Right & Wrong

[trippymonkey]

Is it ever possible for a person to be 'right' about anything without somebody else being 'wrong'?
Need there always be some kind of 'casualty'?

This notion seems to permiate these forums like some perverse game certain people play here.
I HAVE to be right so that YOU must be wrong.

Nick

[Shaker]

Only in matters of obvious personal taste and opinion - it's obviously right that I love marzipan otherwise I wouldn't eat it, but it's equally obviously right that you can't stand the stuff, etc. Kant called this a subjectively sufficient but objectively insufficient mode of knowledge, i.e. it's just an opinion where no objective criterion is possible. There are objective facts about marzipan - that it contains sugar and almonds; that it's used to decorate cakes, etc - but as for whether marzipan is personally appealing or not, that's wholly and entirely in the subjective realm.

Matters of fact are a different game altogether, of course.

[Rhiannon]

I'm not sure 'right' exists. In some areas we can have a consensus - this is a tree, that's a table - and science has its facts and religion its rules. But is anything really, truly knowable? For that to happen we'd need to be certain about the facts around our existence, and I'm not sure that we are.

Liking marzipan is plain wrong though.

[Udayana]

It's quite hard to have a discussion if everyone takes the same side.

[cyberman]

I'm not sure 'right' exists. In some areas we can have a consensus - this is a tree, that's a table - and science has its facts and religion its rules. But is anything really, truly knowable? For that to happen we'd need to be certain about the facts around our existence, and I'm not sure that we are.

Aargh! Postmodernism at its worst.

Not being able to acquire the knowledge of which is right and which is wrong doesn't mean that there isn't a right or wrong. Either there is a man called Geoff scratching his arse at 8.06pm today in Doncaster or there isn't. The fact that it isn't knowable doesn't mean that there isn't an actual state of affairs. Geoff isn't like Schroedinger's cat, simultaneously existing in an arse-scratchng and a non-arse-scratching state. If I say it is happening and you say it isn't, then one of us is right and one of us is wrong.

[Leonard James]

I'm not sure 'right' exists. In some areas we can have a consensus - this is a tree, that's a table - and science has its facts and religion its rules. But is anything really, truly knowable? For that to happen we'd need to be certain about the facts around our existence, and I'm not sure that we are.

Aargh! Postmodernism at its worst.

Not being able to acquire the knowledge of which is right and which is wrong doesn't mean that there isn't a right or wrong. Either there is a man called Geoff scratching his arse at 8.06pm today in Doncaster or there isn't. The fact that it isn't knowable doesn't mean that there isn't an actual state of affairs. Geoff isn't like Schroedinger's cat, simultaneously existing in an arse-scratchng and a non-arse-scratching state. If I say it is happening and you say it isn't, then one of us is right and one of us is wrong.

You are confusing true and false with right and wrong. The former is a factual argument, but the second is just a moral argument ... a matter of opinion.

[Shaker]

That's the trouble with English - "right" and "wrong" are polysemes, i.e. they have double meanings. "Murder is wrong" and "Berlin is the capital of Spain is the wrong answer" mean two different things, yet we often use the same word for both.

[cyberman]

I'm not sure 'right' exists. In some areas we can have a consensus - this is a tree, that's a table - and science has its facts and religion its rules. But is anything really, truly knowable? For that to happen we'd need to be certain about the facts around our existence, and I'm not sure that we are.

Aargh! Postmodernism at its worst.

Not being able to acquire the knowledge of which is right and which is wrong doesn't mean that there isn't a right or wrong. Either there is a man called Geoff scratching his arse at 8.06pm today in Doncaster or there isn't. The fact that it isn't knowable doesn't mean that there isn't an actual state of affairs. Geoff isn't like Schroedinger's cat, simultaneously existing in an arse-scratchng and a non-arse-scratching state. If I say it is happening and you say it isn't, then one of us is right and one of us is wrong.

You are confusing true and false with right and wrong. The former is a factual argument, but the second is just a moral argument ... a matter of opinion.

I'm not sure if Rhiannon's trees and tables, or Shaker's matters of fact, bear that out Len. I think we are discussing whether there has to be a right and wrong about factual matters, at least in part.

[cyberman]

It's quite hard to have a discussion if everyone takes the same side.

Yes


...........

[Shaker]

It's quite hard to have a discussion if everyone takes the same side.

Yes


...........

No it isn't.

[Hope]

Is it ever possible for a person to be 'right' about anything without somebody else being 'wrong'?
Need there always be some kind of 'casualty'?

Yes.  If I try to unlock my house front door with a similar-looking but incorrect key, I will never succeed, other than in wrecking the lock.  Similarly, imagine a doctor diagnoses someone as having viral hepatitis and treats them for that but it turns out that they actually have meningitis - the outcome could be disastrous.  Another example: you are admitted to hospital with an acute problem and undergo an emergency operation, at the end of which the duty nurse counts up the equipment and states that all is present and correct.  Later, in the room where they laod the autoclave, it is noticed that there is, in reality, one item missing, and it is traced back to being inside you (this happened to the guy who was my best man 6 or 7 years after our wedding.  They had to reopen the incision to retrieve it, and he died of complications of that reopening)

[Hope]

IMHO, You are confusing true and false with right and wrong. The former is a factual argument, but the second is just a moral argument ... a matter of opinion.

FIFY, Len.  I would say that there is so much overlap between the two, as to make your black and white judgement unfit for purpose

[Hope]

That's the trouble with English - "right" and "wrong" are polysemes, i.e. they have double meanings. "Murder is wrong" and "Berlin is the capital of Spain is the wrong answer" mean two different things, yet we often use the same word for both.

Unfortunately, the same applies in many languages, suggesting that there is a natural overlap.

[jeremyp]

Is it ever possible for a person to be 'right' about anything without somebody else being 'wrong'?
Need there always be some kind of 'casualty'?

This notion seems to permiate these forums like some perverse game certain people play here.
I HAVE to be right so that YOU must be wrong.

Nick

Can you think of some examples where two people with opposite views can both be right?  Unless you can, I don't think you should be so critical of the rest of us.

[jeremyp]

But is anything really, truly knowable?

The square root of two cannot be expressed as the ratio of two whole numbers.

[Leonard James]

That's the trouble with English - "right" and "wrong" are polysemes, i.e. they have double meanings. "Murder is wrong" and "Berlin is the capital of Spain is the wrong answer" mean two different things, yet we often use the same word for both.

Indeed, but most facts are demonstrably right or wrong, contrary to god beliefs.

[Hope]

Indeed, but most facts are demonstrably right or wrong, contrary to god beliefs.

Do you have any evidence that what you call 'god beliefs' aren't demonstrably right or wrong, Len?

[Rhiannon]

But is anything really, truly knowable?

The square root of two cannot be expressed as the ratio of two whole numbers.

But that's meaningless unless someone is able to observe it. I'm not sure our perception of the self that observes is accurate. If that isn't accurate, nothing is.

[ProfessorDavey]

Indeed, but most facts are demonstrably right or wrong, contrary to god beliefs.

Do you have any evidence that what you call 'god beliefs' aren't demonstrably right or wrong, Len?

The only way to err demonstrate this, is to demonstrate that god beliefs are right or wrong. Good luck with that, because no-one through history has been able to do that.

As with the existence of god the only way to finally nail the argument is to prove god's existence since proving that something doesn't exist isn't possible (check Popper). The same is the case with objectivity/subjectivity. The only way to demonstrate that something isn't subjective is to prove it objectively.

[Leonard James]

Indeed, but most facts are demonstrably right or wrong, contrary to god beliefs.

Do you have any evidence that what you call 'god beliefs' aren't demonstrably right or wrong, Len?

The Prof has already given an answer, Hope, and I can't improve on it.

[Hope]

The Prof has already given an answer, Hope, and I can't improve on it.

A good answer as well; but not one that helps the debate since some here assume that evidence can only be physical.

[Leonard James]

The Prof has already given an answer, Hope, and I can't improve on it.

A good answer as well; but not one that helps the debate since some here assume that evidence can only be physical.

If it isn't physical, then it will be emotional (feelings) ... notoriously unreliable.

[L.A.]

Is it ever possible for a person to be 'right' about anything without somebody else being 'wrong'?
Need there always be some kind of 'casualty'?

This notion seems to permiate these forums like some perverse game certain people play here.
I HAVE to be right so that YOU must be wrong.

Nick

'Fuzzy Logic' is a branch of Artificial Intelligence that can sometimes give surprisingly good results. Instead of assigning a result as TRUE/FALSE it has a range of values between these states.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuzzy_logic

And I think that the reason that the system works so well is because it mimics the way we think. We can rarely be 100% sure of the truth of anything and have to make decisions based on the degree of truth that we believe exists.


Hence, we can never be sure that we are RIGHT - BEST GUESS is the most we can ever hope for 

[jeremyp]

But is anything really, truly knowable?

The square root of two cannot be expressed as the ratio of two whole numbers.

But that's meaningless unless someone is able to observe it.

No it isn't. 

[Rhiannon]

But is anything really, truly knowable?

The square root of two cannot be expressed as the ratio of two whole numbers.

But that's meaningless unless someone is able to observe it.

No it isn't.

Why?