Steve:
I'm talking about your tendency to say that truth is "tested by experience."
DMB:
> Anyway, let me say a few words about your questions. How would a radical
> empiricist test the claim that there is intelligent life elsewhere? He'd say
> we can only speculate. Alien life, at this point, is beyond human experience
> and so anything we say about it can only be educated speculation. We can try
> to find some, and we are doing that. But no truth claims can be made in the
> absence of experience. The existence of Jesus, like any other figure who
> might be historical or fictional, can only be inferred from historical
> evidence...See, if the claim is that truth is something that happens to an
> idea within the course of experience, if pragmatic truth is what we "ride"
> successfully within experience, then the question of which experiences count
> as evidence for which claims doesn't really make sense. For the pragmatist,
> true are ideas are ideas that function in experience.
Steve:
Yet there is some truth to the matter of whether or not there is
intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, right? We just don't have
a way of determing what the truth is. That truth won't be "made" if we
find or continue to not find life. There is a truth here that
transcends "warranted assertibility."
Ron:
No there is'nt, there is only the possibilty and Probability of truth.
Steve:
Likewise, there either was or was not a Jesus of Nazareth.
Whether we can imagine any way of verifying the truth or falsity in
the matter, there is still some truth to be known. Someone who asserts
that Jesus exists right now is either right or wrong right now rather
than "made" right or wrong by verifying the belief in future
experience.
Ron:
Those claims then hold no pragmatic value. You are now entering in possibilty
and probability claims. One may argue jesus exists as a concept and one
could verify that claim in experience by going to church.
That jesus existed as a historical figure has little or no Pragmatic value.
You seem to be appealing to an absolute truth that Probabilty and Possibility
point to.
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