1. 4 Introduction: Thoughts to Ponder

Some thoughts, no doubt very unoriginal,  occurred to me in the course of preparing to write what follows. I reproduce them here for your own contemplation.

A) The concepts of truth and knowledge are interdependent. If we cannot have knowledge without truth and vice versa, is one of those concepts redundant?

B) Despite claims to the contrary, the concepts of falsification and verification should be given the same emphasis, and we should be equally sceptical of both. Nevertheless, we often need to place more emphasis on well established ideas in order to lead our lives.

C) There is no external truth that exists in the world outside of our heads. 

D) Believing that you have arrived at a particular truth is equivalent to pragmatically placing a tag of acceptance on an assertion. 

E) Propositions can only be asserted within a context. Propositions sometimes appear definitive or truthful when we lack the imagination to see further into a wider context.

F) We often make pragmatic assumptions of certainty even in the face of conceptual incompleteness. This has profound implications for the way we should interpret scientific theories.

G) Personal and communal certainty of belief should not  be mistaken for  absolute truth.

H) Certainty may be a matter of degree.

I) There are many conditions that we encounter where it is desirable to acknowledge our uncertainty of belief.

J) The certainties of logic and mathematics arise by definition and construction and are driven by instinct and creative thinking.

K) Logical truth is merely a value attributed to the structural relationship said to exist between 2 or more assertions or entities. Although logic is indispensable for the creation of our ‘Worldview’, by itself deductive reasoning says nothing about the state of the world or our place within it.

L) When we have regard to our position within the history of human culture, personal enlightenment often seems more likely to be an increase in our awareness of conceptual possibilities.

M) Progress in science is brought about by activities that produce novel observations and the cumulative formulation of coherent descriptions and explanations. Intellectual progress is merely the elaboration of a coherent body of ideas. Whether or not apparently progressive ideas will last is another matter.

N) Scientific explanations can be viewed as very useful approximations with predictive power rather than truths. The present ’laws’ of science are some of our very best approximations or generalisable idealisations at this particular point in our cultural history. These ‘laws’ are no more certain than many explanations we have of everyday events in our lives.

O) One of the most famous quotations in the English language concerning truth reads: ‘And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free’. Freedom should not be so undervalued.  “Freedom is the exercise of intelligence“.

Version 2

Steve Campbell
Glasgow, Scotland
2016-22
< previous | Index | next>