What about Ben Franklin? (was Re: [PLUG-TALK] O.J. and guns)

[glen e. p. ropella]

=><=><= "rs" == Russell Senior <seniorr at aracnet.com> writes:

rs> something.  If you are saying, instead, that truth is just you and me
rs> agreeing on something, then that makes more sense, as long as no third
rs> party is required to agree.

Aha!  So, you're not a follower of Hobbes!  That's cool.  I agree that
we don't need a 3rd party w.r.t. guns or truth.

However, you can't just treat the pairwise case.  You have to treat
triplets and up, too.  And when it gets to be a large enough number
(say, 6 billion), then any one person who disagrees with a statement
that all the other people agree with, then the psychologists tend to
name that condition and begin locking you away and release the
psychiatrists on you to pump you full of chemicals that make you 
more receptive to the truth.

At that point, it's less a matter of a third party (at least as 
an intelligent, intentional entity) and more about how things 
just settle out around you, regardless of how much you may rail
against it.

rs> biases, etc.  Most people (including the underpriviledged kids) never
rs> get a chance to confirm things like the value of G for themselves, but
rs> instead have to evaluate the source of the information and the content
rs> of the information to determine how credible it is.  Which is all very
rs> interesting (and I mean that, truly I do ;-).  However, the thing we are
rs> arguing about is really the definition of "truth".

And you see these things as unrelated?  The determination of credible
information is all about the definition of "truth".  In fact, many 
people will suggest that one needs a definition of "truth" in order
to successfully talk about (or come up with strategies for) the 
determination of credibility.

I disagree with that, though.  I think it's the other way around.  The
techniques we already use to determine whether info (and its source)
is credible _are_ the definitions of "truth".... sure, they're 
operational definitions instead of axiomatic ones; but, they're 
definitions, nonetheless.

And if a child has every adult and every other child in or around
her telling her that "G = 2.672...e-11" or that "guns should be 
banned", then she'll hold those statements as "credible"... and 
will, therefore, believe them to be true.

Now, if she is presented with conflicting info, then there are
contingent techniques that mainly rely upon trust.  She might trust
her parents more or less than she trusts little Bobby or the
Encyclopedia.  And that trust can result in a predilection towards the
belief in one statement over a belief in another conflicting one.

(This is the main reason that the gun control lobby is successful...
we gun-bearing people seem like homicidal maniacs and the
anti-gun-bearing people seem like rational, sedate, deducers....
leading the people in power -- traditionally people who are familiar
with calm debate and compromise -- to trust the anti-gun-bearing
people more than the gun-bearing people.... Why?!  Because truth,
belief, credibility, trust, etc. are all fundamentally linguistic.)

rs> Yeah, me too.  I see it really as an expression of disapproval for
rs> making an ill-considered tradeoff (and implicitly a plea for wiser
rs> consideration), rather than (as it appears literally) an incitement to
rs> imprisonment and endangerment.

[grin]  It's hilarious how some of the gun-bearing fanatics quote 
old Ben as if he were their buddy, where, in reality, he was the
type of person most of the gun-bearers wouldn't tolerate for a minute
... with his snide sense of humour, alternative lifestyle, and 
weird pasttimes.  But, the quote about beer pretty much washes all
that away and presents him as a good old hellraiser.

-- 
glen e. p. ropella              =><=                           Hail Eris!
H: 503.630.4505                              http://www.ropella.net/~gepr
M: 971.219.3846                               http://www.tempusdictum.com