timelets

Mon, 23 Mar 2026 22:28:06 GMT

"We are prone to think that we have here are degrees of certainty, with 2+2=4 enjoying the highest certainty. We don't realize that what we have here are not degrees of certainty, but kinds of certainty. And the kinds of certainty are as various as the kinds of proposition in question. *"

This crucial point is often lost in probability calculations. Nassim Taleb gets it though.

* “Different kinds of certainty have different kinds of grounds. And what it is that is certain is, in each such case, a categorially different kind of proposition. The grounds for mathematical certainty are deductive proofs, and mathematical propositions are rules, not descriptions. The certainty of a perceptual statement such as ‘The curtains are red’ lies in its being evident to the senses – look and see! The certainty of an empirical prediction is determined by its conclusive empirical evidence. And the certainty of a highly theoretical proposition of science, such as e = mc2, is determined by the holistic confirmation of the theory of which it is a part.
...
What applies to certainty applies also to truth.
..
Empirical propositions, mathematical propositions, logical propositions and ethical propositions are categorially different. And that’s why what it is for propositions of categorially different kinds to be true is also so different, even though the term ‘true’ is unequivocal.”

Peter Hacker;. “A Beginner's Guide to the Later Philosophy of Wittgenstein.”

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Wed, 01 Nov 2023 04:53:30 GMT

Truth is not "relative" and certainly not "subjective" in the popular sense of the word. It is always, or almost always, completely determined within a thought style.
...
Truth is not a convention, but rather (1) in historical perspective, an event in the history of thought, (2) in its contemporary context, stylized thought constraint.

--- Ludwik Fleck, Genesis and development of a scientific fact.

The relationship to thought constraint sounds interesting. Also, we can probably model it as a topos of dynamical systems.

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Mon, 30 Oct 2023 05:45:14 GMT

If they tell in mosques in Washington DC that claims about hamas atrocities are lies, I can imagine that what they say about hamas in mosques around the world.

https://twitter.com/MEMRIReports/status/1718584462525550645

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Post-truth ca 19 century CE.

Tue, 04 Oct 2022 04:44:07 GMT

Turned against reason, this understanding behaves in the manner of ordinary common sense, giving credence to the latter’s view that truth rests on sensuous reality, that thoughts are only thoughts, that is, that only sense perception gives filling and reality to them; that reason, in so far as it abides in and for itself, generates only mental figments.

In this self-renunciation
of reason,
the concept of truth is lost,
is restricted
to the knowledge of mere
subjective truth,
of mere appearances,
of only something to which the nature of the fact
does not correspond;
knowledge has lapsed into opinion.

GWH Hegel, The Science of Logic.

Hegel was extremely successful in his project to rediscover truth and put on a solid foundation of new logic. I wonder whether something like that would be even possible in today's world. What would it take to overcome the post-truth attitude in our society?

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Sun, 23 Feb 2020 07:19:55 GMT

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