Is truth conceptual? Do we create the "truth?"

[Krysondra]

Could it be that all language has that problem?

All language does have that problem. Language is a placeholder. It can be a very beautiful and elaborate placeholder that conveys a great deal of meaning, but in the end, it only stands for something. It is not the thing itself. This is not necessarily a bad thing, just one that must be recognized. Language as we know it is not capable of conveying an absolute truth or, I would venture, even a personal one. Everything gets changed in the “translation” process. First, the speaker must find the closest words he can to approximate his thoughts or feelings. Then, the listener must take in those words and translate them based on the listener’s personal lexicon, understanding, and experiences. Meaning is transmitted, but it may not be the meaning that the speaker intended. In the end, the listener provides their own meaning which means an exact truth cannot have been passed on.

[Grim]

And so the scientist traces the truth using language as a map maker, unable to make a map if the one is not free to follow the contours of their thoughts. This free thought should not be taken for granted, most people have agendas, or the obligation to further an agenda. The freedom to follow a thought unique to its setting must be guarded. A practical example is where research grants may impede this process and focus on certain truths to the deprivation or ignorance of others under the guise of relevance or practicality.

The function of truthful discovery is to surprise, not to discover what is already know. In this manner discovery has the power to forcefully alter peoples thinking in a revolutionary sense and reinvent its self within, not outside of new contexts. Language does not change without reason. Changes in the language of science or truth being an important clue that a paradigm shift has occurred.

Regulatory bodies, societies and individuals within societies generally don't want to learn, they base their legitimacy on the ability to know before a discovery is made and often make careers predicting certain requirements before scientific information is actually available. This I believe involves the disguising the language of science as the language of technology (utilitarian - means to the predefined end) restricting or compromising the freedoms of the scholar from their ability for that certain success which only freedom can bring. An important reason why the scientific community must remain radically free.

Technology as utility essentially presumes that if you take something weak or incapable of completing a task and add the technological knowledge the result will be something functional. Adding technology to language should, by this premise, make language more forceful or descriptive than it otherwise would have been. I agree with this assumption; however, within the technological paradigm the objectives seem to remain intrinsically unchanged (the objective of communication), that is of enhancing the nature of thought is not effect, only the technique of expression is new.

Where there is a competing interest for truth, as resulting from the exchange of ideas within an applied interest community, freedom of research produces not only scientific truths but the recombination of language archetypes as structures of thought, the ability for further definition and sustained redefinition within the context of best known scientific truth is a powerful way in which to modify preexisting ideas.

These factors I believe form some of the contexts in which when language is adapted for the convenience of science the result is an adaptation of not only the ability to express the idea but thereby the necessary revolutionizing of the very thought.

[Interbane]

RT: "Information is purely conceptual and does not have physical dimension."

When it's in your head it's limited by available physical space of neurons. There's no way around this.

[seespotrun2008]

When it's in your head it's limited by available physical space of neurons. There's no way around this.

Yet, we all see the world differently, regardless of the fact that we all have those neurons. I have often thought about cloning. Say I decided to clone my siamese cat. The cloned cat would never be the same as my current cat even with the same genes. It would be the same with people. Why do you think this is Interbane?

[seespotrun2008]

All language does have that problem. Language is a placeholder. It can be a very beautiful and elaborate placeholder that conveys a great deal of meaning, but in the end, it only stands for something. It is not the thing itself. This is not necessarily a bad thing, just one that must be recognized. Language as we know it is not capable of conveying an absolute truth or, I would venture, even a personal one. Everything gets changed in the “translation” process. First, the speaker must find the closest words he can to approximate his thoughts or feelings. Then, the listener must take in those words and translate them based on the listener’s personal lexicon, understanding, and experiences. Meaning is transmitted, but it may not be the meaning that the speaker intended. In the end, the listener provides their own meaning which means an exact truth cannot have been passed on.

I agree. Communication is very complicated.

[Grim]

The greatest contribution of science (not technology) in respect to communication is the example of the community of scientists putting truth ahead of personal advantage while encouraging dissent and relying on as little governance as possible. Communications of this sort basically rely on the civilized spirit within members of a group. The most complicated communication is also the freest, it has no enforceable boundaries associated with some form of punishment.

Over the history of the past century the spirit of science begins to dominate culture on a global scale. There is an embracing of freedom implicit to the continual search for truth which intolerance does not allow. In contrast to the scientific community of openness, society at large has been one of dictatorship and narrow-minded intolerance. Science used as a geosocial-political tool is communicated popularly as a emotionless type of machinery producing dangerous and destructive truths. The implication is that truth is also machinelike and in incapable or unlikely to grasp softer human complexity, stalling the ability for science to communicate relevantly with the individual, society or government. Rather the role of science has been to take a rational approach to looking at and communicating truth, the use of truth is the technological application.

In reality there is no basis for any form of discrimination against science as it communicates its truths. After all it has a much less dangerous hold on human imagination compared to institutions offering shortcuts to happiness, however barbaric the means may be these promises often appeal to human primitive or simplistic tendencies.

As a human race we are on a voyage of discovery based around communicating a shared vision of the undertaking, developing communicative maps that can help us all lead better, more productive and ethical lives.

The nuclear bomb in its time was the pinnacle of technology - the ultimate weapon, not in its explosion, but its application of theoretical of truths ultimately to end human life. Its message was communicated in a blinding flash. It give credibility to a system where the inputs of science and technology served no constructive purposes rather destructive ones. However it is important to note that this was not realized until changes occurred in society at large, initially the perfect weapon had been matched with the perfect target, immediately after the true ethical implications became all too apparent and were communicated as such.

In this there is an element to science where the commitment to the idea that humans can learn to embrace a new view of the universe or ourselves opens scientific dialogue to communication of what can be viewed in our present political system as radical scientific pacifism. The humanitarian aspect of scientific language, the use of definition to break away from utilitarianism to better express the shades of gray inherent in man. Scientific pacifism anticipates the control dilemmas inherent in new technology seeking to define technology not as technology but rather as the application of new science or the reapplication of the old within ethical thought redefined and rediscovered.

[Interbane]

SSR: "Yet, we all see the world differently, regardless of the fact that we all have those neurons. I have often thought about cloning. Say I decided to clone my siamese cat. The cloned cat would never be the same as my current cat even with the same genes. It would be the same with people. Why do you think this is Interbane?"

Of course the clones would not be the same. Even a single instant after birth, external variances are already enough to set them on different behavioral paths. Even nutrition in the womb can effect their long term behavior. Yet, none of this says anything about the limits imposed by the physical sizes of brains.

[seespotrun2008]

The greatest contribution of science (not technology) in respect to communication is the example of the community of scientists putting truth ahead of personal advantage while encouraging dissent and relying on as little governance as possible.

I would have to disagree with this. The way to communicate science is through language and language is limited. There are also politics, prejudices, perspectives, and emotions that come into any human endeavor. As Krysondra said: “This is not necessarily a bad thing, just one that must be recognized”. If we do not recognize our limitations we cannot acknowledge them and can be responsible for all sorts of damage in the world. Science has not been free of problems. It has been used to oppress groups of people just like other human institutions. I think that we always need to be aware that we have limitations and that we need to be open to listening.

[Grim]

I would have to disagree with this. The way to communicate science is through language and language is limited. There are also politics, prejudices, perspectives, and emotions that come into any human endeavor.

Of course the symbol is heavily used. The point was not a thorough analysis of the successes and failures of language of science rather to point out that the scientific atmosphere is one of open communication and sharing of ideas and truths. As such it is inherently opposed to restrictions or non-scientific dogmatisms. The point remains that science is precisely useful for enabling language to do what is required of it in a functional scientific sense. Primo Levi, the Italian chemist and author applauded the study of chemistry as it allowed him access to wonderful and pragmatic metaphors and verbiage.

“For me chemistry represented an indefinite cloud of future potentialities which enveloped my life to come in black volutes torn by fiery flashes, like those which had hidden Mount Sinai. Like Moses, from that cloud I expected my law, the principle of order in me, around me, and in the world. I would watch the buds swell in spring, the mica glint in the granite, my own hands, and I would say to myself: 'I will understand this, too, I will understand everything.'”

Primo Levi

If we do not recognize our limitations we cannot acknowledge them and can be responsible for all sorts of damage in the world. Science has not been free of problems. It has been used to oppress groups of people just like other human institutions. I think that we always need to be aware that we have limitations and that we need to be open to listening.

Of course science is limited, my point remains that it has constructed the world we live in. The fringes of science is also the resting place of religiosity, of a kind of dogmatism not founded in the rest of the scientific corpus. No, in fact the problem of science has been in its application not in the idea of science as such. In my opinion science is like truth, it can be said to exist outside of any misapplication of its basic nature.

[seespotrun2008]

I would say truth is how accurately the information in your head reflects reality.

In all things but perhaps mathematics, the information stored in our heads can only be a compressed and rendered version.

Even a single instant after birth, external variances are already enough to set them on different behavioral paths. Even nutrition in the womb can effect their long term behavior. Yet, none of this says anything about the limits imposed by the physical sizes of brains.

I am trying to understand exactly what you and Robert are debating. I guess what you are saying is that there is an actual reality outside of ourselves. And our brain takes that information in by making it a smaller, representation of the actual thing. And Robert is saying that outside information is transformed into language. As Johnson 1010 said language is a picture first. Do you agree with this Robert? And if it is a picture first, what is wrong with what Interbane is saying? Although, I think I would have to add that our experiences color the things that are outside of ourselves. But you seem to understand and agree with that, Interbane.