If God Ever Stopped Intervening In Nature....

In terms of certainty, reality is absurd. Forced absolutes are just a dumbing down of the necessary uncertainty.

Where does this idea come from?First off... no one is dismissing the possibility of absolute certainty.
I am only dismissing our current ability to know about absolute certainty.Second... invite the absurd? This sounds very dramatic.
We seem to do quite well without absolute certainties.I am not absolutely certain it will be sunny tomorrow.
Doesn't stop me from going outside.
Doesn't stop me from not-taking-my-umbrella.I am not absolutely certain my house won't be robbed while I'm away.
Doesn't stop me from leaving to get my groceries.
Doesn't stop me from going to work or away on vacation.I am not absolutely certain the universe was created 13+ billion years ago.
Doesn't stop me from putting my pants on in the morning and going to work.I am not absolutely certain that I won't get in a fatal car crash as I drive to work in the morning.
Doesn't stop me from going.I am not absolutely certain my child won't drown in water.
Doesn't stop me from letting them learn to swim.Are you able to name something where we will sit idly by and wait until we have an "absolute certainty" before moving forward?
What are these "absurdities" that will enter our lives without absolutes?I think you mean that without the illusion of absolute certainty... then certain immature minds will devolve into the absurd.I would agree with that. But I hardly see how that affects any practical life or has any weight in a discussion of absolute reality.The idea of things being absolute is a childish one.It is lunch time.
I am hungry.
You are my best friend.
All humans have 2 arms and 2 legs.As we grow up, we learn that things don't necessarily have to be absolute in any sense:-It may very well be noon, but "lunch time" can be whenever I decide to eat.
-I might feel like some food, but maybe I'm not actually hungry yet.
-I can have many friends without necessarily designating one as "the best" if I want to.
-Some humans do not have all their appendages.The illusion can be stronger or weaker depending on the scenario.
But it still remains that we are not currently able to identify whether or not anything actually is "absolute reality."
We're also not surrounded by absurdities.This means that we most certainly do not "invite the absurd" when we dismiss the possibility of knowing anything absolutely.

Can you give me an example of a truth which you don't consider to be absolutely true? Is it philosophically possible that the conclusion that Lester Moore is dead could be wrong?

I can not. I was referring to absolute knowledge in this instance. Not without regressing into Epistemological solipsism.

Which is it?

Ok. Can you give me an example of something which we know to be true which we don't know to be absolutely true?I am trying to ascertain what (if any) meaning the term "absolute" adds here as far as you are concerned. There are a multitude of philosophical possibilities which would call the absolute deadness of Lester Moore into question. Most of which are not solipsistic. If we could transport Lester Moore through time from 1880 to 2014 so that he could take part in this discussion would "absolutely dead" be a valid description?There are all sorts of philosophical possibilities that we might consider desperately unlikely but which cannot be absolutely eliminated.

Fine that's fine There is only one absolute, and it is that reality is not absolute.I'll even push it one further: There are no absolutes, except this one.In Message 484 you wrote: One way to see truth as separate from absolute truth is in how it works in a practical matter.I've been arguing that there is no absolute length of a 2x4.So if I was working in a lumber yard and a customer asked me if I had an 8-foot 2x4, I would have to conclude that it was not true that any of them were absolutely 8 feet long.But that ain't right, as I explained in Message 256:

quote:

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To further my point, in the context of the length of a two-by-four. I contend that even without absolute truths, scientific predictions would still be possible.

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Let's say we have a two-by-four. You're saying that it has an absolute length. So, God drags out a board, makes a cut with his saw, and proclaims this absolute truth: "This is an eight-foot two-by-four."

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You walk out with your tape measure, slap it down; "ninety-six inches... on the dot."

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Now, for the scientific perspective; we bust out a magnifying glass and take a closer look. The edge of the board is all pointy and spikey. Its hard to find an exact edge. We zoom in closer, its even crazier. The cells themselves have varying length. In closer and the particles become more like clouds. We cannot find a point to draw an actual edge on. We doubt that there's an absolute length because that shit is too blurry.

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So, let's grant that the scientific perspective is actually right. That as you get closer to defining the absolute edge of a board, the less clear it becomes where it is.

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Please realize that this doesn't mean that you can't walk up with a tape measure and go: "Yup, ninety-six inches"

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Or even; 'hey, random guy: "How long is this two-by-four?"'

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<.< "Uh, eight-feet?"

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Sweet, add it to the wall.

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No wait, there's really no absolute length of the board and we have to doubt all our predictions about how level the top of this wall is going to be! Oh noes! and the wall vanishes into non-reality.

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But seriously. From a non-absolute perspective, you can still "do science" and make predictions about how level the top of your wall is going to be. It won't be absolutely level, but that random guy knew it was level. And all our eyeball observations agree.

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The lack of an absolute doesn't prevent the measurement. And once we have those observations, we can begin the predicting.

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So one way to use the word "truth" as distinct from "absolute truth" is to answer if it is true in a practical matter.To insist on the existence of "absolute truth" for practical reasons, because otherwise it isn't actually true, is wrong.It is true that he's dead, but it doesn't have to be absolutely true, and you're wrong to insist on it.

I had asked about how we can calculate probabilities because you can not calculate probabilities if you do not know something for sure about what you are calculating. You cannot calculate the probability of rolling a 6 if you do not know how many sides there are on the dice. The reciprocal of knowing that there are 6 sides gives us the ability to say with certainty that the result will be between 1 and 6 incl. There is no room for rational uncertainty here. My example of the falling stone was an attempt to force someone to justify coming up with a probability of less than 1/1.The fact that some of our practical applications work with 100% consistency is proof positive that there is an actual reality that behaves in a certain way. The fact that when we get to the moon and there is something there to stand on is proof positive that the moon actually exists. To maintain further doubt is not justified in any way.

To know that anything operates with 100% consistency you would have had to test it an infinite number of times.In practise all one can say is that every test and observation so far ever taken has been 100% consistent and that we therefore confidently and quite reasonably expect all future one's to be so too.But that isn't absolute knowledge is it? Inductive ReasoningWhat if the next time you drop a pen it doesn't just fall to the ground as one would expect but instead does a loop the loop and flies out of the window on a trajectory to Mars?You might reasonably say that we know this won't be the case based on inductive and/or abductive reasoning. But that's not absolute knowledge.

Do you work for the testing dept? How many times do we have to roll the dice to know that we wont be getting a 7? If the pen flies out the window then we will know that something has changed. We can know with certainty that unless something changes then the pen will not be flying out the window.Is it not a deduction that because gravity exists the pen will fall?

Ok, in many instances of knowledge that knowledge is tentative.
For example the knowledge of the periodic table had blank spaces where elements where predicted to go. It was not absolute knowledge but eventually the elements that fit in those spaces where discovered.The blanks in our knowledge are not because the facts are indeterminate but because our present limitations in finding them. Yes and all of them inviting absurdity.Edited by 1.61803, : spelling

Unless nothing has changed but our present understanding is inadequate to cover that particular eventuality. It is a deduction of our present understanding of gravity.

Who decides what is absurd? So what is the difference between knowing that Lester Moore is dead (which we both agree is then case) and having absolute knowledge that Lester Moore is absolutely dead (which we apparently disagree over).What meaning (if any) is it that the inclusion of the term "absolute" adds as far as you are concerned?

Apparently I am not sure.

Hi Cat Sci, Ok. If it is not absolutely true then it is not true. Someone is either dead or they are not. Unless you descend into time travel, many worlds, brains in vats, type scenarios which as I stated are absurd.Nature abhors paradoxes. You will never be able to go back in time to kill your parents because you would never have been born to do so. By saying there is no absolute truth you are saying that such paradoxes can exist.