Huh? that's epistemology. Blackburn doesn't deny epistemology.

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Interesting that you feel there is no objective morality. I think we can agree that what is best for some is not best for others without feeling like we can't navigate the territory at all.

Even the martyrs are acting in a utilitarian mindset, either for a good we now generally agree about, or for a less discernibly positive way.

Cringes in Aristotle

This is puzzling if you think natural selection acts on the level of organisms, but completely explained (along with other altruistically motivated actions) I'd you think that natural selection acts on the level of genes (selfish gene theory).

Well, I want some term which is correctly applied to a statement in case things are as that statement says they are.

If you want to use “truth” in some other way, I guess I can’t stop you. But I still want a term with such a meaning.

I am still new to all philosophical l thinking so my answers will be simple compared to most here. To me, suffering is subjective. An animal half eaten by a lion has suffered, felt sorrow and pain but to us, it's a part of life and a necessity. Never thought of it this way but I guess nature will always have perpetual suffering for the unlucky so it's inevitable that some have to suffer in life for the greater good.

I mentioned Ivan Karamazov’s “Even If” because it is a good reason to assimilate truth with what can be known of it.

What value is there in a truth that can never be known? Is there a good reason to maintain a notion of truth that is inaccessible? It becomes totally useless to us at that point

People martyr themselves for dumb and evil shit all the time, though. It's just that we refuse to call it martyrdom at a particular point in time and so perpetuate the illusion of objective morality.

Once you let go, you begin to understand that all "heroism" can be put in a same category of baffling behavior as people who behave "evilly" when they reasonably ought to know they'll get punished for it anyway. Clearly the human mind is capable of either rejecting utilitarianism outright (even just personal utilitarianism,) slipping below the bare minimum knowledge/intelligence requirements to engage productively with it, or convincing itself that the unquantifiable trumps the quantifiable. Those do not have any strict relationship to heroic moral action. They happen with "evil" actions all the time.

Speaking as a professional physicist, the idea that there is not such a thing as truth is infantile. 1+1=2 no matter how you feel or identify. Facts do not care about your feelings.

I cant comment on the post about IAs and all the comments were erased i just want to say theres no thing yet as sentient IA JUST narrow ia and thats not really an IA.

How can you be sure he isn't currently alive? Are you aware of all the states of existence? Before you can determine that Caesar is dead you must first define it. And then you must acknowledge that it could all be a dream. The point being almost all reality and truth is unprovable by it's nature.

And yes, I'm suggesting you stick with Caesar because hot is a relative term in all contexts. In that sense, there is no hot, there is no cold, there is only relative to X.

And I'm not saying that we can't have objective truths, they are all around us. I am saying hot and cold are not among them. Temperature is among them, but temperature is not hot or cold, it just is.

If you want to follow this down a 10 year exploration, all you can prove as an objective truth at the moment is "I think therefore I am." Nothing beyond that.

'Truth' is an abomination. It once meant facts, but it has gradually become some almost mystical, vague, indefinable place-holder for something not-entirely-god but a close approximation of a mythical Absolute.

Facts exist, when supported by strong evidence. But then, that is science, not philosophy. And scientific fact is always held with a margin of doubt, because the possibility of the evidence being misinterpreted or false is recognized. 'Truth' doesn't exist, except as a general, common term for 'generally accepted evidence-supported fact'.

But capital 'T' truth is a lie. There never was any Truth beyond the masturbations of philosophers and theologians, and the arbitrary choice of those unable to accept approximate understanding as the best anyone can ever hope to get.

Truth in the philosophical sense cannot exist. It is an arbitrary, extremely fuzzy term, a variable into which any person can pour whatever they need to justify. More atrocity, horror, and disappointment have come from capital 'T' Truth than any other single fictional invention of Man.

There can be no 'Truth', there never was. Of course Blackburn finds searching for truth to be futile - it is the same as searching for god, another arbitrary, invented thing with no evidence and nothing besides human imagination behind its creation.

I guess utility is a complex idea. I was thinking something like martyrdom.

edit- one might imagine actions that are activist that have incalculable or unknowable utility. "I don't know if what I'm doing will amount to anything, but I am nonetheless compelled." I don't believe that every ethical choice can be reduced to something like an economic tradeoff.

I’m not talking about relativity.

But if you want to argue semantics… While I can’t confirm that Caesar ever existed, we can be sure that without time travel, he’s not currently alive. Whether or not death is the end is irrelevant to him being currently alive as we all know the term to mean.

The sun not being hot… ok. Let’s move the goalpost for the sake of the point.

The sun is plenty hot enough to melt an ice cube if it touched the ice cube, yes?

Is that not an objective truth? Maybe I’m using bad points, or you’re not arguing on good faith. Please explain how we can’t have objective truths.

Can you explain how activism runs against utility? It seems like it could be very much in line, as it is aimed towards the greatest good, at least in the mind of the activist.

Well...let's start with for Caesar to be dead, he must have first been alive. For him to have been alive, he must exist. Can you prove that he existed beyond your belief? Can you prove that death is the end? Can you prove that you are having this conversation right now?

The sun. To an ice cube, rain is hot. To a human, Death Valley is hot. But relative to the sun, Death Valley is a quaint nice place to live. Our sun is 5,778 Kelvin generally. However, there are stars that are 210,000 Kelvin. The sun doesn't seem so hot anymore. And theoretically, there is no max temperature in the universe so hot gets very relative very quickly.

I am not sure that Truth with a big T even makes sense. Unless you are religious maybe, but even then the truth about the existence of God, although very important, would still be a truth about a specific thing, and so a "little" truth in that sense.

I guess that’s what I’m asking. Can we ever know I single objective truth. I thought yes. I don’t understand why not. Certain things are absolute. Caesar is dead, the sun is hot, and earth has water on it. How are these not absolutely knowable?

I would postulate that 'can be' is the wrong language, and insert instead 'must be'.

To me its a closed and rather boring question of whether there are objective truths, yes there are. Instead the more fun question is can we ever know them.

Truth exists...mainly because it has to. That said, can we ever know what it is? Unlikely.

The above though is the heart of what is wrong with relativity, Shrodinger's Cat, and similar concepts that are based upon observational data alone.

No.

There is no good reason to think “what is true” is the same as “what I can possibly know to be true”. It may simply be that there are things which I cannot know.

Is this suggesting that objective truth is impossible? I understand that some things are unknowable but I think that there can be objective truths in the universe. The Sun projects light and heat. Is that not an objective, unarguable truth?

Kind of my thought. We should respect the calculation machine crunching numbers to come up with results? Why?

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