Ok.



Ok - up until the last claim. What are you referring to there as "the truth"? Does the following convey what you mean...

The fact that it has only one mass and one charge is irrelevant to the fact that it acts like it occupies every possible location.

Not exactly. The truth is that the electron acts like it is everywhere at once which makes it's location meaningless. It still has only one mass and one charge.



I think that if we are more disciplined in our use of the term "truth", we can avoid the problems that arise from employing "the truth" to represent things other than truth(perspective, fact, certainty). If "I don't know for certain" is a true statement, it is not true of the electron. Rather, it is true of the mathematician. In other words, it corresponds to the mathematician's state of mental affairs, not to the objective state of electron affairs.

No. It is truly a state of the uncertainty of the electron's position. It is not a statement of the mathematician mental state and should be true of any given mathematician as an example. It is a defining concept of QM.



While I have a genuine desire to employ set theory we must not subordinate truth in the process. The above is simply not true metal. You've called personal conclusions, facts, and perspectives "the truth". Conclusions are always arrived at from first believing the premisses are true. Perspectives wholly depend upon belief. Fact, on the other hand, does not. Thus, truth corresponds to fact/reality... not opinion, perspective, and conclusions. Those things may or may not be true, depending upon whether or not they correspond to fact/reality.

I truly believe you are completely wrong in your statements above. The examples I selected dealt with mathematical, physical concepts outside of belief and previously proven by objective observation. Perhaps my "correspondence" with truth is my personal understanding of truth and the correct interpretation/understanding of any given facts. I have repeatedly tried to separate truths based on "belief" (such as found in a discussion of religion) to truths based on objective facts as found in science. Perspective does NOT depend upon belief in the science world. It literally can mean your seat observing the experiment or how many of the experiments you have observed. The "truth" of understanding may require more or less observation. I equate "belief" with acceptance of "truth" without objective support. Proper science tries to eliminate "belief" wherever possible.

One reason I selected the "physics student, engineer, and mathematician" example is that I have spent many years being all three and dealing with others who were all three or at least one of the above. My comments were observations of truths I have observed.

I equate truth with understanding. You appear to be equating truth as another word for fact, which is not my understanding of the proper use of the word.

However, my specialty is not words ... it is science.



True, but they all converge upon truth-presupposition. Namely, the presupposition of 'loose' truth/reality correspondence that is necessary in order to form thought/belief. That is the largest set - it includes everything humanly thought, believed, and or known.



Purely mathematical problems require purely mathematical solutions. M theory is not "the truth". When we say "the whole truth" what does that really mean? Such ambiguous terminological usage is entirely context dependent, and when a little unpacking is done, it often becomes apparent that the term is being used to mean something else.

I've never seen "an absolute, well understood, fully documented human truth". Are you talking about a bit of human knowledge?


I am talking about human recognizance of correct concepts or simply put ... "understanding". I am also trying without success to separate "belief based" truths from "understanding of objective fact" based truths.

I don't claim to be an expert on truth. I am just giving my perspective on how non mathematical concepts can be analyzed using set theory.

I have several objections here...

1. Electron behavior is a purely mathematical description. Electrons are unobservable.

2. The quote above requires "the truth" to be observed, for how could we know how an electron "behaved" without being able to observe it?

3. It is a mathematical model.

4. Charitably granting their actual existence, the electrons actions are events. Events are states of universal affairs... those are fact.

I'll leave it here for now...

No? So, you're saying that "I don't know for certain" is true of the electron itself? C'mon metal. I think you've been too quick to judge what I've written here. I'm not arguing against the validity of the math.

Again, granting electrons' existence, the state of electron's affairs have nothing to do with a mathematician... agreed? Rather, the state of the uncertainty of the electron's position is a mathematical description, which is exactly why "I don't know" should be true of any given mathematician: because "I don't know for certain" reflects an awareness that they - all mathematicians - ought to have as a result of their having successfully understood the model.

"I don't know for certain" does not belong to the electron. Nor is "I don't know for certain" a mathematically described state of the electron. It belongs to the mental activities of the mathematician. "I don't know" is true IFF it corresponds to the mental activities of the speaker. IOW "I don't know" is true IFF I don't know.

The term "truly"... what does it add here? I mean, does "I truly believe X" mean anything other than "I believe X"? Why add "truly" when it is impossible to not "truly" believe X. I believe X means I believe X is true. "I truly believe X" means I truly believe X is true. It is redundant.



Objectivity is the aim, my friend. Pure objectivity is unttainable, however the goal is necessary and useful, none-the-less.

There are no man-made concepts "outside of belief" metal. None. That is an empty set, and will always remain so. I can confidently say that for a very simple reason. Humans cannot get outside of their own thought/belief. We can and do set epistemic criterion. Those are what we hold as adequate, based upon what we have already accepted and/or believe.

You see where I'm going with this?

Belief is not all true. Belief is not all justified. Belief is not all valid. Belief is not all rational. Belief is not all about that which we become aware of. Belief is not all about that which is unprovable. However, there can be no statement that exists void of any and all prior belief. Language is a product of thought/belief, not the other way around. Therefore language, including math, cannot divorce itself from thought/belief. It seems you're attemping to separate false belief, and/or perhaps unjustified true belief from objective states of affairs and justified, true, belief. IOW, it seems you're aiming at objective fact/knowledge.

I'm with you on that, however our method of approach is significantly different. It is an unattainable goal if we continue to confuse/conflate truth with understanding, perspective, belief, opinion, reality, and/or fact.



You've inverted the role of truth in the process by conflating conclusion with truth. Truth is neither based on belief, nor is it based on fact, although it corresponds to the latter. That is because fact is a universal state of affairs, and truth is a property belonging only to thought/belief that corresponds to objective fact/reality. We can replace the term "truth" in the above quote with the term "conclusions" and it makes perfect sense. In addition, it clearly makes the distinction between an objective fact-based criterion and a belief-based criterion. Those criterions must be met by s/he who holds them in order to assent to a more complex belief or set thereof that is based upon them.



This smells like dogma.

In order for the above claim to be true, a person's perspective would have to be able to be completely independent from any and all belief. That is logically impossible for personal perspective is nothing other than a product of personal belief. However, if "perspective" denotes the participation in an observation, then in order for the above quote to be true participation would have to be able to happen completely independent from any and all belief. Again, that is impossible, for reasons given earlier in this post. Lastly, if "perspective" is meant to denote the number of experiments that one has observed, then perspective is 7, or 250, or some other quantity. Perspective is a number? That is an odd way to talk. What then, would we call the point of view belonging to the person performing the observation... a quantity?




Quantity of observation is insufficient for truth. Truth is neither qualitative nor quantitative. It is connective. It is the sole bridge(for lack of a better term) that connects human thought/belief to reality.



I see that, and such a premiss undercuts itself by removing the foundation upon which all points of view are built, including the scientific worldview. Belief without objective support would be belief not based upon objective universal states of affairs(objective fact). Acceptance of "the truth" of X is believing that X is true - believing X. Therefore, acceptance of "the truth" of the HUP is believing that it accurately describes/corresponds to a universal state of affairs. The point being made here is that all belief based upon fact is still belief. It just holds a more stringent criterion for assent. It is justified by objective fact.

It is true IFF it corresponds to fact/reality.



If "belief" here means unjustified or false belief, then I would readily agree.



Truth itself is unobservable. It is not a physical entity, although it has observable effects/affects that are put on display via communication efforts as well as through a thinking subject's behavior itself. The last sentence in the above quote is unintelligible. How is a comment an observation? These odd ways of talking are a logical consequence of the approach you're taking. This is clearly displayed below...



Let's unpack this a bit.

If truth is equal to understanding and we then apply this equation to the last statement above we have this...

"You appear to be equating understanding as another word for fact, which is not my truth of the proper use of the term."

The equation clearly produces nonsense, as all 'subjective truth' positions eventually do. It is an incoherent position. Truth is not subject to understanding, nor is it equal to understanding. Understanding is a byproduct of how one gathers and correlates the sense datum given in experience. Understanding can be false, mistaken. Truth cannot be. Therefore, the equation is wrong.

There is no 'your truth', 'my truth', 'his truth' and 'her truth'. Rather, there is your belief based upon what you've accepted and/or believe to be true, my belief based upon what I've accepted and/or believe to be true, his belief based upon what he's accepted and/or believed to be true, and her belief based upon what she's accepted and/or believed to be true, all of which may or may not correspond to fact/reality(may or may not obtain truth).

Now, I feel obligated to note here that the reason for my critically analyzing the use of the terms, is to set out(pardon the pun) the foreseeable problems which will inevitably come. In other words, set theory is useless if the contents of the set are ill-defined. Thus, the last several posts are an attempt at avoiding mistakenly defined sets.

I've had a series of arguments recently with people about 'science' and how well 'science' deals with the question of what is true and real, how wise (or not) scientists are in drawing their conclusions, whether its appropriate to have confidence in the assertions of scientists, and the like.

Near the end of these conversations (causing the end of the conversations), it would come out that the other person wasn't talking about physics or chemistry or biology. They were talking about psychology or sociology or anthropology or ...

And then we find that we agree. Physics deals very well with reality and with the issue of beliefs-influencing-observation-conclusion-and-model-formation. Psychology does not.


Metal, it seems that yours and my willful, thorough exposures to science has been in the hard sciences. I sometimes forget that people even consider something like psychology a 'science', since the discourse of psychologists I've seen is obviously packed full of unproved and unprovable ideas.

I don't think the kinds statements you and I often make about 'science' apply equally well to the hard sciences as the soft sciences

here are some images of the supposedly unobservable electrons!



http://www.rdmag.com/News/2011/06/IMaterials-Electricity-Nanotechnology-Images-of-graphene-electron-clouds-reveal-how-wrinkles-hurt-conductivity/

Electron Microscopy Rocks.

Electron microscopes do not see electrons s1ow.

Not sure what's so funny about that.

That is not true. Electron behavior is simply nature. It is how the world works. The fact that someone has created a mathematical model of the probably cloud of an electron doesn't change the behavior of the electron.

Further, you have given the false description based on YOUR PERSPECTIVE of someone who is NOT an engineer. To the engineer the events of the electron are fully observable and his/her designs incorporate those observations to the infinite degree. Valences are calculated, eigenvalues are set, designs are made.

"Charitable granting their actual existence"? I see this is not your field of expertise.

C'mon metal...

We're in agreement regarding the electrons behavior. See #4.

A false description? Interesting. Are you saying that the behavior of an electron is not completely exhausted by mathematical description? That is the only thing that would make the claim false.

--

Are you further saying that despite our inability to know the position of the electron, that we can nevertheless observe it's behavior anyway? That is to say, that we cannot know where it is, that we cannot pinpoint where it's going, but, despite all this we can observe it?

Like I said, it is odd to talk about observing something that we cannot find and continue uninterrupted observation on.

"To an engineer the events are fully observable"...

As they happen, or ex post facto?.

--

And no, this is not my field of expertise, I mean I could completely wrong here. I readily admit that. Would you.. admit the possibility that you could be wrong here? It takes more that just an appeal to ridicule/convention/authority to make your truth claims coherent. Seeing how we were supposed to be preparing to define sets in order to put set theory to use, this bit about quantum mechanics may indeed help matters out. Who knows?

I'll glady be the guinea pig. Care to instantiate truth here without conflating it with belief?

Just checking....

Well we disagree on that one. Electrons are very observable.

What electron microscopes see is scattering (diffraction) off of
charge density so they do in fact "see" electrons. The image I
linked demonstrates that quite explicitly. And, other wild images
from transmission electron microscopes actually image individual
atom charge clouds by diffraction showing in great detail the
ordering of atoms in solids. It's amazing but true.

Magnifications up to 50,000,000X and resolutions to 50 picometers
are possible with high resolution transmission electron microscopy.



http://www.pnas.org/content/105/41/15643/F3.expansion.html

In a more general sense we "observe" electrons whenever we touch
an object. What we feel when we touch something is electron charge
density of the atoms of the object. It is electrostatic repulsion
which prevents the tip of our fingers from going through the
surface of the computer keys.

Anyway we see them and we feel them all the time.

Its nice to see that someone realizes that "observe" has more meaning than just what we "see" and interpret with our eyes.

Very cool s1ow...

I've heard that description of why things seem solid before. I'll gladly concede the point of electrons being observable. So, if that claim is true, then that is to say that it corresponds to fact/reality. The facts certainly seem to support this.

How then, is their behavior observed, from one instant to the next?

What? You're still up too?



Well we can observe electron motion in various ways and readily
manipulate them too. Of course there is the electrical grid but
in a more intimate way there are electron guns which spray out
individual or streams of electrons like bullets. There are magnetic
lenses which focus them and manipulate them like waves in the
electron microscopes for example.

They can be accelerated in particle colliders and formed into
beams.

And consider a lightning strike. We certainly see them and their
affect when we see any spark of any sort small or very very big.

Ok metal...

I should have shown a little more restraint regarding QM. For one, the math escapes me, for two I am not equipped with enough information. Be that as it may, it was a diversion from the project at hand to begin with, that being set theory. Earlier you said this...



My only focus here has been properly and consistently representing and/or defining the sets. This is required for your aim as well. It is my considered opinion that your 'truth' project is fatally flawed from the start as a result of conflating truth with other things such as belief, understanding, and conclusions. Which is why I have been repeatedly pointing it out. I suggested earlier that we be more disciplined in our use of the term truth, and here I'll repeat the suggestion. For instance, in the above you wrote...



This is pretty much meaningless and the root of the problem that I've been objecting to. Please, let me explain here and I suspect that you'll see my point and agree. I mean, firstly truth is not a true statement. It is what makes the statement "true". That seems to be how you're using the term above. Or it could be that you are using it to mean belief, or to mean understanding. The point is that the use creates unnecessary confusion and eventually leads to incoherency/inconsistency. Statements are true, false, or neither. Now, dialetheism holds that they can also be both, as shown by the strengthened liar's paradox, however this need not be gotten into here.

So, if we understand that truth is correspondence to fact/reality then we see that there are neither "belief-based truths" nor are there "understanding of objective fact-based truths". You're losing the distinction between truth and a true claim, in addition to the distinction between belief-based and fact-based by calling them both "truths". Belief-based could be rghtly called unjustified, and fact-based justified. Either could be true, either could be false. That is important here. It does not necessarily follow from the fact that a conclusion has been inferred from a fact that the conclusion is true. It also does not necessarily follow from the fact that a conclusion is inferred from an unsupported belief that the conclusion is false. The former would be a justified false belief and the latter would be an unjustified true belief. So, we see the need to make and adhere to the distinctions being set forth.

I suggest that you set aside your personal aversion to the term "belief" and see it for what it is. Science is not immune to the existence of belief without the scientific method nor thought. That is not to say that science is equal to unfounded belief, rather it is only to say that in order to get accurate results from set theory by separating unjustified true belief from justified true belief we must frame them both in the proper terminology. Science also adheres to the verifiability and falsifiability doctrines.

Set theory is fraught with other issues, we need not add to them. In short, I'm merely attempting to properly define the sets.

Whereyat metal?

I conceded to the observability of the electron. Let's look at those 'truths' using language that will allow us to make the distinctions that you seek to make.