Re: Universality as warrant for relative truth value

On Jul 5, 1:45 pm, Haines Brown <bro...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
jason <jasonkstev...@xxxxxxxxx> writes:
More recently I've abandoned the idea of truth all together and, like
consciousness, I don't really believe in it anymore.

This is a philosphical position that many have taken. There are
problems that I perceive in such a position. One that happens to
concern me at the moment is that knowledge is a precondition of
action. I suspect you might agree with this, but then what is the
function or status of the knowledge we have?

I don't know about it being a precondition. I can see how knowledge
might be a "vector" for action, but we move on false beliefs,
illusions and delusions. We make choices based on feelings and
intuition. We decisively act even without language. We randomly move
and have reflex actions. I think we could survive without the term
"knowledge" here.


For a discussion along these lines, there is Roy Bhaskar, Scientific
Realism & Human Emancipation (London 1986).

I don't have a lot of time for metaphysical schemas that claim truth
is objective, that there are such things as absolutes, and statements
like "...are understood in terms of absence, as absenting absence on
absenting absence".

Dialectics is maddening unless it's understood in terms of
communication, without strict opposites. People that touch on
dialectical ideas, like Derrida, Nietzsche and especially Baudrillard
and Hegel indulge themselves on the apparent contradictions that arise
from shifts in perspective and meaning. They confuse what doesn't
need to be, even though their task, at times, is to highlight these
shifts.


Thanks for the reference but I don't really believe in consciousness..

Interesting statement. Would you mind telling me just what you mean and
why?
I believe that to explain human behavior, we don't need terms like
"consciousness", "awareness", "experience", "qualia", "something that
it is like to human", etc.  A full picture can be expressed, at least
in principle, without the need to hand-wave at some "thing" that's
really quite ineffable.  I don't think there is this hard problem of
consciousness.  I think we've created the problem with the terms we
use and our assumptions they carry.

A tactic is to reduce our terms for unobservables by seeing if we can
do without them. Can we the idea that uses such terms by removing them?
That can be done, to some extent, but there's a heavy price, one of
which is explanation. I suspect that if you throw out such terms, you
also throw out explanation. Well, someone might reply, why should we be
troubled by that, to which there are some obvious answers.

It's only a heavy price if a lot of value is assigned to the term
"consciousness". I think the term is over-valued because it doesn't
explain anything. It's use is an argumentum ad ignorantiam:
consciousness exists only because it has not been proven otherwise.
Or worse, we can't explain our experience of the world, therefore
there is this emergent or ghostly thing we know not what.

Work needs to be done if the term is to be removed, most definitelly.
Metaphysicians would ask for a new explanation and ironists would ask
how we came to start using the term "consciousness" to begin with.


Same with "truth" and "knowledge".  I don't think it exists outside of
human discourse.  I don't think there are any propositions or ideas in
our head that correspond to the world.  The terms are handy, but I
think we could live quite happily without their metaphysical
assumptions.

I assume you are using the word "correspondence" here in a very loose
sense. Well, what compels us to engage the world, truthful knowledge in
hand? What social class members possess the means for their own
development and so do not have to engage the world? What portion of the
world's population are not forced to make bare survival their primary
and even sole concern? If we live in a developed economy, to what extent
is that advantage the result of truthful knowledge embedded in means of
production and the labor of so many who create new value in their
relation to nature in labor? How can we be equipped to change this world
for a better one without a truthful understanding of what makes society
tick? How can we make moral judgements or fashion a moral behavor
without some truthful understanding of the basis for it? The list goes
on. My point is that if we abandon the pursuit of truthful knowledge,
that may be logical in philosophical terms, but it seems to me hardly
worth the enormous price that must be paid.

I find the assumption that we can /know/ things quite repugnant. We
assume we can somehow step outside of ourselves, our culture and our
history, past our perspective, our traditions and our 21st century
biases, and see "reality" laid bare before us. Who are we to claim
to /know/ the world and /judge/ morrality? We're no god.

If we humans got off our pedistal, stopped trying after omniscience
and instead saw ourselves as clever animals, then we might let go of a
lot of bigotry and arrogance we have towards one another. It doesn't
mean we can't stand with unflinching convictions. On the contrary.
We can stand up for what we think to be important, in the face of our
own falability. The difference is that when push comes to shove, we
may... just may... look again at ourselves.

Being free of propoganda terms like "knowledge" and "reason", terms
that have replaced the role of the priest and oracle, we will see each
other as peers that we have to get along with rather than subjects
that we have to "bring to justice".
.

Relevant Pages

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