[HK] C.S. Lewis once said, if you want to know if the cat is in the cupboard, all the reasoning in the world will not tell you. You have to look in the cubboard.
So if the question is, "where is the cat?" and you look in the cupboard and see her, declaring, "she's in cupboard," isn't that the truth?
I don't know Hank, why don't you tell me: Is a true-or-false proposition, such as this one regarding the status of the cat, exhaustive of what Truth is?
Let's take another cat example, Schroedinger's cat in this instance. Whether the cat-in-the-box is to be found alive or dead fundamentally depends on a probability distribution. Observation causes one only of that entire probability distribution to be "selected," and this is the only result (dead or alive?) that can be learned by that observation, and it can only be learned as a function of observation.
But what of the rest of the probability distribution? Because some other probability was not realized at "state vector collapse" does not necessarily mean that it becomes unavailable as a possible selection at the next observation.
A "truth" that focuses on, and is defined by, such low-level true-or-false propositions, it seems to me, is a truth that is incapable of embracing the totality of what is and what may be, which we might call one vast, eternal, cosmic "probability distribution."
Truth either pertains to this universal probability distribution, or it is not truth.
BTW, I had a chance to study your fine essay this afternoon, and to try to play a bit of catch-up with this thread. I owe so many replies! And certainly I owe you one, Hank, considering the time and effort you obviously invested in your essay.
I'll be back! (Gotta go make dinner now.)
[HK] C.S. Lewis once said, if you want to know if the cat is in the cupboard, all the reasoning in the world will not tell you. You have to look in the cupboard. So if the question is, "where is the cat?" and you look in the cupboard and see her, declaring, "she's in cupboard," isn't that the truth?
Then you asked: I don't know Hank, why don't you tell me: Is a true-or-false proposition, such as this one regarding the status of the cat, exhaustive of what Truth is?
No. But, if you are serious, you are being a little disingenuous. My response was to your statement, "Certainly Truth itself is not available to sense perception." You did not say "all truth," but simply truth.
When one swears in court to tell, "the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth," no one supposes they are swearing to tell all the truth there is, exhaustively. What trial would ever be finished?
A "truth" that focuses on, and is defined by, such low-level true-or-false propositions, it seems to me, is a truth that is incapable of embracing the totality of what is and what may be, which we might call one vast, eternal, cosmic "probability distribution."
Our main difference is very fundamental. In some sense you regard truth as something, if not "metaphysical," then at least very nearly metaphysical. I think it is because you, at heart, are a Platonist and believe in Platonic universals as actual ontological existents.
I regard truth as entirely epistemological. Truth has no meaning outside the context of conceptual knowledge, and is the quality that differentiates those concepts that correctly describe any aspect of reality from those that do not.
As for a "truth that is [capable] of embracing the totality of what is and what may be, we might call one vast, eternal, cosmic 'probability distribution", no such truth is possible, because no single statement, however complex can describe everything there is to describe. In the abstract, all of truth may defined by a single statement, "truth is that which describes reality." One thing that certainly is not that truth is, "probability distribution," which not only cannot explain everything, but cannot very well explain what it does explain (thus the uncertainty principle).
The belief that "quantum mechanics" is somehow the ultimate explanation of everything, both metaphysical and epistemological, is just the new version of pythagoreanism. Pythagoras was convinced the everything could be explained as "number." The discovery of incommensurables cured them.
The new pythagoreans, however are more stubborn, and blatantly admit, their method cannot determine both the position and energy of a particle at the same time, and suppose that failure is proof they have explained everything, when all it does is reaffirm what the pythagoreans discovered long ago, everything cannot be explained in terms of measurement and number.
All of mathematics is only a method of dealing with a certain aspect of reality, that which can be counted and measured. It is a very powerful method, but limited by its essential nature. There are many aspects of reality that are neither countable or measurable. Mathematics is useless in dealing with those aspects of reality.
Science proceeds almost entirely by means of mathematics, especially physics and chemistry. Few aspects of science involve counting alone, and almost all important principles of science involve measurement. Now measurement is always arbitrary (no unit of measure is absolute, and must be arbitrarily chosen on the basis of what seems most appropriate and useful), and, unlike counting, which is absolute, no measurement is ever absolute or absolutely accurate. They are not absolute because all measurement must be made in terms of the relationship of that which is being measured to an arbitrary unit of measure, and no matter how accurate our measurements are, there is always some "margin of error."
No mathematical explanation of existence is either complete (it leaves out all those aspects mathematics is incapable of dealing with) or accurate (because there are aspects of reality that can only be known in terms of their measurable qualities, which can never be measured with absolute accuracy). A, "wave function," is a method of resolving certain "problems" statistically, and are based entirely on the observation that certain behavior of some "particles" or "waves" (because the same things are described as having both properties), can be described in those terms.
I have no desire to minimize the importance of this or any other scientific discovery, but this is hardly a means of understanding the ultimate nature of existence, or reality, or, "the totality of what is and what may be."
The so-called, "collapse of a wave function," is nothing more than a mathematical manipulation, akin to finding the derivative of a function in the calculus. It is not a physical event and it does not cause anything. It is only a way of describing what happens, it does not make anything happen.
You know I am not trying to dissuady you from your views. This is only to explain why I do not agree with them, and to provide you with actual points in my view that you can address, if you choose to argue with them.
How dull it would be if we all agreed all the time.
Hank