[MD] Some historical perspective

[MarkHSmit at aol.com]

I agree, there is some interesting stuff going on there.

I wouldn't choose geometry as truth since provided a 
set of postulates, any form of geometry can be fashioned.
Euclidean and non-Euclidean for example.
Geometry therefore would fall under a representational 
paradigm for a given set of rules.   This is what the intellect
has to do.   An all encompassing world view cannot be
transferred (explained) through the intellect, it is simply lacking.

Each word represents a personal feeling.   To ascribe Truth
above all is good until one gets into breaking down what
you mean.   However, having said that, I know certain things
to be absolute truth (for me).   Given that Truth is what
one believes to be absolute, I'm with you.   We break it into
pieces with intellect and then language.   We create a net
to hold Truth in but it is impossible to make the mesh close
enough to contain it.   No matter what we say, the holes
will be evident to those that wish to find them.

Give me a paper bag anytime.

Willblake2

In a message dated 10/24/09 1:27:00 PM, ridgecoyote at gmail.com writes:


> Squonk,
> 
> Good stuff!
> 
> 
> 
> > These insights lead Nietzsche to the later realisation that Plato and 
> the
> > Sophists were trying to ‘out-best’ each other.
> >
> >
> An emotional aspect to dialectical wrangling?  Heaven and Ham forbid.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> >
> > Squonk: This is the way it logically stacks up to me…
> >
> > Truth is an aesthetically pleasing relationship between symbols - 
> symbolic
> > manipulation.
> >
> > Symbolic manipulation is what the Intellect is and does.
> >
> > Therefore, Intellect must exist in order for the Truth to exist, in 
> order
> > for it (the Truth) to subordinate the Good.
> >
> >
> 
> Well and truly analyzed and sir.  I agree.  In fact, I've said before that
> Truth is the highest value of any intellectual pattern.   If we make IT 
> the
> highest overall value of existence in a  subordination of Quality to
> intellect; it becomes something bad called by many names, "SOM",
> Objectivism, Intellectualism, a values-free metaphysic.
> 
> You nailed it on the head.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> > If this is so, then it allows us to contemplate the source of Truth, and
> > that source is evident in Geometry. Geometry existed hundreds of years
> > before Plato’s rhetorical battle with the sophists, (Thales, 635
> >  -543 BC) and in a period of Human consciousness which produced 
> literature
> > that does not convey SOM.
> >
> 
> 
> 
> 
> > This destroys Bo’s argument that Intellect = SOM.
> >
> > Shatters it completely.
> 
> 
> 
> Yes and it joins a long crowded list.  Leonard Shlain's, Art and
> Physics<http://www.artandphysics.com/>  offers
> the most thorough and compelling evidence I've ever seen that intellectual
> insights evolve in response to aesthetic/spatial (non-linguistic)
> appreciation far in advance of intellectual formulation.  He goes into the
> Greeks too.
> 
> 
> > Squonk: I think you are bang on the money when you recognise that truth
> > pre-existed SOM. I think it is so clear that one would have to go to 
> quite
> > extraordinary, if not pathologically arrogant lengths NOT to see it.
> >
> 
> Well you yourself need not go to "pathetical arrogant lengths" in search 
> of
> a motivation, especially as you posit the Occamic solution intuitively at
> the beginning of your excellent post...
> 
> 
> "These insights lead Nietzsche to the later realisation that Plato and the
> Sophists were trying to ‘out-best’ each other."
> 
> 
> See?  They're all good enough guys in their own rights.  Plato was cool!  
> So
> were the Sophists.  But in the struggle to out-best the other guy, they 
> lost
> sight of the process of dynamic evolution of intellect which occurs
> emptying out all the old static baggage and re-organizing.
> 
> 
> I would argue that primary Truth belongs in the realm of pure abstraction.
> > (In this realm, Truth is actually an aesthetic appreciation of quality).
> >
> >
> Yes, although that last statement can be as confusing as Keats formulation
> of Truth and Beauty, if you want to really slice and dice you lose the 
> good,
> so I won't.
> 
> My thinking on Truth evolved out of Pirsig combined with Ellul.  Jacques
> Ellul posits that human consciousness has two disparate paradigms as value 
> -
> Truth (of the word) and Reality (of the image)
> 
> What I see plainly in front of my face, in a gestaltish whoosh at once and
> all the time is what I think of as Reality.  What I deduce or induce or
> imagine intellectually is the realm of Truth.  Seeing a cat cross my path 
> is
> part of my reality.   Saying that a cat crosses my path is part of my 
> truth.
> 
> 
> Hmmm... if we start philosophizing about where and how the two realms
> intersect, wouldn't we be in the intellectual pattern known as 
> "Pragmatism"?
> 
> 
> Rather than state that rhetorical truth can be abstracted to 'Essence -
> > Truth', i would say that the notion of an 'Essential Truth' is a Human 
> myth
> > - its a story.
> >
> 
> Yes.  It's not so much that Truth is relative, but more like truth is
> relational.  It is always "about" something else and is built upon 
> context,
> narrative and rules.
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