James,
DQ: It's very easy for anyone of average intelligence to deal with multiple definitions of a word. We do it all the time with words like "run", "read", "eat", etc, without any problem at all. It's only when the spectre of truth looms on the horizon that this suddenly goes out the window and everyone miraculously starts having "difficulties" with it.
So clearly, what confuses the confusion is not the multiple definitions themselves, but people wanting to evade mental clarity and truth, which stems from the desire to keep everything as fuzzy as possible
J: If it comes from dissatisfaction with the completeness of your truths, or your attitude to these truths, where is the harm. Do you expect us to cease philosophising about the ultimate just because you have a set of truths you believe to be ultimate.
No, but I do expect the challenges to be of a higher quality than simply regurgitating the tired, old postmodernist scripts.
It's clear that your emotional make-up has difficulty accepting the direction that Truth lies in. That is understandable. Truth can appear very nihilistic and bleak from certain perspectives. But instead of addressing this issue in yourself and trying to see how you can adapt to the reality of Truth, you are trying to undermine the very path to Truth itself by making use of these external shallow arguments. This is evasion, pure and simple.
J: There is a margin of error in everything.
DQ: One assumes, then, that this statement has a margin of error as well?
J: Here we go again, the little paradox game. Merely you bringing this up says that it has a margin of error.
This is not a paradox game. Rather, this is a "spot the contradictions in the postmodernist scripts" game. It's quite fun. You should try it some time.
James, if you are happy with giving arguments that are self-contradictory in nature, that's your business. But I will always speak against it.
It is impossible for a conscious being to know ultimate truths, because ultimate truths are of the nature of a holistic picture, which we as humans can only do abstractly because consciousness causes us to limit the holistic vista to individual concepts and in doing this, by necessity, it loses what one could call ultimate.
On the other hand, a conscious being can truths that apply in all instances to almost 100% accuracy and those are the truths you believe are ultimate.
You couldn't be any more wrong if you tried. Truths are always 100% accurate, or not at all. There is no such thing as an approximate truth.
For example, the truth that Nature is not nothing whatsoever is 100% true. There is not the slighest bit of doubt about its truthfulness; there is not the slightest bit of falseness embedded in it. It is purely true, through and through.
It is also 100% true that our empirical models and theories will never embrace the whole of Nature. I wholly agree with you in this. So the question is, why do you, having arrived at this 100% truth, suddenly disown it by declaring that there are no such things as 100% truths? It's quite comical, really.
DQ: If it does, can it still have any meaning?
J: Yes, everything we experience has meaning. The experience will be used or discarded. Seeing as you are talking in ultimates, to what degree it means something to us is not relevant.
You're not understanding my point. You have presented what you think is an error-free statement about the way things are - namely, "there is a margin of error in everything". You have deliberately presented it as a conclusion which is final and dismisses all other competing claims of ultimate truth.
However, if this conclusion of yours was itself to contain a margin of error, then it would automatically cease to be an error-free statement about the way things are. It would lose all power to pontificate on the way things are. It would become a meaningless statement about the nature of reality.
Conversely, if wasn't to contain any errors, then the idea that "there is a margin of error in everything" would immediately become false. Being false, it would lose all power to pontificate on the way things are. It would again become a meaningless statement about the nature of reality.
In the end, you are being a hypocrite, James. You are effectively saying to the world, "All truth claims are uncertain and prone to error - except mine."
As you well know, physically all things are flawed, they must be in order to exist. All things coming from flawed material must thus also be flawed, including human ideas of truth and meaning.
This point is flawed, so I won't bother responding to it.
The rest of your post contains the same basic errors, so I think I'll stop at this point.
Except this, at the end:
The truth you find in the statement 1+1 is because you have the habit of defining it as mathematical logic and adding to the statement "One 1 must first be equivalent to another 1" for this statement to be always truth. But in terms of our total experience of using the calculation of 1+1 then what I pointed out was correct. 1+1 does not always result in the same truth and when we limit its definition to mathematical logic alone, the concept becomes meaningless.
Ideally, when 1+1=2 is applied to the physical world, it should be done intelligently. Then there will be no problems. The "problem" that you raise is a false one, created from a lack of intellence and misapplication of the equation.
Part of this intelligence involves realizing that 1+1=2 is indeed a mathematical truth. This means that you cannot chop and change the terms of reference half-way through. In its pure form, the "1" and "2" do not represent anything at all in the empirical world. There is nothing there that can be chopped and changed.
This purity and lack of empirical input means that the equation will always be true, in all situations. No amount of misapplying it to the physical world, and chopping and changing the terms of reference which have been artificially tacked onto it, will ever change this.
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