There seems to be a lot of ambiguous phrasing in this discussion — Michael

I quite agree. If you don't mind I will go overt the argument again, just to make sure we agree on the basics.

The SEP argument proceeds as follows:
$\forall p(p \rightarrow \Diamond Kp).$
The Knowability principle, KP: All truths are known by somebody at some time. This is taken as the antirealist premise.

And we are not omniscient:
$\exists p(p \wedge \neg Kp).$

So for some p,
$p \wedge \neg Kp.$

Substitute this into KP:
$(p \wedge \neg Kp) \rightarrow \Diamond K(p \wedge \neg Kp)$

But we already have the antecedent, so:
$\Diamond K(p \wedge \neg Kp)$

Which is false. We can't know that p is true and that p is false. So a contradiction follows from KP and non omniscience, and one of these must be false. So if all truths are knowable,
$\neg \exists p(p \wedge \neg Kp)$

and hence all truths are known:
$\forall p(p \rightarrow Kp).$

Hence Fitch's paradox, if something is true then it is known:
$\forall p(p \rightarrow \Diamond Kp) \vdash \forall p(p \rightarrow Kp)$

I'll pause there. I gather we agree at least that this is the account being scrutinised?

1. The realist believes that it is possible for the truth to be unknowable
2. The realist believes that it is possible for the truth to be unknown — Michael

Not happy with those. Again, I think it should be
1. The realist believes that it is possible for a truth to be unknowable
2. The realist believes that it is possible for a truth to be unknown

And I'll maintain that (2) is all that realism requires.

You lost me.

∀p(◊(p ∧ ¬◊Kp)) says "For all truths p, it is possible that p is true and it not be possible to know p"

I think that should be "For all truths p, it is possible that p is true and yet p is not known". That would be ∀p(◊(p ∧ ¬Kp)).

The realist does not need to say that it is impossible to know that the cat is in the box, only that it is not known. It might be possible that the cat is in the box, but we just do not know.

I think you have one too many modalities.

It's an interesting argument, nice work, though.

So particular truths. While any particular truth might have been unknown, this is different to every given truth is unknown. Is that so?

1. The realist believes that it is possible for truth to be unknowable in principle. — Michael

I'm puzzled as to how to read this. Is it that it is possible for all truths to be unknowable or for some truths to be unknowable?

Very pleasing to see that the proportion of folk who think the OP argument invalid has dropped from a third to a fifth. That's four people - presumably NotAristotle, Hanover, Leon and one other.

There is no collapse. — Wayfarer

Well, I'll leave you to convince the physicists of that,

Cheers. There is more than one SEP article being waved about.

That applies to TKP rather than KP. I don't agree that we only know things that are not contradictory - cartesian truths. So while any particular truth might not have been known, it does not follow that every given truth is unknown. We do know things. That is, the "p" in your logic is all truths when it should be a particular truth.

But to be sure, yours has been the more interesting approach to the topic.

Your want a ghost to be the only thing that can collapse the wave function.

"the realist believes that it is possible for truth to be unknowable in principle". — Michael

Humour me and provide a link. Which article?

Banno has distanced himself from your definition — Leontiskos

I do not trust your ability to understand and present either what I am saying or what is saying.

Curious that thinks Davidson magical, but is happy with ghosts in machines.

No.

You seem to think that a realist will say that nothing is knowable. Not following that at all.

You complimented my essay on it. — Wayfarer

Yep, it was a good essay. That doesn't make it right.

Does this accurately describe your view? — Wayfarer

Nope. I'm arguing that the realist/antirealist issue is a choice of language game, and that there are good reasons to prefer a realist logic to an antirealist logic when talking about medium-sized small goods. Cats in boxes. Or on mats. Or gold in the ground.

But this forum has a plague of antirealists, and I find myself again defending realism against bad arguments.

I am unhappy with Putnam's idea that "Metaphysical Realist is committed to the existence of a unique correspondence between statements in a language or theory and a determinate collection of mind and language-independent objects in the world.". Ugly. But even if it were so, it's not my approach.

Pretty much.

Yep. This is a pattern for Leon.

"...quantum!"

:rofl:

You know that what is to count as 'the observer' in "the fundamental role of 'the observer'" is a subject of debate. Yet you insist that the only thing that collapses a wave function is a mind. It suits your narrative to pretend there is a consensus where there is none.

Time comes into existence with minds. — Wayfarer

No, it doesn't.

Although
that time is passing does.

Time passed before there were minds. That's kinda built in to the notion of there being a time when there were no minds. Basic stuff. You need some quite sophist-icated argument to avoid it. Like his piece of bullshit:
knowing

Laplace’s nebula is not behind us, at our origin, but rather out in front of us in the cultural world — Maurice Merleau-Ponty, quoted in The Blind Spot, Adam Frank, Marcelo Gleiser, Evan Thompson

...which confuses what is true (Laplace’s nebula) with what is cultural (our stories about Laplace’s nebula). It's just bad thinking.

"the realist believes that it is possible for truth to be unknowable in principle."

Which means that the realist believes either that (5) does not entail (1) or that it if "the cat is in the box" is true then it is possibly not possible to look in the box and see the cat. Either entails that if "the cat is in the box" is true then it is unknowable1. — Michael

What?!?

That's silly.

That's an odd post. No, if all life disappeared, so would foxes. Foxes are (usually) alive.

I haven't avoided the question - I answered it quite directly by presenting a truth about what things would be like, given that "all life disappeared from the universe, but everything else remained undisturbed".

You claimed, "If all life disappeared from the universe, but everything else is undisturbed, then it would still be true that there is gold in Boorara." — Leontiskos

Indeed, the bit "everything else is undisturbed" kinda makes the point. One of the things that remains undisturbed is the gold at Boorara.

A shame that you need Kant's analysis of time here, which is wanting. Regardless, the argument does not depend on time. We can posit instead a space with no folk in it to know stuff, and get similar results. There may be a planet in orbit around the pulsar described here. That there is such a planet is either true, or it is false, and this is so regardless of what we know.

This by way of separating what is true from what is known to be true. Again, that a proposition is true is a single-places predicate, "P is true"; but that we know it is true is a relation, "We know P is true". Same for what are commonly called "propositional attitudes"; a name that marks this relational aspect.

...you do understand that what you have there is not my argument... it's yours.

No, perhaps not.

Oh, yes, I noticed your selective quote.

If you are really interested, as opposed to just a poor attempt at baiting, set out for us what it is you think 's argument was, and my reply.

Becasue I do not think you have understood it.

I concluded... — Leontiskos

That's you, not I. You have misunderstood - again - the logic of the argument.

Love you too. If you are going start by misrepresenting what was said, there's not much point in chatting with you. Of course, it is entirely possible that you do think that a reasonable interpretation of what was said... if so, explain what it means for truth to exist. Do you just mean that there are truths?

This is clearly committing to the view that truth exists where no minds do. — Leontiskos

There it is.

For me the strangeness of Banno's position is the claim that truth can exist where no minds do. — Leontiskos

Yep. Oddly phrased. It's unclear what it would mean for a truth to "exist" - it's not going to be the value of a bound variable. Nor is truth the sort of thing that occurs at a particular place, although particular things might be true at a particular place.

Given Leon's history of misrepresenting folk and his incapacity with logic, I'm not too hopeful here.

So the sense in which I question the reality of 'mind-independence' is that whatever we assert, about gold in Boorara or whatever, relies on this cognitive framework - that we can't stand outside of that faculty to see what is outside of or apart from it. — Wayfarer

Sure, whatever we assert relies on our cognitive framework. But the gold in Boorara doesn't. It'll be there, asserted or not.

Which neither you nor anyone would ever know — Wayfarer

It is true that there is gold in Boorara. If all life disappeared from the universe, but everything else is undisturbed, then it would still be true that there is gold in Boorara.

And further, from this argument, we know that there would still be gold in Boorara.

So we do know stuff. Again, what you say doesn't work.

That was never at issue, — Wayfarer

Well, yes it was... that there are still facts even when no one is around.

But as I said, that is the case for any empirical fact whatever. — Wayfarer

Well, no, the facts concerning life would presumably have varied somewhat... but for the others, yes, and this only serves to show how much we would know about such a universe. It doesn't work in your favour.

You're loosing sight of what 'mind independent' means if indeed you ever had sight of it. — Wayfarer

Perhaps I've shown that "mind independent" is not so clear as you seem to think. You tried to show a case of mind-independence, and instead of what you wanted, it shows that we can still talk of truths.

Yours is basically the argument from the stone. — Wayfarer

A succinct and powerful rebuttal of Bishop Berkeley's "ingenious sophistry" in my opinion; a precursor to Moore's 'Here is a hand".

Here it is again, since you seem unable to provide a rebuttal. It is true that there is gold in Boorara. If all life disappeared from the universe, but everything else is undisturbed, then it would still be true that there is gold in Boorara.

...but whatever existence it possesses would be unrecognisable to human intelligence. — Wayfarer

Well, no. There would still be gold in Boorara. That is quite intelligible.

but that is still not the point at issue. — Wayfarer

Yeah, it is: Are there truths when no one is around. You tried for a counterexample, but it doesn't work.

Here we go with the defence of Kant yet again.

...and you slide again. Try to stay on a topic.


There is gold in Boorara. If all life disappeared from the universe, but everything else is undisturbed... your hypothetical, not mine... by the definition you gave, there would still gold in Boorara.

Ground control to Major Tom...

Imagine that all life has vanished from the universe, but everything else is undisturbed.

Then there would still be gold in Boorara. It would be true that there was gold in Boorara.

Moving from the topic at hand onto something less tractable, and derailing the line fo argument. Meh.

You seem to be moving around a lot. Apologising for Bergson?

Kantian bullshit. So you now admit to idealism, of the transcendental sort?

...space and time exist only in the subject as modes of perception...

...Einstein disagrees.

It just seems to me that you are saying it wrong. The bit were a truth is a single-place predicate but a saying, acknowledging, seeing, maintaining and so on are relational. And a fact is what is true. SO we set up (even construct) a language in which we set out the state of the ground around Boorara in a specific way. But doing that does not change what is the case at Boorara. Stating (using, believing...) the fact is dependent on the language used, and how we divide Boorara up. But that does not change how Boorara is.

Again, the realist/antirealist dichotomy is muddled.

And this is the bit where you say "quantum".

But they're not things until they're cognised. — Wayfarer

What could that mean? I think, as I just described to , that it is better - clearer, more coherent - if we do exactly the other. So the gold at the new Boorara gold project near Kalgoorlie in Western Australia was there before it was discovered. It did not come into existence at the discovery.

I never use the word. — Wayfarer

You never use the word. Nevertheless it plays a big part in your thinking.