Talk:Consensus theory of truth

message: In an article in "PC mag", John Dvorak discusses the utility of wikis. He encourages his readers to read this article, suggesting that it is this sort of truth that emerges on a wiki. See http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1835857,00.asp for details. Pcb21| Pete 12:44, 14 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Reference

message: As it currently stands, I think that the article needs quite a bit of work, and I have started to do some of it but don't have time right now to do any more.  Consequently I have left it in a lopsided state, i.e. by adding certain things and taking out a few others, it is not internally consistent.  But I thought it worthwhile inserting at least the beginnings of additions.  The article doesn't deal with counterfactual claims to validity, i.e. it seems too focussed on actual empirical consensus.  It doesn't deal with Habermas's huge batch of recent work on this (including claims to validity other than truth claims), as well as critiques of his work by e.g. Rescher (which I've only read a bit of, so I can't yet fully represent his arguments).  So I've just mentioned those things briefly but haven't had time to work them all out.  I also temporarily took out the stuff about metaphysical idealism because it didn't seem relevant to the main thrust of the consensus theory of truth.  Jeremy J. Shapiro 00:01, 30 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: State of the consensus theory of truth article

message: Began: Jon Awbrey 03:40, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Draft 1

message: Began: Jon Awbrey 20:34, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Draft 2

message: :Good stuff, Jon, though I feel that the middle paragraph is more of a defence for the other two, and may be excised with no problem. I rephrased a little bit, but stuck the text in more or less verbatim. Now we need to find some way of describing the history of this phrase, as well as the ways in which the phrase has been interpreted!
:Sorry if I mislaid your intent during the rephrase - please adjust accordingly. I also did a rough job of trying to link the remainder of the article as was, but clearly this needs to be rewritten eventually. (20040302)
:Thanks, I think the second paragraph is more like another try at formulating an "attribution principle" or a "truth in labeling law" that probably needs to be abstracted and packed to a separate article or norm location, so it can be referenced in brief whenever needed, if you folks don't already the moral equivalent somewhere.  Jon Awbrey 13:36, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually, I don't know for sure that Peirce "never" used the target phrase, but I am pretty sure that his theory of inquiry, which is what this is all about, is a whole different ball of yarn than what the phrase seems to mean on the contemporary neo-scene.  So it will be necessary to untangle that. Jon Awbrey 20:46, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Discussion

message: JA: It never made much sense to describe Peirce as having a consensus theory of truth, so I'm moving this material here until the useful bits can be sorted out to more fitting pages.  Jon Awbrey 04:52, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Geez, I thought you'd retired. ;)  This article does need work, though, so I'm glad to see you're tackling it. •Jim62sch• 07:31, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

text: The consensus theory of truth, as defined, is in accord with such a response:  We may never agree whether or not "she is beautiful", so the statement cannot be said to be true. But we cannot state that the counter-thesis ("she is not beautiful") is true either, otherwise we would agree on the first statement. Therefore, at least implicitly, Peirce states that according to the consensus theory of truth, not all statements can be assigned a truth value.
..Not to be confused with
The consensus theory of truth should not be confused with either subjectivism — the claim that what is true is whatever one happens to believe, or relativism — the belief that what is true is whatever is accepted by one's culture or community.
===Problem 1.  Lack of definition===
JA: There does not appear to be a consensual definition of consensus theory of truth.  The current introduction dances around that problem a bit, but maybe it needs to be stated more straightforwardly.
Again we have the fork with common usage versus technical usage, so we need to decide if this article is meant to be a documentation of popular usage or an article about a technical concept.
The only definition that I found so far in the standard philosophy references that I consulted is the one that refers to consensus gentium.  This was previously described as bare or naive consensus.  This seems to be recognized as a fallacy, equivalent to argumentum ad populum, and I do not not find any writers of note saying of themselves that they subscribe to such a theory.  Jon Awbrey 13:58, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Problems

message: JA: There does not appear to be a consensual definition of consensus theory of truth.  The current introduction dances around that problem a bit, but maybe it needs to be stated more straightforwardly.
Again we have the fork with common usage versus technical usage, so we need to decide if this article is meant to be a documentation of popular usage or an article about a technical concept.
The only definition that I found so far in the standard philosophy references that I consulted is the one that refers to consensus gentium.  This was previously described as bare or naive consensus.  This seems to be recognized as a fallacy, equivalent to argumentum ad populum, and I do not not find any writers of note saying of themselves that they subscribe to such a theory.  Jon Awbrey 13:58, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Problem 1.  Lack of definition

message: JA: I read a lot of Habermas in the 90's (years not Fahrenheit) and have a whole shelf of his works, and though his writing, as translated perhaps, makes Peirce seem like Spot and Puff by comparison, I'd be happy to check the statements about his having a consensus theory if the editors who added them would give me half a clue as to the loci cited.  I am highly suspicious of secondary sources, however, as it seems to be the general rule here that writers will often attribute a strawperson consensus theory to others while seldom confessing to anything so naive in their own writes.  Jon Awbrey 18:12, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Problem 2.  Lack of sources

message: This just removed from the intro.  No doubt there's more to say here, but any seasoned WP editor will recognize this is not how the article should say it. ... Kenosis 17:18, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Removed material from intro paragraph

message: How about moving these big sections of text to a subpage as a workspace, rather than filling up the discussion area?  Not everyone has high speed internet access. --Blainster 22:09, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Talk page clutter

message: JA: In view of Habermas' use of universal pragmatics to describe his own position, I propose moving the Habermas material to a section devoted to him on the pragmatic theory of truth page.  Either that or just merge it with the article on universal pragmatics.  Discussion?  Jon Awbrey 02:32, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Habermas &rarr; Pragmatic theories of truth 

message: I just discovered that the article Truth by consensus exists, which appears to cover essentially the same topic as this one. Does anyone else agree that the two articles should be merged? I suggest keeping this one, simply because it's the older article, and merging the contents of the other one here, but the other way around would work just as well too. Robofish (talk) 12:52, 8 July 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah, I agree with you. We don't need two articles, we just need one good one. After reading this, I cannot believe that there are any philosphers that would even allow the assert this form of "truth" into a discussion. For example, those who would subscribe to this form of truth will fall prey to the consequences of believing in the portents of dreams e.g. the horrifying tale from Ray Bradbury's The Illustrated Man: Every one of the last few remaining adult humans has the same dream, that the world will end on a certain day. So they all come together and agree that they will poison their children on the night before the cataclysm. They do. The next morning unfolds -- just another gorgeous day: Mankind has distroyed itself, but the world did not come to an end. Kurt Goedel also mentions a similar one (this is more subtle -- having to do with relations between concepts as opposed to the relations between a concept and an object): "However, in truth, experiences are not the object of most other sciences either. E.g., animals seen in hallucinations are not the objects of zoology. On the other hand, a general mathematical theorem, in a sense, has the mathematical experiences relating to the special cases as its object. Here, again, there is no substantial difference between mathematics and other sciences." (Is mathematics syntax of language? reprinted in Kurt Goedel Collected Works Volume III Unpublished Essays and Lectures 1995:359)." Unfortunately neither of these are overt criticisms of this philosphy of truth. BillWvbailey (talk) 13:47, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

text: I oppose this merge because of the great difficulty the community has in dealing with these issues. Although the division appears to be a POV fork, there's no practical way around that at present. I don't think that we can have the fallacy and the nuanced analysis of this epistomology on the same page. In the long run, maybe... but, for right now, please do not merge. --Wragge (talk) 21:07, 26 August 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merge 

message: "A consensus theory of truth is the process of taking statements to be true simply because people generally agree upon them."
... this is just not true (oh the irony). Seriously, the consensus theory of truth doesn't say that. Maybe this is what some philosophers or especially unknowing amateurs conclude from a theory of consensus, but this is neither actual message nor core point, so I don't really think it's an appropriate first sentence... (How philosophic thoughts are treated here is generally pretty sad, but anyways...)
A better one would f.e. be: "A consensus theory of truth is a philosophical believe in the #Theory of Knowledge stating that there is no objective truth existing or observable and that therefore the only term of 'truth' we think about and use is one generated from human ourselves, genereated from the perception of the majority of humans and the majority of observations."
134.3.243.131 (talk) 22:39, 23 October 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  General Understanding 

message: You get more hits if you Google "Elvis is alive" than for "Elvis is dead". Suggest this "fact" is added to this wiki article. 82.25.154.11 (talk)  —Preceding undated comment added 13:01, 6 February 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Google Elvis test