Re. your discussion, it sounds heavily like a non-argument completely obsessed with definitions. In other words, to continue a la the "tree in a witness-less forest," there's nothing different that I can see in the expectations held between you and Azymandius -- he just wants to banter with you about "the meaning of sound" (whether if at the speed of light the socks could still be said to be "black", etc.).
His interjection of the state of the eyes seeing, the brain interpreting, the medium through with the light is reflected, and whether or not one is traveling at the speed of light seems to have no bearing on much of anything in terms of the actual "territory."
To illustrate, how about this approach?
State: "My socks are made of 100% cotton fibers with these properties, woven together, and then saturated with the chemical composition xyz, which when viewed by any non-colorblind human on the earth through air in adequate light produces a black shade."
Followed by: "Does my speed relative to the socks, the state of my eyes, the medium through which I'm attempting to view the socks, or anything else that affects my state, have any bearing on the material and chemical composition of the socks?"
If his answer is, "No," then you agree and the question is dissolved.
In other words, the discussion was revolving around "words" in "quotes" that "might" just mean "different" things to different "people." in the end... you don't actually expect anything different about the composition of the socks and thus the statement "the socks are black" is an accurate representation of a universal truth given that it maps to the territory, "the socks are composed of x and to all properly functioning human eyes in non-colorblind persons appear as what we have defined as the color 'black' or some shade thereabouts."
If he answers, "Yes," then put one of the socks a bag filled with vegetable oil, gouge out his eyes and perform a frontal lobotomy, then put him in a spaceship and have him fly around at near-the-speed-of-light for a while. Upon his return, remove the sock and compare it to the other sock (control) and see if it changed. (Not all that different from suggesting a test of gravity's universal truth-ness.)
The best we can do is make better maps. To spend one's time arguing that if our sensory equipment were different then our maps would be different seems fruitless :)
I agree with you. And even if I rewrite my first section, I intend to keep my original socks example.
Nevertheless, our discussion did raise a point: "truth is universal" sounds dogmatic, and people may be put of by this. If I have not written it, he probably wouldn't have commented at all. The problem is, I haven't found a line which is (1) as accurate, and (2) not as loaded.
"truth is universal" sounds dogmatic
I guess, but can't certain things able to hold such a status by their empirical nature? In other words, dogmatic connotes this to me:
Perhaps your conception of rationality is that it is rational to believe the words of the Great Teacher, and the Great Teacher says, “The sky is green,” and you look up at the sky and see blue. If you think: “It may look like the sky is blue, but rationality is to believe the words of the Great Teacher,” you lose a chance to discover your mistake.
Looking around and having everyone, including yourself, see and determine that the territory really "is" (that is, is universal), seems to be more of an empirically-derived "dogmatism." I see that as quite different from the big-brain-powerful-guy-said-it type of dogmatism.
That commenter might just be a troll looking to nitpick, as in perhaps your statement was fine as it was, but you can't satisfy everyone and his commenting is making you second guess?
I might be seeing this all wrong, though. I'm hoping you'll get some other comments as maybe I'm seeing things too plainly... maybe you are right and there's something about your statement that invited dissent unnecessarily.
After having submitted it here, I published my essay on my web site, then submitted it to reddit (on r/religion and on r/atheism respectively). While I was very pleased by Less Wrong (your feedback were quite informative), reddit was quite… disappointing.
On r/atheism, my essay was ignored into oblivion in less than an hour. I guess there's just too much activity there, and I got lost in the flood. There's one comment though, which lead me to seriously question my use of the word "universal". I feel that "truth is universal", though accurate, doesn't sound obvious enough. And I'd like to avoid this heavy dependency.
On r/religion, my essay is still in the front page. There are a few votes (5 ups besides my own, and 2 or 3 downs). No comments at all. I guess there's too little activity here.
Overall, I'm now confident this essay is now good enough for my family to read.