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Assuming there is an "out there" is unwarranted. As Nietzsche famously stated, "God is dead". He didn't mean the Christian god: he meant every objectivist philo
by Confusion 17y ago
Assuming there is an "out there" is unwarranted. As Nietzsche famously stated, "God is dead". He didn't mean the Christian god: he meant every objectivist philosophy. There is just the world with us immersed in it. It is not even wrong to attempt to describe the world in objective terms, separate from ourselves.
- Eliezer 17y agohttp://yudkowsky.net/rational/the-simple-truth http://yudkowsky.net/rational/the-simple-truth
- Confusion 17y agoI'm not advocating abandoning the notion of 'truth'. It's certainly not up for grabs either. I side firmly with the pragmatism of Rorty: I only care about the 'truths' that I think help me and others survive and be happy.
- gort 17y agoIf there's no truth to the matter of what's out there or how the world is, then I invite you to leave your 10th floor apartment via the window some time. After all, there's nothing out there that makes this dangerous.
- Confusion 17y agoTruth cannot be out there—cannot exist independently of the human mind—because sentences cannot so exist, or be out there. The world is out there, but descriptions of the world are not. Only descriptions of the world can be true or false. The world on its own—unaided by the describing activities of humans—cannot. -- Richard Rorty The point is not that the world does not behave in consistent ways: the point is that if you assume there is some objective truth 'out there', you are bound to sometimes end up with 'wrong' conclusions, because truth is only in us, because 'truth' is not an attribute that 'what is out there' has.