In article <000101be3cd1$a6c1c220$3d1bfbd0 at default>, "Ronald C. Blue"
<rcb5 at msn.com> wrote:
> Truth should be independent of source. Truth should be able to stand on its
> own merits. The reality is that truth is relative to the observers. Each
> human is limited by their experience. Slowly a shared experience emerges
> developing
> a conscious in the collective mind. Each person approaches truth from
> their frame of reference. No single frame of reference will be adequate for
> knowing the truth. Our behavior, our research, and our income is
determined by
> our approach to obtaining the truth.
>> Ron Blue
Your view is the same as "constructive alternativism," i.e., that the
world we live in is a perception created by the mind and varies from
person to person. it is fundamentally opposed to the view that most
science is based on, empiricism, which is that the physical world can be
estimated from the senses (ie. what is observable) and the assumption that
this information is reliable from individual to individual.
Well, while there are individual differences in the senses, they are
fairly reliable (I mean reliable in the statistical sense here) and the
genetic variations in these senses (and influence that learning has on the
senses) is minimal. So whereas perception may be greatly influenced by
learning, I doubt that sensation is so influenced (at least, it is not
qualitatively different from person to person, just perhaps
qualitatively). So I tend to think you are overestimating the differences
in people's perception of the world as a frame of reference.
We tend to blow things like whether or not people think the world is fair
out of proportion in terms of a frame of reference (as you refer to it in
the physics sense). For the most part, people agree on the world as a
percept. Things are particular colors, things are fast or slow, round or
square, smooth or rough, large or small, etc. And genetic and learned
variables are small enough that people even agree for the most part of
highly subjective things, such as beauty or ugliness, or fairness about
the president's impeachment (I had to stick this in somewhere!). So I
don't think constructive alternativism has much merit, but this is just my
opinion.
As far as truth, this all depends on how you define truth. If you think
truth is just reference to a collection of facts, then this is no problem
in the empiricist view; a fact is a fact if it can be observed similarly
by multiple observers using diverging techniques. In contrast to an
empiricial observation, however, theories are much harder to prove and to
me truth tends to refer to a collection of facts as well as some statement
about those facts; then, if the theory is robust across many facts
(including new ones not in the original theory) it becomes a truth. But
there is no agreement on this, and scientists tend to avoid the use of the
word truth (or for that matter, even the use of the word fact. They tend
to like the word observation, since this makes no claim about its
reliability).
Cheers,
Stephan