What is a true statement?

I stand by the challenge of the naysayers going first. If they want to go to the moon to try and prove me wrong at least it will make a great story.

 

The Moonies have claimed the moon in the name of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, which is why the wealthy are moving to Mars.

 

I have had experiences with faerie , and our intersected existence cannot be proven false .
It may however be proven true , as in take a forest walk with me some wizardly fine day and
we shall find the spinning wheel , spinning round , and see all the colors that are real .

When Tinkerbell is portrayed as just a flying twinkle ? ... this light you may see , and in the kindness
of mind that is true , ya , it'll twink twice just for you .

Why bother not believing this ? Or is the dependability of a society of non-believers and jokers good
enough to qualify as true .

Truth is dependable

 

I know a train-kid by the name of Tommy Two-Times :

"time is now , time is now "
"I gotcha a beer , I gotcha a beer "
"I tell ya it's Truth , I tell ya it's Truth "

 

that sounds like an angry reaction to me. witnessing hatred of logic can provoke those in me too.
but it isn't that a billion gods, or god-like beings, or even the invisible equivalent of rocks and trees, can't exist, its that nothing owes anything to what anyone tells anyone else to think or claim they know about it.

 

That's good, I'm glad my anger was conveyed. Holy fuck sticks, yes I am angry. Because delusions, based on lies passed down through generations, destroys countless lives. Ignorance is a virtue to the delusional and they call it faith. On top of all that the delusional have the nerve to hijack the word truth to pervert it towards their delusions.

 

Over half the population of the planet believes in common sense, but nobody has ever documented it as existing anywhere in the universe. Methinks the problem lies in the fundamental assumption, that life must ultimately make sense, when the most useful answer is not necessarily the correct one.

 

Certainty seems beyond the grasp of humans. It's the curse of humanity that we can ask the big questions but never answer them for sure. The best we can do is use what Santayana called "animal faith', the instinctive sense that there is a real world out there beyond the human mind. All knowledge ultimately depends on faith, which as Luther says is a bet. We bet our lives that certain things are true. But how can we be sure, in a world that's constantly changing? We can't. And betting has consequences. We bet if we invest in the stock market, but we can lose our shirts. Like most gamblers, I like to think I can narrow the odds by placing educated bets relying on logic, evidence, experience, and intuition instead of blind faith. In most areas I can test personally, it seems to work. and science, which relies on empirical testing of refutable propositions, seems to produce impressive results. I accept science as the gold standard of knowledge, but science is always tentative. The theory of evolution is only one rabbit in the pre-Cambrian away from being discredited. So far, no rabbits.

What bothers me about the way the OP formulated the question is that it suggests that nothing is really true unless it can't be proven false. As a practical matter, I think that idea is useless, since (1) to the best of our knowledge, we can never tell with certainty that such a proposition exists, unless it is a tautology (true by definition); and (2) it may suggest that irrefutable knowledge is superior to refutable knowledge, when in fact just the reverse is true. Science is, by definition, refutable or falsifiable. Polanyi convinced us that if a proposition isn't falsifiable, it isn't science. Science has its limitations. It's better at eliminating Type One errors (false positives; i.e., accepting things that aren't true) than Type 2 errors (false negatives; rejecting propositions that are true.Not all things are testable by rigorous empirical methods. In ancient history, for example, records are often incomplete or sketchy, and we have the choice of disbelieving everything or making inferences from the best available evidence and saying what seems likely. And science can't give us meaning. For that, we have to take more chances.

 

When you can no longer identify that you have identified nothing, you most certainly have personal problems to deal with, which can be solved with a simple pie-in-the-face, if you are open minded to the possibly that change happens for better, as well as, shit happening.

 

I think there4 I write , I write there4 I
eat , I eat there4 I am

eat pi

 

I see how you are defining to think. A thought, the thing we think, always represents an intentional object. An awareness, even if we are not 'thinking' about that awareness, is the intentional object in that case---it is a thing of the mind---a thought---granted, it is a reflective thought, but it is still a thought. This is a bit like the argument against Descartes that Sartre tried to make--that when we are simply aware of something, then we are not neccesarily aware that we are 'be-ing' a being--a being that is aware, and then he adds that to think of some thing, our consciousness is focused on the thing, not the self. My response to Sartre is that, 1.) 'being' is always implied, because there has to be a thinker to manifest a thought, if that thought is manifested subjectively by a specific (sentient) entity located within a specific place in space-time. 2.) that Descartes' First Principle does not mean that we are always aware that 'I am,' but that to make the statement, I think therefore I am, the intentional object is 'I' with the affirmation or validation of being through the action of mental activity.

Philosophically I am a phenomenalist---meaning that I believe or argue that we experience the phenomena of reality rather than material reality itself, or a Kant would say, the thing-in-itself. For example, hold a solid object, say a figurine carved out of stone, and you think you are holding something that is solid and has mass and so forth. You experience the object as it appears to you. If you wanted to prove how solid it is you could hold it under a faucet and watch the water pour down it---none of it ever entering the stone.

It feels solid and hard primarily because of the action of the electrons surrounding the atoms within the molecules of the stone. They in turn react with the electrons in the atoms within your hands and fingertips, which send electrons up your nerves for your brain to turn into perception. Light reflected off the figurine has a similar effect on the atoms within the vision cells of your eyes (the dynamic of reflection actually ocurring as a particle of light (photon) being absorbed by an atom within the figurine which in turn expels a photon). But these electrons and these photons represent the phenomena which indicate to us how we will experience this stone figurine. This is our reality. But what is the reality behind what we are seeing? Physics tells us that this figurine is not solid at all. It is almost entirely empty space. Consider an atom for example, the actual physical mass of that atom, in terms of space, is only .00000000000000.1% of the space of that atom (yes---14 zero's followed by .1). If we were to squeeze all those atoms and molecules together to where there is no longer any empty space, you would no longer have a stone figurine---you would have a black hole. If we did the same thing with the entire earth, right before it becomes a hole in space-time it would be roughly the size of a golf ball (It would still weigh the same as the entire earth, but it would be about the size of a golfball). Now if you think that is strange, you haven't seen anything yet----because we still have to add in Quantum Mechnics, which will tell you that every particle and subatomic particle in that figurine, and in your hands and eyes, holds a single position in space-time for the briefest most infinitescimal period of time, and outside of that infinitesimal point of time, it speads clear across the universe in a quantum wave-field. That particle could have appeared anywhere in the universe at any time, but it appeared there in that figurine. And of course in any given infinitesimal point of Now, it should be obvious that not every particle or subatomic particle that makes up that figurine is there, only the ones that have collapsed, and in another moment others have collapsed, and so forth, creating the phenomena that is that figurine.

I refer to the shared objective reality that you refer to, with its common truths, and empirical evidence, and so forth as existential reality----the reality we experience by living in physicality as a physical being. The term 'existential' refers to the human experience of existence, but obviously every living thing experiences its own existential reality whether it is human or not.

 

Swallow the pi rationally whole . Too quickly though and you might get
the belly-ache . Perfection should result , a true circle of mind-light .

 

Reality bites. If we jump off the top of a tall building, we can be as solipsist or philosophical idealist as we want until we hit the pavement. Then reality takes over. In other words, I think there is an objective reality. We have to live with its consequences, and need to exercise good judgment in forming opinions about it. If we wait for scientific proof, we may be a puddle of protoplasm and blood before we get it. Generally speaking, the amount of evidence we need to support a decision is a function of the consequences of being wrong, the feasibility of obtaining more evidence, and the time frame for reaching the decision. We use the highest standard (beyond a reasonable doubt) in criminal trials and something like it in science, except that in the latter case the "jury" consists of expert panels of peers and the verdict is never final. But for civil trials, a preponderance of evidence will do, and for most administrative decisions, substantial evidence (supported by enough evidence to convince a reasonable person, even though other reasonable persons may come to the opposite conclusion) is the standard. On important matters like voting, I'm never able to prove that my candidate is the best, So I rely on substantial evidence in making my decision. For example, confronted with evidence that Donald Trump has been involved in shady real estate deals and scams like Trump U, that he is a habitual liar, cheats on his wife, puts crooks like Pruitt in key government positions, violates the emoluments clause by continuing to control businesses to which foreign actors can contribute, and seems slavishly attached to the brutal head of a hostile foreign power, I think I have substantial evidence to vote against him even though no actual smoking gun has yet been produced. It's a matter of judgment, based on intuition and experience but supported by substantial evidence. And this is generally the way I approach problems in everyday life. if I'm not on a jury or conducting a science experiment. The alternative is not to vote, and let the decision be made by the deplorables again.

 

Never wallow in someone else's crap, when you can always wallow in your own.

 

That is right, even though our experience of existential reality is only through the phenomena of a reality we can't perceive, it is very real with very real consequences. We cannot escape this reality except within a mental sense.

However, I do disagree with you on one thing. I think there are many smoking guns around Trump (and quite a few bullet holes and embedded bullets...).

 

I need food to survive.

 

These days, we can stick you in the fridge and you'll last much longer.

 

What's the limit of perception ? Surely it's beyond of the limit of expression . One can feel very stupid and still
manage to irrationally yet sublimely make good choices .

 

Meditate upon the Sublime Lime Jell-O, to infinity and beyond, only to find the rooted truth hidden in the calm of the storm! Whether hidden treasure or nightmare, depends on what you wish for. Make sure the merry-go-round is going slow enough, before attempting to jump off.

 

I believe we experience the material reality. I just don't think that it's really material. I think it's more of a phantom, the entire thing. It's constantly in a state of flux, fleeting, maybe more akin to a very lucid dream than anything else. So while we do experience it, we just don't understand it.

But just think, the Earth is speeding through the cosmos at a blistering rate. All of this that seems solid, from a certain perspective, should look like a complete whir. Imagine the Earth shrunk to the size of a tennis ball and you could watch it go by in front of you at 67,000 miles per hour. I think that we're traveling at such a high rate of speed, in other words, that we mistake something that is more like a dream, and with less substance, for something which is somehow solid at its core.

This breaks down at quantum physics I suppose. Since you're trying to measure a dream of course your results are going to get extremely iffy when you try to dissect a reality moving by at 67,000 miles per hour because the fabric of spacetime is pulling itself apart to a photon of light. We think we're so advanced now, but really all we've done is discover the magnifying glass. We're just like kids with a magnifying glass looking at fireflies. Neat tricks of the ultimate reality, but not the ultimate reality itself at all.

I don't even think our experience of entropy or decay are realistic. It's more likely the tail end of something we can't see, that is beyond our vantage point for the fact that we are traveling through space at such a high velocity. Perhaps to travel through space is to warp space somewhat.