On 23 Nov 2013, at 07:09, Chris de Morsella wrote:
From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com
] On Behalf Of meekerdb
Sent: Friday, November 22, 2013 9:11 PM
To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: Belief vs Truth
On 11/22/2013 3:24 PM, John Mikes wrote:
Bruno:
Brent's dichotomy - as you pointed out - about exist and true may
go deeper in my opinion:
If we THINK of something: it DOES exist indeed (in our mind) but may
not be true. I refrain from calling T R U E anything in our
restsricted (partial) knowledge capability. "WE THINK IT IS TRUE" is
in our belief system.
Now it is up to you to call the "EXISTING" thought as 'truly
existing'???? We fabricate 'truth' in this respect but only in this
respect. Otherwise I am just waiting for additional input disproving
what I 'beleived-in' so far.
John M
PS I read this remark of mine to my wife who asked: if somebody
KILLS a person (cuts her throat):
is it TRUE, or NOT? (pointing to the more convoluted sides of the
topic). I tried to save face by saying:
Don't you apply our 'wisdom-concepts' to practical life! We seek the
theoretical truth! (laugh).
(As a matter of fact 'true' is not confoundable with 'truth' just as
conscious is not the adjective representing consciousness - in most
cases)
JM
In my meta-physics "true" is an attribute of a sentence meaning that
the sentence expresses some fact. Facts do not depend on sentences,
they can be facts even though no one says so in a sentence. "Exist"
has different meaning in different contexts. In physics the
essential parts of a model are thought to exist just in case the
model is true.
Truth, perhaps, depends on some frame of reference; one could even
describe it as an emergent phenomena that has meaning only within
the frame of reference from which it emerges.
Logicians distinguish "theory" (which are set of sentences close for
some applications of some inference rules), and models, which are
mathematical structures together with a notion of "satisfaction of
sentences". So a sentence (close formula) is never true per se. It is
only satisfied, or not, by this or that model. Validity or theoremhood
will correspond with the idea of being true in *all* models of a
theory, at least for first order theories (which have such nice model
theory). In that case the validity of a reasoning is independent of
the interpretation of the theory.
Physics, biology and theology brought some difficulty here, as it
assumes some "reality", and normally we should distinguish the theory,
the models of the theory, and the relation between those models and
reality.
Physicists usually ignore the model theory level intermediate between
theory and reality, and logicians, like mathematicians, ignore
"reality", which they take as a dirty notion used only by engineers or
philosophers.
Now, I can agree that many truth can emerge, but they have to emerge
from some truth, which are needed to be considered as primitive. With
comp, computer science or just arithmetic constitute(s) enough basic
truth to explain the emergence of many different notions of truth and
existence (indeed one for each "person points of view").
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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