Skepticism and The Normal

Three truth values in the news.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/02/14/wiran214.xml

Al-Sadr, is he in Iraq or Iran?

http://www.canada.com/topics/news/world/story.html?id=9980075c-91ed-419b-9d93-849350f25e9a&k=40051

The US Government says that he is in Iran. (t,f,m)

The Iranians say he is in Iraq (t,f,m)

Both sides have shown in recent history of distorting truth for political agenda, can we accept the truth value of either statement considering the parties making them? What is the probability that Al-Sadr is in either Iran or Iraq?

How can anyone possibly analyze this scenario for any certainty without the third value?


BF

Party A is making Claim X.
Party B is making Claim Y.
If Claim X is not substantiated by objective, verifiable evidence, then the claim is moot.
If Claim Y is not substantiated by objective, verifiable evidence, then the claim is moot.
If there is objective, verifiable evidence that is relevant to Claim X or Claim Y, then it should be evaluated as to whether it supports, or refutes either claim.

There is no need for a mystical "third value". What is needed, is more information in order to evaluate Claim X and Claim Y.

Regarding your specific example with Al Sadr; the probability that he is in Iran is 1/z (where z represents the # of countries in the world + the # of international territories (Antarctica, etc)). The probability that he is in Iraq is also 1/z. Other objective, verifiable information can be applied to adjust the probabilities accordingly.
 
Three truth values in the news.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/02/14/wiran214.xml

Al-Sadr, is he in Iraq or Iran?

http://www.canada.com/topics/news/world/story.html?id=9980075c-91ed-419b-9d93-849350f25e9a&k=40051

The US Government says that he is in Iran. (t,f,m)

The Iranians say he is in Iraq (t,f,m)

Both sides have shown in recent history of distorting truth for political agenda, can we accept the truth value of either statement considering the parties making them? What is the probability that Al-Sadr is in either Iran or Iraq?

How can anyone possibly analyze this scenario for any certainty without the third value?


BF

With or without a third value, we can only guess. The only source of certainty would be irrefutable evidence.

But of course, you know that perfectly well. Your feigned belief in this mystical third value is a ploy for attention.

And here I am giving it to you! Nice job, troll.
 
There is no need for a mystical "third value". What is needed, is more information in order to evaluate Claim X and Claim Y.

.

huh? You added a third value when you said 'moot'!

Clarification. The third value is not mystical, rather, mystical what the point of view's idea about it is!

[unknown = unknown] is {logic}

[unknown = moot] is {mysticism}
 
Here are two examples of dialectic happening.

The first one is Robert Wright, currently my favorite rational dialectician. Robert uses logic and honesty to arrive at truth. (he also said some nice things to me in an email about OS 012, yes, I am bragging about that, he is one of my heros, so why shouldn't i !;-)



The second one is Stephan Colbert, my favorite irrational dialectician. he uses art to find the truth and expose it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJvY_RftA4I

I like to consider I do both, although admittadly not as well as either of them.
BF

You expose the "truth" illiterately do you?
 
yes, neither side is allowing the third value to operate here.

Assume they are willing so to do... then what?
But this illustrates one thing that's going to kill your project before it leaves the gate - if parties in conflict are unwilling to 'allow the third value to operate here', then OS012 is useless. You can't make people adopt the concept that they might be wrong, or that what they think they know, they really don't.

So it's a lot like claiming that if everyone became pacifist, there'd be no wars. Obvious, but useless.
Aside from that, you seemed to dance around the issue without ever actually discussing it...

Another point to remember, is that some beliefs are fundamental in nature; that is, they trump rationality and evidence. Theism is like that, and so is atheism in many ways. No manner of philosophical sophistry will ever resolve the nature of fundamental belief.

See, RV, dialectic and related fields are lovely in college, maybe at home; but where such fields are most needed, they lack the essential tools and elegance to do what they claim to do. A philosophy that lets you learn to agree to disagree with another student of the philosophy, or with your friends, or your wife... that's lovely, but irrelevant. A philosophy that can make two mortal enemies work out a peace accord is truly relevant, but you clearly don't have that yet. Not even close.

You mentioned that each participant would be walked through a dialogue that introduces the third value. Explain that for me for the participant who believes the Qu-Ran is the literal truth, the absolute word of God, and that it states they must kill heretics.

I can already tell you what such an individual is going to respond to the most obvious argument: that there IS no 'third value'. Everything in the Qu'Ran is True, the existence of God is True, and the ordination to kill heretics is True. Any conflicting idea is False. Period.

Now, if you, as I suspect, are going to claim it's a bad example because he's not a 'willing participant', I have to point out that this is PRECISELY the environment in which your philosophy is most required - if it actually worked - and is also where it is most likely to fail. For a philosophy of intellectual debate to be truly useful, all sides have to agree on the foundational rules of that debate, OR the philosophy has to be structured in such a way that the process supercedes prior disagreement.

It's much like hypnosis: it only works on those willing to believe - or self-delude - that it works. It doesn't work on those who don't believe that it works.

Beyond using it as a debate tactic, OS012 is a pretty poor model of reality, because it assumes the primacy of the subjective, an assumption that fails prior to the evolution of subjective experiencers. It appears to deny the fundamental fact that all statements are either true or false, and that the ignorance or awareness of the subject cannot change those values, only obscure them.

This is why I state that what you have here is 3/4 of a dual two-value system - a True-False dichotomy and a Known-Unknown dichotomy.

As far as dealing with the subjective perception, systems which attempt ot limit truth values to a small number of cases are a dangerous trap to fall into, as most perceptive truths are far more multivalued than simple true-false (or even true-false-I don't know) can allow.
 
With or without a third value, we can only guess.

with the third value, we can make a certain statement and say the location of Al-Sadr is unknown.

The only source of certainty would be irrefutable evidence.

there is irrefutable evidence that his whereabouts are unknown to us

But of course, you know that perfectly well. Your feigned belief in this mystical third value is a ploy for attention.

right, I'm making all this up as I go along.

And here I am giving it to you! Nice job, troll.

Keep guessing!


Bubblefish
 
Assume they are willing so to do... then what?

synthesis. the synthesis of the exchange then becomes a new meme, which in princaple will spread, and conflict with other meme's, which then recapitulates further dialouge, resolution, and synthesis.

But this illustrates one thing that's going to kill your project before it leaves the gate - if parties in conflict are unwilling to 'allow the third value to operate here', then OS012 is useless. You can't make people adopt the concept that they might be wrong, or that what they think they know, they really don't.

zaay, that's simply a misinformed opinion. your assuming, making an assumption, of how this is structured and your flat wrong.

I can assure you that is been considered, and it's not a problem that cannot be overcome rather simply and elegantly.

So it's a lot like claiming that if everyone became pacifist, there'd be no wars. Obvious, but useless.

it's absolutly nothing like that at all. it's more similar to say that if everyone has equal access to resource, then there is no competition for resource

Aside from that, you seemed to dance around the issue without ever actually discussing it...

I directly answer each question that is relative to this argument. I am not going to lay out the model for OS 012 discussion here, that would be foolish, however, this discussion is indeed a good functioning example of the princaples I am arguing.

Another point to remember, is that some beliefs are fundamental in nature; that is, they trump rationality and evidence.

this is true, this is the 2 value, and the 0 value in many cases

Theism is like that, and so is atheism in many ways.

agreed

No manner of philosophical sophistry will ever resolve the nature of fundamental belief.

the nature of fundamental belief is direct experience.

See, RV, dialectic and related fields are lovely in college, maybe at home; but where such fields are most needed, they lack the essential tools and elegance to do what they claim to do.

in your opinion

A philosophy that lets you learn to agree to disagree with another student of the philosophy, or with your friends, or your wife... that's lovely, but irrelevant. A philosophy that can make two mortal enemies work out a peace accord is truly relevant, but you clearly don't have that yet. Not even close.

you are not even close to knowing what you are talking about

You mentioned that each participant would be walked through a dialogue that introduces the third value. Explain that for me for the participant who believes the Qu-Ran is the literal truth, the absolute word of God, and that it states they must kill heretics.

I can't walk through an imaginary person through this process, that wouldn't prove anything and it's also impossible.

I will say however that i have had these discussions with many religious people, who actually have a easier time with accepting that God is an objective mystery over an objective truth.

I also had OS 012 discussions with a group of muslims, who actually were the calmest and most considering of all communities, ironically enough. One of them offered a contribution to OS 012, others said they found my 'antics' entertaining, and the moderator there, instead of threating to ban me for my antics, asked me to stick around, as they 'sorely need more rationality' around there and he rarely 'witnessed such dismantling of arguments using logic' as I had performed.

How's that for ironic, eh? True experience, i swear. I'm still perplexed by it! It's the only OS 012 discussion of it's kind.


I can already tell you what such an individual is going to respond to the most obvious argument: that there IS no 'third value'. Everything in the Qu'Ran is True, the existence of God is True, and the ordination to kill heretics is True. Any conflicting idea is False. Period.

well, that's not my experience! I get more miltant reactions about the third value from reductionists!

Now, if you, as I suspect, are going to claim it's a bad example because he's not a 'willing participant', I have to point out that this is PRECISELY the environment in which your philosophy is most required - if it actually worked - and is also where it is most likely to fail.

Let's wait and see, eh? You're not considering a few factors in your critique, one being the global or cultural dialectic that is already taking place around world events, the rhetoric of the media vs the rhetoric of the politicians.

For a philosophy of intellectual debate to be truly useful, all sides have to agree on the foundational rules of that debate, OR the philosophy has to be structured in such a way that the process supercedes prior disagreement.

this is not true. None of you agree with the 'rules' of OS 012, yet I have succesfully navigated it with 40 hostile users through dialogue seamlessly on over 100 pages of discussion!

It's much like hypnosis: it only works on those willing to believe - or self-delude - that it works. It doesn't work on those who don't believe that it works.

Depends upon how you mean hypnotise, and that's a poor example anyway. It's like saying martial arts only work on attackers who believe that they are a good method of self defense.

Beyond using it as a debate tactic, OS012 is a pretty poor model of reality, because it assumes the primacy of the subjective, an assumption that fails prior to the evolution of subjective experiencers.

it assumes the primacy of mystery, true, and false

It appears to deny the fundamental fact that all statements are either true or false, and that the ignorance or awareness of the subject cannot change those values, only obscure them.

it denies no objective or verifiable fact

This is why I state that what you have here is 3/4 of a dual two-value system - a True-False dichotomy and a Known-Unknown dichotomy.

that's an over complicated, sloppy and non working way to describe something ternary in nature.

As far as dealing with the subjective perception, systems which attempt ot limit truth values to a small number of cases are a dangerous trap to fall into, as most perceptive truths are far more multivalued than simple true-false (or even true-false-I don't know) can allow.

I agree, that is how we must not limited truth values to true or false, and keep them closed, but rather 'open' them into true, false, and unknown to avoid delusion.

BF
 
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Bubblefish, I'm coming into this thread very late, but after reading through the exchanges that you've had with everyone else here, I need to say that everything you are talking about is something that has been discussed many times before in philosophical and scientific circles, and eventually discarded.

I don't know if you've heard of Alfred Korzybski. He wrote a book called Science and Sanity, in which (among other things) he inveighed against "two-valued logic", which sounds a lot like what you're protesting here. The problem is that every time someone has tried to set up a system of multi-valued logic (i.e., true, false, other), it always winds up being another way of looking at two-valued logic, and that's why it eventually gets dumped: it doesn't tell us anything we don't already know.

What you are doing is essentially giving Korzybski's arguments a new coat of paint and some fancy new terminology, but it's the same argument, and it's no newer or more useful now than it was back in the Thirties and Forties when he came up with it in the first place. I'll quote Martin Gardner's discussion of the subject:

"No one has yet succeeded in creating a logic in which the two-valued orientation of true and false could be dispensed with [or expanded on], though of course the dichotomy can be given different names. There is no reason to be ashamed of this fact, and once it is understood, a great deal of general semantic tilting at two-valued logic is seen to be tilting at a harmless windmill."

One of the reasons it's useful to study the history of any endeavor before trying to make your own creative contributions to it is that you can avoid repeating other people's mistakes and going down previously abandoned dead ends. Nobody today seriously tries to prove the earth is flat, because it's been disproven in so many different ways and to such an extent that if you attempt to argue otherwise, you're not going to be taken seriously except by people who are already delusional (and are probably not worth having as intellectual allies).

The more I read of your posts, the more I get the impression you are simply determined to be right, to be remembered and to be admired at any cost. If the only way for you to feel as if you have accomplished something is to upend something that hasn't been upended in centuries -- and for a good reason -- I'd strongly recommend finding a less quixotic way to prove yourself.

As someone else once said: "In a fight between you and the world, bet on the world."
 
synthesis. the synthesis of the exchange then becomes a new meme, which in princaple will spread, and conflict with other meme's, which then recapitulates further dialouge, resolution, and synthesis.

in principle.

In other words, in reality, you really don't know what comes next.

zaay, that's simply a misinformed opinion. your assuming, making an assumption, of how this is structured and your flat wrong.



I can assure you that is been considered, and it's not a problem that cannot be overcome rather simply and elegantly.[/quote]

Demonstrate or explain, then, please.

it's absolutly nothing like that at all. it's more similar to say that if everyone has equal access to resource, then there is no competition for resource

Again, obvious - and useless. Again, not everyone is going to allow equal access to resources. Some people'e demand for resources will outstrip their access. Some people's basic human natures will prevent others from gaining equal access.

So, yes, it's exactly like that.

I directly answer each question that is relative to this argument. I am not going to lay out the model for OS 012 discussion here, that would be foolish, however, this discussion is indeed a good functioning example of the princaples I am arguing.

I agree it's a good functioning example - page after page, and no one is convinced yet.

in your opinion

An opinion based on the fact that no system of dialectic has resolved any major issue as of yet.

you are not even close to knowing what you are talking about

In your opinion.

I can't walk through an imaginary person through this process, that wouldn't prove anything and it's also impossible.

Then you have nothing.

I will say however that i have had these discussions with many religious people, who actually have a easier time with accepting that God is an objective mystery over an objective truth.

Sure they do - to your face. they're more than happy to accept any definition that doesn't cause God to equal nonexistent. Because in their hearts, they're actually still accepting God as an objective truth, in spite of what they may be telling you.

I also had OS 012 discussions with a group of muslims, who actually were the calmest and most considering of all communities, ironically enough. One of them offered a contribution to OS 012, others said they found my 'antics' entertaining, and the moderator there, instead of threating to ban me for my antics, asked me to stick around, as they 'sorely need more rationality' around there and he rarely 'witnessed such dismantling of arguments using logic' as I had performed.

Yeah, we heard that claim before from you.

But, just like Christians, not all Muslims are fundamentalist extremists. My example was of a fundie extreme Jihadist Muslim.

How well would OS012 work with them?

How's that for ironic, eh? True experience, i swear. I'm still perplexed by it! It's the only OS 012 discussion of it's kind.

So, as such, you've had ONE success, versus how many failures?

well, that's not my experience! I get more miltant reactions about the third value from reductionists!

Not surprised, since reductionists are more likely to realize that you're blowing smoke from your wahoo... :)

Religious believers, woo believers, etc. are always more likely to accept any worldview that doesn't openly deny their beliefs. That's why any philosophy that emphasizes the subjective experience over the objective is so popular among that crowd.

Let's wait and see, eh? You're not considering a few factors in your critique, one being the global or cultural dialectic that is already taking place around world events, the rhetoric of the media vs the rhetoric of the politicians.

Yeah, it's been taken into account. It's been going on for a VERY VERY long time, and conflict resolution still boils down to more deliberate and immediate actions.

this is not true. None of you agree with the 'rules' of OS 012, yet I have succesfully navigated it with 40 hostile users through dialogue seamlessly on over 100 pages of discussion!

Not really - since in your claims you say that OS012 should result in a win-win - and so far, you haven't won an inch with anyone here. Further, no one here feels they have 'won' a thing yet, until/unless they can either make you go away, or make you start thinking outside your self-imposed triangular prism.

Depends upon how you mean hypnotise, and that's a poor example anyway. It's like saying martial arts only work on attackers who believe that they are a good method of self defense.

Not at all. Hypnosis doesn't work on people who don't believe that it works. Hypnosis only works on those willing to accept hypnosis. You have to go along with it for it to work, which requires belief and the ability to self-delude.

Martial arts is a little different from that, though a LOT of martial arts are the same way.

it assumes the primacy of mystery, true, and false

Which assumes the primacy of the subjective.

it denies no objective or verifiable fact

Oh, you're just deluding yourself here. It denies a lot of objective facts.

Like the fact that there's no such thing as an objective unknown.

that's an over complicated, sloppy and non working way to describe something ternary in nature.

Too bad what you're describing isn't ternary in nature.

It's an accurate, precise, and fully functioning way of describing truth values and awareness values, which are two different value systems. The ternary value you attempt to introduce is a false shoehorning of part of a second value pair into a value pair where it doesn't belong.

I agree, that is how we must not limited truth values to true or false, and keep them closed, but rather 'open' them into true, false, and unknown to avoid delusion.

No, truth values are binary. The delusion you speak of comes from the values of known versus unknown. Your oversimplification works only to stultify dialogue, in practice.
 
huh? You added a third value when you said 'moot'!

Clarification. The third value is not mystical, rather, mystical what the point of view's idea about it is!

[unknown = unknown] is {logic}

[unknown = moot] is {mysticism}

Stop with the equivocation.

Moot - deprived of practical significance : made abstract or purely academic

That is to say: useless, without value, meaningless, not adding value to the discussion, not worthwhile, etc.
 
A few points.

You have never answered the question as to how it is going to turn conflicts into win-win scenarios, nor what happens if one side tries using BS012 and the other side doesn't. I *do* know what happens if someone purports to use this in a discussion about the subject, given from the evidence of this thread.

Your "master meme" seems to be about as sucessful as my (hardly original) BS 012 "slave meme". In fact it *did* convert me thinking that memes are a (slightly) useful metaphor into thinking that they aren't.

Jim
 
this is not true. None of you agree with the 'rules' of OS 012, yet I have succesfully navigated it with 40 hostile users through dialogue seamlessly on over 100 pages of discussion!

Congratulations! You have just won the inaugural Nobel Prize for bullsh*t.
 
Bubblefish said:
I have succesfully navigated it with 40 hostile users through dialogue seamlessly on over 100 pages of discussion!


I must say, Blubberhead, I don't detect a shred of a discussion or dialogue in any of your posts. And I guess, by your definition of "success", the captain of the Titanic successfully navigated that ship across the Atlantic.
 
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