[MD] [Bulk] Re: Humanism

[118]

On Sat, Nov 13, 2010 at 12:02 PM, david buchanan <dmbuchanan at hotmail.com>wrote:

>
>  dmb says:
> Thanks Adrie. But I don't think Ant was being careless and I do not
> disagree with what he's saying. I just think Marsha is reading it badly.
> She's resting her case on Ant's use of the term "relative" in describing the
> provisionality of truth. To say that truth is relative to a particular
> historical context simply means that truth is not eternal, that it evolves,
> that it is never final. But that doesn't mean that truth is JUST a matter of
> perspective. Provisional truths are still constrained by empirical reality.
> They still have to agree with experience and function as the best possible
> explanation as we move into further experience.
>

[Mark]
I see a disagreement rising between Adrie and dmb from the above, who will
back down first?

[Mark]
Here you are pointing to the importance of Quality in its compliment to
perspective.  As such, you are pointing to provisional truths.  The
corollary to your statement above is that there are absolute truths.  This
does not really fit in with my interpretation of Quality, since that is the
ONLY thing that is absolute and is a single truth.  This is of course
described in ZMM, and is also considered to be an agreed upon premise in
this forum.  Please correct me if I may be misinterpreting.  As you say,
truth is arrived at through agreement.

As James puts it, the pragmatist is "pent in" more than anyone. Pragmatic
> truths exist "between the whole body of funded truths squeezed from the
> past", he says, "and the coercions of the world of sense". In other words,
> the truth is constrained by the mythos in which it's stated AND by the
> empirical reality in which it's used. This empirical reality is not
> conceived as a material reality but it is still a very strong form of
> empiricism. And that is very different from relativism.
>

[Mark]
I would say in response to this, that new truths are being created all the
time.  This may not be necessarily as a result of previous truths either.
 Some things become true that were never expected such as the existence of a
black swan.  Your use of mythos is a little misleading, could you explain?


> Richard Rorty, for example, is accused of relativism because he denies the
> possibility of empiricism - or any kind of epistemology. He thinks truth is
> not something philosophers should even discuss. And since Rorty is the main
> reviver of pragmatism, James and Dewey scholars have been defending the
> classical pragmatists against charges or relativism all over again.
> Defending against this charge has literally been going on for a hundred
> years. As we can see in James's complaints about pragmatism's "impudent
> slanderers", defense against this charge began while the thing was still
> being invented.
>
> Marsha and others seem to be confused about the difference between
> traditional forms of social and political "authority" and intellectual
> "authority". The latter simply refers to a competent or reliable source of
> information. That kind of authority is based on a very reasonable belief,
> namely that we like to rely on people who know what they're talking about. I
> do not think this kind of authority is any cause for alarm. Nobody should
> feel persecuted or oppressed by an encyclopedia entry or a quote from the
> text we're discussing. Frankly, I think that kind of reaction is completely
> ridiculous. What kind of mind resents the use of openly shared meanings and
> handy public resources?
>

[Mark]
The reliability of information is agreed upon, it does not exist as is.  I
believe you are speaking about levels of authority.  As such, it is very
difficult to separate the intellectual from the social since it requires
agreement which is a social function.  Any confusion is valid unless you
have a strict definition of the demarkation.  I don't think people find Wiki
oppressive.  Often I find it very frivolous.  Again the use of Wiki has to
be agreed upon.  If I do not think it is meaningful, your use of it has no
meaning to me and I dismiss it.  Would you call Wiki openly shared meanings?
If so, who is sharing these?  Perhaps you are too young to remember the days
before Wiki.  At its creation it was very limited.  As more people began to
contribute to it, and as Google formed a pact and put it at the top of its
list, it is more used.  Does this make it more credible?  Certainly not as a
sole source of information.  Such information must be checked against
several other sources.  At least that was the way I was trained in research.

Just a few comments that I know you do not want to deal with.  If they do
not fit within your model of reality, you can just ignore them and carry on.
 Others may find them valuable in terms of their critical thinking skills.

Mark

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