1
   

Truth and Language

 
 
Letty
 
  1  
Reply Mon 6 Dec, 2004 08:42 am
Val, I realize that. but part of the curriculum in any school of thought should contain some clarification and workable thesis to explore the effects on people and their environment, and to improve the human condition. Abstract concepts will always be interpreted in many different and meaningful ways, and each will come from the table with a different truth colored by the communication process. I follow through these threads and do research, because I love to explore. I was, at first, amused by the Zig Zag Zen that I mentioned, then I realized how many cultures have subscribed to that belief.

I did a small experiment when I taught. I asked the students to take one day and smile at every student that they met in the halls, and then to write down the results. I, as well as they, were surprised at the positive results. When I created the Weaned Away from the World thread, I was looking into the possibility that the body acts in concert with the mind. I still believe that to be factual.
0 Replies
 
BoGoWo
 
  1  
Reply Mon 6 Dec, 2004 09:01 am
Letty wrote:
................ I still believe that to be factual.


and occassionally, when the body is urged to break away from the chains of the mind, it manages to drag the mind out of its 'prison' of the expected!

[the unexpected always carries the power of surprize.]
0 Replies
 
Letty
 
  1  
Reply Mon 6 Dec, 2004 09:09 am
Agreed, Bo. I have witnessed it in real life.
0 Replies
 
JLNobody
 
  1  
Reply Mon 6 Dec, 2004 08:54 pm
Val, I agree. Philosophical "debate" is (or should be) a win-win situation in which the terms of disagreement become increasing refined (we clarify our questions, as you told Letty). I do enjoy some challenges to my perspective, and they have at times altered my views. My absolute idealism (that there is only the subjective) has been tempered by Fresco and others, such that now I see an interactionist reality in which our relations to the world determines our understandings of it (and the units of interaction comprise a unitary process, not an absolute dualistic relationship between subjects and objects). Knowledge (or truth if you will) is that which, as Fresco observes, favors our need to predict and control our environment. If an idea serves these functions it is likely to become normative, i.e., it will enjoy consensus in the culture. If it never suceeds it will not, and the individual who insists on its veracity may be ostracized. Is not "predict and control" another way of saying "adequation"? I don't see much difference between our perspectives.

By the way, Letty. When strangers smile at me in public, I immediately like them. The response may be superficial but it is very primitive (fundamental, basic, "instinctive", etc.).
Body and mind may be two words for a single reality. We think, IN A SENSE, with our entire body. At least, it is very easy to see mind and brain as a single reality.
0 Replies
 
fresco
 
  1  
Reply Tue 7 Dec, 2004 01:15 am
JLN and Val,

I understand JLN's "tempering" in terms of the futility in denying that we are here engaged in "communication" hence the purely "subjective"
would be somewhat perverse.

I agree that "adequation" implies pragmatism within interaction....this rock serves as (adequates) "a table" for the purposes of a picnic...and note that all elements of this interaction are transient albeit on different time scales (i.e for different purposes/observers)

It is the spectacular success of "science" in controlling our environments at the local level which adds weight to an apparant "objective reality". But consider (a) that "science" tends to use the metalanguage of mathematics which is relatively "culture free" (wide consensus) and (b) local "success" might engender macroscopic "failure" as in the concept of "global warming".

The rationality behind interactionist views of existence (in which language functions as one possible level) is based on "systems dynamics" involving the maintenance of "structure".
Such structures (cell, individual, group) do not seem to arise by "causal mechanisms" but involve
states of equlilibrium between "inner and outer" with respect to structure and function.
0 Replies
 
Letty
 
  1  
Reply Tue 7 Dec, 2004 07:12 am
Good morning, philosophers.

I mentioned the "smile" because Konrad Lorenz has suggested that the smile and the handshake are universal aggression inhibitors. Perhaps body language is instinctual, but the behaviorists call it shaping; however, in our global culture, these simple mechanisms no longer apply.

JL has mentioned that many of these discussions have changed his thinking, and I will continue to follow the threads just to see if the same applies to me.
0 Replies
 
baffman
 
  1  
Reply Thu 9 Dec, 2004 06:12 pm
Frank Apisa wrote:
Bring me up to speed, Baffman...and assume I am not the sharpest tool in the shed while doing so.

Are you suggesting that the existence of a God...is more logical (and therefore more likely to be the REALITY) than suggesting that no gods exist?


I'm saying that "The universe had a beginning" makes sense and that, "the universe had no beginning," makes no sense. Something cannot come from nothing. Only nothing comes from nothing. Therefore, something comes from something (or someone as I propose). If you propose that God doesn't exist, you are forced to defend a nonsense proposition, "something came from nothing." If you propose that God isn't there, you must either defend belief in a natural universe that has no beginning and no end (which I think is not possible); or you must defend a destic universe in which God made it then split (which is possible if you reject the Bible as God's Word and Jesus as God's Son, both of which must be rejected concurrently); or you must defend a theistic universe (which you think or at least Val thinks is meaningless). I think the theistic universe (a personal uncaused cause of the universe) makes far more sense than a "nothing caused" universe.

Baffman
0 Replies
 
JLNobody
 
  1  
Reply Thu 9 Dec, 2004 06:27 pm
Baffman, to me a personal uncaused cause of the universe is totally meaningless, but this does not, as far as I'm concerned, leave me with the meaningless notion of a natural universe without a beginning. To me, the notion of natural is meaningful only in contrast to the notion of supernatural. The latter is spurious making the former unnecessary. And the notions of BEGINNING and END are far too artificial and epistemologically provincial for application to something so grand and all-inclusive as the universe or cosmos (which, however, may also be a very artificial notion--er, as are all notions). To me, the question of the beginning of the universe is a non-problem. But what about the notion of the changing universe, about a cosmos that merely changed with the Big Bang?
0 Replies
 
Frank Apisa
 
  1  
Reply Fri 10 Dec, 2004 03:52 am
baffman wrote:
Frank Apisa wrote:
Bring me up to speed, Baffman...and assume I am not the sharpest tool in the shed while doing so.

Are you suggesting that the existence of a God...is more logical (and therefore more likely to be the REALITY) than suggesting that no gods exist?


I'm saying that "The universe had a beginning" makes sense and that, "the universe had no beginning," makes no sense.


Well that may be the problem in our differing takes on this.

"The universe had a beginning" makes less sense to me than "the universe had no beginning."


Quote:
Something cannot come from nothing.


That seems more like an argument for my position than yours.

If the universe had a beginning...it would be something coming from nothing. If the universe had NO beginning...that problem would not present itself.

Perhaps my position would be more clear if we changed the wording of your proposition a bit...by substituting the word "existence" for "universe."

Doesn't "existence had a beginning" make less sense to you than "existence had no beginning?"



Quote:
Only nothing comes from nothing. Therefore, something comes from something (or someone as I propose). If you propose that God doesn't exist, you are forced to defend a nonsense proposition, "something came from nothing."


But if you presuppose, as you are, that all "things" must come from something (in other words, MUST have a beginning)...you are forced to defend what you consider to be a "nonsense proposition"...something (your god notion) came from nothing. If you are supposing that some things do not have to have a beginning...then we reduce the argument to "Can existence (which includes the universe) be the thing that either a) does not have to have a beginning...or b) that came from nothing...or is a God necessary as an intermediate step?

Either way...your god...or existence...has to be considered as something that either a) had no beginning or b) came from nothing.

Why would it have to be your god? Why would that make more sense? Why would that be "more likely?"


Quote:
If you propose that God isn't there, you must either defend belief in a natural universe that has no beginning and no end (which I think is not possible)...
Quote:



But that is so arbitrary. Why?


Quote:
; or you must defend a destic universe in which God made it then split (which is possible if you reject the Bible as God's Word and Jesus as God's Son, both of which must be rejected concurrently); or you must defend a theistic universe (which you think or at least Val thinks is meaningless). I think the theistic universe (a personal uncaused cause of the universe) makes far more sense than a "nothing caused" universe.


Trite as this may be...and it is indeed trite...

...If you can conceive of a God without a beginning...an uncaused cause...

...why can you not conceive of existence without a beginning...an uncaused cause?


Keep in mind that I have absolutely no idea of what the REALITY of the situation is. I suspect the TRUTH of REALITY may be so remote from what we are discussing here...that neither the logicalal bits you presume to be presenting or the logical bits others offer in rebuttal...may actaully be logical. In discussing whether or not a God (or gods) are necessary to explain existence and the universe...we may be like ants discussing whether different kinds of grass indicate the existence of a higher order of beingness.

We know so little of what is here...all this speculation about how it came to be is, to be as polite as possible, putting the horse before the cart.
0 Replies
 
BoGoWo
 
  1  
Reply Fri 10 Dec, 2004 10:11 am
baffman wrote:

I'm saying that "The universe had a beginning" makes sense and that, "the universe had no beginning," makes no sense. Something cannot come from nothing. Only nothing comes from nothing.........
Baffman


can't let that one go;

au contraire!!
nothing 'defines' something; if something always existed, it would be meaningless.

something can 'ONLY' come from nothing!

however, having said that, doesn't imply a chronology of nothing, then something; but merely a framework around the mutation of nothingness to everythingness, and back again.

[Nothingness is a magnetic/gravitational pole from which something, by the expenditure of massive amount of energy, emerges for a 'moment in the sun', and inevitably, falls back, headlong into nothingness!]
0 Replies
 
Letty
 
  1  
Reply Fri 10 Dec, 2004 10:38 am
Somewhere I read that destruction is the only thing that brings about change, Bo....and from it, comes evolution. If the truth were told, just think of the many languages that have died and produced scions of other languages.

(I concur with JL's Big BAND theory. Razz )
0 Replies
 
JLNobody
 
  1  
Reply Fri 10 Dec, 2004 12:36 pm
Frank, your last post is very convincing. Excellent logic.
I would only suggest that, from my limited human and personal perspective, no thing comes from nothing. Reality is a mysterious fact of existence. We know that there is something(i.e., whatever the case may be) but it is not statically substantial; it is epitomized by CHANGE. When something comes into existence, it (never a static, absolute, positive, thing) did not come from a static, absolute, negative "nothingness". As a gross example, my open "hand" closes and BECOMES a "fist". This fist is a form that comes from the form, hand. It is not a thing, actuallyl it is a process: the hand is fisting as a form of changing Reality. I suspect the observable Universe is like that. With the Big Bang we are presented with a "form" of observable, or potentially observable--at least in part--universe that had a different form before the bang. Here, of course, the Bang is analogous to the closing of the hand. There is the reality of changing forms, but not the absolute beginning and end of things, only the shifting of forms. And that occurs against the ground of something (Reality is good a term for "it") that I would not venture to describe as either infinite or finite, as having a beginning or not having a beginning, or as having an ending or not having an ending. It is inherently mysterious and completely beyond human understanding. And questions about it are inevitably "unrealistic."
0 Replies
 
Frank Apisa
 
  1  
Reply Fri 10 Dec, 2004 03:37 pm
JLNobody wrote:
Frank, your last post is very convincing. Excellent logic.
I would only suggest that, from my limited human and personal perspective, no thing comes from nothing. Reality is a mysterious fact of existence. We know that there is something(i.e., whatever the case may be) but it is not statically substantial; it is epitomized by CHANGE. When something comes into existence, it (as a static, absolute, positive, thing) did not come from a static, absolute, negative "nothingness". As a gross example, my open "hand" closes and BECOMES a "fist". This fist is a form that comes from the form, hand. It is not a thing, actuallyl it is a process: the hand is fisting as a form of changing Reality. I suspect the observable Universe is like that. With the Big Bang we are presented with a "form" of observable, or potentially observable--at least in part--universe that had a different form before the bang. Here, of course, the Bang is analogous to the closing of the hand. There is the reality of changing forms, but not the absolute beginning and end of things, only the shifting of forms. And that occurs against the ground of something (Reality is good a term for "it") that I would not venture to describe as either infinite or finite, as having a beginning or not having a beginning, or as having an ending or not having an ending. It is inherently mysterious and completely beyond human understanding. And questions about it are inevitably "unrealistic."


Thanks for the compliment.

The points you made in this post make lots of sense...so please allow me to say: AMEN! (Irony intended!)
0 Replies
 
Thalion
 
  1  
Reply Sun 12 Dec, 2004 08:54 am
See my argument in the Spirituality Thread on "what makes people NOT believe." Words in themselves are only statements of fact and have no meaning without an understanding (Wisdom) that grants them meaning.
0 Replies
 
JLNobody
 
  1  
Reply Sun 12 Dec, 2004 01:10 pm
Thalion, it occurs to me that the question, "what makes people NOT believe?" would be more interesting if we were talking about Europeans during the Middle Ages. Today, after the enligtenment and the advances in science, including psychology and anthropology, the more interesting question is "why DO people believe?"
0 Replies
 
Thalion
 
  1  
Reply Sun 12 Dec, 2004 01:59 pm
I do not consider science, psychology, and anthropology distinct from God. They are an understanding of God as the logos.
0 Replies
 
JLNobody
 
  1  
Reply Sun 12 Dec, 2004 08:22 pm
Thalion, interesting. Could you clarify what you mean by "logos"? If you mean "the rational principle that informs the workings of the universe" that IS, I agree, a tacit metaphysical presupposition of Science, but the sciences, as I understand them, would not consider this logos to have any basis in a personal force of some kind.
0 Replies
 
Thalion
 
  1  
Reply Sun 12 Dec, 2004 08:45 pm
Psychology and cognitive science would contribute to the understanding of God as the logos rather than suggest a non-existence of God because of determinism. Browse around for my other messages for a better description of my somewhat unconventional theistic stance.
0 Replies
 
JLNobody
 
  1  
Reply Sun 12 Dec, 2004 08:53 pm
Thalion, I am somewhat familiar with your less than orthodox theistic stance, and find it MUCH more interesting than what is usually propounded. But I am also not a believer in determinism, i.e., as a metaphysical characteristic of the Cosmos.
0 Replies
 
Thalion
 
  1  
Reply Sun 12 Dec, 2004 09:00 pm
In my opinion, Determinism contradicts the basic principle of philosophy. Even if all my thoughts are determined, it does not matter b\c I must still think them. Whether the act of thinking them is determined does not affect the fact that I must still experience the act of thinking them, which is consciousness. I disregard determinism and tend to deal more with philosophical descriptions of the world I can percieve. Determinism still has it's place as a science (I love physics) but that is not relevant to the way that I experience the world.
0 Replies
 
 

Related Topics

How can we be sure? - Discussion by Raishu-tensho
Proof of nonexistence of free will - Discussion by litewave
Destroy My Belief System, Please! - Discussion by Thomas
Star Wars in Philosophy. - Discussion by Logicus
Existence of Everything. - Discussion by Logicus
Is it better to be feared or loved? - Discussion by Black King
Paradigm shifts - Question by Cyracuz
 
  1. Forums
  2. » Truth and Language
  3. » Page 7
Copyright © 2025 MadLab, LLC :: Terms of Service :: Privacy Policy :: Page generated in 0.03 seconds on 01/05/2025 at 04:58:56