Is there objective Truth?

[Edwardo Piet]

What is truth?

Beauty is truth, truth beauty - that is all,
Ye know on Earth, and all ye need to know.

Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn

The truth is that which corresponds to reality.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correspond...y_of_truth

(Feel free to disagree but the correspondence theory of truth makes by far the most sense IMO... I also think it's the theory most lay people in practice presuppose without even realizing or knowing about it. Most people see truth this way, I'd wager).

This then begs the question "What is that which corresponds to reality?... well it's anything that is existent. So we start by defining existence itself. Ontology is more fundamental than epistemology by many people skip it and this is why you have the inanity of people equivocating between different models of 'existence' or 'reality' when they're trying to know and understand existence and reality. Agree on a definition of existence and reality and it would make all the debating about epistemology, or how we can know that reality, a whole lot easier.

[Whateverist]

I just realized I said "preachy" twice.

I'll not edit that out though. I'll leave it as it is. It's rather appropriate.

Adds emphasis or indicates they are like twice as preachy as one might otherwise imagine.

[Whateverist]

Bollocks.  The use of objectivity is neither justified or established by a transcendant cause, i.e. God, anymore than it is by naturalistic explanation.  This seems to depend on an extreme form of the PSR, implying that everything must have an explanation.  It's trivial to define God as a lawgiver.  Such definitions come cheap.  It does not follow from an inability of a naturalist to justify their use of the objective that objectivity requires a transcendant cause.  That's an argument from ignorance.  Let's call a spade a spade.  You're arguing that the existence of objective facts requires God.  That's the most ludicrous assertion I've heard lately and is not supported by an argument from ignorance.

So digging through all the unnececary filler everything which doesn't conform to my own ideas, your response is we don't need a explanation for everything is that correct?

Happy to fix that for you, gratis.

[Edwardo Piet]

Exactly [emoji2]

[emoji106]

[Whateverist]

You seem to have a thing for justification, which is why I referenced the PSR.  No, brute fact is saying that it doesn't depend upon something else, it just is by virtue of being what it is.  For what its worth, objectivity is best justified through intersubjective validation.  I fail to see how this situation is improved by inserting God.  Regardless, you've yet to justify that objectivity requires a God, given that your main argument is a failure.  And postulating that God is the source of objectivity requires more work than you've put in so far.  You seem interested in gotcha arguments.  However, your main gotcha is a bust.  If you have another argument, or evidence that objectivity requires God, please present it.

I already know you reject "binary thinking", you volunteered to follow along, so don't fall back to intersubjective validation. If you refuse to entertain the idea than so be it.

So you claim that it is self existing/ self justified? That's not exactly a justification. We could use that same logic and apply it to realy anything if we wanted to. We don't because there are more proper explanations for things.

I would answer that the notion that we, this simian biped, should be able to justify everything or else reject the existence of an independent (objective) world, is a far more ambitious claim than the claim that an independent world really exists.  We have to make do with what we are and what we have.  Optimized explanations are the best we have.  They will do.

[Whateverist]

P.S. two of the most pseudo-profound non-questions ever to be asked:

1. Why is there something rather than nothing?

2. Why does existence exist?

They're both akin the asking "Why does A=A instead of A=not A?" or "Why are bachelors unmarried instead of married?"

Nonsensically asked questions.

What the person is trying to ask is questions like this "Although existence always exists.... why did it expand into what we know to be the universe? Why was there a big bang? Why was there a great inflation? Why didn't existence remain either completely static or effectively static to such an extent that it was lifeless and stagnant to such a degree it would be indistinguishable from if it were completely static?"

If someone asks "Why does existence exist?" or "Why is there something rather than nothing?":

My answer is "Start by asking a question that makes logical sense. Those questions are technically nonsense questions because they contain implicit contradictory presuppositions."

Well put but you left out my favorite:

3. Why do apples taste so apple-y?  (Who but God could have matched up the thing with its attributes so flawlessly?)

[Edwardo Piet]

Why aren't squares curved will be the next question.

"Why is there something rather than nothing?" should be "Why did the big bang begin rather than not begin?" Asking why there is anything at all rather than nothing at all makes no sense. There can't be nothing at all. The only thing that can ever be is something. Existence has to exist and be existent otherwise it's not existence.

Question what form existence takes but questioning the existence of existence itself makes as little sense as asking why bachelors can't be married.

[Whateverist]

P.S. two of the most pseudo-profound non-questions ever to be asked:

1. Why is there something rather than nothing?

2. Why does existence exist?

They're both akin the asking "Why does A=A instead of A=not A?" or "Why are bachelors unmarried instead of married?"

Nonsensically asked questions.

Alasdir Ham raises a common objection but fails to understand the significance of it. By hand-waving away the question “Why is there something rather than nothing?”, he or she, is by default asserting that the existence of the physical universe is a brute fact. He, or she, may not realize that this in turn entails a further assertion, that the universe must be as it is, since for it to be otherwise would require a prior cause, the one responsible for its existence.

Neo-Scholastic makes the usual sort of point one would expect from someone who expects more from themselves than our organisms can reasonably support. When he, she, they or it says "the universe must be as it is, since for it to be otherwise would require a prior cause, the one responsible for its existence" ... he, she, they or it is assuming that the world must always be answerable to our simian understanding, a common assumption amongst theists which is never itself defended.

; ;

[Whateverist]

Why aren't squares curved will be the next question.

Silly. God curved squares eons ago. Where do you think circles came from?

"Why is there something rather than nothing?" should be "Why did the big bang begin rather than not begin?" Asking why there is anything at all rather than nothing at all makes no sense. There can't be nothing at all. The only thing that can ever be is something. Existence has to exist and be existent otherwise it's not existence.

Are you suggesting that of the two, the set of things which include something and the set of things which include nothing at all, only the former could possibly include questioners?

[Whateverist]

What is truth?

Beauty is truth, truth beauty - that is all,
Ye know on Earth, and all ye need to know.

Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn

Tip of the hat.


Indeed raw approval and intersubjective agreement is at the heart of each for organisms such as ourselves.