Freewill and Culture: The Prism for Perception.

[John D. Brey]

To say freewill filtered through culture, is the prism for perception, is probably trickier than it sounds, due to the seemingly retroactive feedback mechanism, i.e., the back-and-forth, between the prism through which something is perceived, and the nature of the perception circumscribed by the nature or design of the prism.

Popper and Eccles thought hard about this in a number of essays they composed together to include those found in their book, The Self and Its Brain, where they explain that every perception is theory impregnated.

If every perception is theory impregnated, then no perception can be true since one of Popper's best known adages is that no theory is ever true, or the truth, since they're merely generalization pointing always forward to a new theory, and thus, where theory forms the prism for perception, a new way of seeing things.



John

 

[shunyadragon]

To say freewill filtered through culture, is the prism for perception, is probably trickier than it sounds, due to the seemingly retroactive feedback mechanism, i.e., the back-and-forth, between the prism through which something is perceived, and the nature of the perception circumscribed by the nature or design of the prism.

Popper and Eccles thought hard about this in a number of essays they composed together to include those found in their book, The Self and Its Brain, where they explain that every perception is theory impregnated.

If every perception is theory impregnated, then no perception can be true since one of Popper's best known adages is that no theory is ever true, or the truth, since they're merely generalization pointing always forward to a new theory, and thus, where theory forms the prism for perception, a new way of seeing things.

John

I have read this book, and find it very interesting, though I question the wording in bold above.

I may comment further . . .

 

[Estro Felino]

To say that our free will is 80% or 90% the result of either religious or cultural conditioning, does not imply free will doesn't exist.

But as you rightfully affirmed the external conditioning is so strong, man is absolutely unaware of his own freedom to choose.

So many times we think of our past actions and we think : "I did well. I would do it again." Or "I did wrong. I wouldn't do it again. "
That is the free will which meditates.

 

[shunyadragon]

I am a compatibilist, and describe Free Will as the 'potential of Free Will,' and limited. Natural determinism, cultural and religious (?) determinism does dominate our decision making process.

 

[John D. Brey]

If every perception is theory impregnated, then no perception can be true since one of Popper's best known adages is that no theory is ever true, or the truth, since they're merely generalization pointing always forward to a new theory, and thus, where theory forms the prism for perception, a new way of seeing things.

I have read this book, and find it very interesting, though I question the wording in bold above.

I may comment further . . .

. . . Calling all perceptions "generalizations" may not be the most precise language since I don't mean to imply, by the word "generalization," that perceptions are just willy nilly. They have rhyme and reason, logic, and rational support.

The real problem I'm thinking about is how perceptions can deliver up contradictory strongly held orthodoxies. Say for instance the worldview of a Democrat voting for Biden, or a Republican voting for Trump, or a Jew who believes Jesus is a fraud, versus a Christian who thinks the Jew who thinks Jesus is a fraud has a fraudulent theology? Or even my religious orthodoxy versus say Dejee's?

And I'm less concerned about the guys who just follow the herd, and more interested in the true believers who take their beliefs and worldviews as serious as a heart attack, and consider them based on truth, though the guys in the other worldview, and orthodoxy, do too.



John

 

[John D. Brey]

To say that our free will is 80% or 90% the result of either religious or cultural conditioning, does not imply free will doesn't exist.

But as you rightfully affirmed the external conditioning is so strong, man is absolutely unaware of his own freedom to choose.

So many times we think of our past actions snd we think : "I did well. I would do it again." Or "I did wrong. I wouldn't do it again. "
That is the free will which meditates.

I saw the photo of the town where you live in the forum media. That cathedral is unbelievable. Absolutely beautiful.

On the topic at hand, it seems to me that freewill can only function within a particular medium, which, in this case, I'm claiming is culture (to include religion, ethnicity, geography, etc.). In this sense freewill is only free to functions as circumscribed by the culture it finds itself.

It can leave a particular cultural straight-jacket, say for instance Judaism, and enter a new one, say Christianity, or vice versa. Or it can even leave both and enter an agnostic cultural worldview. But what interests me is the criteria free-willed thought can use to make thoughtful decisions about the truth or veracity of the cultural context it chooses when in every case its wiggle-room is circumscribed within one or another cultural bias?

This is to say that there doesn't seem to be an unbiased free-willed thought mechanism that has a truth-function built in that allows it to look over every cultural bias and choose the right (true) one. This being the case, what is the criteria for truth, the measure of truth, that can be considered free from cultural bias?

In Popper's work, the scientific-method is treated as the criteria for truth or viability. And yet he himself say it isn't that. For it begins, always, with a theory to test. And as he and his peers point out, those theories are always culturally based to some extent or other. Which is to say, with Sartre, we kinda always find only what we're already looking for. Or at least something related to what we're looking for. Which is to say that it's not surprising that fish didn't discover water.

What is the truth that envelops us so completely that we breath it, live in it, and yet take it utterly for granted?



John

 

[Estro Felino]

I saw the photo of the town where you live in the forum media. That cathedral is unbelievable. Absolutely beautiful.

Awww ....thank you really.
You are too kind

On the topic at hand, it seems to me that freewill can only function within a particular medium, which, in this case, I'm claiming is culture (to include religion, ethnicity, geography, etc.). In this sense freewill is only free to functions as circumscribed by the culture it finds itself.

It can leave a particular cultural straight-jacket, say for instance Judaism, and enter a new one, say Christianity, or vice versa. Or it can even leave both and enter an agnostic cultural worldview. But what interests me is the criteria free-willed thought can use to make thoughtful decisions about the truth or veracity of the cultural context it chooses when in every case its wiggle-room is circumscribed within one or another cultural bias?

This is to say that there doesn't seem to be an unbiased free-willed thought mechanism that has a truth-function built in that allows it to look over every cultural bias and choose the right (true) one. This being the case, what is the criteria for truth, the measure of truth, that can be considered free from cultural bias?

In Popper's work, the scientific-method is treated as the criteria for truth of viability. And yet he himself say it isn't that. For it begins, always, with a theory to test. And as he and his peers point out, those theories are always culturally based to some extent or other. Which is to say, with Sartre, we kinda always find only what we're already looking for. Or at least something related to what we're looking for. Which is to say that it's not surprising that fish didn't discover water.

What is the truth that envelops us so completely that we breath it, live in it, and yet take it utterly for granted?

John

I totally agree on most of the things you say.
We believe in a certain "truth". I believe free will exists because I have decided to believe in it (although many Christians do not believe in it).

But what I am certain is that I do not possess the absolute truth. So I still believe in something which might not be the absolute truth.

 

[John D. Brey]

This is to say that there doesn't seem to be an unbiased free-willed thought mechanism that has a truth-function built in that allows it to look over every cultural bias and choose the right (true) one. This being the case, what is the criteria for truth, the measure of truth, that can be considered free from cultural bias?

In another thread in this forum, Land, Language, Dialect, and Dereliction, I pointed out a glaring problem, perhaps even a fundamental flaw, in the very approach Judaism has to its seminal truth-mechanism: the written text of the Torah. Which is to say that for Judaism, the written text of the Torah (particularly the Pentateuch) is the lowest-common-denominator of truth so far as Jewish culture is concerned.

And yet the problem in the cross-hairs of this discussion raises its thorny head and bleeds all over the foundation for Jewish cultural integrity:

What the root of a word is is retroactively determined by the interpretive selection of the points that determine the word itself. You can't know what the root word is until you know what the actual word is. And what the actual word is isn't intrinsic to the consonants. Which is part and parcel of the emphasis placed on the malfeasance related to believing the root comes before the Masoretic points, when in truth the Masoretic points retroactively determine if the branch out of the root is produced semantically, or else asexually, straight from the root.​

The quotation above, from the thread noted earlier, implies (shows) something's fundamentally broken about Jewish heremeneutics and exegesis. And this is not a sleight against Judaism since the very point of this current thread of thought is to point out that the same brokenness visible in Jewish heremeneutics appears to exist in all human thought. The example of Jewish heremeneutics and exegesis is only to point out the problem in what I personally consider the most thoughtful, careful, and honest case of cultural genesis.

To explain the quotation above more thoroughly, the source for Jewish culture and truth comes from the Torah text given to Moses on Sinai. But the original text was a string of consonants with no word-breaks or punctuation:

בראשיתבראאלהימאתהשמימואתהארצ

And because a text like that is something like a cipher-text, since it can be read multiple ways according to where the consonants are broken up into words, or where full-stops are placed ending one thought and starting another, the Jewish authorities (codified in the Masoretes, and the Masoretic text) decided to break up the string of consonants, and add punctuation, producing the "true" or "authentic" reading of the text.

The problem in the quotation from the other thread raises its thorny head when we realize that to know what the word is in the text you must know first what the root word is and then exegete from there to determine what the actual word in the text is. Which is to say you must know the root word before you can determine what the actual word is.

Unfortunately, you can't know what the root word is until you know what the sentence is allegedly saying so that you can break down the consonants into discrete words. Which creates a Gordian knot since to know the root word, you must already know what the sentence is saying, which implies the root word must come out of the sentence when technically speaking the sentence should come out of the root.

It's like if scientist had dozens of different seeds from dozens of different trees. And they don't know which seed grows which tree. So they have to plant the seed to see what grows. . . Except that in this case we have the further nuance that the seeds can only grow in the right soil for the particular tree or else the soil will destroy the seed, such that you have to know which soil goes with which seed, and you can't find out from trial and error without destroying the whole process.

Textual exegesis is even worse since technically the seeds will all grow regardless of what soil they're in. But if they're in the wrong soil, they'll grow poisonous fruit that will kill, or contaminate, the planter/grower, and in the most egregious manner: the planter/grower will believe they're sustained and made well by the very fruit that lead to their ultimate demise.

When Judaism thinks they can determine the root of a word by knowing what the sentence is saying, they're producing bad fruit. And that bad fruit has consequences. It poisons the culture and thus the very place freewill is supposed to grow fruit and truth sprouting into eternity. And again, this is not a sleight against Judaism since what's true for the chosen ones, the best and the brightest, and Judaism is that, is obviously true for the rest of us.



John

 

[shunyadragon]

. . . Calling all perceptions "generalizations" may not be the most precise language since I don't mean to imply, by the word "generalization," that perceptions are just willy nilly. They have rhyme and reason, logic, and rational support.

The real problem I'm thinking about is how perceptions can deliver up contradictory strongly held orthodoxies. Say for instance the worldview of a Democrat voting for Biden, or a Republican voting for Trump, or a Jew who believes Jesus is a fraud, versus a Christian who thinks the Jew who thinks Jesus is a fraud has a fraudulent theology? Or even my religious orthodoxy versus say Dejee's?

And I'm less concerned about the guys who just follow the herd, and more interested in the true believers who take their beliefs and worldviews as serious as a heart attack, and consider them based on truth, though the guys in the other worldview, and orthodoxy, do too.



John

The word generalization is simply a very poor word choice in context.

Your jumping around a bit. From a discussion on Free Will, with Popper, Eccles and I would include Dennett. to subjective arguments concerning the politics and religious questions.

Please narrow the topic.

 

[John D. Brey]

The word generalization is simply a very poor word choice in context.

Your jumping around a bit. From a discussion on Free Will, with Popper, Eccles and I would include Dennett. to subjective arguments concerning the politics and religious questions.

Please narrow the topic.

. . . In the thread-seeder I tried to note that freewill functions in a particular medium. It needs something to work with to produce freely determined ideas or outcomes. So the problem I was trying to express is the idea that the medium where the freewill functions, i.e., our perceptions, are (our perceptions), because of the Popperian concept that all perceptions are theory impregnated, already (our perceptions) biased according to the theories that impregnate our perceptions, which theories come, so to say, from our culture, rendering "freewill" not so free after all.

If our freewill is already contaminated by our perceptions, and if our perceptions are literally colored by, circumscribed within, the seminal theories of our culture, then the very organ of perception, i.e., culture, predetermines what we're even able to think, which doesn't sound like truly free thought.

To discuss the problem that's the genesis of this thread, I gave the example of persons who grow up in a worldview that accepts say left-wing ideology, or a leftist worldview, as correct and true, versus persons who hold right-wing ideologies, or a right-wing worldview to be true. Both of these ideologies often come from the same cultural foundation implying that the freewill they employ should have constraints, based on the cultural foundation, that would limit their opposition.

Nevertheless, in the most foundational sense, we might say left-wing and right-wing ideologies have contradictory perceptions about the foundational nature of reality. And yet in both cases, the perceptions of the nature of reality are considered by their holders to be consistent with the cultural norms and standards they not only share, but from which the ideologies arise. Both ideologies often sprout from the same cultural norms?

How does freewill, using the same cultural norms, produce perceptions that are sometimes diametrically opposite since the cultural norms seem to be the medium from which the perceptions arise, implying that diametrical opposition would suggest error, or misinterpretation of the culture, in one or both of the ideologies deriving from the same medium.

Judaism and Christianity are similar. They share the same foundational text, the Torah, and they undeniably share a cultural foundation, and yet in many ways they appear to be diametrically opposed in a fundamental sense.

I guess what I'm trying to get at is whether or not there's a criteria for truth that can determine not only whether one or both of the diametrically opposed worldviews (come from the same root) have errors causing the division, but more importantly, whether the very error (or errors) can be smoked out, so to say, such that if that's possible, and I suspect it is, it would be a pretty profound thing since it could show, in an unbiased, literally scientific, manner, a fundamental flaw in one or both of the opposing ideologies.



John

 

[John D. Brey]

I guess what I'm trying to get at is whether or not there's a criteria for truth that can determine not only whether one or both of the diametrically opposed worldviews (come from the same root) have errors causing the division, but more importantly, whether the very error (or errors) can be smoked out, so to say, such that if that's possible, and I suspect it is, it would be a pretty profound thing since it could show, in an unbiased, literally scientific, manner, a fundamental flaw in one or both of the opposing ideologies.

. . . Earlier in the thread I said:

When Judaism thinks they can determine the root of a word by knowing what the sentence is saying, they're producing bad fruit. And that bad fruit has consequences. It poisons the culture and thus the very place freewill is supposed to grow fruit and truth sprouting into eternity. And again, this is not a sleight against Judaism since what's true for the chosen ones, the best and the brightest, and Judaism is that, is obviously true for the rest of us.
​

How this relates to the general examination is in the idea that we can use our perceptions, which are secondary to the cultural theories that give birth to our perceptions, as a feedback mechanism with authority over the very seminal source of our perceptions.

The example of Jewish exegesis of the Hebrew Torah text (the foundation for their culture), seems almost too perfect since the Masoretic interpretation of the Torah text indeed came about partly because of the division, opposition, between Judaism and Christianity; two ideologies that come from the same foundation. Which is to say that it was precisely because the Christians were deriving different perceptions from the same source, the Hebrew Torah text, that the Masoretes sought to establish the authenticity, and authority, of their particular perception of the meaning of the Torah text that's the foundation for them and the ideology they consider diametrically opposed to their perception of the meaning of the Hebrew Torah text.

The very genesis of the Masoretic text derives from the actuality, the scientific reality, that the original Hebrew Torah text is subject to multiple legitimate (though not necessarily correct) interpretations. The Jewish sages, the Masoretes, understood well that the Hebrew Torah text could, by its very nature, justify more than one perception or even worldview, depending on how the Hebrew Torah text is interpreted.

Which is where "interpretation" of the seminal foundation is seen to determine the duality, and in the cases noted already, diametrical opposition, come, ironically, from the singular, seminal, foundation.



John

 

[shunyadragon]

. . . In the thread-seeder I tried to note that freewill functions in a particular medium. It needs something to work with to produce freely determined ideas or outcomes. So the problem I was trying to express is the idea that the medium where the freewill functions, i.e., our perceptions, are (our perceptions), because of the Popperian concept that all perceptions are theory impregnated, already (our perceptions) biased according to the theories that impregnate our perceptions, which theories come, so to say, from our culture, rendering "freewill" not so free after all.

If our freewill is already contaminated by our perceptions, and if our perceptions are literally colored by, circumscribed within, the seminal theories of our culture, then the very organ of perception, i.e., culture, predetermines what we're even able to think, which doesn't sound like truly free thought.

Libertarian Free Will or will without restraints actually is not a viable description of Free Will based on the evidence, though it does not conclude that culture and genetics predetermines what we're even able to think. This appealing to two extremes that neither reflects the objective verifiable evidence for a limited degree of free will.

To discuss the problem that's the genesis of this thread, I gave the example of persons who grow up in a worldview that accepts say left-wing ideology, or a leftist worldview, as correct and true, versus persons who hold right-wing ideologies, or a right-wing worldview to be true. Both of these ideologies often come from the same cultural foundation implying that the freewill they employ should have constraints, based on the cultural foundation, that would limit their opposition.

Nevertheless, in the most foundational sense, we might say left-wing and right-wing ideologies have contradictory perceptions about the foundational nature of reality. And yet in both cases, the perceptions of the nature of reality are considered by their holders to be consistent with the cultural norms and standards they not only share, but from which the ideologies arise. Both ideologies often sprout from the same cultural norms?

How does freewill, using the same cultural norms, produce perceptions that are sometimes diametrically opposite since the cultural norms seem to be the medium from which the perceptions arise, implying that diametrical opposition would suggest error, or misinterpretation of the culture, in one or both of the ideologies deriving from the same medium.

Judaism and Christianity are similar. They share the same foundational text, the Torah, and they undeniably share a cultural foundation, and yet in many ways they appear to be diametrically opposed in a fundamental sense.

I guess what I'm trying to get at is whether or not there's a criteria for truth that can determine not only whether one or both of the diametrically opposed worldviews (come from the same root) have errors causing the division, but more importantly, whether the very error (or errors) can be smoked out, so to say, such that if that's possible, and I suspect it is, it would be a pretty profound thing since it could show, in an unbiased, literally scientific, manner, a fundamental flaw in one or both of the opposing ideologies.

First, I am not proposing extreme determinism versus Libertarian Free Will. Limited Free Will does not not in and of itself negate the possibility of choices.

Different worldviews among different individuals do not represent the necessity of Libertarian Free will. There is often a chain of inheritance of political and even more so religious beliefs, that a desire of sense of community and identity greatly influences or choices. It is a fact that by far,95%++ of all believers believe a similar if not the same as their peers and parents. Those that change their belief most often describe themselves seeking a sense of community and identity they lacked.

 

[John D. Brey]

The very genesis of the Masoretic text derives from the actuality, the scientific reality, that the original Hebrew Torah text is subject to multiple legitimate (though not necessarily correct) interpretations. The Jewish sages, the Masoretes, understood well that the Hebrew Torah text could, by its very nature, justify more than one perception or even worldview, depending on how the Hebrew Torah text is interpreted.

Which is where "interpretation" of the seminal foundation is seen to determine the duality, and in the cases noted already, diametrical opposition, come, ironically, from the singular, seminal, foundation.

Earlier in the thread I said:

What is the truth that envelops us so completely that we breath it, live in it, and yet take it utterly for granted?​

Truth is often said to be so simple it evades all but the simpleton. The Masoretes, in their attempt to codify the fact that their interpretation of the Torah text is more authoritative than the Christian interpretation of the Torah text, not only contaminate their interpretation, figuratively lobbing off their own head with the sword as they draw back to strike the Christians, but they do so in a manner that's scientifically verifiable as erroneous.

The Masoretic interpretation of the Torah text derives from the knowledge that there's another, perhaps *******, interpretation of the Torah text. The Masoretes set out to make their worldview, ideology, their Torah text generated cultural reality, the singular, canonical, or authoritative interpretation of the Torah text. But to perform this task they clearly and undeniably use their interpretation of the text as the feedback mechanism that has seminal authority over the root consonants, the uninterpreted Hebrew text. Which is an inversion of natural asymmetry whereby the tree grows out of the root, rather than the root taking its marching orders (it's seminal nature) from the tree it produces in natural asymmetry.

In the malfeasant sense of the Masoretic text, the interpretation, which should grow out of the Hebrew text, the root words, is instead used as the authoritative source feeding back into, like a male into a female, the very text which should itself have the seminal authority to determine the nature of the interpretation.

Now although the dynamics of the Masoretic approach to the text is indeed backwards, so far as a scientific approach to natural asymmetry is concerned (the root doesn't grow out of the tree), the Masoretic worldview is probably the most fundamental, and authoritative, revealer of the fact that there's a genuine flaw in the natural asymmetrical order of things (there's a genuine flaw in the belief that the tree can only grow out of the root, and not vice versa). And to the degree that it's true that the Masoretes are caught between hyper-biblical cross-currents, or even cross-members, we're handed a paradox of genuinely biblical proportions, to the degree we're willing to try to untangle the Gordian knot that's the paradoxical nature of the Masoretes' bizarre syzygy.



John

 

[shunyadragon]

Earlier in the thread I said:

What is the truth that envelops us so completely that we breath it, live in it, and yet take it utterly for granted?"​

​

Truth is an awkward proposition to be put on the spot in this context by burdening it with diversity of human subjective cultural propositions. Since in terms of the diverse and conflicting beliefs and religions, all claiming each to be true.

The only thing that could be considered relatively sound as far as what "envelops us so completely that we breath it, live in it, and yet take it utterly for granted," it is the consistent predictable factual nature of the physical existence that we may describe through science. The many diverse conflicting religious beliefs lack the relative consistency of science.

Truth is often said to be so simple it evades all but the simpleton. The Masoretes, in their attempt to codify the fact that their interpretation of the Torah text is more authoritative than the Christian interpretation of the Torah text, not only contaminate their interpretation, figuratively lobbing off their own head with the sword as they draw back to strike the Christians, but they do so in a manner that's scientifically verifiable as erroneous.

Different cultural interpretations of ancient texts has nothing to with science.

 

[John D. Brey]

Different cultural interpretations of ancient texts has nothing to with science.

. . . I thought you said you'd read Popper?

Not that it matters too much, but I've probably read 90% of everything Popper ever wrote, and much of it many times over. . . Which is preface to me saying that Popper disagrees with your statement vehemently. He said, more than once, that modern science is a product of ancient religious texts. And I concur.

I doubt you'd like what Oxford philosophy Professor, Bryan Magee (an associate and friend of Popper), cornered Popper with, based precisely on his (Popper's) claim that ancient religious thought is the father of modern science.



John

 

[shunyadragon]

. . . I thought you said you'd read Popper?

Not that it matters too much, but I've probably read 90% of everything Popper ever wrote, and much of it many times over. . . Which is preface to me saying that Popper disagrees with your statement vehemently. He said, more than once, that modern science is a product of ancient religious texts. And I concur.

I doubt you'd like what Oxford philosophy Professor, Bryan Magee (an associate and friend of Popper), cornered Popper with, based precisely on his (Popper's) claim that ancient religious thought is the father of modern science.



John

I have Popper's books in my library and when I cite Popper I will do so specifically and completely. No one cornered Popper, and describing ancient religious thought as the Father of modern science is not what Popper stated.

Popper, of course, like all scientists do acknowledge the evolution of science in the history of humanity, but that does not have any relevance to our discussion. In the first post he paraphrased Popper loosely and using poor terminology. Please cite Popper directly and specifically. The result of Karl Popper's work is how modern science best works today based on Methodological Naturalism.

You still have not responded to the substance of my previous post concerning Free Will.

 

[YoursTrue]

In another thread in this forum, Land, Language, Dialect, and Dereliction, I pointed out a glaring problem, perhaps even a fundamental flaw, in the very approach Judaism has to its seminal truth-mechanism: the written text of the Torah. Which is to say that for Judaism, the written text of the Torah (particularly the Pentateuch) is the lowest-common-denominator of truth so far as Jewish culture is concerned.

And yet the problem in the cross-hairs of this discussion raises its thorny head and bleeds all over the foundation for Jewish cultural integrity:

What the root of a word is is retroactively determined by the interpretive selection of the points that determine the word itself. You can't know what the root word is until you know what the actual word is. And what the actual word is isn't intrinsic to the consonants. Which is part and parcel of the emphasis placed on the malfeasance related to believing the root comes before the Masoretic points, when in truth the Masoretic points retroactively determine if the branch out of the root is produced semantically, or else asexually, straight from the root.​

The quotation above, from the thread noted earlier, implies (shows) something's fundamentally broken about Jewish heremeneutics and exegesis. And this is not a sleight against Judaism since the very point of this current thread of thought is to point out that the same brokenness visible in Jewish heremeneutics appears to exist in all human thought. The example of Jewish heremeneutics and exegesis is only to point out the problem in what I personally consider the most thoughtful, careful, and honest case of cultural genesis.

To explain the quotation above more thoroughly, the source for Jewish culture and truth comes from the Torah text given to Moses on Sinai. But the original text was a string of consonants with no word-breaks or punctuation:

בראשיתבראאלהימאתהשמימואתהארצ

And because a text like that is something like a cipher-text, since it can be read multiple ways according to where the consonants are broken up into words, or where full-stops are placed ending one thought and starting another, the Jewish authorities (codified in the Masoretes, and the Masoretic text) decided to break up the string of consonants, and add punctuation, producing the "true" or "authentic" reading of the text.

The problem in the quotation from the other thread raises its thorny head when we realize that to know what the word is in the text you must know first what the root word is and then exegete from there to determine what the actual word in the text is. Which is to say you must know the root word before you can determine what the actual word is.

Unfortunately, you can't know what the root word is until you know what the sentence is allegedly saying so that you can break down the consonants into discrete words. Which creates a Gordian knot since to know the root word, you must already know what the sentence is saying, which implies the root word must come out of the sentence when technically speaking the sentence should come out of the root.

It's like if scientist had dozens of different seeds from dozens of different trees. And they don't know which seed grows which tree. So they have to plant the seed to see what grows. . . Except that in this case we have the further nuance that the seeds can only grow in the right soil for the particular tree or else the soil will destroy the seed, such that you have to know which soil goes with which seed, and you can't find out from trial and error without destroying the whole process.

Textual exegesis is even worse since technically the seeds will all grow regardless of what soil they're in. But if they're in the wrong soil, they'll grow poisonous fruit that will kill, or contaminate, the planter/grower, and in the most egregious manner: the planter/grower will believe they're sustained and made well by the very fruit that lead to their ultimate demise.

When Judaism thinks they can determine the root of a word by knowing what the sentence is saying, they're producing bad fruit. And that bad fruit has consequences. It poisons the culture and thus the very place freewill is supposed to grow fruit and truth sprouting into eternity. And again, this is not a sleight against Judaism since what's true for the chosen ones, the best and the brightest, and Judaism is that, is obviously true for the rest of us.



John

You make some very good points. I still would like to know what Hebrew text the Masoretes used when they first started inserting the markings of pronunciation.

 

[YoursTrue]

. . . I thought you said you'd read Popper?

Not that it matters too much, but I've probably read 90% of everything Popper ever wrote, and much of it many times over. . . Which is preface to me saying that Popper disagrees with your statement vehemently. He said, more than once, that modern science is a product of ancient religious texts. And I concur.

I doubt you'd like what Oxford philosophy Professor, Bryan Magee (an associate and friend of Popper), cornered Popper with, based precisely on his (Popper's) claim that ancient religious thought is the father of modern science.



John

Ok, why is that?

 

[YoursTrue]

. . . In the thread-seeder I tried to note that freewill functions in a particular medium. It needs something to work with to produce freely determined ideas or outcomes. So the problem I was trying to express is the idea that the medium where the freewill functions, i.e., our perceptions, are (our perceptions), because of the Popperian concept that all perceptions are theory impregnated, already (our perceptions) biased according to the theories that impregnate our perceptions, which theories come, so to say, from our culture, rendering "freewill" not so free after all.

If our freewill is already contaminated by our perceptions, and if our perceptions are literally colored by, circumscribed within, the seminal theories of our culture, then the very organ of perception, i.e., culture, predetermines what we're even able to think, which doesn't sound like truly free thought.

To discuss the problem that's the genesis of this thread, I gave the example of persons who grow up in a worldview that accepts say left-wing ideology, or a leftist worldview, as correct and true, versus persons who hold right-wing ideologies, or a right-wing worldview to be true. Both of these ideologies often come from the same cultural foundation implying that the freewill they employ should have constraints, based on the cultural foundation, that would limit their opposition.

Nevertheless, in the most foundational sense, we might say left-wing and right-wing ideologies have contradictory perceptions about the foundational nature of reality. And yet in both cases, the perceptions of the nature of reality are considered by their holders to be consistent with the cultural norms and standards they not only share, but from which the ideologies arise. Both ideologies often sprout from the same cultural norms?

How does freewill, using the same cultural norms, produce perceptions that are sometimes diametrically opposite since the cultural norms seem to be the medium from which the perceptions arise, implying that diametrical opposition would suggest error, or misinterpretation of the culture, in one or both of the ideologies deriving from the same medium.

Judaism and Christianity are similar. They share the same foundational text, the Torah, and they undeniably share a cultural foundation, and yet in many ways they appear to be diametrically opposed in a fundamental sense.

I guess what I'm trying to get at is whether or not there's a criteria for truth that can determine not only whether one or both of the diametrically opposed worldviews (come from the same root) have errors causing the division, but more importantly, whether the very error (or errors) can be smoked out, so to say, such that if that's possible, and I suspect it is, it would be a pretty profound thing since it could show, in an unbiased, literally scientific, manner, a fundamental flaw in one or both of the opposing ideologies.



John

Ok. One thing a biographer of Einstein said is that gravity is known by happenstance. What that happenstance is in the biographer's mind I'm not sure, but I perceive it to mean we wouldn't know gravity if we weren't alive and thinking about a few things. Such as falling off a cliff.

 

[John D. Brey]

Ok. One thing a biographer of Einstein said is that gravity is known by happenstance. What that happenstance is in the biographer's mind I'm not sure, but I perceive it to mean we wouldn't know gravity if we weren't alive and thinking about a few things. Such as falling off a cliff.

He may have had what an excellent biologist, Richard Lewontin, had in mind:

Whether or not gravitation is an effective factor in the environment of an organism depends upon the organism’s size. Animals of a medium or large size, such as vertebrates, are anatomically constructed under the constraint of gravity. . . In contrast, bacteria living in a liquid medium are not effectively subject to gravity, which is a negligible force on objects of such a small size floating in a liquid medium. But the difference in size between elephants and bacteria is coded in their genes, so, in this sense, the organism’s genes have determined whether gravitation is or is not relevant to them. . . although ignoring gravity in their construction because they are so small . . . they are buffeted about by the thermal agitation of the molecules in the culture medium, the force producing Brownian motion. We, in contrast are not constantly knocked back and forth by the molecules of the air, because we are too large for Brownian motion to affect us. Differences of size and of the medium in which organisms live are of overwhelming importance in determining the organism’s entire set of environmental relations, but these factors are a consequence of the internal biology of the species.​

In the context of the current discussion Lewontin is pointing out that the biology of the organism determines, by its gene's choice of design, what elements of the external world are even used in the perceptions taken to be reality. Whatever choices the organism makes, in relation to its perception of reality, are circumscribed by the world delivered up by the theories living in their genes.

I’ve always liked the way Humberto R. Maturana, Ph.D. & Francisco J. Varela, put it in their book, The Tree of Knowledge:

In effect, we often think of the process of selection as the act of choosing voluntarily from among many alternatives. And it is tempting for us to believe that something similar occurs here, too: through its perturbations, the environment is supposedly `choosing’ which of many possible changes are taking place [within the organism]. This is completely the opposite of what actually occurs and contradictory to the fact that we are dealing with structurally determined systems. An interaction [between an organism and an external perturbation] cannot specify a structural change [to the organism], because that change is determined by the previous state of the subject unity [the inner structure of the organism determines the unity between itself and the external perturbation] and not by the structure of the disturbing agent [the environment] . . ..​

The unity between the Jewish interpreter of the Torah text, and the text itself (in the context of the two quotations above), is part and parcel of what to my mind is one of the most important scientific concepts that will ever be known.



John