the complete determination of any one term requires its distinction from all other terms. In fact, they didn't go far enough. I'd argue you would need to know the distinction between the term and all other possible terms.
You have to know perfect definitions in order to have the idea in your head be perfectly true. Perfect definitions require infinite information, therefore you cannot know perfect truth.
Hi Rob, welcome to Veritula. It’s nice to meet another software engineer. Be sure to read ‘How Does Veritula Work?’ and ‘How Do Bounties Work?’ to make the most of V.
Re: definitions, you raise an argument others have made before, namely that language has some unavoidable ambiguity or incomplete information, which necessarily introduces error. I already addressed that argument in the article linked in the discussion header:
I don’t know if I agree that natural language is always ambiguous, but even if so, I don’t see how that implies error. We can make ambiguous but true statements. ‘I’m currently located in a hemisphere’ is ambiguous as to which hemisphere, but it’s still true. We could be silly and ask, on which planet? This one. Earth. We all know what we’re talking about.
Therefore, I disagree that we need perfect definitions or infinite precision to find absolutely true ideas. (But correct me if I’m wrong to think you’re making the same argument.)
I suggest you read the article in full, otherwise you may inadvertently make more arguments that have been addressed: https://libertythroughreason.com/fallibilism-vs-cynicism/
There’s also https://blog.dennishackethal.com/posts/don-t-take-fallibilism-too-far.
I think you misunderstand both my own argument and the meaning of ambiguity. "I'm currently located in a hemisphere" is not ambiguous in its meaning due to not knowing which hemisphere you're in. The meaning is ambiguous to the extent that we do not have absolute knowledge of what you are, what it is to be located, or what a hemisphere is - or what "in" is. While you obviously know what those words mean, you do not have absolute, 100% defined boundaries of what they refer to and what they don't. But you would have to have that to have absolute truth.
I may be wrong in this argument, but I don't see how your counterexample refutes it.
I think you misunderstand both my own argument and the meaning of ambiguity.
You’re saying that, to hold a true idea in the sense of absolute truth in my head, I’d have to have perfect definitions, which require infinite amounts of information, and having all that information is impossible. Right?
While you obviously know what those words mean, you do not have absolute, 100% defined boundaries of what they refer to and what they don't.
I think it’s enough to know what the words mean for the idea to be true. We don’t have to have “100% defined boundaries”.
Truth means correspondence with the facts (Tarski). Not infinite precision.
I think a ‘trick’ cynics use (not maliciously, still I like to call it a trick) is to set an unrealistically high standard for truth. And then, when no idea ends up being able to meet that standard, they say the idea can’t be true.
In that case, I'm unclear what "100% true" means. If your definitions have wiggle room, then the truth is not your idea. The truth is within the bounds of your idea, but it is not identical to your idea.
In that case, I'm unclear what "100% true" means.
Perfect correspondence with the facts.
For example, if it’s currently raining, and you say it is, then your statement is 100% true.
Would you agree that this notion of truth amounts to truth relative to our conceptual framework? When you say it's 100% true that it's raining, "the facts" you correspond to are already facts within that framework, and not reality.
At the molecular level there are no discrete raindrops, only a continuous distribution of H2O molecules constantly evaporating and condensing, and some of those very molecules are diffusing through the roof into the house, since no material is 100% impermeable to water vapor.
When you say it's 100% true that it's raining, "the facts" you correspond to are already facts within that framework, and not reality.
I think of them as facts of reality. I don’t think about ‘frameworks’. I think the idea of frameworks invites relativism.
We don’t need the molecular level for this. Truth is a very simple concept. No need to complicate it.
You might disagree. But when we search for truth, I think most of us are trying to understand the causal structure of the universe, not just predict it with our own fitted models. This is just a criticism of this notion of truth, which waters the concept down from what I at least think of as truth. Many incompatible theories can fit the same facts without capturing any causality. If you agree that truth is correspondence with reality, and not with the facts within our conceptual framework, the problem reemerges.
A statement carves the world into concepts standing in relations. For it to correspond with reality, those concepts must pick out genuine entities and relations in reality. But we have no way of verifying that our conceptual carvings track or pick out entities and relations in reality. This might not imply that some theories can't be more true than others. But it definitely rules out absolute truth.
If you agree that truth is correspondence with reality, and not with the facts within our conceptual framework, the problem reemerges.
I disagree because I think this sets up a false dichotomy.
When I wrote “Truth means correspondence with the facts”, that means with the facts of reality.
[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.
… for absolute truth, the boundaries of meaning of your terms must be completely determined.
You seem to be using ‘absolute truth’ differently than others. Wikipedia:
Absolute truth is a statement that is true at all times and in all places. It is something that is always true no matter what the circumstances. It is a fact that cannot be changed. For example, there are no round squares.
This is what I think Popper had in mind. Also that absolute truth leaves no room for deviation (which I think is the reason it’s “true at all times and in all places”). Nothing related to definitions or meanings. Popper wasn’t very interested in definitions.
In this related article, I write:
If we could not speak the truth, our minds would have to have some subconscious mechanism that evaluates our ideas and detects and rejects true ones, or modifies them a bit to introduce errors, before we become aware of them. Otherwise, we could still utter the truth, if only “by chance”, as Xenophanes says. Such a mechanism would itself depend on a criterion of truth. So the epistemological cynics, though inspired by Popper’s fallibilism, and even though they would call themselves ‘fallibilists’, are not actually fallibilists. Whether they realize it or not, they rely on the existence of a criterion of truth and (simultaneously, ironically) reject the possibility that some of our knowledge is true.
Couldn’t the mechanism introduce falsehood by other means? For example by introducing contradictions. Then it wouldn’t need a criterion of truth.
If it introduces falsehood only fallibly, then it might fail sometimes, and the target idea would still be true after all. So no, it would need some infallible way – ie, a criterion of truth.