If God Ever Stopped Intervening In Nature....

See Message 383

Essentially what you are saying is that if you don't know everything then you don't know anything and that doesn't seem right to me.While our reality may be similar to a Russian doll in a nested hierarchy this does not detract from the reality of our perspective. We can know absolutely that drinking a glass of water will quench our thirst. Even if this takes place within the dream of some other consciousness it cannot be described as a dream that we are having. That dream would be our reality.No matter what reality is, we can know absolutely that it manifests itself to us in this way. The connection between what we perceive as reality and what is reality is indicated by the ever expanding web of corroborating evidence that confirms our ability to predict what reality will do.Where is the demarcation between practical reality and absolute reality?

We don't need two Mona Lisas to know that we have one.Your arguement is the same as saying that we need to see something that is supernatural before we can determine what is natural.

Dear NoNukes,Great hearing from you again. You are absolutely correct; I am as bull headed as they come; however, I am honest enough to admit when I am wrong.

I was wrong!!

The most embarrassing part is I should have known better.As I see it I made three blunders.First, I should have used the phrase ‘Atomic Number’ not ‘Atomic Wight’ (Which is what you were trying to tell me). Second, when you pointed out my mistake, I did go back and check it out, so, I should have caught it then (which is equally embarrassing); I then made my third mistake and blamed it on Wikipedia.So, please, let me apologize, first to you, for not taking your comment more seriously and actually looking into what you were saying and why; and then, let me apologize to Wikipedia for blaming them.I promise to be more careful in the future; and I promise to take the time to figure out exactly what you’re say when you make a correction on something I say in the Future.Thank you, NoNukes, for taking the time to correct me.God Bless,
JRTjrP.S. I will make the corrections to may statements; again, thanks NoNukes.

No. We can know lots of things. There are lots of things we can say are true. But there is always a degree of uncertainty no matter how small which means that blathering on about "absolute truths" is a fools game.

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"To my mind the essential thing is that one should base one's arguments upon the kind of grounds that are accepted in science, and one should not regard anything that one accepts as quite certain, but only as probable in a greater or a less degree. Not to be absolutely certain is, I think, one of the essential things in rationality".

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Bertie Russel. It's the difference between absolute reality and just plain old reality. You are the one insisting that we apply the tag "absolute".

The uncertainty of the observer has nothing to do with the absoluteness of reality.I would also say that it is irrational to maintain doubts about some things. For example, you have children don't you? Do you doubt that you have children? Do you doubt that you love them? Things are either real or they are not. If the moon is real then it is absolutely real. How can it possibly be rational to harbour doubts about the reality of the moon? When a woman gives birth to a child was she just pregnant or was she absolutely pregnant?Imagining the grand illusion is no different than imagining God.

I agree. But I don't claim absolute knowledge about the (non)existence of God and I wouldn't claim that my atheism is based on the non-existence of God being an "absolute truth".My deeply skeptical rejection of both "the grand illusion" and God is a tentative, potentially fallible, conclusion based on the evidence available.It's not absolute. It does if the only thing that actually exists is one's mind and the very notion that one is observing anything at all is a big dream (i.e. if the "grand illusion" is in fact true).I strongly doubt it is true. To all practical intents and purposes I treat it as untrue. I am a defacto atheist with regard to "the grand illusion".But I don't claim absolute certainty. Just a high degree of skepticism.

Anyone can make an error. As I see it, you made only one real mistake, and your apology more than makes up for that. Nicely done.

Dear Cat Sci,Thank you for your correspondence. I am sorry it has taken me so long to reply, but I am working fulltime now and have gotten busy; among other things. Without going into a long paragraph I have a few queries.1. Are you saying that ‘as far as we know they are both true’ therefore ‘LNC’ is not ‘Absolutely True’? Or are you saying that ‘as far as we know they are both true’ therefore ‘LNC’ may not be ‘Absolutely True’?2. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that both of your examples are ‘True’; are they ‘Absolutely True’? and even if they were ‘Absolutely True’ would that not mean that LNC could be ‘Absolutely True’ since (if you are correct) two opposite things can be true ‘in the same way’ ‘at the same time’? If they are not ‘Absolutely True’ then I don’t see where that would affect the ‘Absolute Truth’ of ‘LNC’. You are correct, and since ‘LNC’ cannot be applied to that phrase it does not affect whether or not ‘LNC’ is ‘Absolutely True’. So, forgive me but, I do not understand your point here?Thank you for your input, hope to hear from you again,
JRTJr

Dear Ringo,Thank you, once again, for your correspondence. I am sorry it has taken me so long to reply, but I am working full-time now and have gotten busy; among other things. I must apologize to you; I don’t think I have laid out exactly what I am talking about when I refer to ‘the Law of Non-Contradiction’.When I talk about the ‘Law of Non-Contradiction’ I’m talking about the second of three ‘Laws of thought’ or ‘Laws of Logic’. ‘ According to the 1999 Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, laws of thought are laws by which or in accordance with which valid thought proceeds, or that justify valid inference, or to which all valid deduction is reducible. Laws of thought are rules that apply without exception to any subject matter of thought, etc.’ When I speak of the ‘Law of Non-Contradiction’ I am referring to the fact that It is impossible for the same thing to belong and not to belong at the same time to the same thing and in the same respect So, if I say that ‘As of 9/13/2014 at 6:55am Central Standard time I own a 1999 Chevrolet Blazer’; using the ‘Law of Non-Contradiction’ you can know that one of two things is True about that statement. In this particular example the first is true; as of 9/13/2014 at 6:55am Central Standard time I really do own a 1999 Chevrolet Blazer; I have possession of it; I have the Title, and the title is in my name.See, I cannot, logically, both own and not own the same vehicle, in the same way, at the same time.The three ‘Laws of thought’ are, of necessity, true; that is, if they were not true than you would have no bases for deciding whether or not they were true; since it is these self-same Laws we use to determine whether or not something is true or faults.I have included links to further information to help you understand where I am coming from on this since I have been unable to make myself clear so far.I hope this helps our conversation,
JRTjr

No, but it has everything to do with whether the observer can say for certain whether 'absolute reality' exists or not.And since we agree that we are all observers, then we agree that we cannot, any of us, say that 'absolute reality' exists without being somewhat uncertain; i.e., our conclusion that reality exists cannot be an absolute certain conclusion. What is rational and what is absolutely, certainly, verifiably true are two different things. Of course. But we cannot know for certain whether they are 'absolutely real'. How so? When we say something is 'real', we mean we have examined it with our fallible senses and declared the evidence 'good enough' to conclude, without complete certainty, that the thing we have examined is probably 'real'. But this is not the same as the thing itself being 'absolutely real', existing, beyond any doubt whatsoever, completely outside of our minds in some space we might call 'absolute reality'. We don't harbor doubts about the reality of the moon. We harbor doubts, however small, about the 'absolute reality' of the moon. She was 'pregnant'. Why do we have to say that she was 'absolutely pregnant'? In our world and experience, simply saying she was 'pregnant' is good enough; we don't possess the complete certainty to say that she was 'absolutely pregnant'; and since it doesn't really matter if she was 'pregnant' or 'absolutely pregnant', there's really no need to bother with debating the absoluteness of her pregnancy.If we were to debate it, though, we'd have to come to the conclusion that we cannot be certain she was 'absolutely pregnant' even if we can comfortably say she was 'pregnant'.Jon

What you haven't made clear is why you think the Law of Non-contradiction is important. Give examples.

Hi Jon. I still do not see where the dividing line is between absolute reality and practical reality. I do not see how it is rational to harbour doubts against all of the evidence. If the woman is pregnant then she is absolutely pregnant and it is absolutely true that she is. Simply doubting the reality of the situation does not seem adequate cause to ignore the evidence.I find myself agreeing with JRT's point about non contradiction in that the moon either exists in reality or it does not. One of these conditions must qualify as an absolute reality and therefore there is such a thing as absolute reality.

I already explained that the LNC is just a stupid tautology. "A red thing is red" is just as impressive. Is that really all you were talking about with absolute truths? That you can come up with tautologies?

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Its like a tautology. The problem isn't that they aren't true, they just don't really tell us anything. That's what is meant by being trivial.

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The fact that something is itself and not something else is not some kind of profound insight, its trivially true. That it is the only example of an absolute truth that you can come up with, tells me that absolute truths are a pipe dream.

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Seriously, when you started talking about "absolute truth", were you really just talking about tautologies?If you, instead, would have said that tautologies exist, then you wouldn't have had an argument.

Sorry ProtoTypical, I didn't see this reponse until today. I agree.
Just as we don't need two realities to know that we have one.But we're not talking about knowing whether or not we have one reality.
We're talking about knowing whether or not our reality is "absolute."Let's say we have a copy of the Mona Lisa. How do we know if it's 'absolute?'
Wouldn't we compare it to what we know of the original?If we can confirm it to match everything about the original... then we can say we know it is the "absolute" original Mona Lisa.
If it does not match.. then we know it is a fake.If you have another method to verify whether or not the Mona Lisa is absolute without comparing it to the original, please let me know.Otherwise, we are still left with only 1 reality and no known "original" or "absolute" to compare it to.
Therefore... even using the example you've provided... we have no way to know whether or not this reality is "absolute" because we have nothing to compare it to.It's like someone giving you a fake Mona Lisa and your job is to identify whether or not it is a fake.
Except you don't know anything about the Mona Lisa... you don't know if the smile is supposed to be weird or if the landscape in the background is supposed to line up. You don't even know if it's supposed to be a picture of a woman or some mountains or just some blue squares. If you don't know what "an absolute Mona Lisa" is supposed to be... how can you possibly identify whether or not the single copy you have is an absolute?If we don't know what "an absolute reality" is supposed to be... how can we possibly identify whether or not the single reality we exist in is an absolute?You would need to provide knowledge that is currently impossible for you to have (what an 'absolute reality' is supposed to be like).Provide such knowledge first, and then we can identify whether or not this reality is absolutely real.