I draw a really great circle. Is that a perfect circle? If we’re just eyeballing it, our answer could be “Yeah, it’s true; that circle is perfect.” But if we need to do anything serious with it, like engineer something, we might say, ‘No, it’s not true that it’s a perfect circle.”

Once we realise that ‘truth’ means ‘true enough for our purposes’, the difficulty between truth and facts disappears.

if you want a fresh and original look at , well , Life the Universe and Everything , I suggest the reading of his five books in the Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy series, and if you want to further test yourself , finish off with his two “Dirk Gently” novels, Douglas Adams was an amazinginly intelligent man and a radical aetheist (his own words) I just love his work and its cured me of any religious leanings at all , I prefer these days to read Toaist poetry , or re-read my favourite Douglas Adams novel, including the one produced after his death “The Salmon Of Doubt” which gives you a breathtaking insight into the life and mind of Douglas Adams

This may be a bit drastically formulated, but the key for me is *as fact*. I almost sense that my statement is being interpreted to mean that scientists should be ostracized for speculating, but this is most definitely not what I mean. In science the word fact is generally reserved for things that have been verified in every which way, and it would indeed be a slap in the face to the scientific community to assert as a fact something that can’t be proven.

I think a good scientist is often also a philosopher and an expert at speculating. Nevertheless, a good scientist never overplays his/her hand. The term “fact” must be reserved for things that can be backed up with the strongest of evidence. First and foremost, a scientist is obliged to tell it like it is. TaoAndZen, I think this aspect of science is essential to maintain the trust you refer to above.

Oh yes, the meaning of blue. I would agree that there seems to be a commonality of perception and association that arose without a scientific basis (biological? perhaps). However, to learn more about it and its source, science is the only tool.

I did take slight issue with “A scientist who puts forth something unverifiable as fact will be cast out for being unscientific.” But didn’t think it important as (I think) I understood what Jonathan was driving at.

There are many examples of unverifiables in Science if you assume Empiricism. However, unverfiables are often verifiable rationaly through the Straw Man process that Jonathan describes, “I welcome the input of anyone who can prove my views wrong” which is a key element of Scientific process. Quantim Mechanics is full of such unverifiables right now (eg Bohm’s universal hidden variable in wavefunction collapse).

The argument over the color blue reminds me of what Neils Bohr said about Physics not being about what nature IS but about DESCRIBING nature. That distinction is immensely insightful.

I use the word “believe” more in the sense of assume, since I don’t believe in 100% proof. TaoAndZen mentioned that the scientist says “this is what we know so far”. This corresponds with my notion of truth. Yet I may still make assertions as the most direct form of challenge to others to refute my statements if they can. I do this because I welcome the input of anyone who can prove my views wrong. Every time I am proven wrong, I come out of it with stronger arguments. What I believe is not in any way sacred, and I never have qualms about being challenged to defend it.

I am afraid I may not have been very clear in my comment on the color blue. My example was intended to show that as long as the nature of the thing itself is mutually verifiable, it doesn’t matter what common term we use to indicate it. You seem to suggest that I don’t care about the nature of the thing itself, but nothing could be further from the truth. I just don’t care what it’s called, as long as we both know we are referring to the thing itself. For example, it doesn’t matter to me if we use -1 to mean 1 as long as we both know we are referring to 1. But perhaps I’ve missed your point here owing to my lack of knowledge of math.

Here’s where I have difficulties:

“And I hope you could concede that there is no scientific method for establishing that colour of blue is in fact blue, and yet there *is* blue.”

Here I must say I am unable to follow you. For me, blue is simply a wavelength of light. In other languages it’s called something else, but it always refers to that wavelength, and that wavelength of light is the thing itself.

I am also not sure I understand you correctly when you suggest that falsehood could or does represent the lack of existence of something else. Here I see a clear distinction: a falsehood is verifiably not true, for example: “sand is nutritious”. I would argue this includes also the concepts of things that conflict with concepts that have been verified, without supplying a surpassing verification; an omnipotent god, for example.

Yes, it is quite likely that there is a truth beyond scientifically verified, or even scientifically verifiable facts. After all, we did not always know what we know today about the universe, and it would be foolish to assume we have verified everything that exists. There are almost certainly things that we will never be able to verify, but this is the realm of pure speculation.

I would defend the casting out of scientists who put forth unverifiable things as fact; this is quite simply a scientific lapse, and merits loss of credibility. Actually, I am more suspicious of everything else than I am of science.

I do apologize for hinting that you could be religious. I thought you might be because your arguments in places seem to resemble those of agnostics/theists (apparent emphasis on the importance of the unverifiable).

And to your statement on truth being the consequence of a belief system, “whatever that may be”, I’ll say yes as long as I get to define belief system.

Let me touch on colour (color) of blue again – your assertion that it does not matter how we call it, for as long as we can be sure that we’re talking about the same thing is wrong. In my view, things *are* if you have a word for them – mind you, language, and therefore words, are not there just to describe “material” things. There are numerous examples in mathematics to prove this point, i.e. i^2 = -1, imaginary number, defined as a complex number whose square is negative number or 0. Thus, the above statement about irrelevance of how we call things for as long as we’re talking about the same thing is quite unscientific – it is like saying: it does matter if we call it -1 or 1, for as long as we agree that it is i^2.
Well, it does matter. And I hope you could concede that there is no scientific method for establishing that colour of blue is in fact blue, and yet there *is* blue. On the other hand, if we conveniently forget that falsehood exist, but rather represents non-existence, in other words, it exists not to represent itself, but rather lack of existance of something else; than we can assert that everything that *is* is true, because it exists. This way it we should not have a lot of trouble concluding that there may be a truth beyond scientifically verifiable facts, as my colour of blue example suggests.

Finally, when you make a comment like:

“A scientist who puts forth something unverifiable as fact will be cast out for being unscientific.”

you’re highlighting a very important socio-political aspect of science, which makes me very suspicious of it. Mind you, I never said that science is a religion – I am not a religious man, and hence confused as to how did you manage to read that in my writing. But, be that as it may, let me repeat – all I said is that truth is a consequence of a belief system, what ever that may be…

Truth is not absolute. Not even F=ma is written in stone. The Scientist says, “this is what we know so far”. And is open to addition and/or correction. No conviction, no matter how heartfelt, can make an assertion true.

It seems I’ve started another of the reasons I come here – the intelligent and informative discussion. Thanks everyone!

Our barmaid is different from Jesus and Mo in that she doesn’t draw on anything unverifiable for her truth, i.e. she relies on scientific method. She criticizes Jesus & Mo for believing things that are not verifiable, but this is not an unfounded belief on her part. She insists that something be verified before she believes it (or considers it to be true). Is this for you a belief system?

Regarding your comment on the color blue, it doesn’t matter whether what I call blue looks green to you. Important is that we can both check the wavelength in order to be sure that we are talking about the same thing.

But I think your point is (please correct me if I’m wrong) that we just accept what we are told is true by scientists, and that this is the same as accepting, for example, the existence of god (s) because someone tells us they exist, or anything else we may be told.

Still, it’s not the same thing. Science is the system (the only system) with which we catalog our observations and check them for consistency with our theories. All of science is interconnected, and, generally speaking, everything that comes from the scientific community has been tested for validity. A scientist who puts forth something unverifiable as fact will be cast out for being unscientific.

So we can generally trust what the scientific community tells us because we know it’s a system with strict quality control; every idea has been tested and confirmed.

Information from other sources is not so reliable, and we should be skeptical until it has been confirmed scientifically. Personally, I need a scientifically valid reason before I will believe something to be true.

And regarding sticking rigorously to the terminology: you, as someone who has taken so many courses, should also recognize that these words are used with more than one definition. Especially in an open forum such as this one, you really do have to define your terms if you want to be sure others know what you are talking about. As I acknowledged, I could have been more careful in defining my terms to avoid misunderstandings.

P.S. I’ll just politely ignore your not-really-indirect suggestion that I need courses to hold my own in an argument, or that it is an American (and not merely a human) tendency to assume that others will know what we mean when we don’t define our terms. And you certainly do have an interesting definition of polite, though you may have to explain to me why I would have understood your comments as eggheaded or snobbish.

As for facts, do you have a scientific proof that colour of blue is actually blue? Using science, you might be able to assert that blue is different than red, or that there is a relationship between light and colour. However, there is as much of scientific evidence for calling it blue as it would be for calling it yellow. I’ve been told that this particular combination of light and matter is called blue, and I believed them, and based on that, I’m taking it as a fact. Science has very little to do with it.

I just don’t understand how your statement could not be completely solipsistic.

Anyway, I meant truth to mean scientifically verifiable fact, and while I agree that there is no such thing as 100% proof, there is such a thing as a preponderance of evidence. With this in mind, claiming that truth in the sense I use it above cannot exist without believing (in the sense of holding something true without evidence or with insufficient evidence) is just wrong (in the sense of being incorrect). Or do you mean something else with belief system?

I hope you are not trying to argue that science is a religion.

But I basically agree with everything you say, and it’s true (or a fact, if you prefer) that some of the least christian people I know are christians. Self deception seems to be a prerequisite for religion.