A place to start
Descartes, one of the best know proponents of foundationalism, attempted to find knowledge that was sure. From his famous cogito, "I think therefore I am," he established the existence of a world independent of his perception as well as a good god, in the capital "G" sense of the word.
However, since that time many thinkers have put a shadow over all the world that Descartes desired to illuminate. Nothing seems as stable as Descartes would have hoped, and foundation after foundation has proved unsuitable for building a house of knowledge in which we might bed down with certainty.
Mathematics has a field called "Ring Theory" which considers the way we define and understand numbers. This examination of mathematics' most foundational concepts provides mathematicians with solutions to problems that other alternatives could not solve, each also coming with its own unique set of unsolvable paradoxes. If even mathematics is faced with undecidable problems, from where do we expect to obtain knowledge?
This is only one of many evidences that leave me certain of my uncertainty. This uncertainty comes to me as a messenger, like one of Jobs servants who escaped calamity, to tell me, "all knowledge has been destroyed and I alone have escaped to tell you."
I find this point boring, and not even worthy of debate. I only put it down because it seems to be a point whose important implications hide in the background of every discussion. I admit that here a phenomenological approach, or the Kierkegaardian claim, "subjectivity is truth," can play an interesting role, and I am glad, and even blessed, to talk about such things. However, here my goal is not to abandon truth but to rethink it.
Maybe I will be able to redeem this post with a quote is at least interesting to read. If you don't like quotes you probably haven't bothered to come back to this blog anyway.
"The will to truth which will still tempt us to many a venture, that famous truthfulness of which all philosophers so far have spoken with respect--what questions has this will to truth not laid before us! What strange, wicked, questionable questions! That is a long story even now-- and yet it seems as if it had scarcely begun. Is it any wonder that we should finally become suspicious, lose patience, and turn away impatiently? that we should finally learn from this Sphinx to ask questions too? Who is it really that puts questions to us here? What in us really wants 'truth'?"
-Friedrich Nietzsche
However, since that time many thinkers have put a shadow over all the world that Descartes desired to illuminate. Nothing seems as stable as Descartes would have hoped, and foundation after foundation has proved unsuitable for building a house of knowledge in which we might bed down with certainty.
Mathematics has a field called "Ring Theory" which considers the way we define and understand numbers. This examination of mathematics' most foundational concepts provides mathematicians with solutions to problems that other alternatives could not solve, each also coming with its own unique set of unsolvable paradoxes. If even mathematics is faced with undecidable problems, from where do we expect to obtain knowledge?
This is only one of many evidences that leave me certain of my uncertainty. This uncertainty comes to me as a messenger, like one of Jobs servants who escaped calamity, to tell me, "all knowledge has been destroyed and I alone have escaped to tell you."
I find this point boring, and not even worthy of debate. I only put it down because it seems to be a point whose important implications hide in the background of every discussion. I admit that here a phenomenological approach, or the Kierkegaardian claim, "subjectivity is truth," can play an interesting role, and I am glad, and even blessed, to talk about such things. However, here my goal is not to abandon truth but to rethink it.
Maybe I will be able to redeem this post with a quote is at least interesting to read. If you don't like quotes you probably haven't bothered to come back to this blog anyway.
"The will to truth which will still tempt us to many a venture, that famous truthfulness of which all philosophers so far have spoken with respect--what questions has this will to truth not laid before us! What strange, wicked, questionable questions! That is a long story even now-- and yet it seems as if it had scarcely begun. Is it any wonder that we should finally become suspicious, lose patience, and turn away impatiently? that we should finally learn from this Sphinx to ask questions too? Who is it really that puts questions to us here? What in us really wants 'truth'?"
-Friedrich Nietzsche
posted by The Begger at 6:01 p.m.
2 Comments:
Sorry, do I need to read McLuhan to get an understanding of his idea of truth? Get back to me. I think it is cool that McLuhan was a Christian too. I would like to read some more of his work, did he write a lot? Was it all popular or was some of it very academic? Topic for discussion: truth according to McLuhan. How does it relate to other ideas such as certainty, correspondence, or aesthetic which have been associated with truth? Let me know Soren, the ball is in your court.
I think the fact that you have worked on rethinking truth even in this comment suggests that it could be worthwile. The conception of truth as "the opinion of the majority" is already a rethink from classical conception.
What about the fact that even if everyone thinks carrots are good for them, they could still die from eating carrots? It seems to me, and I think it is generally accepted, that though post modern thought has abandoned "truth" as a universal concept, that it is not because they have really proven that it cannot exist, but only that they have no access to it. I believe you said "It is not possible to know whether truth, unaffected by social pressures, even exists." So, old conceptions of truth MAY not be usefull, as we seem to have no access to it, but there is still more to think about here.
A guy in our class did a presentation where he talked about the entropy and how nothing returns to order without a maxwell's demon, however, as he pointed out, this is assuming an infinite background in the process. If the background is finite it is always possible that it will return to order, though the possibilities may be so great that no person inside the system will ever gather enough info to give the whole picture.
The interesting thing in this idea is that it is POSSIBLE that we will find certain limits, though we may never be able to know if they are absolute limits. This means that maybe we ought to live as if we might find a limit, or that something that looks like a limit might be one, though it might be show as merely contingent in a short time.
Your "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" seems to conflict with Derrida's "I begin with love. This concept does not leave much room, despite appearances, for chitchat, or for declaration." Right now I'm willing to lean to Derrida's side.
I'm not sure what it means for the "existence of something to be predicated on the desire of an other" but I'm happy to hear.
Also, if we were to talk about Keirkegaardian or phenomenological notions of truth, we wouldn't have to worry about the universable nature of truth anyway, so there is plenty to talk about here.
It is not possible to know whether truth, unaffected by social pressures, even exists, for we cannot step beyond these pressures. Even claiming counter-culture does nothing but reinforce this idea that our ability to know something is true is defined by its status in society at large.
And that's where beauty comes in. Beauty is so individual: you think Angie is beautiful, I think Sarah is beautiful. However, neither of us would argue with the truth that we believe one to be beautiful. Because beauty is in the eye of the beholder. And I think truth is the same way. Establishing some kind of meta-truth is not only implausible, but impossible. The very fact that we cannot conceive of such a universal truth--that is, an idea, though, or observation that will be ratified by all--
One might counter that such meta-truth exists whether it has universal acceptance or not. And I would respond that the existence of something is predicated on the desire of an other. Without that other, we cannot be sure the subject exists.
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