False premise. There is no “absolute truth”. I don’t want to come across as condescending but please have a look at any somewhat recent science textbook if you doubt this claim.
I would suggest reframing to: how can we establish common ground that a) all/most people can agree on and b) facilities productive inquiry.
And that arose a question: If there’s no “absolute truth”, then how “relative” the truth most people agree on (such as 1+1=2 mathematically) would be?
Sorry if this question seems too naive as I’m at an early stage of exploring philosophy, and any other views other than objectivity under the positivism view seems not convincing to me.
False premise. You seem to be assuming that many people using symbols reliably in similar ways points to anything other than this convention being reliably useful in achieving some broadly desired end. It doesn’t.
Your mathematics example is also misleading because it directs attention to “mathematical truths” which are generally only considered to be valid statements within the framework of mathematics and, thus, inherently relative to a particular framework and not “absolute”.
As soon as you move to “real life” cases you are faced with the question of how to frame a situation in the first place (also see the “frame problem” in AI research). There is no “absolute” answer to this. Maybe a little bit tongue in check but ask yourself: Why is this website called “Less Wrong” and not “absolute truth”?
If you are looking to educate yourself have a look at the following resources. I found them quite insightful.
On philosophy:
Dewey, J. (1938). Logic: The Theory of Inquiry. Henry Holt and Company, INC.
Ulrich, W. (2006). Critical Pragmatism: A New Approach to Professional and Business Ethics. In Interdisciplinary Yearbook for Business Ethics. V. 1, v. 1,. Peter Lang Pub Inc.
On the frame problem:
Vervaeke, J., Lillicrap, T. P., & Richards, B. A. (2012). Relevance Realization and the Emerging Framework in Cognitive Science. Journal of Logic and Computation, 22(1), 79–99. https://doi.org/10.1093/logcom/exp067
Andersen, B. P., Miller, M., & Vervaeke, J. (2022). Predictive processing and relevance realization: Exploring convergent solutions to the frame problem. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-022-09850-6
False premise. There is no “absolute truth”. I don’t want to come across as condescending but please have a look at any somewhat recent science textbook if you doubt this claim.
I would suggest reframing to: how can we establish common ground that a) all/most people can agree on and b) facilities productive inquiry.
And that arose a question: If there’s no “absolute truth”, then how “relative” the truth most people agree on (such as 1+1=2 mathematically) would be?
Sorry if this question seems too naive as I’m at an early stage of exploring philosophy, and any other views other than objectivity under the positivism view seems not convincing to me.
False premise. You seem to be assuming that many people using symbols reliably in similar ways points to anything other than this convention being reliably useful in achieving some broadly desired end. It doesn’t.
Your mathematics example is also misleading because it directs attention to “mathematical truths” which are generally only considered to be valid statements within the framework of mathematics and, thus, inherently relative to a particular framework and not “absolute”.
As soon as you move to “real life” cases you are faced with the question of how to frame a situation in the first place (also see the “frame problem” in AI research). There is no “absolute” answer to this. Maybe a little bit tongue in check but ask yourself: Why is this website called “Less Wrong” and not “absolute truth”?
If you are looking to educate yourself have a look at the following resources. I found them quite insightful.
On philosophy:
Dewey, J. (1938). Logic: The Theory of Inquiry. Henry Holt and Company, INC.
Ulrich, W. (2006). Critical Pragmatism: A New Approach to Professional and Business Ethics. In Interdisciplinary Yearbook for Business Ethics. V. 1, v. 1,. Peter Lang Pub Inc.
On the frame problem:
Vervaeke, J., Lillicrap, T. P., & Richards, B. A. (2012). Relevance Realization and the Emerging Framework in Cognitive Science. Journal of Logic and Computation, 22(1), 79–99. https://doi.org/10.1093/logcom/exp067
Andersen, B. P., Miller, M., & Vervaeke, J. (2022). Predictive processing and relevance realization: Exploring convergent solutions to the frame problem. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-022-09850-6
This seems useful. Thanks!