1) That the world is not flat first got traction because someone sailed round it. We KNOW it is not flat because people have taken pictures of it from space. This is experimental proof not reason
How do we know, based on sailing around the world, that it isn’t flat? It’s because, using our minds, we are able to see that the ability to sail around the world implies that the world is round, and furthermore, using our rational sense, we can see that the fact that the world is round logically contradicts the proposition that the world is flat. And, because of the law of non-contradiction, we can see that the proposition is therefore false.
To get from an experiment to facts about the world, or to prove a statement like “the world is flat” false, requires a rational mind that can intuit and interpret facts from the experiment, and that has the ability to understand logical contradictions and accordingly reject as false propositions that contradict those facts.
Experiments don’t prove or disprove anything by themselves. They are nothing without reason. So to the extent you try to claim that reason is flawed as a guide to truth, you’re actually denigrating science too.
except in the most pedantic manner of saying the brain interprets photos and the brain is responsible for “reason” therefore reason is what says the world is flat.
That’s not pedantic at all, at least not to any careful, analytical thinker who is interested in ascertaining the truth about things. And why the scare quotes around “reason”? It’s actually an essential insight that reason operates as the final arbiter in scientific practice. It’s a corrective to those like JP who, without looking deeply enough into the matter, try to claim that rational intuition is essentially flawed or useless.
2) Firstly, as we being pedantic the axiom of the excluded middle – what you have called the “law of non-contradiction” – is an axiom not a law.
It’s both an axiom and a law. Unless you want to tell me that you consider it optional, in which case, hey, go make yourself crazy trying to conceive a square circle.
Mathematical “truth” says absolutely nothing about the real world, whereas scientific “truth” is ONLY about the real world.
No, mathematical truth says nothing about the physical world. If it said nothing about the real world, there would be no basis whatsoever for judging one mathematical claim as true and another false. And yet there is. Guess what? If you get all the questions wrong on a math test, your professor is going to give you a lot of red marks, and it won’t just be because of a difference of opinion.
4) You can measure a “falsity” claim by testing it against experiment.
Again, no you can’t. You evaluate claims as true or false with your mind. You don’t measure them. Or have you found a way to do so? Did you invent a propositionometer? If so, care to send a pic?
So we can say with 100% certainty that classical mechanics is wrong.
Yep, but only because we’re able to use our reason to see that the facts we learned by experiment contradict the claims of classical mechanics.
As for not being able to “measure” claims, it is this sort of idiotic comment which led to me claiming you cannot be a scientist.
And it’s this sort of naivety that led me to say that you seem to have some kind of deficiency that keeps you from being able to clearly process non-material concepts. You’re consistently failing to make the basic distinction between physical experiments and the propositional claims gleaned from those experiments. It’s kind of funny that you’re trying to use your ignorance of basic logical distinctions as evidence of my ignorance of science.
Classical mechanics made very very precise claims about all of the above situations which most certainly CAN be measured.
I know full well that we can use experiments to prove claims false, but that’s not measuring them. You’re simply missing the point by giving examples of experimental disconfirmation. We measure the physical entities involved in the experiments with physical instruments, and we evaluate the claims with our rational minds.
The final arbiter of scientific “truth” is experiment.
No, the final (and only) arbiter of scientific truth is the way reality actually is. Experiment is one way that we figure out what the truth is, not how the truth is created.
5) As for the idea that if you can say something is false then you can say there must be “truth” then only in the pedantic “it is true that x is false”.
And it’s more than just that. Saying that something is false implies that there is truth, because the very definition of falsehood is falling short of the truth. Saying that a claim is false is meaningless apart from the implication that there is some truth from which it deviates.
Btw, I’m noticing a trend here. Whenever you’re forced to admit that I am right, you try to dismiss it with an “Oh, but that’s just pedantic”.
I would say – mostly because I am prejudiced – that being mathematician implies a certain rigour of the mind. Certainly it would imply a familiarity with logic and a mathematician would tend not to throw about concepts they don’t really understand – unlike say a philosopher….
Ah, I see. The very definition of a mathematician is someone with a certain vaguely-defined “rigour of mind” as determined by you (and here I always thought it had something to do with math). A less charitable person might be inclined to say you were a vainglorious imbecile, but me, I would never say that.
A mathematician would have an appreciation for subtleties and implicit assumptions that in my experience philosophers simply don’t have.
And this comes from a person who thinks it “pedantic” when I insist on acknowledging subtleties and implicit assumptions.
the difference between mathematical “truth” and scientific “truth”
There is no difference. “Truth” refers to those propositions that accurately describe reality, in science, math, or anything else. There are truths about different subjects, and different methods of ascertaining true statements, but there’s only one kind of truth: the true kind.
