Zaay,
Once again, thank you for your time. People say I post long! Me likey you’re style. I appreciate your tit for tat.
However, for the sole sake of convenience, I am going to sum up your arguments and address each point so we are clear about what ideas we have that conflict and are relevant to this topic and thread, and ones which are not as important.
I thought to try doing this myself, but today turned out insanely hectic, as the wife's car broke down halfway to work, and I was late picking up our preschooler, and the pipes half-froze...
heh.
So, let’s recap our argument. It first and foremost regards the third value, which I define as mystery, a tangled hierarchy of both true and false at once. In other systems, it is called ‘maybe’, unknown, neither true and neither false, wu chi (or tao).
My argument states: Considering this third value is indeed very relevant and critical in all forms of problem solving, either directly or indirectly. I could make the argument that it is critical in philosophy too, and perhaps we will touch on that, but I do want to make clear the distinction, it’s not just philosophy, it’s not just a ‘thought’ experiment, it is something that is basic to critical thinking in the most exalted sense of the word. It’s natural thinking. Let’s call this form of thinking ‘ternary thinking’. It dictates that truth is not limited to two values, it is limited to three values.
And I can only say that this is nonsensical. Truth is binary in nature - either a thing is true, or it is false. You yourself have already admitted that it doesn't matter whether we know a thing to be true or false, or not.
Your argument states: The third value is a useless and irrelevant term in perhaps all but the most subtle and extreme forms of computation, it holds no common value, and no meaningful value in either critical thinking, pragmatism or skepticism. Bivalent logic, Aristolian frameworks, 0/1, true/false, hard binary distinctions are all that are necessary to frame unknown, or known, phenomena. Let’s call this quality of thinking ‘bivalent thinking’, and say that it limits truth not to three values, but two.
An oversimplification, but yes, it works.
And of course unknown is not a third value in a true/false scenario, it’s a third value in a true/false/unknown scenario. Third values do not exist in hard binary division.
No, unknown is not a true/false value. There is no ternary notion for true/false. Either a statement is true, or it is not, within a given framework. There's no middle ground, no shade of grey.
Sometimes, the statement is incorrectly or meaninglessly phrased, but there is ultimately truth or falsehood.
The question then is, what is a true/false scenario? I am saying a true/false scenario is a concept that does not exist except in your head. It doesn’t relate to objective reality completely. It works tautologically, which is to say it has a mathematical function in form, just not in content. So objectively , there is no true/false scenario, there is only a true/false or hard binary way of distinguishing objective reality, or a ternary one that perfectly reflects reality and that is indeed logical and functioning rationally, in addition to being intuitively adoptable in a complementary way to it’s structure without producing contradictions.
And I'd say that's nonsense. Consider the value of any statement in absence of a subjective viewpoint, and we remove any notion of known/unknown immediately. Further, consider the value of any statement within the correct framework, and we again remove any notion of known/unknown.
To one extant, your statement does indeed contain truth. Binary distinctions are a novel and repeating pattern in perception. We can make workable distinctions that are found in the full exaltation of opposites. Day/Night. Left/Right. Woman/Man. This/That. The pattern of opposition is indeed a fascinating contemplation to have.
Yet if we look at your statement unknown/known, it doesn’t give us the full picture. Unknown has no binary cut, we can see that, but known most certainly does. Of what is known, what distinction can be made? Things that are known can either be true, or false. We cant make unknowns true or false. So the distinction of known/unknown is a workable function, it’s just not the whole picture, it doesn’t self reflect information that we know it must contain for it to be known.
You're attempting to conflate two dichotomies and are trying to force them to merge.
I see a contradiction here already if I take your text in whole, for above you stated that “Unknown does not relate directly to the true-false dichotomy”, yet you state here that [snip]
Which to me looks like your indeed relating unknown to a true or false structure, which then looks contradictory in and of itself. Help me out here, I want to understand, how can an unknown be a true unknown as opposed to a false unknown? If it’s true or false, doesn’t that make it known? I mean, a ‘false unknown’ would simply be another way of saying ‘known’, so why use it? It looks like your over applying binary cuts to me here, over thinking it, producing contradictions.
...which means I failed to explain myself appropriately.
Since you apparently misunderstand, let me try this another way:
The true-false dichotomy relates to any factual statement or idea, when phrased within the correct framework. In the absolute objective framework - one which, admittedly, we're not privy to - ALL statements are either true or false. In an absolute objective framework, there can be no unknowns OR knowns, since there is no knower. This, then, is one of the basest dichotomies available, and it is absolutely binary in nature.
The known-unknown dichotomy relates to any factual statement or idea, when phrased within a particular framework, yet has no place in an absolute objective framework. For any given subjective framework, ALL statements are either known or unknown. The issue of truth becomes irrelevant under this dichotomy. This dichotomy, by itself, is binary in nature, but often very confusing, due to issues of incorrect belief, faith, etc.
This dichotomy is also absolutely dependent on an observing subject, and as such, is largely irrelevant beyond the subjective view.
When I offered four scenarios for the combination of this dichotomy, I may have done so in a confusing manner. So let me try this again, using slightly different statements:
Framework: A scientist in the early past, discussing the current state of astronomy:
S1: The planet Earth has one naturally occuring, uniquely large, non-solar satellite.
S2: The moon is square.
S3: The moon orbits the earth, which in turn orbits the sun.
S4: Tiny people live on the moon in cities made of glass.
Under your system, this observer makes three types of statements. His first is true, his second, false, his third and fourth are mystery. However the third and fourth statement, as time progresses, certainly don't remain mystery; no statement ever does, if frameworks are properly adjusted.
Under my system, he has made two types of statements under a primary level dichotomy, and two under a secondary level dichotomy; combined, this gives four types of statements.
His first is clearly true as well as being known. The second is also known, but clearly false. The third is true, but unknown, while the fourth is false, but unknown.
A known and true statement, yes, can be reduced to a true statement; a known and false statement can be reduced to a false statement. In common conversation, an unknown can remain an unknown, whether true or false. But please note how I said that: An unknown remains an unknown,
whether true or false.
So there remains a dichotomy, though we may not be privy, in our framework, of the details of that dichotomy.
A few more responses:
A true known? ‘Known’ implies a truth value of true, it seems redundant.
Yet there can be a known false. For example, our atmosphere is fatal to human life. Clearly false, and clearly we know it to be false. A known false.
As opposed to this statement: Our atmosphere contains more water vapor than it did 10,000 years ago.
The statement is unknown, but is most likely false. But it could be true...
Of course, the fact is the statement is either true, or it is false.
1+1=2 is known to be true.
Incorrect use.
1+1=2 is true within a trinary or greater number system.
1+1=2 is a known statement in any number system.
1+1=2 is false within a binary number system.
1+1=2 is unknown to an illiterate person.
Frameworks are the key.
To me, your saying that it’s true things are unknown. So you create an extra unnecessary category, you give us four truth values, when you could keep it simple and use three.
No, I'm giving you two truth values, and two knowledge values.
That's it.
We either know or we don't. A statement is either false, or it is true.
That's all.
More over complication. Your saying that it’s false, yet could not have been proven true, just believed. So beliefs are false unknowns, which to me breaks down as you saying beliefs are beliefs about things unknown. Again, absolutely useless in the present moment, only good for describing some past event. How can we know if we are encountering a false unknown in the present or a true unknown? It’s so tangled this four value set you introduce, and it appears useless in the present moment regarding present phenomena. It doesn’t even tell us anything about anything unknown, other than it’s false, not true.
Again, you're the one overcomplicating.
Either a thing is true, or it isn't. Either we know its truth value, or we don't.
That simple.
All your statements are saying is an overcomplicated way of stating three truth values. There is that which we know, that which we don’t know, and that which we don’t even know we don’t know.
You just used two values, and neither one was a truth value.
To rephrase, there are knowns, and unknowns, and unknowns.
That's all you just said.
Your introducing four values! Two sets of dichotomies.
I could introduce dozens more, as well. It is you, by attempting to add unknown to the true-false dichotomy, who are dragging in a separate dichotomy.
You want to go with true-false? That's the whole burrito. You want to add unknown? Then you gotta add known, and that in no way changes the true-false burrito - that's just adding an enchilada to the side.
Your almost right, it is paradox, yet ternary systems resolve paradox, and yours avoids them. Paradox exists. It is true there is paradox. It is also true there are unknowns. It is true that unknown is perceptibly both true and false at once. We cannot distinguish between what is or can be known to be true about it, or our own false ideas or concepts surrounding it’s truth, if we could, it would be known as either true or false.
Your ternary systed does no such thing, it avoids paradox completely. If you disagree, give me a good example of how it resolves a specific paradox.
And I strongly disagree - an unknown is NOT perceptibly true and false at once. An unknown is just an unknown, and it is either true or it is false.
I hate to say it……do I have to? It’s not a cope-out, however, it just an example that proves your statement is false.
Schrödinger’s Cat.
NONSENSE!
Another fool who doesn't understand Schrödinger’s Cat.
It's a mental exercise, silly person, not an actual experiment. In reality, the cat would either be alive, or it would not, period. It wouldn't magically resolve once the user peeks in. The cat wouldn't be in some hellish stasis of quasi-life, waiting for an observer.
So, no, that's just an unknown which is still either true or false.
Please, keep going...
What happens when you add a positive and negative together?
You mean, I take it, an equal positive and an equal negative?
1 + -1? What do you get? 0. Doesn’t that truth repeat in many different environments, not just mathematically? Doesn’t something like that happen in particle physics?
Don't embarrass yourself further. Clearly, you're not very good with math, and I imagine, with particle physics either.
And this in no way relates to the concepts at hand. There's no paradox or mystery to 1+-1 (or, simply, 1-1). There's no paradox or mystery - well, not MUCH mystery - to the interaction of particles and antiparticles.
TRY to stay on topic.
Isn’t light BOTH a partial and a wave at once?
Nope. Light exhibits properties of a particle and of a wave at once, but what light is, remains a bit uncertain as of yet. OUR misunderstanding of the nature of light doesn't change the fact that light is, what it is.
No paradox, yet again.
I will get an ice coffee tomorrow is both true and false at once perceptibly. The statement itself is neither true and neither false logically.
Wrong. That statement is merely an unknown. However it is either true, or it is false. The resolution of that statement can only be seen from a future framework, true; nevertheless, the statement remains either true or false. It is never both at once.
To those of us with you today, the statement is an unknown, either a true unknown or a false unknown. However, the statement could be better worded:
It is my intention to get an ice(D) coffee tomorrow.
However, you could be lying, so this statement is still either a true unknown or a false unknown statement.
Nevertheless, regardless of the ignorance of our observing framework, the statement remains either true or false, but not both at once.
In 2003, was the existence of WMD in your four value framework a false unknown or a true unknown?
A false unknown. My ignorance of its truth value had no bearing on that truth value. It was never both true and false at the same time.
(As it happens, it was a false known to me at the time, but I really, REALLY can't get into details on that one...)
True, false, and tentatively false? Wouldn’t you also get tentatively true if we kept consistent with your two sets of dichotomies? And if we did, wouldn’t we really be saying the same thing, as in your four value system is now reducible to ternary?
You can introduce any number of value sets to any statement, XXXX. When dealing with an unknown, you may certainly treat it as true until proven false, or false until proven true. That's a matter of personal behavior, and again has no bearing on the actual truth value of the statement.
I agree it is useful, one cannot help but to use it, but it’s not applicable to logic, and it’s not science, it’s philosophy. And I was trying to argue over at bad science.net, they were determining their truth values with philosophy, while attacking me for determining truth values with logic, and then claimed I wasn’t being scientific.
I've never been to badscience.net that I can recall, so I can't comment on the discussions there. But I agree that heuristics such as Occam's Razor are philosophical tools; more to the point, I think they're debate techniques. They can be, however, indispensible; much as I have found Sherlock Holmes' own heuristic to be irreplacable. "When we eliminate the impossible, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truth."
I will address our next set of conflicting ideas in my next post. This keeps everything orderly. I hope to get to all this evening. I have production starting tommorow morning, so I cant predict I can post here frequently the next few days.
I too am insanely busy the next few days, and besides I might be banned or suspended by then.
Again, me likey your style! And yes, I did meet tia carrera, she is a babe, but my favorite asian mistress is kobi tai, hehe, just kidding, my favorite is Lucy Liu, but I only drove by her in my car once. She never called me back;-)
mmmmm... Lucy Liu is a hottie hot hot hottie...
