What is truth for

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In Cat's wild world truth is what is necessary for survival.

I would conclude that truth for any animal, including the human animal, is a matter of survivability. Evolution is a process for determining any creature's ability to comprehend truth, i.e. survive in their particular world.

What is truth for humans? Cognitive science informs me that "truth depends on meaningfulness" and "truth is relative to understanding". What is meaningful for humans? I would say that, just like Cat, survival is the ultimate meaning for humans just as for Cheetahs.

Cat is not a social animal to the extent that humans are. We can examine social animals such as wolves and apes and we can see that what the group decides is meaningful, i.e. true, determines truth for the individual as well as the group. Truth for humans becomes more complex because humans have created an artificial world of meaning that makes it more difficult to ascertain what is true and what will lead to the extinction of the species.

Isn't scientific theory an example of truth for humans?

Quotes from "Philosophy in the Flesh" by Lakoff and Johnson

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It is quite painful to read these simplistic ramblings when existing threads have debated the issues in depths. As usual Coberst declines to engage in such debate but merely litters this forum (and half a dozen others) with his compulsive "Readers Digest" reports.

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well i dont follow the idea entirely, but i do agree survival is "truth, to an extent.

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OGIONIK

"Truth" as "what works" is a basic axiom for functionalists. The "what works for survival" issue is well covered by both evolutionary arguments and by extrapolation from the term "autopoisesis" by contemporary systems biologists such as Maturana. So called "cognitive scientists" like Lakoff nibble on the crumbs from such tables. In short, there is an established epistemological history, from Kant through to Kuhn and Wittgenstein, concerning semantics in general, and "truth" in particular of which Coberst appears to be ignorant.

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Re: What is truth for

coberst wrote:

I would conclude that truth for any animal, including the human animal, is a matter of survivability.

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In a previous thread, Coberst, you wrote:

coberst wrote:

Would you not consider that reading "Hamlet" as containing truth unconnected to a specific application?

I would be interested to hear how you would incorporate this notion of truth into your "survival" concept of truth. Do you still maintain that the enjoyment one gets out of reading Hamlet qualifies as "truth"? If so, it seems to follow that humans who read Hamlet do so in order to survive; do you believe this is the case?

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well, you need to be alive to read it in the first place haha. j/k

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And according to the argument being offered here, the inverse is apparently also true: you need to read it in order to be alive.

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Coberst, what Cat didn't get from its mother was culture (specifically KSAs), not "truth." It annoys me when people take words and redefine them as something other than the commonly understood meanings, when there are already perfectly good words to express their ideas.

Knowledge and skills that give individuals a better chance at survival and reproduction will become part of the group culture, but thriving cultures may also include beliefs that are not scientifically "true" such as myths, medical practices, taboos, rituals, codes of honor, and so on. What "works" is not necessarily founded in truth, such as sacrificing to gods to avert calamity and bring good harvests.

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Terry,

You sing the praises of "common sense", but perhaps you might consider where "science" would be if it were not for the counter-intuitive re-definition of terms like "gravity" etc (by Einstein and others). Also for many animals. especially man. "survival" has a major social component. Religious practices, however bizarre or bloodthirsty, are a manifestation of group norms to which individuals conform thereby contributing to "group survival". All you need to add is a "life after death" clause and "mental integrity" can triumph over physical survival.

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We comprehend a statement as being true in a given situation when our comprehension of the statement fits our comprehension of the situation closely enough for our purposes.

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Do you still maintain that the enjoyment one gets out of reading Hamlet qualifies as "truth"? If so, it seems to follow that humans who read Hamlet do so in order to survive; do you believe this is the case?

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Shapeless,

You are unlikely to get a reply.

Response to coberst from one of his many forums.

Quote:

You've made a neat little band of enemies here, but before we collectively dismiss you as a total crank, I want to make sure that there's no confusion over why so many of this forum's regulars are up in arms over your posts.

This has always functioned as a discussion forum. The key word being discussion. A BBS system like the one upon which this forum functions allows all sorts of communication, but the people who come to, and stick with this forum are looking for a particular kind of communication. That kind of communication has certain hallmarks, identifying characteristics, the most salient of which is a back-and-forth that results in more than just the exchange of static information, as though it were a kind of concrete commodity.

You've made it pretty clear that what you've come here to do is familiarize us with information you already possess. You presume, it would seem, that we have any particular want or need of that information. Even if the theories you've been posting were of any particular interest to us, we don't particularly feel inclined to take it at face value from some anonymous source on the web. Which means that we'll always assess it the same way we would assess any other statement made on this site. Discussion is the primary way in which we address such statements, and if you're unwilling to engage in discussion, then you'll find that the contributors to this site will quickly and readily lose interest in you. So long as we feel that we're being respected, 99% of us will conduct conversation on a very civil level. The easiest way to lose our respect is to disrespect us, and that's precisely what you've done by treating us as though we were undergrads in your intro. level course.

If you want to stick around (and I doubt it) you'd do well to try and respond to some of the comments the generous among us have made in response to your mini-lectures. Make a dialogue of it. If you can justify it no other way, go read some Plato and figure out why Socrates felt that dialogue was the basis of all philosophy. If you can't manage even that modicum of civility -- ie. assuming that the other person's response is worth considering -- then you have no place here.

(Italics mine).

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Shapeless wrote:

Do you still maintain that the enjoyment one gets out of reading Hamlet qualifies as "truth"? If so, it seems to follow that humans who read Hamlet do so in order to survive; do you believe this is the case?

That which is meaningful for me is that in which I am in the picture. When I create something meaningful I am creating a concept that includes me. When I study a painting if I really "get-into what the artist is "saying" I am making that painting meaningful for me. When I empathesize with another person I am trying to make that person meaningful to me.

Meaning is not an object but is a concept created by the individual. Meaningfulness is created in certain kinds of experiences in certain kinds of environments. Meaning is subjective. When many others share that same feeling then one might say that the meaning is "objective".

Iraq becomes very meaningful for me if my grandson goes into the army. Meaning is a creation of the individual.

That which is meaningful certainly would not be considered objective in any form that I would understand. I would say that objectivity is shared subjectivity.

Truth is about meaning and the ultimate meaning for me is my survival.

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coberst,

Your reply is encouraging !

By "My survival" do you mean "coherence of my self-integrity" as well as "physical survival". Thus the "reading of books" could be seen as a "a servicing of mental functioning involved in self -integrity" ?

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fresco wrote:

coberst,

Your reply is encouraging !

By "My survival" do you mean "coherence of my self-integrity" as well as "physical survival". Thus the "reading of books" could be seen as a "a servicing of mental functioning involved in self -integrity" ?

Yes. Survival is a large umbrella under which much is included.

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Fresco, I agree that Coberst's reply is encouraging, the most interesting contribution he has made so far, IMHO. Although I have not opposed his "excessive" posting of topics for discussion sans participation. But it IS nice to have his thoughts as well.
One point Coberst: I have always preferred the term "intersubjectivity" for what you have properly put within quotation marks, "objectivity." I DO believe (i.e., relate to the notion) that there is an objective reality, e.g., that which the physicists are dealing with. This is so even though I do not consider the reality they address to be a reality-out-there. I and you ARE that reality. It's just that as far as I am concerned I have no subjective sense of "things" like "quarks" (or whatever--the list is infinite/indefinite). I DO have a physical relationship with "quarks" but not one that I am conscious of. They do not participate in my dualistic field of conceptualized awareness, which, of course, is not really "my" field, it's just non-dualistic (and ineffable) phenomena.
Gasp! I'm getting too old for this stuff.

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Was that a yes or no, Coberst?

I'm trying to see how your "survival model" of truth fits with your "aesthetic model" of truth, since you've claimed in the past that aesthetic pleasure is a form of truth. How, exactly, does Hamlet contribute to your survival? So far you've suggested that Hamlet is meaningful to you, and that meaning is a concept that lies in the general rhetorical proximity of truth, and so Hamlet is "kind of like" truth. Is there more to it than that?

Do you maintain, as you have in the past, that reading Hamlet qualifies as "truth"? And if so, how does Hamlet contribute to your survival?

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I see that a few responses were posted as I was typing my above response, and that they help to clarify what I was inquiring about.

coberst wrote:

fresco wrote:

By "My survival" do you mean "coherence of my self-integrity" as well as "physical survival". Thus the "reading of books" could be seen as a "a servicing of mental functioning involved in self -integrity" ?

Yes. Survival is a large umbrella under which much is included.

This is what I suspected: if we are stretching the concept "survival" so widely that it can include leisure activities, then yes, I can see how reading Hamlet can be said to be an aspect of survival--as can going to the opera, basket-weaving, and model train collecting. In this context, "survival" becomes a synonym for "life activities." And if this is the case, I have to wonder what is gained by calling it "survival" rather than "life activities," other than the dubious advantage of being able to make facile analogies between the life of humans and the life of wild cats. As Terry suggested on the previous page, we are starting with an attractive intellectual concept and molding our perception of reality to fit it. I wonder if it should not work in reverse.

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Regarding the aesthetic model of truth: It seems to me that "truth" is a very troubling concept. I prefer the slightly less troubling "reality," and define "truth" as provisional and relatively acceptable (acceptable by whatever criteria) propositions about the nature of reality/realities.
But Neitzsche wrote that beauty is the only justification for life. He was not referring to truth. He considered "truth" pragmatically to be those notions that promote survival, even though they will eventually be replaced by other truths--I think he considered "philosophy" and "science" (broadly speaking) to be histories of error: every replaced truth eventually becomes an historical error. So BEAUTY, according to Neitzsche, is not, as I read him, the equivalence of survival-promoting truth. As I see it, while beauty does not necessarily promote survival it contributes substantially to its value. I not sure I would want to live without art and alcohol.

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JLNobody wrote:

As I see it, while beauty does not necessarily promote survival it contributes substantially to its value.

Sure--I'd be the last person to deny the importance of beauty in the aesthetic experience. I just don't see a whole lot to be gained, and quite a lot to be lost, in pretending that aesthetic quality is a form of truth. Primarily what is lost is, ironically, the thing that Coberst is always hawking: critical thinking. As proof of this, one need only ask the committed aesthetician for an example of the kind of truth that Hamlet illustrates. Invariably, the response is that the truth of Hamlet, whatever it is, can't be put into words; either that, or explaining the "truths" of Hamlet would consist of simply quoting the text and "letting it speak for itself." (I'm reminded of a possibly apocryphal anecdote I once heard concerning T.S. Eliot, in which he has just read aloud the text of "Sweeney Among the Nightengales" at a poetry reading and, upon being asked what the poem "means," responds by reading it aloud again.) In other words, "aesthetic truth" is a kind of truth that is explicitly designed to refute interrogation... which is the opposite of critical thinking.

Among the other things that are lost when one conflates aesthetic quality and truth, I would argue, is the reality that high art--the kind that is always used when an intellectual wants to distinguish between "aesthetic quality" and mere "entertainment"--has always been a luxury item of the affluent. To describe art's pleasures as crucial elements of "survival" seems to me to be wildly naive and not a little offensive.

I'm not suggesting that we start devaluing artworks or start feeling guilty about liking them, of course. I just think we should call a spade a spade. Why not call the enjoyment of Hamlet a leisure activity, since that is what it is? What do we gain by pretending that it is crucial to our survival?

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