That does not matter, I was replying/refuting to a specific post/claim and the poster who claimed to know the truth only logically proved that they did not know what truth is.
The Other Waldo Pepper
Stated that 1: they can deduce the truth using non transcendental methods.
And stated this example:
Person A claimed to know the truth
Person B claimed to know the truth
Person C claimed to know the truth
Person D claimed to know the truth
2: He (or she?) determined that A,B,C,D are contradictory.
So conclusion, if his determination 2 is actually correct (which is in question), then at most only one can be the truth
— logically this proves The Other Waldo Pepper can not determine truth, which is contrary to is claim. All it proves is my point is that without transcending this would it is impossible to know truth.
No, it doesn’t. If, in fact, “determination 2 is actually correct” – and if, as you say, I’ve used logic to correctly determine that only one can be truth – then what I’ve determined is, well, truth. (And if I then take a look at the coin, and find out whether all of them were incorrect, then I will have once again determined truth.)
That doesn’t follow at all. If we can determine, without transcending this world, that at most only one of A and B and C and D were telling the truth; and if we can further determine, without transcending the world, that none of them were telling the truth; then we have, of course, mundanely come to know the truth, as is routinely the case right here in the real world.
But it is also not evident that transcending this world will make it possible to know the truth. Even if there is some sort of “hereafter” or spiritual realm, the assumption, that useful or worthwhile information is more readily available in that plane of existence, is unfounded. Leaps of faith within leaps of faith.
In your example, with the extension that they are all preaching some apparently self contradictory truth, the answer is they are all communicating truth, not by their words, but by their hearts (their souls). There is truth to be heard from each one, and truth does not contradict each other. It is not the though/connotative process that we take in truth, but with the afective/discernment process which then ‘categorizes’ and tags what they say and filters it through the spirit presented. The truth is then revealed.
No all you have demonstrated is you are incapable of finding the truth, even when shown the answer you have no way of learning or duplicating it, so you have not learned truth, you have learned perhaps to determine what is not the truth.
No, it’s not. If one tells me I’ll see a penny when next I open my hand; and another says no, that’s not true; when next you open your hand, you’ll see a nickel; and a third says no, they’re both wrong; when next you open your hand, you’ll see a dime; and a fourth says all three are incorrect; when next you open your hand, you’ll see a quarter – then (a) they’re not, in fact, “all communicating truth.”
And (b) if I open my hand and see a silver dollar there, I know none of them were communicating truth. And, for that matter, if I open my hand and see a penny there, I’ll know that one of them was telling the truth.
But the people in question do “contradict each other.” If I open my hand and see a penny, the guys who contradicted that first one had no “truth to be heard”. (And if I open my hand and see a silver dollar, then none of them were telling the truth.)
No, it’s through the thought process that I’d realize at least three of the four aren’t telling the truth, and then it’s by actually taking a look that I’d reveal the truth: penny or silver dollar? (Or some other coin? Or no coin at all?)
Well, when you eliminate what is not the truth, quote Sherlock Holmes and Spock.
But I don’t follow you, here. In my example, if four guys make those contradictory claims about what I’ll see when next I open my hand – yeah, okay, sure, I’ve learned to determine that at least three of them aren’t telling the truth even before opening my hand. But then I’d open my hand, and see the truth! I’m perfectly capable of finding it; I have a way of learning it; I’ll see what one of them predicted, or I’ll see what none of them predicted – but the point is, I’ll see it.
Beforehand, I know I’ll see what at least three of 'em weren’t telling the truth about. Afterhand, I’ll know the truth.
Only for very loose definitions of “truth”, in which two answers happen to coincide. The person giving the answer of “a penny” might have been taking a shot in the dark, with no actual knowledge of what, if anything, the hand contained.
To agree with you while splitting a hair, I seem to recall from my grad-school days, that, yeah, “knowledge” is defined as “justified true belief” – that what you believe may happen to be true, but you have to get there the right way to actually know something. So the guy who guesses “penny” is telling the truth, but doesn’t know it.
Still, I think it answers kanicbird well enough: before looking, I know at least three of 'em aren’t telling the truth; and, upon looking, I know which of them weren’t telling the truth; I discover the first by logic, and the second by learning the truth: I know it, I got there the right way, I’m telling the truth, and I can tell you who didn’t.
Maybe so. But I phrased it pretty carefully: they each made a claim about what I’d see when next I opened my hand – not about what’s in there right now, before I look.
So they can’t all be true until I look; each is a claim about what I’ll see when I look.
Understood - and agreed - just trying to explain kanicbird’s “everyrthing is true even when its not - you just have to look at it from the right way with your eye’s crossed =- and if you can’t see it - its your fault for not trying hard enough”
But the claim that everyone is telling the truth until the hand is opened can be proven false by the simple fact that, for that to be true, the hand must actually contain all coins guessed while closed. If we expand the range of coins to include those of the world, and allow 100 different guesses, then if all were telling the truth the hand would explode in a bloody mess.
All of our knowledge of the world is functional. We know (to a limited degree) what the world DOES. We do not know what it IS. And, in fact, knowing what the world IS is impossible. That’s not how knowledge works.
A lot of silly theological wrangling is merely the product of faulty epistemological assumptions.
Sure. “Is” is also problematic, but it’s so integral to English that it’s hard to do without it. We normally think of “is” as an assertion of properties: “Sunlight is warm.” However, this naive interpretation of “is” is itself epistemologically questionable – it makes a claim about the structure of reality that implies absolute knowledge. It’s better to interpret “is” pragmatically: “If we TREAT sunlight as being warm then we can make accurate predictions about our unfolding experience.”