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A fair warning and four questions

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sNerd, are you just pretending to not understand the basic things? I said multiple times that I believe that the best criteria of truth available is empirical. You understand what the word means, right? And the fact that you can't achieve total certainty for statements of law quantified over an infinite range of possibilities is just something you'll have to put up with. In case you're a child English lit. student who won't accept anything but the total certainty, here's a nice essay by Isaac Asimov that should clear things up:

 

http://chem.tufts.edu/answersinscience/relativityofwrong.htm

Edited by lex_aver
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dream_weather, what is this, a pathetic attempt at bullying? It doesn't phase me, whatever it is. Since you didn't object to my arguments, I will assume that you admit that you're wrong.

We are saying the exact same things to one another. They are identical, at the same time, and in the same respect, and referring to the same referents too!

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Perhaps this does not add to the post but one thing that I can identify with lex_aver is that I always seem to want to know… “What did Ayn Rand get wrong”

And then I will want to know what she got right … although I always enjoy her non-fiction writing. Perhaps for some reading lex_aver you will appreciate the following link http://www.noblesoul.com/orc/critics/ .

My own interest in Ayn Rand is more some kind of egocentricity that fuels my need to understand things. Even if Ayn Rand got some things are wrong in Objectivism I would quote the The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy “I'd far rather be happy than right any day.” Does this mean that I contradict myself… well who said I can’t?

Lex_aver interesting post. I hope that they don’t block it but perhaps you should be more polite?

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sNerd, are you just pretending to not understand the basic things? I said multiple times that I believe that the best criteria of truth available is empirical. You understand what the word means, right? And the fact that you can't achieve total certainty for statements of law quantified over an infinite range of possibilities is just something you'll have to put up with. In case you're a child English lit. student who won't accept anything but the total certainty, here's a nice essay by Isaac Asimov that should clear things up:

 

http://chem.tufts.edu/answersinscience/relativityofwrong.htm

For the record, Objectivism is very emiprical (I'm not being sarcastic about this point). But then it would take a while to explain in what sense Rand claims that it is possible to achieve certainty that is entirely based on perceptual evidence. Just because Hume' emipricism can only have any kind certainty except some statistical approximation. You are making some good points, but some of those good points aren't anything to disagree with. Can those axioms be validated deductively? Not at all. Does all knowledge need to be deduced from those axioms? No. In fact, most knowledge, or perhaps all, cannot be deduced from those axioms. To acquire knowledge, the only standard of truth that can be used is basically empirical, or perceptual is a better word to use. Now, I understand why you're saying that is impossible to be 100% certain then. Part of it has to do with keeping a context in mind. But, I don't want to re-write ITOE to explain what Rand meant and believed.

 

To be honest, you seem like you think anything you say must be in complete opposition to anything in Objectivism. Don't be so biased! Admittedly, sNerd is now starting to confuse me too, but I think that's his point. He's showing what Rand means by identity. When he's saying it's silly to think wrong is meaningful, he's showing the absurdities even in simple conversation when you are suggesting that identity is also meaningless. An axiom of identity here doesn't mean we deduce knowledge from it. It just means that it's basically something implied in all things that you do, think, see, and say. It can't be proven either, because any notion of proof in the first place is connected to identity. I'll look at your previous response to me, but I doubt at this point there is much more for me to say until, because I've only been trying to show how Rand does consider these issues, and answers them.

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I'm opposed to a vague metaphysical notion of "identity" which is supposedly enough to reason about things-in-themselves. That one is bullshit.



Good, because I don't think anyone is claiming that. See my previous post.

You'll ask how it's validated: it is applied to statements of fact, and the conclusions are tested empirically.



I agree, but how do you go about testing emiprically? How would you decide if a fact is false?

Depends on what you mean



It wan't my question, but it goes back to my previous post. Can you provide an example of when you don't implicitly use a notion of identity? I mean, even with your links, you have to at least say one of them is true!
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While we do embrace certainty, we contend neither that certainty requires omniscience nor that we are omniscient.  Certainty is a matter of conclusions following an "If [THIS], then [THAT]" formulation.  "If these are the conditions, then this is the result." Discovering different conditions doesn't invalidate something like that, it just renders that previous conclusion irrelevant. If one were to later find oneself in the exact conditions of that previous earlier conclusion, then the result will be the same result included in that previous conclusion.  For example, if the temperature reaches 32 degrees F, then water will solidify. However, if one is dealing not with water, but with a water and salt mixture, then such a mixture will require temperatures lower than 32 degrees F to solidify even when and if everything else about the water/salt mixture situation was the same as the pure water situation. Salt water =/= pure water and so the two do not always behave in exactly the same way.


I can and will elaborate on the above depending on any further questions and comments you have.


*Note* The above is assuming the "if, then" things here are ultimately rooted in observation, not just made up.

As for paraconsistent logic, I looked at the wiki article you linked to. It contained this:
"The primary motivation for paraconsistent logic is the conviction that it ought to be possible to reason with inconsistent information in a controlled and discriminating way. The principle of explosion precludes this, and so must be abandoned."


Assuming you would agree that that part in the wiki is accurate information, how does this differ from just any old general feeling being used as if it were cause to disregard anything that indicates things are not as one feels/desires them to be?

 

As for quantum logic, I'd like to address these above other things first before getting to this one.

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