Rex Kerr
1 min readSep 21, 2023

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Yes, what the success of the scientific method has revealed is that the model "there is an objective truth" is outrageously, spectacularly good, as if daily experience didn't already drive the point home beyond a reasonable doubt. (It did drive the point home to everyone but a few philosophers, but philosophers are tricky with their words, so some people have ended up nominally "doubting" things that their behavior reveals that they really don't.)

Statements like "the sun is a star" and "the speed of light is 299,792,458 meters per second" and "it hurts to stab one's arm with a stainless steel fork*" and so on are all objectively true. (*Nociceptor mutants excepted.) There's a lot to unpack in all of them, but that's okay. You just do it. There's a lot to unpack in walking to the dinner table and eating food. You just do it anyway.

The trick in any particular case is to determine whether there is such a truth to be had, and if so to find it (or narrow the bounds within which the truth most likely will be found).

When dealing with particular visions of the truth, the problem isn't the idea of truth, it's that "I have a vision" doesn't meet the baseline criteria for something to count. Value-laden statements especially are suspect, since value is not a fundamental physical property, it turns out.

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Rex Kerr
Rex Kerr

Written by Rex Kerr

One who rejoices when everything is made as simple as possible, but no simpler. Sayer of things that may be wrong, but not so bad that they're not even wrong.

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