A Scale from "lie" to "truth" LO16525

Winfried Dressler (winfried.dressler@voith.de)
Tue, 13 Jan 1998 18:04:17 +0100

Replying to LO16438 --

Steve Eskow answered At de Lange:

>So: you will be patient and kind with me and others, who for reasons of
>their own can not or will not grasp your "truth": but you will continue to
>believe that the rest of us have "mental models" while you have none,
>since your vision is not a mental model but the "truth."

Hi Steve and At,

Isn't there more truth than just mental models?

If other researchers repeat At's experiments and, with their results,
agree on the conclusions At draw, it would be validated and gets more
evidence. Still it can be rejected, modified or put in a wider context
later with more experience. Of course to discribe the results, one still
relies on the language of all the former results that built the current
language, so it is difficult to see something new, for it sounds so
similar to the old. But I think the loop from experiment to language back
to experiment is not a closed loop but a kind of spiral. And by the time a
new, more appropriate language can emerge and also did in the past.

I wished At's injunctions could be formulated as simple as Galilei's, when
he explained what to do to see a Jupiter moon. But still Galilei was
accused to have a (heretic) mental model - a false model which he,
Galilei, claimed to be more true than just a mental model. The argument
against Galilei was fully supported by the world view ("truth") of that
time.

I am not supporting At's theory, I just don't know yet. But to reject it
requires more than arguing or simply state:

> The seven essentialities are neither essential nor the empirical truth:
> they are a mental model.

Can you feel the inherent contradiction in the sentence: "The sentence "It
is all mental models" is true"? If it is all mental models, this would be
a mental model too and not a true or false statement. But the citation
above comes along as stating a truth rather than a mental model of Steve.

This is a general problem of cultural relativism. It states that all
cultures are relative, but this statement is defended as if it was true
and not an expression of a special culture and therewith relative in the
eyes of their protectors.

I think, that relativism is a 180 degree reaction to the dogmatic
position, Galilei had to face. But I am afraid, it is not much better.

To answer my own question in the beginning: Yes, there is truth and the
truth can be found. A "No" will lead to unresolvable inconsistencies. Also
a dogmatic "Truth for ever and ever" may lead to inconsistencies with new
experience - but if you leave the "for ever and ever" (and At never said
anything like this), this is resolvable by a new, more accurate theory as
a formulation of the next generation-truth.

May be one has to distinguish between the truth and the meaning of this
truth. Meaning can be seen as cultural, relative and assigning meaning as
a mental function. But I am even not sure about this.

Best Regards,
Winfried

-- 

Winfried.Dressler@voith.de

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