Truth Theories

There are several truth theories. The Disquotation theory of truth is a useful one. Identity theory and correspondence theory are notable. Verification theory is an obvious one. Axiology is the field of value theory. If one has a bad truth theory their values may be off the mark as well. That could be meaningful for understanding. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/truth/

For the verification theory of truth to be effective, one need have something to verify. Speculation on any concern or whatever one isn’t certain about is natural enough. The first philosophers didn’t know everything about everything that might matter. I believe that remains the situation today, thousands of years later.

Etymology of Concept

 The etymology of concept is from conceive. It is to put an idea into a mind. Sentient species might create similar ideas without the idea existing someplace other than as an idea.  Math is an idea

The Lakers need better, more reliable 3 point shooting yet that’s just an idea. Others may have that idea too without it existing someplace independently as in Plato’s realm of forms.

Placing the Crucible in a Science Fiction Story

 Should one start a science fiction story with a battle? I read an action novel that started with a brilliant, intensely detailed battle. The hostage rescue team was blindsided in an alley with a hidden .50 caliber machine gun placed by a criminal seeking revenge it turned out, dropping clues for the FBI to recover leading them to the kill zone. The slaughter was described minutely with the agents crawling in hot gravel looking for non-existent cover.

The trouble with that kind of beginning is that the rest of the book couldn’t reach the intensity of the start. The remainder of the story was afterwords.

Detective stories often start with a crime followed with a story to identify the perp. Where to place the crucible in science fiction  I would guess depends on the preferred structure of the plot.

Rectilinear Structures are Heavily Favored

 Building non rectilinear structures escalates the cost orders of magnitude. Until recently the math would have been a lot more difficult. Curves are hard for carpenters to calculate. Square footage of various comic sections, how and where to cut, and what to cut with for variegated surface, calculations for interior insulation that’s a reciprocal of diurnal solar exposure, etc are tougher. Building artificial mountain ranges for people to inhabit with habitat for wildlife outside might be easier.

For individuals building complex curvy structures might be more the kind of thing rich people could do. Gunnite spray concrete of course allows complex home structures to go up readily for specialized contractors. Incidentally people with bad knees don’t like stairs.

U.S.A. Doesn't Need to Support N.A.T.O. Members that Attack Russia

The N.A.T.O. treaty the US is signed into should not obligate the. U.S.A. to join into wars and military conflicts started by N.A.T.O. members like England and France that purportedly plan to send troops to Ukraine to kill Russians and possibly pre-emptive strikes inside Russia itself. If Russia counter-attacks France and Britain the US could choose to remain neutral.

Ukraine presently

N.A.T.O. cannot be used to let runt members start conflicts knowing the U.S.A. need intervene on their behalf. Consider the stupidity of the treat in an example

Turkey attacks Israel in support of HAMAS. Israel counter strikes Turkey. Turkey demands N.A.T.O. including the U.S.A. attack Israel.

Russia has a right to defend itself against attack. N.A.T.O. is a defensive agreement, not one of partnership to aggression. If England and France choose to more directly involved themselves in the Ukraine war that’s all on them as independent nations.

Pragmatism and the Ukraine

Pragmatism is selecting something that works and/or is necessary. People can make bad choices though.

Some don’t know what pragmatism is. An example- Act and rule based utilitarianism may be a good theory yet in practice it has a lot of difficulties. The greatest good for the greatest number might require force to implement.

Pragmatism might triage social problems and fix as many as possible with available resources. An ideal approach might ban fossil fuel engines tomorrow, a pragmatic approach might stress support for EVs to eliminate exhaust gases because politically.one would encounter too much protest to eliminating fossil fuel.

It is a complete fiction that pragmatism disregards reality or truth. Lol. The Ukraine conflict may cause a nuclear war. Britain, France and Joe Biden would spend years and trillions of dollars to fund the war and rebuild. Escalating to nuclear war isn’t pragmatic.

A pragmatist would stop the war, share Ukraine with Russia and let the planet get back to working together and move towards environmental economics and justice for all.

The most famous example of pragmatism to solve a problem was that of Alexander the great cutting through the Gordian knot with a sword.

Atheists May Hate Godel's Incompleteness Theorems

I believe the simple explanation for Godel's incompleteness theorems is that there cannot be a set of all sets including itself, with the exception perhaps of God. Einstein and Godel had offices at Princeton. I believe Einstein said he didn't understand Godel's work.

There is an explanation of the first incompleteness theorem.

"The first incompleteness theorem shows that the Gödel sentence GF of an appropriate formal theory F is unprovable in F. Because, when interpreted as a statement about arithmetic, this unprovability is exactly what the sentence (indirectly) asserts, the Gödel sentence is, in fact, true (Smoryński 1977"

There are practical consequences for the demonstration of the incompleteness  or limitations of formal systems. Philosophers at least, as well as computer scientists and mathematicians got more to think about. 

The Godel criterion seems reflected in reality at the quantum level in some respects. Even a fundamental particle or wave *in the beginning, requires a precursor outside or before the system starts. Incompleteness exists apparently in the infinities that arise as math physics regress toward the singularity so the model is incomplete.

Alternative Courses to Nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Hiroshima and Nagasaki were civilian targets. Truman had different courses to take yet he was a Democrat. Perhaps he could have nuked just one city instead of both. He might have bombed Yokohama harbor for shock and awe and gave the big bad wolf's ultimatum afterward. If he wanted Chinese communist empathy he could have dropped the nuke on Emperor Hirohito. 

Because WW2 was the last battle of World War 1 the U S could have stayed out of 1 and let Germany win. The Nazis would never have happened and German aristocrats would have faded out like the British royals. I don't think Germany would have greased the rails for red commie killers to take over Russia.and Rasputin could have led the Romanovs to the Stairway to Heaven.

Alternative fiction courses of history are completely malleable to an author's construction. One should never have taken the branches to war to start with if that's what one wanted to edit post hoc. The Second World War didn't improve world affairs generally except for select expedited liberation movements overall.

The Lakers are Clients of the Nuggets

The Lakers were trounced Saturday by the Nuggets. They had abysmal shooting and benched Dalton Knecht. Knecht probably should start the rest of the season. If he can’t be the third star the team has little chance of reaching the N.B.A. finals. The Lakers can’t always have shooters going 2 for 10 in repeat performances.

They could bring up Olivari from the G league to be the 4th guard and trade Hachimura, Vincent and DeAngelo Russell while they still have good value for a better shooting forward. Christian Koloko, a recent acquisition hasn’t played the past season and a half because of blood clots. Now that he’s recovered he might be a good center sharing the job with Jackson Hayes.

The President's Irrational Ukraine Policy

Nuclear weapons are an existential threat. Presidents are not welcome to egress toward the direction of nuclear war. It's just bad policy that could kill 200 million Americans. President Biden's Ukraine policy is worst case in economic development as well as security. He is not welcome to gamble American lives quite stupidly. He might get with war at best 50% of the economic benefit possible with peace and build long term global insecurity. He isn't competent. I haven't served in the military since the year the cold war ended. I cannot imagine rational people severing Crimea from Russia...that was an importunate misunderstanding of history that changed the world.

Christian and Secular Government misc

Regarding use of nukes in 1945: it wasn’t my choice. As with the impending Third World War, I would have tried different approaches to international relations that didn’t culminate in war. Pres Truman was elected by voters that didn't want more constituents to die if it wasn't necessary. Obviously I wasn’t involved then nor in the Vietnam conflict in making political decisions. Far beyond my social mileau. A post prompted me to reflect on the relationship between the sacred and the profane. Bill Clinton led the profane government for example rather than the sacred.

Augustine wrote about the City of God vs the city of Man. People often. They don't understand the circumstance of man with original sin that last throughout life...it's problematic in a thermodynamics field, and forgiveness of sin by the sacrifice of Jesus. The sin of Christians is covered by the shed blood of Jesus so God doesn't see it, yet while in the world Christians remain human and there is a conflict between the sacred and the profane where all humanity coheres. The profane don't have that conflict if unsaved. Presidents and other leaders revert to normal human conduct common to history when pressed, if they are even saved. The world always needs someone to blame... that's s.o.p. Finding Godly leaders to bring the world to Christ and his ethics when most of the world is lost isn't as easy as training a lion to be a vegetarian

Jesus said that in heaven people neither marry or are given in marriage. What is male and female except for sexual differences of beings for reproduction in a thermodynamics field? An eternal being, God isn’t likely to have a gender. He is in his own class; sui generis, Spirit. Jesus called him Father, and himself The Son. That is a relationship humans do not fully know. It’s easier to learn why gravity was the first force to go its own way after inflation.

Individuals are saved by Christ. All humans are subject to thermodynamics and all that means from energy input to procreation, greed, desire etc Corrupt or misunderstanding Christian leaders can support select secular government actions like war on occasion yet they are far better off simply doing what Jesus instructed in the Bible.

There has been a lot of political tragedy in the world. Secular governments with sovereignty in the west were nearly always independent of Christian leaders. Even the crusades were fought by kings not under direct subordination to a Pope or Protestant leaders. 

Was Pope Gregory right in motivating the crusades? He was not a general or ruler of nations that heeded his call. The crusades were a reaction to Muslim invasions of Europe on three fronts. Christians believe God can use secular governments to work his will yet like the free will debate no one can understand the criterion exhaustively.

Secular government leaders are glad to draw in anything that will bring them support. They haven’t over history required urging to increase political power, expand the realm or increase wealth.

God may try to improve the quality of secular governments over time evolving them in accord with a purpose.

King Leopold wasn’t a priest. Neither were Democrat Presidents Tuman, LBJ and Biden. Incidentally some say the Japanese nukes incentivized the Soviets not to continue west in 1945 to capture what Hitler lost. It was a tragic use of technology obviously. It spared 250 thousand US casualties invading Japan and possibly more in Europe. Entirely secular.

Individuals saved by Christ try to follow His way. Results on Earth may vary, though the grace of God moves them forward with eternal life transcending physical death. It isn’t about money though. Matthew 19:24 “And again I say unto you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of God.”

An Appearance and Order of Fundamental Forces

I have considered an order of appearance of the fundamental forces recently. Gravity emerged first. One wonders why. It appeared after the inflation, and forces that permitted particles and matter afterward.  Gravity may have stopped inflation when it appeared and let inflation occur before it existed. Gravity may have been produced by inflation. It is interesting to consider the strong and electroweak force; with the latter further divided into electromagnetism, the weak force and the Higgs Field.

 The strong and weak forces  each appear when two-dimensional particles become entangled in the Higgs.  The strong and weak forces could be apparent rather than fundamental forces.

 It seems as if there is an underlying medium of the Universe continuing from the singularity that isn't gone and is not observable directly.

Gravity though was distributed evenly throughout space-time with inflation and might be like a dark energy cosmological constant trying to return spacetime totally to singularity. It was blown off first and is the weakest force, yet seems like an unwillingly detached property of the singularity.

All Life is Capitalist

Everything in nature is capitalist; they try to get more and expand...even amoeba and communists. Some self-aware primates aren't aware of thermodynamics. It's important for societies to direct that drive to expand into positive political channels letting sustainable development of everyone receive optimal opportunity.

Build Electro-Magnetic Fields From Earth to Proxima Centauri

When an electro-magnetic interplanetary module accelerator is built in the solar system travel will be much faster than with rockets. People could live about anywhere. Solarpumk habitas may fly out toward Proxima Centauri B at half the speed of light eventually. Converting Solar energized laser and particle beams to push charged spaceships, and draw them to places like Proxima in vast right wing emg fields energized with starlight could be free enterprise efforts in a century if humanity can survive till Jan 20, 2025.

Woke and Truth Theory

Axiology and other views need be subjectively held. That is one’s opinion is subjective. Truth theories too have a subjective metaphysical essence. The disquotation theory of truth is pragmatic. I would guess that woke is a package of political preferences more than a philosophical outlook, though the later may exist in an unrooted kind of way.

Does one need purple hair to be woke, and what about the challenges for people with significant hair loss? Maybe in accepting Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil Paradigm it should be remembered that Nietzsche may have been boosted there by an advanced stage of syphilis causing dementia.

There may be different categories of truth references. Disquotation theory can point to God as Truth in itself for example within a language list without disquotation theory being the same kind of truth.

Society requires objective rules to function well. So many people require traffic signals-even the woke, to go about their business and reduce unintended collisions.  Civil governance is required regardless of one’s opinion on truth theory. Democracy has an implicit pragmatic operating system that cannot withstand its abandonment for the notion that truth is subjective.

Einstein’s wild hair and relativity theory may have stimulated a cascade of woke emulators.  I believe that Einstein on truth theory might have opted in for an objective basis for space-time and said that human statements about it can be true or false.

About Logic

A silly, grossly invalid syllogism.

premise 1  All men are mortal

premise 2  Janey Socrates is not a man

Conclusion-  Janey Socrates is immortal.

Mark Bendig Not sure what you mean. It remains entirely wrong. There are 256 possible forms of syllogism and just 24 are valid. People know that faulty premises make even logically true forms yield wrong conclusions. 

The logic of your argument is implicitly invalid. Your conclusion doesn't follow from the premises...it contradicts them, so it's ian nvalid form.

Someone wrote" P1. If god does not exist, objective morals do not exist. 

P2. Objective morals do exist 

C. Therefore god does not exist."

One can recapitulate it better like this; If A then B...Not B...A

An arithmetic statement like this has the same form...  

premise 1  If Fred goes to work Fred gets 5 dollars

Premise 2.  Fred did not go to work

Conclusion.   Fred gets 5 dollars

Your's is a biconditional statement with wrong premises.. One can make up a valid one of course like ""A number is even if and only if it is divisible by 2" and test various numbers with it or give a specific example of a number that is odd.

Premises A and B are faulty and the conclusion invalid.It is like building a truth table with Boolean Algebra and dumping wrong values in it, if that were useful. Although besides computer logic maybe people don't really care. 'Boolean Expression Q = A.B'. is meaningless to most. Maybe logic gates are like propositional logic with however many test conditions put together in valid constructions.

Some define morality as being an actual description of human behavior perhaps written in symbolic form. The ten commandments were objective morality as a divine command yet people didn't follow them well. God complained about what the ancient Jewish tribe actually did. What they did was their morality.

Morality

It was said that morality is a description of how people and society actually conduct themselves in social behavior. One might then ask why people and societies behave as they do? Such as escalation to nuclear war instead of balancing a federal budget; is the former moral behavior and the latter immoral?

Some Wonder About Shi'ism

There are courses on comparative religion. One may read history too and study topics on Islam from the foundation and rivalry of successors to Muhammad resulting in the killing of Hussain (cf if disciples of Jesus had killed one another to become head of the church after Jesus) to the purge in Iran of Zoroastrianism to the hidden imam and especially interesting is Shi'a eschatology comparable to that of pre-tribulationist Christians because it was inspired by the New testament hermeneutics of some, not all Christians of the era.

Innate Knowledge of God?

Chomsky and Everett' debated over the question of grammer being innate for humans and didn't have a decisive outcome.

 Maybe it was surpassed by an emergent paradigm. It did at least have few complex concepts strung together in support of unobservable points although one could certainly create various tests for humans and apes. 

The way humans apprehend and appearance of God in any form including communication is entirely live and up to God. He has communicated with individuals in different ways history recounts. The book of Jeremiah has a passage where God said that everyone will know him:  31-34"And they shall teach no more every man his neighbor and every man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord.’ For they shall all know Me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them,” saith the Lord, “for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”

In Jeremiah where God said that his people had forgotten him, that probably meant they had fallen away from a right relationship and worship. 15"15 Because My people hath forgotten Me, they have burned incense to vanity; and they have caused them to stumble in their ways from the ancient paths, to walk in paths, on a road not cast up,".

One might argue comparably that humans have no innate knowledge of morality or the differences between good and evil. Strong opinions exist on each side.

Some might wonder if humans have an innate sense of the passage of time or if it is simply biological challenges that press that are the real time experience. Then scientist theorize that time be an apparent phenomenon of quantum entanglement and might not really exist. More options on shifting sand. https://www.thebrighterside.news/discoveries/time-may-be-an-illusion-new-study-finds/

Mind is Different Than Matter

Mind cannot exist in-the-world without a brain. Neurology has proven the relationship.Brain damaged individuals for example, have diminished mind.

‘Reinventing Physics From the Bottom Up’by Robert Laughlin, the Nobel Laureate suggested phase changes. The emergent whole cane be greater than the sum of the parts qualitatively, and in the case of the mind becomes something completely different. The mind may be something of a micro phase change that is phenomenal and greater than the sum of the parts of the brain supporting it’s existence. Mind is not the same as matter. Mind has emerged from matter.