UNR Students for Liberty

Reality is of course open to interpretation, but some interpretations can be wrong, or much less likely to correspond to an accurate description of reality, than others. Is that what you meant by your first premise?

How is reality open to interpretation? There are correct descriptions of reality, and you can move along the continuum being less right until you reach completely wrong.

[...] in regards to the topic of conversation. ['Right' in this sense meaning that one possesses a truth which corresponds accurately to the reality of [...]

Clarifying Exmple: If I place a certain number of oranges within a box and put the lid on it, and I ask the you what the total number of oranges is…there is an actual numerical correct answer that is not disputable. In this case there is one correct answer with no fuzziness about it.

+ There are more ways to be wrong than there are to be right.

Rejoinder: There is one correct answer to the oranges-in-the-box problem regardless of you ability to arrive at it. There, however, are literally billions of incorrect answers, many of which as the final point noted, we can summarily dismiss even without lifting the lid. In other words, the answer is probably not four hundred trillion.

Truth requires fact, fact requires proof, proof requires perception, perception is subject to interpretation.

“Provisional truths” are about as worthless as imaginary ones. Just because you believe something to be “highly unlikely” or “very likely wrong” doesn't mean they are.

Clearly that is wrong.

There are truths and facts about the world which exist regardless of our ability to “prove” them. As a simple example, there was a specific number of people on this planet who were born in the year 1747. There obviously exists one correct answer. It could be something like 12,675,421.

Now, we would be highly skeptical of anyone who would claim to know the answer to this question to such a high degree of certainty. Hence we must content with approximations: 67,000,000,000 is clearly wrong, as is 4. But with more evidence and reasoning we can tighten our belt on this one…

There's nothing wrong with this. All our knowledge is provisional, it's the best we can hope for. Newton's laws of motion are “provisional” truths, but they seem right enough to work with.

I really hope you don't actually believe the sentiment you pass along, I hope you were merely being an advocate for some faraway devil. Because we know there exists a world independent of our “perception” of it for two reason…I mean, by your logic there would be no such thing as facts 100 million years ago. And that's just silly.

And also, as I just stated, there is nothing wrong with accepted approximated or provisional knowledge: this is all that science does. This has produced astounding results. We didn't get to the moon by shear luck: we actually know something about how the universe works.

And, hah, even if we didn't that wouldn't imply that the universe doesn't work. We're not so special as to mold reality simply by thinking about it…well, except maybe through engineering…but you know what I mean.

“There are truths and facts about the world which exist regardless of our ability to “prove” them.”

Really? How does one define something as truth or fact if they can't prove it?

“There's nothing wrong with this. All our knowledge is provisional, it's the best we can hope for. Newton's laws of motion are “provisional” truths, but they seem right enough to work with.”

But then they're not really “truths” are they? Just a series of experiences and best evidence available to us at any one point, susceptible to the flaws of perception.

“I really hope you don't actually believe the sentiment you pass along, I hope you were merely being an advocate for some faraway devil. Because we know there exists a world independent of our “perception” of it for two reason…I mean, by your logic there would be no such thing as facts 100 million years ago. And that's just silly.”

I believe what I say, or else i wouldn't say it. How do we know that a world exists independent of our perception? Because a majority of individuals perceive the same thing? Must it then be the accurate view of the world?

Believing things are black or white, right or wrong, fact or fiction, or that there are things that are absolute and unambiguous is absurd. All things are subject to perception.

Every single thing is subjected to perception flaws?

It does not matter at all if at some other location we are brains in a vat hooked up to a giant computer. For all intensive purposes, 3 oranges in a bowl in my kitchen are 3 oranges in a bowl. It adds nothing to this specific conversation to refuse to accept that statement as being true. We are interacting within the domain of this world, where the 3 oranges are most certainly there.

There are things that are absolute and unambiguous as long as you don't nitpick your way to irrelevancy.