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The Social Construction of Truth

This is a series of philosophical meditations attempting to tell the story about how 'truth' (general term) is a socially constructed phenomenon.

Monday, March 21, 2005

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The following is a reply to the last comment of the last post.

Consider the following example. You are looking at a table-top, suppose it looks pretty smooth. So the statement,

(T) This table-top is smooth.

seems true. Now, suppose you use some sort of high-powered electron microscope to make "topographical" measurements of the surface of the table. You will find that the table has various inequalities on the surface so that the statement,

(T') This table-top is not smooth.

seems true. I leave you to see how this connects to the issues relating to the Cosmological Argument (or even the Teleological argument) discussed in the last post and the subsequent replies. (Hint: apply this example using the surface of an orange in place of the surface of the table-top in the above example; then apply the same idea to the entire universe. Note that you must use something different than a electron microscope to apply to these new objects--e.g. in the case of the orange you could use your own sight up close as opposed to just looking at the orange from across the room, say.)

posted by pennedav  # 12:50 PM

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