[WikiEN-l] History of "Verifiability, not truth"

[Phil Sandifer]

On Mon, Apr 7, 2008 at 2:34 PM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com>
wrote:
>
> How can we know if something is true or not? (With or without a
> capital 't') You're into the realms of philosophy there. The best we
> can do is show that something is verifiable. It's impossible to show
> that it is true.
>

Most people, when they use the word "true," do not display a deep
epistemological crisis at hand. In practice, most of us judge things as true
or false constantly, with no particular trauma or difficulty, and there is
relatively little that this is remotely controversial about. To introduce
epistemological doubt into the equation is an interesting philosophical
point that has spawned millenia of discussion, but it does not seem to me to
resemble how people actually behave in a practical situation. Simply put,
most people do not suffer any particular crisis or difficulty talking about
truth, even when talking to each other.


> The fact that it hasn't been changed is implicit evidence of a
> consensus. That's how consensus decision making works in the majority
> of cases on Wikipedia - someone does something and if no-one objects,
> it sticks.
>

There is no clear decision point here, though. It was a death by a thousand
papercuts as far as I can tell, where statements steadily deformed from
their original (and sensible) meanings to a detached slogan that is
transparently silly to any reader not steeped in the most wonky of our wonky
policy discussions.

-Phil