Yes, that seems right to me.

I wouldn’t say that bias is in play here. The argument simply acknowledges that it is far more likely we’re at the top of Graph 2’s curve than at the bottom of Graph 1’s. Either situation could be true - indeed because we can’t see or know who is to come - but all that can be said without knowing is that the former situation is more likely.

This thought experiment is mentioned in Stephen R.L. Clark’s book God, Religion and Reality, a book I actually brought up in a recent thread.

Whoever/whenever you are it’s always most likely that yours is the final generation. The rationale being that if the final generation is the largest one, and if a random person is always most likely to be among the largest generation/group, then it follows that you (a random person) are most likely among the final generation.

Imagine the following two population predictions:
In the first, humanity prospers. We venture into space and our population keeps growing steadily. All the humans born until now will be a fraction of all the humans that are to come in the existence of humanity. — Mind Dough

This shows how unlikely it is that we’ll ever expand out into the galaxy, since it would mean we’re all part of a tiny fraction of all humans, rather than the other huge group. Instead it stands to reason that we’re at the top of graph 2’s curve.

How we come to know a fact is a fact isn’t relevant to the OP argument. If you’re on a jury and you’re choosing which story to believe, the prosecution or the defence, then you know you ought to believe the true one. Whether or not you know which one that is is beside the point here, since that doesn’t change where the obligation lies.

I don’t think those questions are relevant here,
since the OP isn’t about how we come to know facts.

If facts ought to be believed/acknowledged then the OP argument works, stating that if there are no objective values then there can therefore be no facts. It seems obvious that there are facts, so there must be objective values.

If we cannot but believe something we acknowledge as fact, doesn't that leave the only place for an "ought" as consisting in the condition that we ought to acknowledge facts as facts? — Janus

Yes, that sounds right.

If there is any doubt that some proposition is a fact, then how can it be determined that it ought to be acknowledged as such? — Janus

Perhaps it couldn’t be determined, but whatever the fact is it would be the case that you ought to believe it.

And this idea that there is no Truth existing independently of us doesn't have to leave us feeling powerless, on the contrary if we are the ones shaping the world then we are potentially omnipotent, the world is what we make it, Truth is what we make it, God resides in each one of us if you will. — leo

That kind of talk creeps me out.

That isn’t a pertinent question. The transcendental Truth is what it is regardless of what I can say or prove.

Yes, I agree with what you say, and that has been my view from the start: that there is a transcendental truth (which I was calling “objective”), that objective facts are a part of this, that they can be accessed and understood, and that a necessary part of those facts is that they ought to be believed.

Your mention of intelligible forms is pertinent. Many of the problems in this discussion I feel have been because of a general failure to consider Truth abstracted from any concrete example; to consider a fact as something that participates in the Truth, rather than a material instance of something.

The Truth is the transcendental Truth; it is what it is regardless how many different personal “truths” there are.

Other than that I’d just repeat my last response to you. Probably we should just draw a line under this now.

I think that’s a prevaricatory way of saying there is no Truth but you behave as if there is.

It seems to me that a person who actually lived as if there were no Truth would collapse right where they were, to eventually die and rot away; because there’d be no reason for them to do anything else.

Then I would ask - if you truly do not think there is Truth that we have access to - why are you here? Why do you seek to adopt or express opinions and ideas about anything at all?

You have a good point. That there is Truth does not necessarily mean that we have access to it. However, I don’t think this affects the OP argument, since it can still be the case that facts ought to be believed, even if we can never really know what is and is not a fact.

Sure, I accept all that. So when I’ve been talking about objective truth and objective values then really I’ve been referring to transcendental truth and transcendental values.

The problem I see with this argument is that it is not so much that we ought to believe facts but rather that if we accept something as a fact we cannot disbelieve it. — Janus

You have a point here, but does it preclude that facts ought to be believed?

I would simply counter that the assertion there is yours; that you’d have to show how that would even be possible (for a mind to emerge).

Eh? I said in my last post that you had a fair point:

You have a fair point. But a hypothetical state of affairs then seems to me [an example of] “something” that is necessarily not true, i.e. false. — AJJ

Yeah, that’s all correct. I would say though that not being able to say what the mind is doesn’t preclude being able to say what it isn’t.

You have a fair point. But a hypothetical state of affairs then seems to me “something” that is necessarily not true, i.e. false.

So it seemed to me that you were saying that we were trapped in infinite recursion, and that this was a fatal flaw. My counter was that, as syntactic theory illustrates, infinite recursion is not a fatal flaw. It can in fact be handled quite adequately. — Theologian

It can be handled when constructing sentences, but I don’t see how this applies to adequately describing the mind. Constructing an infinite sentence about it won’t necessarily explain it.

Really the way I described things in my last post can be done without mentioning final causes, so that may not be an issue.

First, is a mind "always first-person subjective?" If there are other minds in the world, then those minds would seem, by definition, to be second or third person. And if we have some ideas about those other minds, why should those ideas be only subjective? If, as you claim, only things with final causes have objective reality, do minds have final causes? If so, they would seem to be more amenable to objective description than other things, not less. — Theologian

If you were to describe someone else’s mind you’d not be able to apply that description to your own mind due to the same problem. Though actually I think it is the case that the mind can be described in terms of its final cause, I’m just yet to read about that.

Second, don't forget: a model - or a description - is never identical to the thing being modeled, and does not need to share all its properties. It only has to share enough of its properties to tell us how the thing behaves. An electron's orbit is not an equation. But it does not follow from this that an equation describing an electron's orbit is wrong. Nor that equations are fundamentally incapable of describing an electron's orbit. — Theologian

I think you have a point here. Although I wouldn’t concede that the mind is like a computer; it still seems to me to be of an entirely different nature.

I think the the view that without a subjective perceiver, logic circuits are not logic circuits but only electrical currents is also problematic. Many philosophers would see the property of being logical as an emergent property that, well, emerges from the circuits when arranged in those structures that embody the rules of logic. In order to motivate your own theory, you need to show that they are wrong. — Theologian

Those circuits can’t embody the rules of logic unless meaning is applied to what they’re doing by a mind. A computer producing a syllogism on its screen is not applying logic unless we give the words a certain meaning. Its circuits are simply following the laws of physics.

Where our minds come from is also another thread.

Also, let's not forget: while you are now slipping back to saying that a mind cannot be a computer because a computer is only a computer when perceived as such by a mind, there are problems with that too. As I observed before, computers can, and have been defined in other ways. The mathematical model that defines a Turing machine, for example, makes no reference to the operator. But far more seriously and fundamentally, when I said that: — Theologian

Am I slipping back to that? I thought I’ve always been saying that. I don’t think you can describe the mind as a computer, since no computer actually does anything except what a mind makes or perceives it to do. I may be wrong that the mind can’t be described though, just not as a computer.

This has gotten far too inane. The distinction is obvious to me. But who knows, perhaps I’ve gotten it all wrong. That’ll do anyway.

The distinction between objective truth and the almost empty way that you’ve been using the word I thought was obvious.

Oh right - well the OP author does that. Whether his use is novel or not I don’t know.

The author of the OP seems obviously to be using it that way. The OED’s first definition is one I’ve been using, which I’d say is a fair indication of its use.

The problem with this is that you're using "true" to refer to two completely different ideas, and you're expecting the different ideas to be clear via using a capital letter for one of the words. You'd have to always explain your usage there, though, because it's completely novel.

The way I'm using "fact" is a very mundane, standard way to use that term in the sciences, philosophy, etc. — Terrapin Station

It’s not novel. Perhaps start reading a little more widely. The way you use the word is poorly justified and tendentious.

Out of curiosity, does the author use objective that way? — boethius

I assume so. To my understanding that’s what term generally means in philosophy.

Also, if the "truth" refers to the "beliefs" (beliefs corresponding to facts corresponding to reality, or real states of affairs, or the case etc.) then there is no truth independent of thought.

The usual word in philosophy for reality independent of our thoughts about it, is "the noumena", which again comes from Kant referring to the "the thing in itself". We see phenomena in our minds that we infer arises from some noumena that gave rise to the phenomena. — boethius

“Truth” doesn’t refer to beliefs. That would make it subjective. Truth independent of thought is objective.

It seems to me that noumena is what I mean when I refer to objective reality.

Actually, if “I ought to believe lies” is true then I don’t think it does lead to a paradox. It seems to me you just can’t justify it like you can with the truth.

By “objective” I mean existing independent of thought. I’ve been using it where I don’t absolutely need to when the other person has a different definition of “truth”.

If “I ought to believe lies” is a lie then that’s actually good for the OP argument. If it’s true then it’s a paradox, since you ought not to believe that you ought to believe lies, and you ought not to believe that, and so on. So my argument for why we should believe facts is still fine.

I'm not getting this. If the cat is explicitly not sitting on the mat, then it cannot be the state of affairs that the cat is sitting on the mat. The state of affairs is that the cat is not sitting on the mat. — EricH

I think if a state of affairs can be described as impossible then it can be described as false. Either way your describing something that isn’t true.

If I say “the cat was sitting on the circular square shaped mat” I’m describing “something” (a state of affairs) that is impossible and false.

If the cat is not sitting on the mat then it’s false that the cat is sitting on the mat. The “something” there is the state of affairs of the cat sitting on the mat.

For me “true” can refer to statements and propositions that correspond to the objective Truth. It can also refer to things that are part of the objective Truth, i.e. facts.

All you’ve really been doing is asserting your own view of what a fact is, but the above is the perfectly reasonable definition I’ve been using.

If there is objective Truth, then things that are part of it are true and the OP argument goes ahead. If there is no objective Truth, then obviously there are no objective values.

I understand them fine. To them the word “true” refers to when a statement or proposition matches a state of affairs. However, the state of affairs to them is neither true nor false. I’m saying that the state of affairs is part of the objective Truth, which is why a statement can be said to be true when it corresponds to It.

Substitute the word “reality” for “Truth” if you like. In that case something that is false would be so because it is not part of “reality”. But “reality” there just refers to the objective Truth.

Can a thing be false and thus part of the capital F False? — EricH

No - it can be false, which is to say it wouldn’t be part of the Truth.

The statement is false because it doesn’t correspond to something that is true, i.e. part of the Truth. It would be true if the cat being on the mat was true, i.e part of the Truth.

"We" as in S, EricH, etc. and I, as well as analytic philosophers in general. — Terrapin Station

OK.

And that "what" is what exactly ontologically? What sort of thing is it? — Terrapin Station

Whatever the state of affairs, statement or proposition is in question. “The cat is on the mat” is false if the cat is not on the mat.

Okay, but that's not how we're using the word "true." We're using the word "true" to ONLY refer to propositions matching states of affairs. — Terrapin Station

No we’re not. I’m using the word “true” to refer to what is True. I’m using it in a way that actually makes sense.

The reasons stem from (a) an analysis of how people use "true," functionally (which can therefore be different than what they have in mind), and (b) a realization that there's a problem--the same problem that EricH just pointed to above--if we treat "true" as a property of states of affairs. That problem enters the picture when we try to account for "false." We either wind up having to posit some very wonky ontology, or we wind up having to say that "false" is a very different sort of thing (in the "natural kind" sense, basically--the sort of ontological thing that it is) than "true" is. — Terrapin Station

False is what is not True. I wouldn’t say Truth is a property of anything. Things that are true are part of the Truth, not the other way around.

Would you that statements and propositions are false when they correspond to things that are capital F False? — EricH

No - I’d say they’re false when they do not correspond to what is True.

Basically states of affairs are relations of existent things. Things exist and they are situated in certain (dynamic) ways with respect to other existent things. Those are states of affairs. — Terrapin Station

Fine. I’m saying those relations are part of what is True.

If we're using the word "truth" to refer to the matching of propositions-to-states-of-affairs, you're saying that states of affairs are part of the objective matching of propositions-to-states-of-affairs? — Terrapin Station

I don’t know why you’d refer to the matching as “true”. Referring to a statement or proposition as “true” when it corresponds to the Truth makes sense. What you’re saying seems incoherent to me.

But you won’t say what a “state of affairs” actually is. I’m saying a state of affairs is part of the objective Truth, and is therefore something that is true.

My view is that statements and propositions are true when they correspond to things that are capital T True.

Your view seems to be that statements and propositions are true when they correspond to something that is neither true nor false (so how do they ever correspond?)

It seems to me I’m stating the obvious here.