RJG wrote:Steve, firstly I don't think this discussion is necessarily about Climate Change, but more about why we personally hold something as true (i.e. subjective truths). In other words, we personally hold something as true because of something we've read and heard. So we may want to move our discussion (if it gets more involved in this direction) to another area. But here is fine for now.
I agree with this, except that I disagree with the ways in which you use the terms "subjective" and "objective" as we have already discussed in other topics. As I've said previously, you muddle the separate concepts of objectivity and logical certainty.
Climate Change is a specific example of a set of claims of proposed objective fact which we have to assess to try to work out whether we think they are more likely to be true or false. Two other examples I gave in my previous post were the objective claim that a country (a big object) called Australia exists and that a person called Henry VIII (another quite big object) once existed. I moved the discussion here because I suspected that if we kept it up someone would tell us to shut up and get back to talking about "Trump and Truth". As you've said, ideally it should be in a topic about the general subject of what it means to make claims of objective truth on the basis of subjective perceptions and how we assess those claims. But since Climate Change is the example being used, this will do for now.
This does not "falsify" my statement, but instead only "agrees" with it. For your belief that the Earth is 'not' 6000 years old is because of something you read and heard? ...right?
Your statement was as follows (bold added by me):
we all seemingly believe OUR "read and heard" is more true than YOUR "read and heard".
I gave an example of something that was MY "read and heard". I pointed out that I do not believe it to be true. i.e. the extent to which I believe it to be true is zero. Therefore I cannot believe it to be any more true than anything else. Therefore your statement quoted above is false.
Again,
1. Those that believe in X do so because of something they've read and heard.
2. Those that don't believe in X do so because of something they've read and heard.
Example: you've read/heard that little green men called "martians" live on Mars, but because of something you've read/heard you don't believe it.
Yes, we've already agreed that all of our information about objects that we've never personally experienced (Australia, Henry VIII etc) comes from things we've read/heard. You have pointed out here that I believe some of the things I've read/heard more than other things I've read/heard. Yes. So do you. I put it to you that this is why you used the example proposition "the Earth is flat". It's the same reason you're now using the example proposition "there are green men on Mars". You clearly don't practice what you preach . You believe that some things you read/hear are more plausible than others and they are not equally worthless as you've previously claimed them to be. That's why you're using them as examples.
What I'm trying to get from you is the criteria you use for making this decision about the competing claims that you've read/heard.
I was just trying to make the point that "observing" the "world as flat" does not necessarily mean the world is flat. Hence "observations" are not trustworthy in ascertaining 'real' truths.
If you were
just making that point then you could have used an example like "the Earth is approximately spherical" or "Australia exists" or any number of others. But you deliberately chose an example of something that almost all of us do not believe to be true and thereby demonstrated that there is a rational basis for believing some empirical propositions more than others, and you yourself do so.
Yes. Bingo! My belief that the world is not-flat is ONLY based on what I've read and heard.
So, to go back to my eariler question: Why do you believe it? On what basis do you choose to instead believe what you've read/heard about the Earth being approximately spherical?
I don't conclude that the Earth is "really" non-flat, or that it even "really" does/does not exist. I only (personally) believe it is so because of what I've read/heard. Even traveling around the Earth doesn't prove anything. It would then just be a bunch more "observations".
It doesn't prove anything if you're using the term "prove" in the mathematical sense of making it logically certain. But what it does is to start to provide a method by which we all choose between competing claims of objective fact. i.e. it provides a method for
testing competing empirical claims. And the word "prove" is often used a synonym for the word "test". So when people use the term "scientific proof" they are using the word in that sense, and not in the sense of a mathematical proof.
We can't derive 'real' truths from "observations". We can't get objectivity from subjectivity. That which we've "read and heard" (and "observed") is only that which we've "read and heard" (and "observed"), that's all, and not something that is necessarily 'real/true'. If we want to know what's real/true, we have to rely on something else, but certainly NOT our subjective observations! (...nor our "read and heard"'s)
This is where we disagree on the meanings of words again. As well as disagreeing about the word "objective" we also disagree about the term "real truth". For me, the term "real truth" is not a synonym for "logical certainty". I think there's another perfectly good word for logical certainties, or
necessary truths.
Bottom-line: we can't get (derive) objectivity (truths) from what we've "read and heard" (i.e. subjective "observations").
I have already described several times the way in which we do just that. Again: We can't get logical certainty from what we've read, heard, seen, touched, tasted or smelled. But we can use those things to make objective propositions - propositions about objects. Objects are the entities that we propose to be the cause of our subjective sensations etc.
What we've "read and heard" are just the somethings that we personally hold/believe as true, and not necessarily that which is really (objectively) true. -- if we want to know what's 'really' true, then we need something MORE than just our "read and heard"'s (and "observations").
As previously mentioned, we disagree about the meanings of "objective" and "really".
Those that claim Climate Change is true (or false) are only regurgitating what they've "read and heard". That's all. And no one's "regurgitation" is anymore valid (truer/realer) than another's.
This is the statement demonstrating that your false proposition that there is no rational basis for choosing between competing empirical claims that we have read/heard has genuine negative consequences. Your conclusion appears to be that we should have no opinion, one way or the other, about climate change because each position is equally invalid. To be consistent, you would have to apply this principle not just to climate change but to absolutely everything except the Descartes-style logical certainties that you think you've found.
Luckily, you self-evidently don't do that. You do the same thing as everyone else, using approximately the same methods to differentiate between competing claims. You did exactly this when the subject of climate change was first introduced. You said some things about how the Earth's climate has changed a lot in the past, before humans existed. You've read/heard this, right?
As I've said, I'd be interested in hearing you explicitly examining the methods you use, starting with the method you've used to conclude that the read/heard objective proposition "the Earth is flat" is less believable than the read/heard objective proposition "the Earth is approximately spherical".
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Anybody else reading this conversation: please, please don't dive in mistakenly assuming that this is a debate about whether the Earth is flat.