universal truths and the universe (was Re: Three ideas)

WARNING:  Thinking about things like this can rot your brain or, worse, turn 
you into a philosopher.  On the other hand, thinking too little about things 
like this has potentially worse outcomes. Thinking too much about how much to 
think about thigns like this will definately rot you brain; I speek from 
experience.  :-)


Pat appears to be arguing that there are universal truths and that the 
universe, on which the notion of universal truths is based, has a single 
unbranching time line.  So it makes sense to have a statement like "Bette 
Davis played the part of a vulgar waitress in the move 'Of Human Bondage' in 
1934" be a universal truth no matter what the current time is.

It is possible for the universe to not have an unbranching time line and still 
have universal truths.  It is just that many of these universal truths have to 
be more complex.  So instead of the above statement one might need "Bette 
Davis played the part of a vulgar waitress in the move 'Of Human Bondage' in 
1934 at all time points after X" where X is a point in time.  For some X, even 
the one where the seance occurs (which is before 1934), this might be true and 
for other X it might be false.  But in either case each instance of this 
enhanced statement with X replaced by a time point has a universal truth.  
(Yes, this is a bit sloppy.)

The nature of time in the universe is unknown by any human at this time, as 
far as I know.  There could be a single unbranching time line.  Time could be 
like a tree, where at any point there is a single past but multiple futures.  
Time could be even more complex, where there are both multiple pasts and 
multiple futures.

It is also possible that those things that we think of as unchangeable 
physical truths, and thus universal, are not really universal, perhaps needing 
to be stated about a point in time, or time-space, or even something more 
complex.  It is even possible, I think, that those things we think of as 
unchangeable mathematical or even logical truths are not really universal.

Does this all matter for RDF?  Maybe.  What is certain is that some kinds of 
mixing of current truths and other truths can cause problems in RDF and in 
extensions of RDF.


peter


PS:  See 
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-CWM1zDcmWXs/TroD0VsX4WI/AAAAAAAAAVA/Jc5bN5xSTkc/s1600/ch930919.gif 
for an interesting universe where the laws of physics might have changed.

Received on Wednesday, 19 January 2022 16:32:18 UTC