Interbane wrote:It's too late and I'm too tired to reply at the moment, but I just wanted to scowl at you across these forums for considering it possible I could think the spaghetti monster is a distant cousin to gravity. Hypotheses can be disproven, remember, so your reasoning here holds no value except to make me hungry. In the meantime, give me a synthetic statement that is absolutely true, and therefore absolutely unfalsifiable. I think this challenge will no doubt raise questions of the definitions of the words, so delve into that also, if you wish. I make the challenge with the phrase "absolutely true", where you make claims of "absolute knowledge" or "absolute certainty." It would be a tripping point better tackled earlier. I'll respond to points in your other post when I'm coherent.
Hi Interbane. Talking about the Spaghetti Monster is just a way to illustrate the absurdity of your contention that it is theoretically possible that we are an alien dream. If we reduce our certainty about the existence of the universe from 100% to 99.99~9% even this slight chink is more than enough for the noodly pastafarian appendage to insinuate its wicked way into our thought process and create a false doubt. If we say we have faith the universe exists we are claiming 100% certainty.
Re your question on a synthetic statement, I should explain for others that 'synthetic statement' is a philosophical term meaning a statement that combines two ideas which are not linked by definition. It is easy to find numerous synthetic statements which are absolutely true, such as the example I gave that both the USA and Australia border the Pacific Ocean. It is a simple matter of looking to see whether the statement is true.
Synthetic statements can be contrasted with 'analytical statements' which combine ideas which are linked by definition, such as that a square has four sides.
"All knowledge is true" is an analytical statement because it is true by definition. If there is a shade of doubt about a claim then by definition it cannot be classed as knowledge, although it may be a strongly held belief. Burton's critique is about beliefs that try to pass themselves off as knowledge, eg that the universe began in 4004BC.
What I suspect you are asking me to provide is a synthetic statement whose truth does not depend on sense perception, ie one that is true by definition, like an analytical statement. Unfortunately, this is much more difficult, and introduces the problem of faith.
An example of a synthetic statement which cannot be tested/falsified is Euclid's axiom that parallel lines never meet. This is a useful assumption for engineering, but it is not absolutely true unless we treat it as an analytic statement, true by definition. If we say a line is something real, such as the path of a light beam, then we observe that parallel lines do in fact meet in gravitational fields. This example illustrates the shift from the paradigm of Newton to that of Einstein.
Looking for necessary synthetic statements, the best place to start is with the most simple and obvious claims we can find. I think a good candidate is the claim 'the universe exists'. As our previous discussion indicates, the attribute of existence is not contained within the fact that something is observed, because it could theoretically be a deception. Hence this statement is synthetic and not analytic. I personally believe it is absolutely true, but as you argued earlier, my belief rests on faith in science.
Moving on from this basic level of claims about existence, I also think there are claims in ethics which are synthetic and necessary. The best examples I can see are that 'human flourishing is good' and that 'knowledge is good'. These are circular, in that they cannot be proven, but such ideas are necessary to build any practical ethical vision. Skepticism about such ideas is a main factor in modern nihilism.