1) That's a good catch. I might be better to not have presumed a standard by saying "redefining truth" rather than "defining truth." But to the point, I have no clue who or what defines universal or absolute truth, as all beings I am acquainted with are finite. I think we do the best we can in the direction of truth by reference to things and concepts that can demonstrated outside our individual minds, checked by other conscious beings. I'm hesitant to reduce truth to the product of subjective consensus, but it does seem difficult to demonstrate truth as much more than that.
I don't see how it's possible to define human "objectivity" as anything but subjective consensus. The same goes for things like truth and reality. Even the proofs in mathematics (considered by some as universal) and verifiability in science are based wholly on logical and empirical consistency, not on specific claims of reality.
This consistency is underscored in mathematics by "Hilbert's Second Problem" which asks for a proof that even the most basic arithmetic in math is consistent and non-contradictory. And the only way this can be done is based on set axioms or axiomatic systems "which contain an exact and COMPLETE description of the relations subsisting between the elementary ideas..." of the math, or science. Completeness being the essential criteria.
But, the second of Kurt Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems (which I already brought up in this thread but was waved off as "deep esoteric math theory") shows that you sacrifice completeness for consistency. In other words, you can never prove the consistency of an arithmetic within itself because that proof would be incomplete. You have to prove the axioms. The only way around this fundamental problem, some have argued, is by some meta-mathematics...that we're yet to know of, of course.
You see, this is basically the same problem of induction in science. And that's why falsifiability is required as a stronger validation of a theory. But even at that it's still based on consensus.
I personally think solipsism id bullshit and i'm not suggesting that consensus knowledge is worthless. My only intention in this whole thread was to expand the context in which discussions like this are had. That's all. At the end of the day, Science vs Religion is just a battle of the axioms. IMO.
2) I wasn't calling QM made up. That was a reference to the use of uncertainties produced by QM to cloak otherwise made-up shit. (i.e. Deepak, The Secret gang, What the BLEEP Do We Know?, etc). Because we did not evolve in the quantum world, its seems silly to use elements of the uncertainty now observed there as in some way fundamental to our BIG truths and BIG lives.
I agree. That documentary was just the Hollywood version of the implications of QM. Nothing more. I don't pay to much mind to QM sensationalists like Deepak and co. The mathematical formalisms of QM could care less of what philosophical interpretation people chose to make. If ones purpose is merely to provide some interpretation that sooths some philosophical predisposition, that's on them. How phenomena like the wave-particle duality and superposition of quantum states in the Double Slit Experiment is physically interpreted, nobody can say definitively. All we scientists can say is that formally (mathematically) QM is so far the broadest and empirically most successful theory in the history of all SCIENCE. That's it. But science isn't the only method of getting knowledge.
For me, WISDOM >>> KNOWLEDGE. But that's just me.
3) I generally use "relatively objective" in this arena so that my use of "objective" does not suggest I think the methods or practitioners of science are perfectly objective.
Cool. I wish more people could recognized and appreciate this too.
i can only keep it at a simple level because that's what it is...."simple"
