4 ms·

If you can demonstrate the possibility of proving any truth, you just proved it, you are done. If you can demonstrate the impossibility of proving any truth, t

If you can demonstrate the possibility of proving any truth, you just proved it, you are done. If you can demonstrate the impossibility of proving any truth, then you just demonstrated that you can prove some truth, thus it is false that it is impossible to prove any truth. Finally, if you can neither disprove nor prove the impossibility of proving any truth, you just don't know whether it's possible or not; in which case the honest posture is agnosticism. Oh, and if you admit that an honest posture is desirable when pursuing truth, you just bootstrapped a ground that allows to growth (relative and sound) truth allied to virtue. That might not be as satisfying as "acquiring some absolute truth", but personally I feel that for my humble human capacities and needs, that's not too bad.

maxfan8 7y ago
This argument is a classic example of the vicious circle principle [1]. The self-referential nature of this interesting argument makes it somewhat meaningless (from a logical perspective). [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vicious_circle_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vicious_circle_principle
- cryptonector 7y ago
  > The self-referential nature of this interesting argument Self-referential symbolic statements are at the core of Gödel's incompleteness theorem.
  - hanche 7y ago
    Yes, but that self-reference happens outside the formal language, not within it. Gödel encoded formal statements in the language as integers, and thus turned the question of provability into statements of arithmetic. If the formal system is powerful enough to let you reason about arithmetic, you can thus trick the system to be self-referential, but only via this mechanism external to the system itself.
    - psychoslave 7y ago
      The thing is, as far as we have to deal with in the real world, there is nothing such as an absolutely isolated system. To my mind, self-reference only occurs in an interpretation, thus in the frame of some actions, which are only possible in a world where changes happen, most likely changing the frame of interpretation itself.
- psychoslave 7y ago
  Which argument are your referring to? Do you mean the Münchhausen Trilemma or the comment to which you replied?
  - maxfan8 7y ago
    I was referring to the comment to which I replied, not the trilemma.
Der_Einzige 7y ago
The only truth available is that there are no other truths. We have exactly one truth available to us. (This is a form of epistemological monism.) Ironically, It's Plato (through Socrates) who says "I know that I know nothing" but it should be fixed to say "I know that I know nothing else" "the truth that there are no truths is a truth" is a cop out. It can easily be resolved and the statement "I know that I know nothing else" is coherent
- psychoslave 7y ago
  If at first, the only truth available to us is that we don't have any other truth available to us than existence, then we just built an other truth, and we can construct other truths in a similar way, don't we? If we have the power to access any truth, then we have the power to access truth of our power to access the previous truth, and so on. Not only do we know that truth exists, but also we are aware that not every representations that come to our mind are truth. One might even consider that most representations that occupy our mind are unchecked untruths, but that doesn't undermine our ability to explore and gain new truth knowledge in some absolute way.

maxfan8 7y ago

This argument is a classic example of the vicious circle principle [1]. The self-referential nature of this interesting argument makes it somewhat meaningless (from a logical perspective). [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vicious_circle_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vicious_circle_principle

cryptonector 7y ago
> The self-referential nature of this interesting argument Self-referential symbolic statements are at the core of Gödel's incompleteness theorem.
- hanche 7y ago
  Yes, but that self-reference happens outside the formal language, not within it. Gödel encoded formal statements in the language as integers, and thus turned the question of provability into statements of arithmetic. If the formal system is powerful enough to let you reason about arithmetic, you can thus trick the system to be self-referential, but only via this mechanism external to the system itself.
  - psychoslave 7y ago
    The thing is, as far as we have to deal with in the real world, there is nothing such as an absolutely isolated system. To my mind, self-reference only occurs in an interpretation, thus in the frame of some actions, which are only possible in a world where changes happen, most likely changing the frame of interpretation itself.
psychoslave 7y ago
Which argument are your referring to? Do you mean the Münchhausen Trilemma or the comment to which you replied?
- maxfan8 7y ago
  I was referring to the comment to which I replied, not the trilemma.

Der_Einzige 7y ago

The only truth available is that there are no other truths. We have exactly one truth available to us. (This is a form of epistemological monism.) Ironically, It's Plato (through Socrates) who says "I know that I know nothing" but it should be fixed to say "I know that I know nothing else" "the truth that there are no truths is a truth" is a cop out. It can easily be resolved and the statement "I know that I know nothing else" is coherent

psychoslave 7y ago
If at first, the only truth available to us is that we don't have any other truth available to us than existence, then we just built an other truth, and we can construct other truths in a similar way, don't we? If we have the power to access any truth, then we have the power to access truth of our power to access the previous truth, and so on. Not only do we know that truth exists, but also we are aware that not every representations that come to our mind are truth. One might even consider that most representations that occupy our mind are unchecked untruths, but that doesn't undermine our ability to explore and gain new truth knowledge in some absolute way.