dybmh
דניאל יוסף בן מאיר הירש
If possible, would you please you provide another source for this?
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Metaphysics of Gender.
- Thread starter John D. Brey
- Start date
If possible, would you please you provide another source for this?
John D. Brey
Well-Known Member
. . . That's a tautology: we study and do science because we are creatures that study and do science. Tautologies are true. But they're true like a statue is true. They can't move, breathe, or function like a pack mule or a horse and buggy; they can't take us anywhere nor even carry some of the burden.
People whose longing glance in search of truth can be stopped by a statue are technically blind so far as truth is concerned. . . To perceive truth you've got to see through the statue and to do that the eye must be able to pierce the veil of untruth represented by the marbled tautology.
John
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John D. Brey
Well-Known Member
Truth is like mind: two words that describe the same entity in different ways for creatures trapped in space and time and its inherent disunity and infinite relativity.
I keep trying to think of a fresh, improvisational way to speak of truth, and find myself unable to say much more, or say it better, than I did in an essay nearly twenty years ago:
Truth exists only in dialogue. It gives up the ghost the moment it’s nailed-down to wood, chiseled in stone, or even written down on paper. The moment it’s chiseled in stone, the stone tablets where it’s chiseled must be broken to pieces; the rock must be struck and made to bleed; for the blood of truth must be on the lips (not the hand or forehead) of those who would gain sustenance from it (Exodus 17:6).
In marked opposition to every attempt to “present” truth --- truth “makes itself felt” in the truism that truth has no presence. --- It doesn't exist. --- To exist it has to become static and dead; and then it’s no longer truth. Therefore, truth doesn't exit in words; it’s not present in words; but only in dialogue. Truth keeps moving forward in dialogue. It can't stop long enough to exist, otherwise its time will come, and in that moment, it’ll find itself trapped between various cross-currents . . . or even cross-members (Matthew 27:38).
To paraphrase Sartre: The truth that exists in conscious dialogue, “continually experiences itself as the nihilation of its past being.” Truth can’t be found in a place or time. Therefore, the concept of “finding truth” is an abortion of it. --- The process of “finding truth” represents asphyxiation through induction. Induction is the placenta that chokes truth to death in that abortion called “finding truth” (Ezekiel 16:6). Nailing truth down (in speech or text) makes truth immanent. --- Yet those who try to nail truth down with words and concepts have simply exchanged iron for icons; the goal hasn't changed a bit. ---- The sound of a hammer striking a nail is indistinguishable from the sound of every statement presented as “truth.”
The Sacramental Protocol of Hermeneutics.
In marked opposition to every attempt to “present” truth --- truth “makes itself felt” in the truism that truth has no presence. --- It doesn't exist. --- To exist it has to become static and dead; and then it’s no longer truth. Therefore, truth doesn't exit in words; it’s not present in words; but only in dialogue. Truth keeps moving forward in dialogue. It can't stop long enough to exist, otherwise its time will come, and in that moment, it’ll find itself trapped between various cross-currents . . . or even cross-members (Matthew 27:38).
To paraphrase Sartre: The truth that exists in conscious dialogue, “continually experiences itself as the nihilation of its past being.” Truth can’t be found in a place or time. Therefore, the concept of “finding truth” is an abortion of it. --- The process of “finding truth” represents asphyxiation through induction. Induction is the placenta that chokes truth to death in that abortion called “finding truth” (Ezekiel 16:6). Nailing truth down (in speech or text) makes truth immanent. --- Yet those who try to nail truth down with words and concepts have simply exchanged iron for icons; the goal hasn't changed a bit. ---- The sound of a hammer striking a nail is indistinguishable from the sound of every statement presented as “truth.”
The Sacramental Protocol of Hermeneutics.
John
John D. Brey
Well-Known Member
. . . There was a link to the original essay at the bottom of the quotation. And you can find support for most of the factual claims of the essay in the work of a Phd'd biologist: William Clark, Sex and the Origins of Death, (Oxford University Press, 1996).
John
dybmh
דניאל יוסף בן מאיר הירש
Just checking if I understand...
"The female ovum, post meiosis and polar body, pre-fertilization, are "omnipotent" stem cells."
and
"The omnipotent cell can do the totipotent cells one better. It can become any living organism on the planet."
Are you saying that these stem cells can "become any living organism on the planet"?
If so, is that discussed in this source?
( Here's a link to the source: Sex and the Origins of Death on google books in case it's helpful: link )
Try this then. Curiosity, the idea that it's good to know, is an evolved appetite, and not just in humans, being good for survival. We study science as part of our personal and cultural curiosity. We also do it to earn a living, to gain prestige (improve our place in the peck order) and for a wide range of other psychological pressures and rewards. We employ the methods of reasoned enquiry to invent new materials, new medicines, new technologies, put rovers on Mars, map the brain and set about describing its functions for the purpose of explaining them, set about putting the past back together, pursuing γνῶθι σεαυτόν, anthropology, the nature of esthetics ─ and so on. All to answer the question, What's true in reality?
Is that clearer?
That's not a definition of truth. That's not a definition of mind. You appear to use those words for their connotations without denoting anything specific. At least when I say 'truth' and 'mind' I can explain clearly what I mean.
So your take on truth is wholly subjective: a statement is true if and only if (a) you like it and (b) it occurred in a dialog, you say?
There are no absolute truths, if that's what you mean. As Brian Cox put it, a law of physics is a statement about physics that hasn't been falsified. It was once true that the world was flat, that gravity exerted force instantaneously, that fire was due to phlogiston, that light propagated in the lumeniferous ether, that time moved at a single rate everywhere, that the earth's crust was unitary and fixed. Now it isn't. The power of science, or history, or medicine, is its power to correct itself and so move forward.
That will only make sense after you've stated clearly what truth is, a denotative definition instead of this inarticulate stuff.
Do you have a denotative definition of 'mind'? Or is that wholly connotation too?
John D. Brey
Well-Known Member
. . . to state unreservedly that we cannot discover truth can be true only if it's false, but it cannot be false unless it is true.
Professor Elliot R. Wolfson, Heidegger and Kabbalah.
Professor Elliot R. Wolfson, Heidegger and Kabbalah.
John
John D. Brey
Well-Known Member
Truth can be known subjectively but not objectively since objective knowledge requires a criteria of truthfulness based on some kind of democratic principle. And, like any thoughtful, truthful, person, truth is not a Democrat or a democratic principle.
John
There's no such thing as absolute truth. There's only our best understanding for the time being.
But because, at least on my definition, truth gets its truthful quality by accurately reflecting reality, it's always answerable to the most objective standard we have.
Truth is indeed a concept, a construct that doesn't exist unless there's a brain present that holds the concept.
But 'best opinion' is democratic only when the demos is limited to those most informed and impartial regarding the topic. Makes a lot of smokers wish they'd paid attention to the US Surgeon General back in 1964. And why your odds are better with a specialist doctor than with a priest or shaman if you get lung cancer regardless. And why the world is getting hotter whatever the Kochs say.
So what, if any, real thing do you intend to denote when you say 'mind'?
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John D. Brey
Well-Known Member
. . . Then truth is unanchored and infinitely relative. Which means it's not really true, only factual, or tentatively correct.
The word "truth" tends to speak of a criteria for factuality, or actuality, that isn't itself merely factual or tentatively correct. Without truth, facts are factual accidentally, or tentatively, or democratically.
John
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John D. Brey
Well-Known Member
. . . Either the mind has access to truth, or it manufactures it. If it manufactures it, then truth is a product of mind, such that we shouldn't mind too much if different minds produce different flavors of truth. The belief that mind manufactures truth frees a mind from searching for access to truth; it's the end of faith and the start of secularism, materialism, communism, atheism. And a bevy of other isms.
John
John D. Brey
Well-Known Member
An entity that can produce non-tautological thought:
. . . to state unreservedly that we cannot discover truth can be true only if it's false, but it cannot be false unless it is true.
Professor Elliot R. Wolfson, Heidegger and Kabbalah.
Professor Elliot R. Wolfson, Heidegger and Kabbalah.
John
MonkeyFire
Well-Known Member
The ultimate metaphysic is organization and order of "all things," which is the nature of buddhist dharma.
No. I've stipulated, and you haven't demurred, to certain basics ─ a world exists external to the self, the senses are capable of informing us about it, and reason is a valid tool. It's thus possible to make accurate (= true) statements about the external world. It is, after all, the source of our air, water, food, shelter, society, parents, mate and offspring.
No. See above.
Other way round. A statement is true to the extent that it accurately reflects / corresponds with the world external to the self.
I read 'unreservedly' there as meaning 'absolutely'. As I said, statements can't be absolutely true. But I claim they can be true, and that their truth can be tested against a standard as objective as possible. This greatly assists the struggle against woo static.
Truth is a concept. Concepts only exist in working brains. The concept refers to how accurately the statement corresponds with the facts to which it relates. The judgment that a statement is true can therefore be tested against a standard as objective as possible.
Nope. On my definition of truth, the brain is not its own truthmaker. Instead the truthmaker must be an objectively real state of affairs.
John D. Brey
Well-Known Member
. . . The metaphysics of we less than Buddha types settle for trying to understand, and help create, a higher order, that will eventuate (eventually) in the perfect organization of all things.
John
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John D. Brey
Well-Known Member
. . . I've tried to make a distinction between "correct," "factual," "accurate," versus "true."
The accurate statements we make about our external world today will seem laughable in a hundred years. For instance, there was a time when it was factual, accurate, and correct, to assume, and say, the world was flat. . . . Unfortunately it wasn't true. Or at least isn't true according to what we now know. Though some day it could end up being factual again from a perspective we can't even imagine today.
John
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John D. Brey
Well-Known Member
. . . I would say a statement is accurate, correct, and factual, to the extent it accurately reflects, or corresponds with the world external to the self. But that accuracy, and correctness, is context dependent.
It was once thought to be accurate, correct, factual, that the earth was the center, while the sun and stars rotated around the earth like an axes. Unfortunately, though accurate at the time, so far as anyone could tell by observation, alas, it simply wasn't true.
John
John D. Brey
Well-Known Member
. . . I don't necessarily agree that truth is a concept. You haven't proven that to be factual, correct, or actual. . . Imo, truth is the power to posit things about observations, facts, and such, that aren't evident about the observation, or the fact, without the power of, and access to, truth.
John
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John D. Brey
Well-Known Member
John said:
. . . Your statement is the foundation of materialism: the belief that the world we experience it is made up of material things, and states of material things, sitting out there hard and solid and . . . material . . . just as we experience it.
But as Noam Chomsky said, materialism is utterly bankrupt until someone proves there's such a thing as material. To date, every single thing we thought was material breaks down into packets of information. And that information can be rejiggered to lose its merely apparent solidity and it original, and false, object-ive truthfulness.
When we turn a rock into energy we don't necessarily call the rock a liar rather than a truth-teller for not telling us thousands of years ago that it was actually energy and not just a dumb, hard, rock. And when a tiny spider sees us move, what to him is a giant mountain, with a swift kick from our foot, we don't criticize the spider for not having the faith to move a mountain. We realize perspective trumps observation and that truth is the power to pursue a quest that questions the truthfulness of what to mere morals appears apparent as hell.
John
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MonkeyFire
Well-Known Member
All things have potential for buddahood.