At 5:07 AM 9/7/95, Jim Choate wrote:
Doesn't make it true, in Tim's sense--just makes it verifiable.
MacN
On Wed, 6 Sep 1995, Jim Choate wrote:
Truth is that which can be verified to be reproducable by indipendant and unbiased parties. All else is opinion.
What exactly is Tim's sense to you? Perhaps Tim could clarify more clearly what he means by 'truth'. To me it sounds like he is saying that there is some viewpoint that is absolute. I no more believe in absolute viewpoints than I believe in absolute coordinates.
I promise to be mercifully brief. This is a subject that we could all go on and on about. I used the ironic "What is truth?," a la Pilate, to indicate some degree of ambiguity. How Jim concluded that I have some absolutist viewpoint from this simple line is unclear to me. In any case, I don't believe there are "independent and ubiased parties" who can determine what truth is. Not that there is no measure of truth. I am no solipsist, and I believe we have a much clearer view today of how things work than we had, say, 500 years ago. Courtesy of science and the core idea of falsifiability. As this view relates to government and law, it is that many things are best left outside the bounds of the law. The law stays out of most inter-family disputes, for example, unless violence or fraud of a major sort occurs. And the law stays out of confirming or refuting religious claims. If Preacher Bob says that praying to Baal will save one's soul, no law officer will step in and stop this "lie." As I like to put it, of the N different religions, at most _one_ of them is "true," and the other N - 1 are based on lies. So, if we are to "allow" religious freedom we must surely allow lies to be told. Q.E.D. Our liberal, Western society went through this debate a long time ago, and it was pretty much concluded that people could choose their own paths to hell without interference from others. That people were free to believe any damned fool idea they wanted to believe in. Somewhere along the line we've adopted the new view that government needs to correct all incorrect thoughts, needs to protect people from "hurtful" ideas and speech, and needs to determine what is true and what is not true. If you want more information on my views about truth, check out the work on "evolutionary epistemology," especially the writings of William Bartley and Karl Popper. --Tim May ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^756839 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."