Stan, lists,
You prefer to use 'truth' in quotes and to call 'truth' any opinion that
anybody calls a truth. You're saying that, as far as I can tell, that
truth is culturally relative, period, end of story. That would imply
that your cultural relativism is itself culturally relative and isn't
finally true in any normal sense of the word. So why do you bother to
make that or any assertion? Or, what looks like an assertion of truth
from you is actually something else, like making a political move, or
adjusting a windshield wiper, or scat singing. Yet camouflaged as
discussion. For some reason you want both to throw a wrench into the
language and to keep using the language, and the result is a surrealism
of the text, though not a surrealism of its writer. As the sometimes
surrealistically writing poet Jack Spicer said, "the surrealism of the
poet could not write words."
Best, Ben
On 9/22/2014 10:44 AM, Stanley N Salthe wrote:
Replying to Ben ad Frederick
Replying to Ben:
B: You're simply not distinguishing between truth and opinion. If
two traditions arrive at contrary conclusions about the same kind of
phenomenon, the normal logical conclusion about the contrarity is that
at most one of the conclusions is true and true for sound reasons, at
most one is the result of sufficient investigation even though both
traditions claim sufficiency. Peirce's semiotics is logic studied in
terms of signs. You don't distinguish between sufficiency and claims
of sufficiency, truth and claims of truth, and reality and claims of
reality. Both traditions' conclusions might be false, results of
insufficient investigation. They might both be mixes of truth and
falsehood, various inaccuracies, and so on.
S: I do not believe in an external non-mediated TRUTH as such. I think
different traditions might reach different concepts of truth, and,
indeed, more importantly, some might not construct an idea of truth at
all. As I see it, you are simply defending the European conceptual
tradition that has now become global. It was globalized because of its
usefulness (sufficiency), and because no objection was permitted
B: Simply accepting contrary conclusions as reflecting two "realities"
because two traditions arrived at them is a defeatist method of
inquiry, a form of 'insuccessibilism'. Imagine the swelling mischief
if courts treated widely discrepant testimony from various witnesses
as reflecting different "realities" rather than different perspectives
or mistaken or differently limited observations or memories, or lack
of honesty or candor, and so on. Imagine being an accused defendant in
such a court, with one's money, career, freedom, life, hanging in the
balance.
S: The ‘truth’s here are those imposed within one culture/society,
where internal conformity is requisite (as we can see today, when it
is collapsing in many places. I do not support rebelling against a
hegemonic system just because there could be other systems.).
B: Waiting for the conflicting traditions to resolve their conflicts
and hoping that their resultant conclusion will be the truth, is a
method of inquiry of last resort, that to which a pure spectator is
confined.
S: Our culture did not ‘wait’ to supplant all the others (that counted).
B; To go further and _/define/ _ truth as the conclusion of any actual
tradition or actual dialogue among actual traditions, underlies the
method of authority, a form of infallibilism. If two traditions don't
resolve their argument and if you for your part have no way to
investigate the question itself and arrive at a conclusion about the
subject of their argument, then your normal logical conclusion would
be that you won't know the answer to the question, not that there are
conflicting true answers to the question.
S: I do not define (philosophical) truth at all.
B: I disbelieve that you ever did physics in either way. I don't see
why you'd want to impose such weak methods on philosophy, or have a
semiotics in which contrary signs about the same object merely reflect
different "realities";
S: To me, relativism is the only way to proceed once we understand the
Umwelt concept. As I work within our culture I accept its norms and
procedures, but I do not need to accept the concept of absolute
philosophical truth in order to do so.
B: such would turn logic and semiotics into mush. Peirce's theory of
inquiry, which seems to reflect the attitude of scientific research,
does not boil down to 'poll the experts'
S: Actually, in science (and likely elsewhere) it DOES often boil down
to just this.
B: or 'poll the traditions', instead it boils down to 'do the
science,' by a method actively motivated and shaped by the idea of
putting into practice the fallibilist recognition that inquiry can go
wrong (because the real is independent of actual opinion) and the
'successibilist' recognition that inquiry can go right (because the
real is the cognizable). To argue about this, as you do, is to
presuppose that there is a truth about this very matter under
discussion, a truth that can be found and can be missed.
S: The ‘truth’ here is only that there is no unmediated absolute truth.
then
Replying to Frederick:
F: I agree Stan's interpretation of fallibilism here is far too
colored by radical constructivism.
S: Yes. I admit it.
F: Fallibilism is not equal to scepticism or constructivism at all,
nor does it imply that all "knowledge" will change completely over time.
S: Within a culture it very likely will NOT.
F: Science is growing by the day, we achieve more and more insight in
a large number of fields of reality, including those of history,
sociology, arts, political science etc. Fallibilism is the realization
that even if most of that knowledge is in all probability true, we
have 1) no absolute assurance that is the case which is why 2) any
single item of that knowledge may be subject to some degree of
revision over time. Cf. Peirce's sane refusal of absolute, Carteseian
doubt: we should only doubt any single result when we have some reason
or other to actually do so (inconsistencies, missing data, new
information, gut feeling or any other reason). But we should not doubt
established knowledge tout court without any reason ...
S: The reason is implied in the Umwelt concept, as well as in the
common sense idea that culture can evolve.
STAN
On Sun, Sep 21, 2014 at 12:28 PM, Benjamin Udell <bud...@nyc.rr.com
<mailto:bud...@nyc.rr.com> > wrote:
Stan,
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