Is Truth Ethical?

[Cavernio]

Re: Is Truth Ethical?

The question is basically if the search for the truth outweighs most other values. I don't think it does, not for humanity as a whole, even though personally it does. That said, society should allow for variations in values, so that since I value the truth, I should be allowed to pursue it.

Foilman brings up a worthwhile point in his story about Galileo. His conclusions are a little different from mine though. He's saying that because the truth will eventually come out, there's no point in quickening it's pace. I think that Galileo disagrees with you. I think anyone who's died because of their scientific beliefs disagrees with you. (Killing someone because they don't follow your beliefs is wrong, regardless if their beliefs are truthful or not, but that's another ethical point really.)
False beliefs are perfectly fine as long as they aren't a detriment to society. If your beliefs involve killing people who don't follow those beliefs, then that's bad. If your beliefs make scientific advancement hard or impossible, like denying evolution, then those beliefs should also be fixed because stopping science stops technology and will ultimately be a detriment. In this case, the detriment is beyond the value of simply piqueing our curiosity in our search for the truth.

[foilman8805]

Re: Is Truth Ethical?

No, don't get me wrong, I certainly believe that the truth should be made known as soon as possible (and ethics would demand as such), but it's always that there are deterrents to the process, i.e. the Catholic church regarding Galilieo's confirmation of heliocentric solar system.

Look back in history and you'll see those individuals who were coming up with absolute truths weren't met with open arms. The truth is almost never embraced immediately, but eventually, everyone comes around. That's what I'm trying to say.

[devonin]

Re: Is Truth Ethical?

The issue with Galileo though, is that he really didn't have all that much by way of -proof- that he was correct. There wasn't an especially strong reason to believe him at the time. In fact, it wasn't until Copernicus and later Kepler that the heliocentric view of the solar system actually became what we might call "proven"

There has been suggestion, experimentation and evidence to suggest that the earth is a sphere and not a plane dating back thousands of years, but it wasn't really -proven- until someone set off in one direction, kept on in that direction, and ended up back where they started.

[foilman8805]

Re: Is Truth Ethical?

There has been suggestion, experimentation and evidence to suggest that the earth is a sphere and not a plane dating back thousands of years, but it wasn't really -proven- until someone set off in one direction, kept on in that direction, and ended up back where they started.

Galileo offered his theory of tides as physical proof for the heliocentric solar system.

Are you saying that the only way to prove something is to physically undertake it? Heliocentrism was proven without physical space travel.

In fact, it wasn't until Copernicus and later Kepler that the heliocentric view of the solar system actually became what we might call "proven"

So Copernicus, who died a hundred before Galileo did, had already proven the existence of a heliocentric solar system? Same with Kepler. He was alive at the same time as Galileo, and he died about twelve years before him. It's likely that Galileo had access to both of their works, and along with his theory of tides and his own invention of the telescope, was able to cement the foundation for heliocentrism in my opinion.

[devonin]

Re: Is Truth Ethical?

Galileo offered his theory of tides as physical proof for the heliocentric solar system.

Are you saying that the only way to prove something is to physically undertake it? Heliocentrism was proven without physical space travel.

No...I'm saying that there's a difference between having some corroborative evidence to support a hypothesis and proving your hypothesis.

So Copernicus, who died a hundred before Galileo did, had already proven the existence of a heliocentric solar system? Same with Kepler. He was alive at the same time as Galileo, and he died about twelve years before him. It's likely that Galileo had access to both of their works, and along with his theory of tides and his own invention of the telescope, was able to cement the foundation for heliocentrism in my opinion.

Copernicus suffered from the same condition that Galileo did, namely that while he had a predictive model that seemed to bear out in the short term, to support his hypothesis, that wasn't the same thing as proof.

Kepler was the one who was the most effective and the closest to actually correct in his theories, and Galileo dismissed many of Kepler's actually correct ideas as foolish.

Lemme grab from Wikipedia: "Galileo dismissed as a "useless fiction" the idea, held by his contemporary Johannes Kepler, that the moon caused the tides.[64] Galileo also refused to accept Kepler's elliptical orbits of the planets,[65] considering the circle the "perfect" shape for planetary orbits."

So again, as a predictive model for a heliocentric solar system, Galileo had a reasonable amount of accuracy and was reasonably close to correct but was much further from -proving- it than Kepler.

[Cavernio]

Re: Is Truth Ethical?

I actually thought that astronomers outside of europe where the first to determine that the earth wasn't the center of the solar system. Someone from the middle east I thought.

[Cavernio]

Re: Is Truth Ethical?

The truth is almost never embraced immediately, but eventually, everyone comes around. That's what I'm trying to say.

Sounds too much like the truth is always in the last place you look. :-p

Sry for double post.