As far as I can tell with the way the debate regarding science has played out, most scientists cannot abandon the idea that there is a "real" world to study (a sentiment I share), since without this faith much of the personal motivation also disappears. But scientists also are now more aware that empirical knowledge can also be problematic. When you read scientific press-releases nowadays they tend to be much more humble in the face of uncertainty (doesn't help that in Italy, it seems they can be jailed when they are wrong! http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/oct/23/jailing-italian-seismologists-scientific-community).

As far as I know, we live in the real world, and this reality we encounter is received by sense and wisdom. That is we must not divide our conception intosensitive and rational.from the very encountering with reality both sense and wisdom work together, and the reality is received by both. I have several articles in English and PErsian, u may refer. Qualitative and quantitative research are not in opposite to each other. EVery research is partially quality or quantity oriented.

Gholamreza,

Can you explain more about what you mean by sense and wisdom? Are you advocating a kind of hybrid approach to determining truth? If so, how does it work?

Dear friend

Hi

I would like to inform u that there are some approaches to epistemology. Some believe as the real world exist, the others think that the world exist as we exist and we think that it exists. So in latter case everything and its existence depends on us. It is subjective approach and deals with relativity.

In another view, we have soul and mind. Mind is a faculty of soul just like other faculties. we have internal faculties and externals for soul. Externals such as the faculty of vision, the faculty of hearing and so on. The internal faculty acts as the faculty of mind, the faculty of reasoning, the faculty of mental storage and so on.

When we confront with reality, both sense and wisdom act simultaneously. The wisdom differs between two or more things or conceptions. So both of them are present in every conception.

We must know that the reason judges according to the approaches which we choose. If we believe in subjective approach, the reason judges according to it , otherwise, the result would be different.

According to me, the real world exists, we encounter with reality. First we perceive everything ontologically, first by soul, very then by mind. Up to this case, all people are the same provided that their sense and wisdom are safe and correct.

Then when we try to communicate with others, we put sign, or any kind of representation by agreement or we accept them by learning from others. and in this case the epistemology goes on.

This question is one of the examples of the famous remark

Epimenides the Cretan says: all Cretans are liars

You are part of the world/nature how can you objectively judge yourself?

This answer is very interesting. It means that there is no difference between human and stone, because both are part of the world. I think human is one who knows and knows that he knows, therefore he can judge, on other things and himself

Indeed tell me what knowing menas

Gholamreza

I realize now that my previous entry is too short, seeing that you contributed quite heavily here. Apologies for the typo BTW, "menas" should be read "means"

What I meant with my question is that does nature itself know that there "living" and non-living objects. And what is a living object anyhow when you consider the bigger picture of a world or as others in this topic call it "nature" and what is "nature". Nature itself does not care how we humans call it or describe it. It is our personal human choice to poke into it with our means. We could also do without this poking.

Brink

To me knowing means a potential in human being that make him to know things, and the main example is for himself. that is everyone knows himself by presence, that is every one is present near himself and it is obvious, no one can deny it. then he can know other things provided that they are present near him as well.

I think, every body has soul as Aristotle also mentioned, it is far from mind. Mind is a potential of soul, we must differ between these tow.

Let me sure that I have your first name right:

Is it Fadaie? My first name is Harry.

Your answer does not really define knowing. You indicate that it is a potential to know things. Do you mean to understand why some things are as they are or why events occur or why some events are the result or related to other events?

You mention in a reply that as far as you know you live in the real world. To tell you my truth I do not know what reality means. I have a concept of my surroundings and myself that seems to be shared by those around me this is what I would call "common" sense.

or communis opnio.

To go back to the original question

"How do we determine what is" true" {and how does (personal) subjectivity interact with scientific investigations.}"

I like to ask you what the relation is between knowing and truth is, because knowledge is needed to decide that something is true. Actually I do not know what true means. the questioneer does not define "what" should be true.

There is a clue in the last part of the question: at least in natural science there should by not be any subjectivity. Therefore science is expressed in mathematics that by our own choice is the language to write down for others what we mean with the results of the investigations

Also, please publish your texts here on Researchgate, so I can read them

Great discussion. To clarify my question just a bit more - I know I am wading into deep waters here. I think it is clear that we all have our own subjective, idiosyncratic perspectives on the world around us, including those of us who are scientists, along with our scientific investigations. Given that subjectivity exists, is there a common ground that we as scientists can agree upon to determine the nature of our world? There will always be paradoxes (eg, classical vs quantum physics), but within domains can we arrive at the "truth"? If so, how is this accomplished?

Neil

What is the diffence between nature and world?

What due you mean with true. The you mentn paradoxes in theoretical physics which is one of those very small domains in our concept of things.

as shown by Pat in a sister question here there are different kind of truth and truism. statements like there. Is a sun a uism but will not bring the perception of ournsurroundings any further

Back to science and its most basic domain physics. This is based on postulates and paramters that we all agree upon but what these paramters are remains fully undefined. Think of mass gravity time space. And also the postulates come for the blue but. We accept these and can derive some new relations between parameters and make predictions on coming events like where the bulletin goes or in. QM which light will be absorbed by a new atom.

where is the truth in this approach?

Hi, everybody

First, my first name is gholamreza u may call it Reza.

Then, there are two questions, one the definition of knowing, the second, the truth.

As I told, knowing is one of the faculty of human, as a creature. It means, u come to a position which Is different from before, as I did not know u and u me, but now I know u and u me somehow, we all can increase this status. Some very pure concepts can not be defined, or they are very difficult to define them. One of them is knowing, another is reality. Reality is reality, for example, u are real, one can find him that exist, u find that the sun shines, u catch its warmth by your sense and your wisdom confirms it, so it is reality, and everybody comes to know it. It is after that, we come to common sense, that is my experience is very similar to your experience, and these two, are reality too. If we differ in judging it relates to our backgrounds, but our judgment does not change the pure reality as to this example, sun. Sun is sun, here and there and through the history, beyond that there may be some judgement which may be personal and subjective.

As to the second question.what is the truth,

In our word of reality, whatever we see, or touch or hear, are real, if not we cannot decide for anything, it means that we r dreaming, although dreaming is a real phenomena. These things to me are real and true. But when we by and by separate from the concrete reality, and everybody interferes his own consideration to interpret the things, the reality differs and separates from truth. This very often occurs in concepts, not in concrete objects. Therefore, I myself is real and true, but my own way of thinking toward or about the world is real but not true. Because, my thinking is something which exist, and mentally I can point to it, but it may not be true, because it is mixed with my personal thought.. It may be true if it matches witty some criteria..

I really apologize my disturbance, I hope I could define my idea..

As to the word world and nature, I could not really understand what u mean. World is world and nature is nature and they may refer to one thing somehow, although there may be some differences in meaning.

Neil: an earlier entry was full of typos induced by my daughters' ipad

Here is the right wording

a question to you

What is the difference between nature and world?

What do you mean with "true". Then you mention paradoxes in theoretical physics, which is one of those very small domains in our concept of things.

Pat Bailey in a sister question -Does certainty or absolute truth exist?- argues that there are different kinds of truths and truism. Statements like "there is a sun" is a truism but will not bring our perception of our surroundings/world any closer.

Back to science and its most basic domain physics. This is based on postulates and parameters. It appears that we all agree upon them, but what these parameters actually are remains fully undefined. Think of mass gravity time space. And also the postulates come from the blue. We accept these and can derive new relations between the parameters and make predictions on coming events like where the bullet goes. In QM we can predict which light frequency will be absorbed by an atom. That's it

Where does the truth come in in this approach?

Reza,

Very interesting distinction between "real" and "true." This distinction makes intuitive sense to me, since it allows a common sense approach to commonly experienced phenomena (eg, feeling the warmth of the sun), while also acknowledging that there is an inherent subjectivity in the interpretation of data that takes place in our minds.

Harry,

I understand much of what you are saying - I think - but it seems to me that we have to "drive a stake in the ground" some place (perhaps what you term "postulates"). Without such common ground or givens, we are going to be cast adrift in a sea of subjectivity. Science operates under certain assumptions based on past studies, and then if the "truth" of a phenomenon needs to be altered, then it is done so after the disconfirming evidence is verified and reproduced.

Are you questioning the scientific method of exploration, as it is commonly understood. If you wish to make a semantic distinction for any terms, please do so. Question after question is not so helpful.

Neil

I agree with you that measurements are the basis of science. One also call these observations. For instance the time it takes for an apple to fall from a tree. Everyone observes / measures the same time for the same apple from the same height. However there is no definition of time.

Then the abstraction: the apple falls because of gravity or in other words due to the force of two masses attracting each other. Mass is something that we use to describe whether an object accelerates more rapidly or less rapidly by a force.

Actually these are the Newtonian "laws" or better "postulates" of classical mechanics.

In QM the classical postulates have been upgraded in assuming that objects at the atomic scale have not a specific location but are described by probability. In this way observations / measurements on electron scattering can be explained.

Harry,

We have measurements or observations in science, and upon this basis we both make conclusions about phenomena and create additional hypotheses to explore. It is certainly understood that time/space impacts the perspective of each observer - Einstein clearly demonstrated this with his thought experiments.

Are you arguing then that the "truth" or veracity of an observation depends upon the observer. If so, then I have no objection to including this information into the calculation of the truth. For example, if we wish to determine the point in space/time of an object, then can we not simply triangulate multiple observations to arrive at the correct location?

Neil

Observation is not science. Science is "explaining" why observations follow a rule and what is more to PREDICT what will happen in a quite similar situation. This prediction is based on physical laws/postulates which are invented by Man and not something that is inherent in Nature.

Truth is a subjective human concept and does not apply in science, though it has a meaning in logic.. at the mentioned sister site here Pat Bailey explains all of this very nicely

Harry,

I see no contradiction between your views and mine. Patently, observations are not science, but are used by scientists to form a provisional view of the world, Nature, if you will. Moreover, scientists are in the business of predicting outcomes based on previous observations/conclusions, which helps verify within our time/space limitations, the characteristics of Nature.

I agree that there is never absolute truth in science, but I believe we can say that we are approaching truth (ie, a factually correct view of reality). This would be my view, at least until an entirely new paradigm arises, in which case we must make major modifications to our understanding of Nature.

Neil

yes I think we start to agree. Only your term verify does not appeal to me. Science is our human view of a very very limited part of Nature. What the "characteristics" of Nature are is not of concern in science

Very interesting discussion. I agree that that the observation is not science, but science is based heavily upon it. Or may say without observation no science is appeared. Next, I agree we try to catch truth, but as we are limit and our experience s are limit, so we cannot say that what we reached is totally truth but they have some portion of truth. There is absolute truth, but it cannot be reached trough science, because it is based upon our experience and our measurement. U know that the tools for measurement progress, so The result of our exploration and explanation may change. Some sort of absolute truth, is not in the realm of science, especially positivist one. For ex. We need knowledge and science, these are truth, if u go through the history of Man U will find that knowledge has been always useful to improve, this is a fact and the facts in many cases are true.

If u try to find true statement, u will find many but they may not be necessary of the kind of experimental science. Other examples are, there are many characteristics in the nature, they can be explored by human effort, everything is subject to change, knowledge is power, or the tool of power, we must try to survive..., these r facts and truth and nobody can deny them. But how we can improve, or change and ... Are subject to science and depends on how we look at them, which methodology we select and so forth.

Reza

In my recent answers I restricted myself to the current concept of physics only. Physics is the description of very defined, localized and limited systems, so it does not teach us anything of the real world. However physics is a good learning school of how a framework works. from intuitive parameters like time, space, mass and postulates to predictions. Not more and not less

Ruxandra,

Thanks for the Schumacher book recommendation. I've begun reading it and I think it's certainly relevant to our discussion. So far, his main point seems to be that "the map is not the terrain," meaning of course that there is so much more in the world to try to understand and articulate than can be captured in scientific investigations.

Harry

U began from a very good point. Physics is the part of reality if not all of it. We begin from physics and then go further. we see something, which is physics, meanwhile we postulate and perceive it. This perception is not physics, or pure physics. This means that from the very beginning of getting in touch with reality we know reality by employing physics and metaphysics . In other word, knowing is the combination of physics and mental work. So physics does show us the real world. The real world is defined in physics, and metaphysics.. For ex. I exist and am part of the world and I know which is not physical, although some try to define it physically.so the physics is a good school and leads us to beyond physics.

Reality is within yourself. Nothing is true unless it is false by others! Physics has also something known as " meta-physics", consider it.

Thomas the Aquinas when beginning the first lesson of phylosophy of the academic years at la Sorbonne was used to come into the classroom with an apple in his hand saying 'this is an apple, who disagrees please leave tha class'.

Good times, now we are so old and forceless to take seriously the 'skeptic hypothesis' when talking od science, clearly if in the real life we should look at our wife/husband in the bed with our best friend we will have no doubt to become crazy without taking into consideration this could be only a construct of our mind ...

Reality comes from the Latin word Res that means thing, if we do not accept reality as true (whitout putting at the first level a minority of possible errors due to fake perception) we will not go anywhere....

wadi

if reality is within us so we have reality in the number of people, past, present and future.This leads us to relativity. This is not reality it is our thinking or judgement. reality is reality by itself, and it does not depend on us. we can judge on it. .As I told sun is sun, for every body and without everybody, but we can judge on how to use or make benefit of it .

U are real if all people think that u are unreal,. but your thinking may be considered as false or true. it is subject to evidence.

I rather agree that physics has something known as metaphysics, because knowing everything has tow sides, physics and metaphysics

Any knowledge of the world we have (not only in science, even our presumption our friends love us, or the kind of knowledge we get from real art..) has a meaning because Truth exists (otherwise life should be useless) but in the same time they are only approximations of truth, a good sign of how good the approxmation is can be checking the distance of our knowledge from reality 'Adaequatio Intellectus et Rei' that can be achieved by many different metric depending on different contexts: from least square estimation, to the real happiness an action provokes in our soul.

Alessandro,

I was looking at your field of study and your publications. You are much too intelligent for this discussion. We won't be able to stay with you. Just kidding, of course - you are more than welcome to join our little debate.

Thank you for your kind words dear Neil, but I am convinced that having two adolescent daughters and a wife with whom I'm married since 24 years is much more important an experience to talk about this theme than experience in biophysics or statistics.

Alessandro,

Interesting - I also have an adolescent daughter and have been married 22 years. How do you think this experience of family has informed your view of "truth" in the world? How would you know if your experience in your family is typical or atypical? Perhaps this is the point, that everyone's subjective experience of the world - including those of your two daughters and wife - is each distinctive and has its own highly individualistic view of truth. How does relationship truth differ from scientific truth?

Count me in too:

but two adult daughters and married almost as long as the two of you together

Neil

It seems that in physics there seems to be a common basis by which we all appreciate the same outcome of an experiment. This is what I would call "objective" science. Actually when there is a discrepancy between the outcome at different labs we immediately think of subjectivity in the data handling. Reproducibility is a key theme.

That maybe does not help you any further in arriving at your answer, but you mentioned mechanics and QM prominently in this thread

Harry,

Good one! - I see a pattern developing here, but only N=3. In any case, any comments on what you have learned about truth in family vs your science life? I have found that relationships in all areas of life color and influence my experience of it. How does family influence the things we ponder and how we investigate them?

Neil

My family and job/science I kept and keep fully separated. Even though my daughters are PhDs in chemistry as well we specialized in different areas. The only decision they made for me was picking out the most beautiful SEM photograph of particles, but this on an esthetic basis

To Neil: any family experience is both typical and atypical, as Chesterton aptly said the real adventure is the family because we did not choose it (like in any real adventure we are not the screenplayers), if you go chasing lovers that tell you you are the best, if you prefer not to face the huge divide that separates males from females (sometimes they look as another species) and prefer stay with your peers (in a monastery, in a street gang or in a hippy community is the same) you do not know what adventure is and thus you cannot understand anything of the true/flase simplyy because you are going around looking at your face reflexed in mirrors (the face of people similar to you even if they are chinses, or indians, or anything else, this is typical of scientists, speaking only with scientists like you or in the grat cities, knowing only people of the same ideas..). But when you have to deal with the REAL DIVERSITY of an adolescent daughter you are constrained by your deep soul, but even by your intestine to love infinitely more than you can even think saying horrible stupid things, the same ideas you tought where the real enemy you fought, false, dangerous, and notwithstanding that you love her in the same way, you can start understand something..I think this is very very typical, but we are used to think that the rule is 'love the peers and who thinks like you' that seems typical but is simply fool and demoniac....

In synthesis: to understand that reality exists you must not take the ideas too seriously, look for the flesh instead, this is why I'm so comfortable with my Roman Catholic Religion we are very concentated on flesh and on people much more than on ideas...

But I think we must take the life and its related concepts seriously. Because, if not now sometime we reach to a serious point, we should decide! If I exist, it means that reality exist, and if I think, it means the thinking as a reality exist, when u think as I think, it means u and your thinking exist, when I can tell u about my feeling or thinking and u understand it and we can come to an agreement, it shows that agreement or coming to an agreement exist. But if we want to see if they r true or not, it needs another way to investigate. For the nature, they are real and true, but for our thinking about them even according to our research, or scientific investigation it depends on our way of investigations and the tools we used. In science, we can not reach the ultimate answer.

"How does the researcher's personal subjectivity interact with scientific investigations?" I think, in much many ways we generally imagine.

Several days ago, your question remind me "A Guide for the perplexed" by E.F. Schumacher. Now, your question makes me read again Masanobu Fukuoka, and think (and think again) to his path from a plant pathology researcher to a natural farmer and philosopher (The One Straw Revolution, 1978).

Neil,

Two weeks ago you asked this in the discussion above:

"Given that subjectivity exists, is there a common ground that we as scientists can agree upon to determine the nature of our world? There will always be paradoxes (eg, classical vs quantum physics), but within domains can we arrive at the "truth"? If so, how is this accomplished?"

At the end of all discussion and debate it seems to me that we, as human knowers, are the ones who bestow the status of "fact" upon a given situation or state of affairs. We speak of "brute facts" but in truth, as the conversation above reveals (to a certain degree), there are no such entities that "force" themselves upon our consciousness. It is we who, both individually and corporately, decide that something is true and factual. Thus, though we would like to deal with a pure science and with matters that are self-evident and self-authenticating, we always must have recourse to the social domain in order to be able to identify and agree on what is true. Reaching for consensus regarding what is and what is not factual seems a necessary aspect of your quest. This is why science cannot simply ignore the social sciences.

Roger I absolutely agree with you when you say, "social factors themselves require theories independent of them to help decide their degree of importance in analyzing the adequacy and circumspection of specific theories." I did not mean that science is "merely social" but I meant that in our hunger for pure science and pure truth we may think we can arrive at the self-evidently true. I'm merely stating that the social dimension of such truth is inescapable. Believe it or not, that was an epiphany to me when I realized it a few years ago. Science seemed to have a different status from the other disciplines, in that it dealt with bedrock "truth". When I perceived that we confer the status of "fact" upon scientific states of affairs it shook my previously inflated perception of science.

Keith

I come back to your original question and its added sentence

"How do we determine what is true in the world? Is empiricism the answer?"

What empiricism are you thinking of. Since I joined the discussion here I started reading and found several philosophies with empiricism in their title.

Do you mean "instrumentalism"?

Determining the level of truth is usually based on subjective judgement.

Yes, with a biased perspective, one's judgement about a truth would always be subjective. What is true for one person may not be true up to the same level for another.

An individual will determine for self what is true in the world. The Truth however, remains the same. The Truth is not known as such, or not understood, or not visualised the same by us as a group/community/public/s. Our understanding is limited to our information, knowledge and wisdom. No two people have the same finger prints, let alone information, knowledge and wisdom.

There is however only one Truth and it has to be infinite. It can not be static as one as well as within itself as it has no boundry of any kind, unless we construct a boundry to feel at ease.

Totality, or the Truth, is not complete without the individual/s and their truths, as we are a part of the total Truth. We are experiencing it from within the Truth, therefore can't even define it as a separate entity.

Now it is here the scientist gets caught. No matter how objective one wishes to remain, one is limited by his own humanistic capabilities at each moment that changes continuously. Also s/he is limited by her information, knowledge and wisdom. If we include the space, time and context, it would become a nightmare to find who's truth is true ...unless we believe that "there is only one Truth but we all see it differently due to our unique subjectivity, no matter how smart we feel we are."

Good question and exploration of the various minds the way they think, act and express.

Cheers!!

An equation that can be proved is truth for me

John,

Granted, equation proofs are one type of truth. But what of the more ambiguous topics? Can we prove the existence (or non-existence, even more difficult!) of God or of the presence of intelligent life in the universe. Are we relegated to expressing the "truth" of these propositions in probabilistic terms?

We must make a distinction of the world entities. A first kind of entities are the "constant" rigid macroscopic entities. For these experience imposes a high fidelity intuition. From this we may add up with analytical developments of these entities. Forr these entities there is an agreement for most observers. This fact transforms the subjective views of the observers into an objective truth! For the second type of entities which are "variable" and thus involve some kind of vagueness, there is no agreement and so there is a pluralism of "truths". The first type of entities give up classical mathematics or classical mechanics. The second type of entities requires non-standard techniques, and mostly Category Theory, in order to develop some kind of "truth" and method of study.

By leaving and obtain experience! And if you plan to use this experience, you should know that it is always under revision.

What is believed may not be true, and what is true may be unbelievable.

Hi to everybody 

I think first we must define the words. Reality and truth r two words we should define. Reality derives from real. All things in the world r real objectively or subjectively. It means all physical real things r  real and they r truth also. All our perceptions from these real things r real and truth. That is if u and we see sun in the sky the presence of sun in front of us is real and it's picture in our mind without any interpretation is real and truth.

thus all other things can be substituted by sun in this example.

then if we interprate the sun or any other object according to our previous perceptions or understanding, these r subjective and differs according to us. These interpretations may be truth or may be false. That is if our interpretation accord the reality it is truth and if not it is not truth. But in both cases they r real.

therefore when we encounter with real things at first glance and without any judgment 

these r real and truth, afterwards, with our interpretations reality and truth differs from each other.

i hope my idea works.

Good discussion, however my less than 3 years old son says, "see, I told you" and I wonder how this stays with most of us throughout our life ...your 'paper' your research or mine, doesn't matter so long my long haired (never trimmed) son Rohan keeps saying, "see I told you." Hope we stop telling and start learning "as I told you before" that "I am nobody trying to understand everybody to become somebody to make a difference to the lives of those who have been under-served for whatever reason" ...love you all, neverteless!!!

Truth and time are inextricably linked.

The gravity of a truth is demonstrated by its durability in performance over time.