Necessary Truths Exist

[Rational AKD]

Yes, if you put those qualifiers at the end of the statements, you can make absolute decisions about their truth.

But without those qualifiers, the truth of that statement is not absolute but only relative to the time in which they were spoken.

they are relative to the time in which they are spoken because it references a time after the present. in other words, it still references a specific range of time, just one that's relative to the present. so of course it will seem different when looked at in the future because it is without context. but it seems rather unfair for you to suggest the meaning of the phrase is changed if time has passed and its context is removed because you've just taken its meaning from it along with the context.

[genkaus]

\no it's not. I can talk about a single thing the world has independent of other things it has. what I am saying is something that is necessary is not contingent upon anything the world has apart from itself. so what exactly is your point? a necessarily existing truth is contingent upon its own existence? well duh. tautology 101.

Read your own argument - it defeats your point. You can talk about something the world has as independent from the other things the world has, but not independent from the world itself. The fact that you've had to keep adding the qualifier "apart from itself" proves it. So, the point is, a necessary truth existing is contingent upon the existence of reality.

you realize all you did is take a proposition and reformulated it into a fact which is equivalent to the proposition you stated. you haven't proved anything.

No, I start with a fact (not a proposition) and formulated a proposition from it. Thus proving that a proposition can be contingent upon non-propositions.

concrete events can be formed into propositions, however. the fact that there was a point in time that Obama became president can be shared in the manner "Obama became the president of the US in 2008" which would be a proposition. concrete facts and events can't be false themselves (being that if it's concrete it's true by definition) but can be communicated as propositions and in fact can only be communicated as propositions. and those propositions are equivalent in meaning of content to the concrete events themselves (the same as how a word is equivalent to its respective definition).

Good. So you understand the argument then. We have propositions that are contingent upon non-propositions and that is where their truth-value comes form. Necessarily true propositions are not required.

if an event A truly happened, then there is no fact that can change the fact that A happened. if A has actual existence, then A has actual existence regardless of what we think of A. you are equivocating fact and perceived fact. there is a difference between perception and reality.

I didn't get into perception to begin with. What we are talking about is the truth of the proposition contingent on facts - not the nature of facts themselves. And given the mutable nature of reality, facts change.

[Rational AKD]

Read your own argument - it defeats your point. You can talk about something the world has as independent from the other things the world has, but not independent from the world itself. The fact that you've had to keep adding the qualifier "apart from itself" proves it. So, the point is, a necessary truth existing is contingent upon the existence of reality.

you entirely miss that it would only require a world because of semantics, not necessity. the fact that it exists means it exists in a world, but that doesn't express a contingent relationship. or if it does, it's more like a relationship of a world and at least one thing existing. i'll try to simplify it with this statement-- "a world exists if at least one thing exists." and the fact that I qualified it with "apart from itself" isn't adding anything new since to be necessary is to exist without being contingent on anything external. to say it is contingent upon itself is just playing semantics. in modal logic, necessary is defined as "true in all possible worlds" and that's the definition I subscribed to in the argument.

No, I start with a fact (not a proposition) and formulated a proposition from it. Thus proving that a proposition can be contingent upon non-propositions.

but you realize the facts aren't necessarily true in the since they couldn't possibly have happened any other way. for example, Obama is president but it is possible that he would not have become president. thus his presidency is contingent upon the facts leading up to the event to where he became president.

Good. So you understand the argument then. We have propositions that are contingent upon non-propositions and that is where their truth-value comes form. Necessarily true propositions are not required.

they are still required since the events can only be expressed as propositions and when they are we realize that they aren't necessary themselves. sequences of events can conceivably different, which leads to the problem "why is anything true at all?" unless you're going to take up a position that all events of reality are necessary in the sense they couldn't have possibly been different (which would be an extreme determinist position) then you can't deny the facts aren't necessarily true.

I didn't get into perception to begin with. What we are talking about is the truth of the proposition contingent on facts - not the nature of facts themselves. And given the mutable nature of reality, facts change.

give an example of a fact that has changed.

[MindForgedManacle]

I lost interest in this conversation when truth and fact began to get confused (I believe that's part of what Genkaus is trying to explain to you, that you're confusing truth (correspondence between assertion/belief and reality) and fact (the state of affairs itself)), but as for your question of when a fact changed: The fact of who the current president of the USA is, changes every few years, for example.

[Whateverist]

I'd like to nominate this for the most bizarre, convoluted parody of an all night gab fest between two freshmen philosophy majors on acid.


Is that what we were going for?


Oh, alright. I admit it. I still haven't read very much. It's just when I try the vertigo and projectile vomiting become too much to endure.

[Rational AKD]

I lost interest in this conversation when truth and fact began to get confused (I believe that's part of what Genkaus is trying to explain to you, that you're confusing truth (correspondence between assertion/belief and reality) and fact (the state of affairs itself)), but as for your question of when a fact changed: The fact of who the current president of the USA is, changes every few years, for example.

funny... you claim i'm equivocating terms truth and fact, but it seems entirely compatible with the dictionary definition of the term.

2 a (1) : the state of being the case : fact (2) : the body of real things, events, and facts

and I just had this same conversation with LostLocke. in order to say "the current president of the USA is..." you must be referencing a specific place in time. in this case, you would be referencing the present. the facts don't change, only the state of time that is being referenced does. if I were to say "Obama is the president" I would be correct no matter how much time has passed. you could only say i'm incorrect by removing the phrase and its context, which would essentially remove all the meaning I put into the phrase.

[MindForgedManacle]

No, you're confusing truth with fact again, and I'll demonstrate with some simple sentences; even you can't fuck up here:

"The circle is true"

"The circle is real"

"The statement 'the circle is true' is real"

"The statement 'the circle is real' is true"


The reason why the 1st and 3rd sentences don't really make sense, while the 2nd and 4th do, is because the 1st and 3rd treat truth as a property of reality itself, which is stupidly nonsensical. There is no theory of truth that does that. Truth is only a property propositions. The closest thing to what you're trying to do is the correspondence theory of truth, which sees truth as a correspondence between a fact (given state of affairs) and an assertion or belief.

So, your dictionary definition is correct; you are not. Facts pertain to reality itself, truth (in the ordinary, corresponding sense) deals with propositions. Reality cannot be true, because reality cannot contain falsity, only mind can imbue such in language. To say otherwise is to say that reality is NOT reality, and to not understand the definitions you yourself are putting forward.

In regards to the president example, "The current president of the United States..." is worded such to not be specific, so the fact that statement refers to does, in fact, change.

[Rational AKD]

No, you're confusing truth with fact again, and I'll demonstrate with some simple sentences; even you can't fuck up here:

really? lets see... truth is a body of facts and facts are true pieces of information. both words are interchangeable and use the other in their respective definitions. perhaps you're simply confused.

"The circle is true"

"The circle is real"

"The statement 'the circle is true' is real"

"The statement 'the circle is real' is true"


The reason why the 1st and 3rd sentences don't really make sense, while the 2nd and 4th do, is because the 1st and 3rd treat truth as a property of reality itself, which is stupidly nonsensical. There is no theory of truth that does that. Truth is only a property propositions. The closest thing to what you're trying to do is the correspondence theory of truth, which sees truth as a correspondence between a fact (given state of affairs) and an assertion or belief.

yes, I know truth refers to propositions and real refers to existence. but what you seem to forget are propositions are most often representatives of reality. "this rock exists" is a proposition that represents a fact similar to how a word represents its definition. we can clearly tell the difference between a word and a definition, but we equate the word to its definition so deeply, it is literally impossible to bring up the word without its definition. same applies to truth. we equate truth to reality so deeply it is impossible to bring up one without the other. truth represents a reality to where if it is not real, it is not true either. so if I say "there is life on other planets" this statement is not true unless there is life on other planets, and even if we don't have any evidence of it for a hundred years it doesn't affect the truth value of the statement.

So, your dictionary definition is correct; you are not. Facts pertain to reality itself, truth (in the ordinary, corresponding sense) deals with propositions.

funny, that wasn't in the definitions. though I do accept your explanation, but propositions can still deal with reality.

Reality cannot be true, because reality cannot contain falsity,

reality cannot be true because in order to say something is true you need more than a subject. you need an about, what, why, where, etc. but tell me, does reality have an about or do we simply make that up? if we make it up, then nothing we say or observe about reality can be real. you might as well claim you live in your head since everything about reality only exists in your mind.

In regards to the president example, "The current president of the United States..." is worded such to not be specific, so the fact that statement refers to does, in fact, change.

what does the word current mean? what does it refer to because every dictionary I look at says it refers to the present. is that true or false? if it is true, then the reference changes over time not the truth of the statement. if you read a book that had the statement "Ronald Reagan is the current president of the US" and saw it was dated 1985, would you claim the author wrong? of course not because you know what he was referencing. the statement is only wrong if you remove its reference and context, which also removes its meaning forcing you to impose your own reference and context.

[genkaus]

you entirely miss that it would only require a world because of semantics, not necessity. the fact that it exists means it exists in a world, but that doesn't express a contingent relationship. or if it does, it's more like a relationship of a world and at least one thing existing. i'll try to simplify it with this statement-- "a world exists if at least one thing exists." and the fact that I qualified it with "apart from itself" isn't adding anything new since to be necessary is to exist without being contingent on anything external. to say it is contingent upon itself is just playing semantics. in modal logic, necessary is defined as "true in all possible worlds" and that's the definition I subscribed to in the argument.

If we're talking about semantics, then you should realize that your very definition of necessary truth indicates a contingency - "true in all possible worlds" - as opposed to impossible worlds, meaning, where modal logic is applicable. Further, you are equivocation between a necessary truth and existential necessity. The definition "true in all possible worlds" applies to propositions, not things themselves.

but you realize the facts aren't necessarily true in the since they couldn't possibly have happened any other way. for example, Obama is president but it is possible that he would not have become president. thus his presidency is contingent upon the facts leading up to the event to where he became president.

Ofcourse, facts aren't necessarily true - did you miss the part where I'm using them to argue against the existence of necessary truths?

they are still required since the events can only be expressed as propositions and when they are we realize that they aren't necessary themselves. sequences of events can conceivably different, which leads to the problem "why is anything true at all?" unless you're going to take up a position that all events of reality are necessary in the sense they couldn't have possibly been different (which would be an extreme determinist position) then you can't deny the facts aren't necessarily true.

The sequence of events being conceivably different doesn't mean that we need any necessary truths. The problem of "why is anything true at all?" is easily answered by truth being a relation of a proposition to reality - it is in the nature of a proposition to be true or false and without there being a mind to conceive of those propositions, nothing had to be true or false.

give an example of a fact that has changed.

Asked and answered.

[MindForgedManacle]

really? lets see... truth is a body of facts and facts are true pieces of information. both words are interchangeable and use the other in their respective definitions. perhaps you're simply confused.

Truth is not a body of facts, not even on truth as correspondence. Just what theory of truth are you mangling here?

yes, I know truth refers to propositions and real refers to existence. but what you seem to forget are propositions are most often representatives of reality. "this rock exists" is a proposition that represents a fact similar to how a word represents its definition. we can clearly tell the difference between a word and a definition, but we equate the word to its definition so deeply, it is literally impossible to bring up the word without its definition. same applies to truth. we equate truth to reality so deeply it is impossible to bring up one without the other. truth represents a reality to where if it is not real, it is not true either. so if I say "there is life on other planets" this statement is not true unless there is life on other planets, and even if we don't have any evidence of it for a hundred years it doesn't affect the truth value of the statement.

You revealed your own flaw several times. "Representatives of reality", in other words, correspondence. You are seriously confused about language if you don't see how this screws up what you're saying. Words refer to certain concepts, words are not the things themselves.

Truth is a correspondence between a proposition and a fact, not the fact itself. All truth would disappear if there were no minds, but not all facts would. Truth is dependent on fact, because truth is dependent on the existence of minds. Truth is the attempt to accurately encapsulate facts, but it is not the facts themselves. Heck, in the part I bolded you agreed with me, thereby giving up inadvertently.

funny, that wasn't in the definitions. though I do accept your explanation, but propositions can still deal with reality.

Yes it was:

2 a (1) : the state of being the case : fact (2) : the body of real things, events, and facts

Propositions deal in accurately reflecting reality, they are not the reality they refer to (self-evidently).

reality cannot be true because in order to say something is true you need more than a subject. you need an about, what, why, where, etc. but tell me, does reality have an about or do we simply make that up? if we make it up, then nothing we say or observe about reality can be real. you might as well claim you live in your head since everything about reality only exists in your mind.

And the underlined bit basically accepts exactly what I've been saying but that you've repeatedly denied. Truth is to propositions corresponding to reality, fact is that to which is corresponded.

Clearly experience of reality is real (we already agreed that is incorrigible did we not?). Whether or not there is something 'behind' those experiences I take to be unanswerable, a la Kant. Reality itself has no about, it just is. Only minds make abouts.

what does the word current mean? what does it refer to because every dictionary I look at says it refers to the present. is that true or false? if it is true, then the reference changes over time not the truth of the statement. if you read a book that had the statement "Ronald Reagan is the current president of the US" and saw it was dated 1985, would you claim the author wrong? of course not because you know what he was referencing. the statement is only wrong if you remove its reference and context, which also removes its meaning forcing you to impose your own reference and context.

You seemed to have missed the point. Say for example you don't know when the sentence was written and have no way of finding out. If it says that Regan is the president, it is false. Why? Because the fact that statement refers to is no longer the case. In other words, facts change and thereby the truth of propositions do too.

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Wikipedia has some good stuff as well:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fact#Fact_in_philosophy

Facts may be understood as that which makes a true sentence true. Facts may also be understood as those things to which a true sentence refers. The statement "Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system" is about the fact Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system.

The underlined bits in particular are exactly what I've been saying.