PureX
Veteran Member
Yeah, but you are someone, too.
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Why I Believe Truth=Experience
- Thread starter RedDragon94
- Start date
I see truth as whatever I happen to be experiencing now in this moment. It's true for this moment and gone the next. Truth is not something you can possess. You just have to accept what it is now, then let go of it as soon as it is gone.
Some folks think our experience or searching will lead us to knowledge of an ultimate truth, something one can say aha! this is it.
I no longer believe this is the case and even if it was, it's unlikely I'll discover it in my lifetime.
I'm always changing, the world is always changing. Both the world and my self of today will not be the same world and self of tomorrow.
So what is true is change. I do my best to accept the reality of what I experience now and try to be as open as I can to the truth that tomorrow brings.
PureX
Veteran Member
Sure you do. Observations are made based on the expectations and cognitive limitations of our existing concept of reality. And these inevitably bias our observations. There is no "objective" human cognition. Objectivity is an ideological illusion that none of us can actually partake of.
Guy Threepwood
Mighty Pirate
So don't take my word for it!
Guy Threepwood
Mighty Pirate
sure, but that's where you get into people taking other people's word for something, rather than the empirical evidence itself
Shadow Wolf
Certified People sTabber
Science isn't taking someone else's word for it. If it was, the peer review aspect wouldn't exist.
Guy Threepwood
Mighty Pirate
Peer pressure review is what gave us canals on Mars, phrenology, steady state and Piltdown man- the furthest thing from the scientific method-
Shadow Wolf
Certified People sTabber
Piltdown man has always been acknowledged in science as a joke, and was doubted upon it's "discovery." Science did away with phrenology. And what is wrong with it being wrong and replacing those things wrong with better ideas? That's another strength of science.
Guy Threepwood
Mighty Pirate
simply not true, it was widely accepted as a basis for human evolution for decades- not because of many people's direct experiment or observation- but because of small numbers of authoritative opinions such as:
Henry Fairfield Osborn, President of the American Museum of Natural History, examined the Piltdown and Sheffield Park finds and declared that the jaw and skull belonged together "without question"
aka taking other people's word for it
Yes, of course their were skeptics (aka 'science deniers') of Piltdown man from the start, largely those unrestrained by academic peer pressure- and so yes, that's my point, science the method is stronger and ultimately usually wins out over science the academic opinion-
Shadow Wolf
Certified People sTabber
Academia and science were largely skeptical of it from the start. It's a fallacy to believe such a thing had such widespread or universal blind acceptance, as it didn't.
Guy Threepwood
Mighty Pirate
They were more skeptical of it at the very beginning yes, and many defenders point this out, but it became almost universally accepted academic consensus, this is hardly controversial, before being eventually exposed by new tech. decades later.
1921 In conclusion, the writer desires not only to recant his former doubts as to the association of the jaw with the skull, but to express his admiration of the great achievement of his life-long friend, Arthur Smith Woodward, in making the discovery and in finally establishing beyond question the authenticity of the 'Dawn Man' of Piltdown. ~ Henry Fairfield Osborn
1929 If, however, the fossil lower jaw found at Piltdown, England, belongs with the human Piltdown skull, as nearly all authorities now believe, it affords a clear case of an ape-like canine belonging in a human jaw. ~ William Gregory
Between the years 1912 and 1914 Mr. Charles Dawson found in a stratum of gravel at Piltdown Sussex, fragments of a fossilized skull and jaw which were reconstructed by Sir Arthur Smith Woodward as Eoanthropus, the famed man of Piltdown. Some scholars refused to believe at first that a skull so human could be associated with a jaw so apelike, but present-day consensus is that the fragments actually belonged to one individual. Most anthropologists—notably excepting Sir Arthur Keith—hold that the Piltdown man, like the Pekin man and the Java apeman, were offshoot types which died out and were not on the ancestral line of Homo sapiens. Nevertheless Piltdown appeared to be the oldest near-human inhabitant of England to come to light, and his age was variously estimated at 100,000 to 300,000 years. ~ Time October 12 1936 p.42 See also: Fark 2 See also: The Washington Post
Important light was shed on the ancestry of the human race by the discovery of the (a) Siamese twins (b) Cardiff giant (c) Gibson girl (d) Piltdown man. ~ Popular Science August 1939 p.126
Shadow Wolf
Certified People sTabber
It was never universally accepted, and skepticism and doubt grew over the years, not more accepting. Your claim of your position being "hardly controversial" is like trying to say scientists aren't nearly entirely unified over evolution via natural selection and the effects of humans on the Earth's climate. Those two areas there is no controversy. The acceptance of "piltdown man," however, was always controversial.
Corvus
Feathered eyeball connoisseur
I don't think you understand that while absolute objectivity is impossible, the most objective way of looking at things is scientifically so. We know our objectivity is limited but it is good enough to build computers spaceships super conductors smart phones small pox vaccine scientific calculators etc....am I getting through? Do you copy over?
If I tell you time dilation is real, you don't have to take my word for it, or my subjective bias. You can do the experiment yourself. To demonstrate it. It involves a turn table and two synchronized stopwatchs. Very simple.
If you want, I could show you how to accurately measure the speed of light, with a ruler, a chocolate bar and a microwave oven. Don't let me tell you how it is or what speed light travels at, find out for yourself.
Politesse
Amor Vincit Omnia
Of course they help. They're flawed to various degrees, not nonfunctional.
Politesse
Amor Vincit Omnia
I participate in peer review regularly, and regard it highly. All of my professional publications have been peer-reviewed, and all were improved greatly by the conversation.
But if believing what one person says means "taking their word for it", why isn't believing what five people say "taking five people's word for it"? Those people added detail, context, and correction to my studies, but turning them into Truth is beyond any reasonable expectation of their abilities. My reviewers are scholars, not gods.
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Corvus
Feathered eyeball connoisseur
I have never met a scientist in RL who denies either climate change by human activity or evolution by natural selection. I have met many non scientists who do however. Especially non scientists with a set of rigid beliefs that are apparently incompatible with evolution. Although I have never fully understood why exactly.
Politesse
Amor Vincit Omnia
I knew several scientists who objected to human casuation of climate change, about ten years ago; as far as I know, all have since gotten on board with the idea.
All evolutionary scientists of my acquaintance accept natural selection as a mechanism of evolution, though none who see it as the only mechanism of evolution.
It is in the nature of scientific consensus to change over time.
Corvus
Feathered eyeball connoisseur
Really? What other mechanisms do they posit?
Politesse
Amor Vincit Omnia
Among other things, mutation, migration, genetic drift, and mate selection.
Corvus
Feathered eyeball connoisseur
Which is what sets it apart from mindless articles of immutable faith.