What happens when you smash two critical minds together? Ozymandias and Silver Guard in debate

[Silver Guard]

Ozymandias:
Verification has no place in science

Silver Guard:
Sorry?
I don’t remember mentioning it

Ozymandias:
"More importantly, find me something which proves God."!

Silver Guard:
Yes?

Ozymandias:
You are looking for verification. Has no place in science

Silver Guard:
Why not?

Ozymandias:
Because something that backs up a theory is irrelevant; what’s relevant is whether it’s able to stand up to attacks

Silver Guard:
Not at all
You are wrong until proven right

Ozymandias:
Nope, you are wrong until it’s shown that you aren’t wrong by showing that attempts to show the theory wrong don’t work. I recommend Popper's Conjectures and Refutations on the issue

Silver Guard:
And if I neither have the money of energy to attain such texts?
If you are right until proven wrong then God exists
As do unicorns and fairies
My invisible friend and the monster beneath my bed

Ozymandias:
Then you aren’t such a philosopher (literal meaning) as I credited you as.
I take it you didn’t read what I said: you are wrong until you are not-wrong. Reread what I stated please

Silver Guard:
Sods law holds power

Ozymandias:
You are wrong until attempts to SHOW you are wrong are shown not to work

Silver Guard:
You are wrong till proven right

Ozymandias:
But that’s not the same as verification. Evidence for something is irrelevant; Freud was right, otherwise. Falsifications, i.e. honest attempts to prove the theory wrong, are what matter

Silver Guard:
To become right you must be able to overcome all proof that you are wrong
Thus proving yourself right

Ozymandias:
But the point is, you aren’t proving yourself right, not directly. You are showing counterproofs don’t work.

Silver Guard:
Not at all, that is proving you right

Ozymandias:
It’s proving you not-wrong.

Silver Guard:
Which is proving you right
They mean the same thing

Ozymandias:
I disagree. Proving oneself right implies absolutism. Proving yourself not wrong remains open to the idea that you might be superseded

Silver Guard:

If there is no reasonable opposition left in logic, then you have been proven right
If a horse wins a race you can shout, "Ha, I knew that horse was the best! I'm right"
Because the horse won, but also because all the others lost

Ozymandias:
And if it lost the next race, against the same horses? You were proven notwrong.

Silver Guard:
No, you were proven not right

Ozymandias:
I mean in the first race you were proven not wrong

Silver Guard:
In the first race you were proven right, in the second you were proven wrong, obviously the ability of the horse differs from race to race, but in the first, it was the best, therefore you were right

Ozymandias:
But it was not the best horse; it was at that time the best horse a very different issue

Silver Guard:
Thus, at the time, you were proved right
That you were to be proven wrong is not part of the situation

Ozymandias:
Ah, but it is, because one must always take into account possible future developments; you were proven not wrong at that time

Silver Guard:
And thus proven right
Not wrong and right are one and the same

Ozymandias:
I tend to disagree. There is a distinction

Silver Guard:
Which is?
Go on, prove me notright

Ozymandias:
The distinction is that right is an absolute term; right means superseding all else. Not wrong means potentially able to be superseded by something more accurate. Newtonian mechanics were, by your reckoning, right until Einstein.

Silver Guard:
Yes
Hence they were considered right
But were proven wrong
But are still right, just only up to a certain limit
Right is also the opposite of left
Look in any thesaurus, the opposites of right are: left, and wrong

Ozymandias:
And is there nothing between left and right? Therefore you decide there must be nothing between right and wrong, maybe?

Silver Guard:
Not at all
However at that point they are neither right nor left
Not wrong is only one boundary
It’s like placing a wall on one side of a playground and expecting boys not to go past the boundary on the other side
*only one

Ozymandias:
Name me something right, and I’ll show you close-mindedness in that instant

Silver Guard:
Something right:
I think therefore I am
It cannot be proven not right
Therefore is not wrong

Ozymandias:
Nope. For a start it’s wrong (prove "I" rather than just thought). It’s not right, but it’s also not wrong.

Silver Guard:
I is the ego, and it depends what you believe is the definition of "I" whether it exists or not
You can go the modernist route and say that the ego is temporary and so vanishes in an instant, being a set of pre-determined settings of "what you are"
Or the Socratic route where the ego is a flowing state that belongs to each self-contained consciousness
I prefer the second myself
As long as I have a consciousness then, I therefore exist

Ozymandias:
Or you can say that all you can actually say is that there is thought, and that the "I" is improvable to exist

Silver Guard:
Not at all
As per the second definition above, that I think necessitates that "I" am

Ozymandias:
Presuming thinking requires a thinker, mate.
Thought does not necessarily require a thinker by any mean
Its one of the major objections to the cogito

Silver Guard:
Go on, id like to hear this, how could there be a conscious without the conscious ego

Ozymandias:
Why does there have to be a conscious? all we can find when we introspect is thought. No overriding overarching ego.

Silver Guard:
Not at all
As I said, it depends on your definition of the ego
As a separate conscious entity
Conscious is also defined as "awareness of oneself"
*Consciousness"

Ozymandias:
Ah, but what awareness of oneself do we have, since we don’t even have a self? I would argue we couldn’t prove an ego!

Silver Guard:
We do have a self; else we would not be conscious

Ozymandias:
Are we conscious? Hume's bundle theory of the self enters here

Silver Guard:
Go on

Ozymandias:
We aren’t actually anything but a collection of thoughts and feelings. Actually some philosophers have argued we aren’t even a bundle, there is no we.

Silver Guard:
How so, without being a bundle we are a random collection of un-related thoughts
Which is a fallacy, we must have a point from which to think to be able to think of any matter
The matter of which we think is a collection of previous thoughts and experiences

Ozymandias:
Why so?

Silver Guard:
Thus an "I" is necessary for consciousness

Ozymandias:
You think of thoughts as inherently linked to a thinker; your argument is predicated on this. But it’s an unproven assumption

Silver Guard:
Well the thoughts do not hang about incoherently

Ozymandias:
Why not? Presumption on presumption

Silver Guard:
Our lives are based on presumptions, without them we are void
Thus "I think therefore I am" is the only statement of which I am certain

Ozymandias:
But its based on doubtable presumptions therefore it is not certain Descartes was bad at applying radical doubt, he really was

Silver Guard:
Not at all
I view every part of that statement as fact
It is un-unprovable

Ozymandias:
Prove it then.

Silver Guard:
I think
Let us begin with that

Ozymandias:
Prove "I" exists, please. Prove thought requires thinker.

Silver Guard:
There is no alternative explanation of how thoughts are distributed, collected, processed, re-distributed and recalled successfully
Thus it is not-notright

Ozymandias:
The lack of alternative is not proof of this hypothesis, sg. That’s essentially a flaw all by itself. Equally, thought-thought interaction would explain it

Silver Guard:
Go on
Why not?
prove the lack of alternative is not proof of this hypothesis
Never ending proof of what are essentially definitions of language has no place in a philosophical debate, which belongs in linguistics

Ozymandias:
Semantics is the soul of philosophy. At this point you are saying basically that you reject my demonstration of shaking your certainty because its linguistics, but language is the basis of philosophy

Silver Guard:
How so?

Ozymandias:
If we don’t agree on what a word means, how can we have meaningful discourse involving it?

Silver Guard:
By using a dictionary

Ozymandias:
Poor argument, very poor. For a start its argument from authority, and second a dictionary ignores philosophical debate on terms. Its has a short entry on knowledge, whereas philosophical debate on the definition thereof is immense

Silver Guard:
However, we are debating using the English language, not our own decided language by debate, thus we abide by the laws of the language, even as we abide by the laws of debate. If you want to change the definition of a word, take it up with the English, not a Celt!

Ozymandias:
Laws of language don’t extend to philosophical definition otherwise epistemology would be dead in a large part, and it aint by a long way

Silver Guard:
?

Ozymandias:
Debate over what constitutes knowledge for instance, debate about what defines knowledge as knowledge

Silver Guard:
We are not debating epistemology (note from speaker: I did not at the time know the meaning of Epistemology, assuming it was the study of words and/or language) ; we are debating the similarity or contrast between right and not wrong

Ozymandias:
But we descended to a very different debate by way of object lesson


(Further speech is limited to farewells and other issues)

[bdh]

But that’s not the same as verification. Evidence for something is irrelevant; Freud was right, otherwise. Falsifications, i.e. honest attempts to prove the theory wrong, are what matter

Theres a word for non-falsifiable statements. Its called ********.

Verification has no place in science

Thats only because verification doesn't exist in science. Theories are merely models. They are gauged on their usefulness (not truthfulness) depending on their ability to predict the universe. Thats why Newtonians mechanics (despite being disproven) is still used in certain applications. Right and wrong is irrelevant. Thats why they've been replaced by the words precision and accuracy.

Of course, we still use right and wrong because its simpler and some things are just so outrageous, we feel fairly comfortable calling them wrong, like the flat earth theory. In reality though, as a shape, its merely several million percentage points inaccurate in regards do geometry.

[Tom Paine]

Result: Ozymandias is right, but he has lost the debate.

He left the debate, in the end, not me; I was also debating whether absolutes of things like justice existed at the same time, in my defence.

Theres a word for non-falsifiable statements. Its called ********.

Meaningless, actually. Popper's Conjectures and Refutations are the recommendation I leave you all with.

Thats only because verification doesn't exist in science. Theories are merely models. They are gauged on their usefulness (not truthfulness) depending on their ability to predict the universe. Thats why Newtonians mechanics (despite being disproven) is still used in certain applications. Right and wrong is irrelevant. Thats why they've been replaced by the words precision and accuracy.

Of course, we still use right and wrong because its simpler and some things are just so outrageous, we feel fairly comfortable calling them wrong, like the flat earth theory. In reality though, as a shape, its merely several million percentage points inaccurate in regards do geometry.

Actually, the principle matter of science is accuracy, correctness; things are useful because they are close to the truth, even if not there. How do we determine they are close to the truth? Find out whether they are by trying to show they aren't.

[Zenith Darksea]

Goodness, that debate took a long time to get off the ground. From what I could see, the first half just involved endless restatements of what each person believed. But otherwise, very interesting.

[Ummon]

Result: Ozymandias is right, but he has lost the debate.

[Odovacar]

Allow me to express my opinion on this, although I was not invented in this dispute.

Ozymandias:
You are wrong until attempts to SHOW you are wrong are shown not to work

Then you are wrong forever. You may not know when will a new attempt to prove you wrong show up....you can only refute past refutations.
You may claim: up to this minute I seem to be right as I refuted every attempt. Nothing more.
But even then, you refute atempts to undermine your point by using the same method you used creating your theory.
Undermining attempts to refute you is the same as proving you are right.
This Popper theory comes from Eukleid and he used in special geometrical cases.

What would be the difference between showing 2*2=4?
or 2*2 cannot =5 cannot be =6 or anything else so is 4? The chain of arguments would never run out.
There must be a direct way of argumenting that you are right.

Silver Guard:
You are wrong till proven right

Neither wrong, neither right, we simply dont know the truth value of your statement before examining every accessible proof and arguments. Sometimes even then.
Example:

1 Caesar's weight was 60 kilogramm.
How do we know whether is it truth or false? We might never know.
We cannot say it is false, then we cant prove that. Why should we assume it is false? What if accidentally I say something which is truth even though I cannot back up it? Like Churchill had the following name in his nomenclature: Spencer
Truth has nothing to do with my knowledge about it.

2, example: Ufos exist.
Wrong? Not proven, right, but doesnt mean wrong. Wrong is what is proven to be false. Right? How do I know it is right? Of course, neither.
It may hav an objective logical truth value (right or false) but that is not known to me.

Let us remember Aristotle's logical dilemma about the 'sea battle'
If only right or wrong exist in a logic then either you can know what will happen in the future or you have meaningless statements.

[Ummon]

Right is obviously merely a transient state, given a falsificational approach.

[Julius Isidrus]

Playing with semantics rather than really philosophing(sp?). Nevertheless interesting.

[Tom Paine]

Semantics, as I said myself somewhere in there, are the basis of philosophy itself; one cannot meaningfully communicate without accepting the meaning of words. Wittgenstein, Ayer, Popper, many others besides were concerned with semantics.

[Zeffen]

Nothing quite like a little mental masterbation to make oneself feel better for their lot in like.
Oh, to know the feeling of Idolizing oneself above all others.
To believe that I was the most intelligent and infallible individual in existence.
Some day I could hope to argue for the sake of arguement and know in my heart that in truth it means nothing.

Really this arguement was pretty pointless. Very similart to two children:
1st child "yes you are"
2nd child "No, I'm not"
1st child "Yes, you are!"
2nd child "NO, I'm Not!"
1st child "YES, You ARE!!"
2nd child "NO, I'M NOT!!!"
A good example of the previous argument.

[Tom Paine]

Which patently you didn't read. Hardly a simple shouting match, given the resoning behind... well, pretty much everything in there. I ask you to actually read it please.

[bdh]

Actually, the principle matter of science is accuracy, correctness; things are useful because they are close to the truth, even if not there.

And thats essentially what I said....

How do we determine they are close to the truth? Find out whether they are by trying to show they aren't.

Thats somewhat true, but ultimately misleading. If we followed that train of thought, we would have to go through an infinite number of possibilities before we developed our solution set. In reality, theories are first positively shown to fit with reality(at least to an acceptable degree, thats how they become theories) and then worked at being negated. Its not pure negation, negation is only part of the process.

Which patently you didn't read. Hardly a simple shouting match, given the resoning behind... well, pretty much everything in there. I ask you to actually read it please.

In a public, open forum like this, its unfair to ask people to research things for you. If you make an assertion, its one's own responsibility to support it or concede it, not someone else's. Don't be surprised if you encounter resistance.

ex: A: The sky is actually red!
B: Why, that doesn't make any sense?
A: Just trust me, you haven't read this book about it. Come back when you have.
B: But the sky is clearly blue
A: Look, you can't argue with me because you don't know my reasons which I told you to find out in the reading materials I assigned to you. Until then, just accept that I am right.

[Tom Paine]

bdh, I'm asking him to read the conversation he is himself commenting on, that's all...

And theories are shown true only as a result of failure to show them false; its not a matter of verification, its a matter of failure of falsification.

[bdh]

bdh, I'm asking him to read the conversation he is himself commenting on, that's all...

My mistake, I must have misread. I'm terribly sorry.

[empty]

The point of this thread was to make a discussion out of a discussion?

Anyway, I didn't read all that HUGE debate, but it seemed like full of semantics, like the tuga-boy Julius Isidrus reminded some people around here about their existence.

Cool thread, I must say... unfortunately I ain't got time nor patience to read all the things I wanted to.

[Tom Paine]

And as I said to him, without semantics, we are nowhere The root of all philosophy lies in semantics and language.

[empty]

And rationality, if we weren't what we are, what would we be? Equal to the other beings, nothing in rational philosofic terms...

Semantics are great though. As you said Ozymandias,without semantics, we are nowhere.

[Tom Paine]

If we weren't what we are... first questions being, what are we, and how do you know that that is what we are?