I think there might be some nuance that can be added in your second paragraph.

What we know to be true is not the same as what is true, I agree. However, in answering the question of what is truth, we should note that there are limits to our ability to know truth. Drawing from Kant, and Gödel’s incompleteness theorem, there are things we just can never know the truth of.

So I feel that ‘what I currently know to be true’ is not the same as ‘what is true.’ But maybe there might be good reason to argue that ‘what I can possibly know to be true’ should be the same as ‘what is true.’ This requires a rejection of the inaccessible absolute Truth, in favor of an accessible but subjective truth. Reminds me of Ivan Karamazov’s “Even If” in Dostoevsky’s TBK.

Accepting that most people are dumb.

[removed]

I can understand all of that, but it seems like you would agree with the OP. There is no BIG T Truth, but there are many little truths and should be sought out on the bases of utility.

I don't think that professor Blackburn thinks the truths are unimportant at all, but he might say that Truth big T is ineffable.

I am highly sympathetic to disquotationalism/deflationism/etc, but something sticks in my craw (intuitively repugnant).

Blackburn seems to say that there is no foundation (aside from justification) that "grounds" morality, and that maybe (I'm inferring now) morality is a name we give teleologically to our already normalized position within an ostensible ethical framework. In this way, we should do what we have always done: not get ourselves excommunicated or exiled by perversions, or activism or some such.

But it seems like we have a sense that moral activism *would-have-been-*right so many times, and times when it is not the sociocultural norm.

Rorty addresses this I think to the effect of, we are always wrong with respect to future normalized positions, but maybe this is too dismissive.

Can moral truth be that normalizing force? Is this just semantic? How can we account for heroic activism that runs very much against utility?

Bah. Correspondence, obviously

>Do you mean, the inability to separate (uncertain, you admit) truth from (likewise uncertain) myth is meaningful, as borne out through a society's technological advancement? This seems like a nod to choosing a truth-position mostly based on its utility...

Sure, yes. That's largely why we care about the truth, after all. We believe operating on truth will result in better outcomes than operating on lies (in general, I'm sure you could come up with specific tortured examples in which that isn't the case). But generally, we care whether X is true because what we should do to get the outcomes we want changes depending on if it is or not. If "easy access to guns leads to more homicides" is true, then banning guns will lower the homicide rate (useful). If it is false, then doing so won't impact the homicide rate while driving up resentment among those affected (the opposite of useful). So knowing whether the statement is true lets us pick the better policy.

And your comment, like OPs, seems to imply a false dichotomy between "certain" and "uncertain". But we have degrees of certainty, and saying something is "true" has only ever meant that we have a high degree of certainty about something, and that is still a meaningful statement.

Basically, just because you can be wrong about what is true doesn't mean that truth should be dismissed as unimportant.

I love the deflationist approach. This is the way

So his rejection of the correspondence theory is just a conflation of a claim’s between being true and being known to be true.

“How do we know what is true?” And “How do we determine wha this true?” are important questions, but they aren’t the same as “what is truth?”

Do you mean, the inability to separate (uncertain, you admit) truth from (likewise uncertain) myth is meaningful, as borne out through a society's technological advancement? This seems like a nod to choosing a truth-position mostly based on its utility...

Well and to provoke a little, I would ask you to show me "a society that is based on the scientific method". I have not seen one lately.

If you admit that the truth is uncertain, but something like "rigorous justification" should be adopted within certain human modes (like tech or science), then it seems like you agree with the OP.

I agree with the premises but not the conclusion. It is true that we tend to define "true" as those beliefs we hold that are both useful and cohesive with our other beliefs. It is further true that those criteria aren't definitive - we can never be certain about truth, and spend roughly a third of our lives in dreams that are pure illusion. Nevertheless, the inability to be certain of the truth doesn't mean that separating truth from fiction has no benefit or isn't meaningful. There is a reason a society based on the scientific method ends up much more advanced than one based purely in myth.

When Descartes proposed a demon or a machine taking a persons brain out of their body, and then a mod sent him to the front of the 30 year's war.

What are the philosophical ramifications of people feeling AI deserves respect?

Please keep in mind our first commenting rule:

> Read the Post Before You Reply

> Read/listen/watch the posted content, understand and identify the philosophical arguments given, and respond to these substantively. If you have unrelated thoughts or don't wish to read the content, please post your own thread or simply refrain from commenting. Comments which are clearly not in direct response to the posted content may be removed.

This subreddit is not in the business of one-liners, tangential anecdotes, or dank memes. Expect comment threads that break our rules to be removed. Repeated or serious violations of the subreddit rules will result in a ban.

This is a shared account that is only used for notifications. Please do not reply, as your message will go unread.

[removed]

After a career spent in the pursuit of truth, Simon Blackburn explains how the deflationist approach, one which demonstrates why there's nothing to say about truth, changed his mind. While truth may be found to correspond to facts, many philosophers agree that correspondence in itself cannot account for a theory of truth. We can try instead to assess truth in light of other things we believe to be true, meaning that fundamentally truth is coherence across all beliefs. But coherence does not exclude the possibility of falsity – we can easily conceive of coherent stories that are nonetheless fictional. An alternative approach is pragmatism, which supposes that truth is that which is useful, but this view also fails to capture the essence of truth as it cannot be guaranteed that what one finds useful has any valid relation to reality. Therefore, the question “what is truth?” ends up dissolving into another: “what are you interested in finding out?” Such an account renders the word ‘truth’ redundant, since saying something is true does not bring any new information to what had already been stated.

Number 1 is totally true. But that doesnt mean we should make humans extinct, that means we should fight for justice.

Number second is not a valid argument, because yeah, that would make other people suffer, but making humans extinct would make them lot more suffer, so its not a valid argument to make humans extinct

[removed]

[removed]

[removed]

[removed]

[removed]

[removed]

[removed]

[deleted]