truth

Say what now?

truth
What happened here, Rufio? Did the thread, Absolute Determinism, suddenly give way to a new thread called Truth? How strange. I can't scroll down to remind myself what you said while writing a response to it.
Let me say, however, that I do not consider the pre-reflective experience of "empty" perceptions to be socially constructed. In fact, a major difference between the mystical and "normal" perspectives is that the mystic doesn't add anything (any meaning) to pre-reflective/unconstructed experience. He leaves it as it is. This can be called "resting in the reality of emptiness."

truth
Oh, I see. I accidently hit the New Topic icon next to the Post a Reply icon. What a convenient way to start a new thread, intentionally or not.

Ok, so you agree that perception (as opposed to interpretation) is not socially constructed, right? However, as I pointed out before, interpretation (other than symbolism and so forth) is so universal that it makes it seem rather unlike a social construction. Why do you say that it is?

truth
Rufio, we do have a persistent inability to understand one another, don't we? By unconstructed experience I refer to that which strikes our attention in the micro-instant before we categorize it. To be able to see it in the raw, so to speak, is what mystics do. When we become aware that we have "perceived" a meaningful something, e.g., a room, a chair, a child, a tree, etc. it's already been interpreted. This happens with lightening speed, so fast that we are unaware of the process of interpretion and thus make the mistake of thinking that the experience came to us with its meaning "given" rather than culturally ascribed. The latter is what is meant by Naive Realism, the epistemology we practice in everyday life, but not, I should hope, when engaged in philosophical reflection. Life is far more complex and problematical than acknowledged by common sense. The only problem with common sense, it seems to me, is that it is too common.
By the way, I understand from you that you are an anthropology major. I'm therefore surprised that you clalim that different cultures, including radically different cultures, are so similar in their world views that their interpretations must reflect an objective picture of an objective world?

truth
Yeah, Twyvel. That would be included in my "...that's what mystics do."

By the way, Rufio, I must admit that even "radically different cultures" do share interpretations for which there is a limited range of possibilities. That would include practical things like how to make crops grow. If they do not conceptualize the process "realistically" they would not be around to be compared by us. But their notions of what makes rain happen are very likely to differ more, and religious notions such as the origin of their worlds, are likely to have still more "play" in them. Remember Fresco's principle that utility rather than actuality is what counts. This accounts for the similarity between pragmatically urgent types of conceptualizations. But this in no way argues, as far as I can see, for an objective reality with given meanings. Remember the peasant who asked the astronomer how he learned the names of those planets so far away?

That seems a rather materialist stance for a mystic. Normally, you'd expect mystics to see things like fairies and the fifth dimension and the ionosphere and alternate planes of existence and so forth, not what's in front of our eyes all the time anyway.

I know that meaning and worldveiw are constructed. For the millionth time, I have never said otherwise. I mean, looking at an object and saying, this object has such-and-such dimensions. This object has such-and-such a shape. This object has such-and-such a color, texture, weight, density, hardness. Etc. These things are not socially constructed - our perception is not socially constructed.

Similarly, not all of our interpretations are socially constructed either - some of them are simply logical. Looking a flat surface and thinking "I could sit on that" is not necessarily a constructed thought.

As a point of interest, I saw this TV special on people who have parts of their brains that are responsible for controlling emotion mess up occassionally. There was one guy who couldn't connect emotion to things that he saw (though he could do it for things that he heard). So he would see his parents and think they were imposters because even though he recognized them he didn't respond to them emotionally. In every other respect he recognized them the same way, though.

I think if we all perceive things the same way that that DOES argue for an objective reality. How could it not?

truth
Rufio, for the millionth time, I was not talking about "socially" constructed meanings/interpretations; you brought that in. I was talking about constructions per se--cultural constructions are an aspect of that. Even colors, textures, flatness, etc. etc. etc. are ideas, no matter how useful they may be. They refer not to objective sui generis realities (i.e., there are no colors apart-from-our-occipital lobes) in nature; they exist only in our responses to "nature", whatever that may be. And the "mystics" I refer to--and you know it; don't be abusive; I don't deserve it--are not believers in fifth dimensions, fairies and the like. If you want to talk to me you'll have show better faith than that. I had hoped we were over that interaction style by now.

What about this: Truth is a positive property of a thing or event that is socially acknowledged to be a fact.

Sorry, the irony just struck me there. Maybe we should call them realists instead....

Sure, colors and flatness and hardness and weight are ideas, especially if they're applied relatively. But they are observations of something that is real. So, an object may not actually be "red" in the sense that we understand it, but the redness we see is generated by a real thing, namely the property that certain wavelengths of light bounce off of or are reflected. This is supported by the fact that we can measure such real qualities, and through our senses alone, we can identify things that have been confirmed to have those qualities and identify them as "red". And the fact that every culture with more than two named colors in their language can identify the same things as "red" would indeed suggest that our perceptions are based on real, existant qualities.

truth
Rufio, that's closer to my understanding--don't kill yourself. Sure, I would not say that the electrical, chemical, molecular, atomic, subatomic, string phenomena (and other scientific constructs) that presumably operate to form the "objective" half of the process by which we make up our experiences of color, substance, weight, beauty, etc. are UNreal. But we make up the other, "subjective" (?) half of the process that construct these empirical qualities. They (e.g., colors, weight, beauty, etc, cannot exist without our contributions. They are, in effect, our ideas, even if they do not arise in a vacuum.

Satt__focusable, that may be, but not as I see it. Truth, to me, is not an objective thing "out there" waiting for us to acknowledge it. Truth is our construction that we "claim", "believe", "hold", "assume", etc. to be "fact" (another construct). And our neighbors may very possible disagree with us. In our debates with them we may invoke cannons of evidence, logical rules, statistical scores, sacred authority, whatever, to support our claims, but all of those are OUR constructions too. We can't get away from the fact that without our constructive participation, the world is not something that makes sense in itself. We ascribe that sense to it. The world is our creation. That is to say, the meaningfulness of it is our creation. I do not know what it is when we are not involved. Nobody does. Knowing it, is--as Fresco--observes, the result of our interaction with it. And our interaction with it is--as Tywvel observes--possible because we are one with it. Only language makes it seem that we are not.

JLNobody..
I talked about a "positive property of a thing or event" that can be acknowledged to be a fact, but not about an 'objective thing "out there" waiting for us to acknowledge it.'
Think about whether there is a unique parallel line (L) along another line K, and through a point not on the line K. It is a fact or not a fact depending on the view of a writer. If a writer thinks it is a fact then the existence of a unique parallel line is the truth, otherwise it is false.

truth
Satt_F. You're either over my head or beyond my reach. But I didn't understand enough of what you said to respond.

My post is a kind of intervension in the discussion between you and rufio. Sorry about it if it was embarrassing.

Sure, those things have an empirical component and an interpretive component. But I would think that they are more real than interpreted, due to the general consensus about them.

truth
Satt, what's this about embarassment?
Shameless

There are infinitely many parallel lines through a point to a fixed line, or there is a unique parallel line, or any line through the point eventually crosses the given line. Those are all true if you think they are facts. If one rejects one of the possibilities as a fact, then it is not true for the person.

Nope, it's still true. Because even if they deny that there's only one line that you can draw that won't encounter the other line, they'll never be able to draw more than one no matter how fiercely they believe that they can.