weemba@GARNET.BERKELEY.EDU (Obnoxious Math Grad Student) (12/27/87)
[I'm moving this over to sci.philosophy.tech. t.r.newage readers might find this style of discussion offensive or something for all I know.] In article <9864@mimsy.UUCP>, mangoe@mimsy (Charley Wingate) writes: >In truth, I see little defense of this eclecticism-- not even the best and >most existential claim of all. There's something paradoxical, to my mind, >about claiming that it can be a fact of existence that the facts of >existence differ from person to person. I don't think that anyone belives >this when it is taken all the way to its conclusion, so I wonder that it can >be defended at all. I never got a response to the following, which I cc-ed to Charley just over a year ago when the same riff was going along then, sparked by Jane Fonda's reply to the Archbishop of Canterbury that the Trinity is "true for you but not for me". (I am also ">>", and a third party is ">",">>>".) ----------------------------------------------------------------------- >>>Do you think [asking "what is truth?"] is the same as >>>asking "what is true"? >> >>Oh wow. Literally speaking, of course not, but in the relevant sense >>of could I conceivably answer the one without being able to answer the >>other, I do not believe that they are the same question. The former >>runs much deeper than the latter. But then again, it is conceivable >>that the former problem could be answered in a manner that leaves the >>latter uncomputable. > >That was exactly my point. I don't think they are the same question >either. That's why I wonder when people like Jane Fonda assert that >a proposition that is independant of any individual can be true for >one person and not another. This seems to be making sport of the >question "what is true" let alone "what is truth". Fonda and the >Bishop weren't talking epistomology, only about a particular proposition. It might seem to be making sport on the surface, and I seriously doubt that Fonda was doing anything more than giving a glib eclectic formula, the HASAn analogue of a spare "Hail Mary", but at a deeper level--well beyond the net discussion--it makes profound philosophical sense. Wittgenstein would want me to know what it *means* to say Jesus is the Son of God before assenting to its truth. You can recite any classical formulation you wish--but if I don't accept that, I will end up saying the exact same words that Fonda did. (I will mean something entirely different though!) This is still all part of the correspondence theory of truth, where the only possible sensical interpretation of "true for you/not for me" is as above--"not for me" means I don't like your terminology, but I agree that either your formulation describes something that is *true* or *false*. In other words, "not for me" is still word quibbling. Now the real fun begins. Let us consider, if you will permit the profane, an analogy to (mystical) apprehension of the Trinity. (And remember that I accept mysticism as valid--and further that mysticism to me means a direct gnosis without automatic religious overtones.) Color perception is a highly complex process. What is "red"? It is known that color is not merely an objective fact about an object, but depends further on background color, background lighting, previous viewer's expo- sure, and the viewer's own training/retinas/brain. The physiology depends on the three different kinds of cones, each with a different response curve emphasizing different parts of the spectrum. I can imagine a virus that attacks one of the cones and alters its response curve--and of course the *brain* will not see this change, although in principle(?!) you could teach it to readjust its cone-response-integratory function. You guessed it. Existentialism has raised its ugly head yet again. That sound you hear is Kierkegaard's ghost cheerfully waking up. What I'm saying boils down to a profound question--IS the Trinity a hard fact "of the world", or is it something part of the very heart, essence, and *meaning* of man's relationship to God? (Of course this is a false dichotomy, but we must make do.) I can read John in both of these senses *very* easily. In the one view Jesus is revealing facts about the (spir- itual) world, the way a physicist might tell you the wavelengths of light bounced off objects around him. In the other reading, Jesus is telling his audiences what will happen when they learn to *apperceive* Him/the Father/Paraclete through the modicum of faith, the way a neurophysical therapist might (conceivably) retrain your color sense to normal by the appropriate mental exercises. (I should point out that this isn't entirely hypothetical. There *are* forms of color "blindness" where one of the cones is deviant from normal. Such people are really color "different".) Even if you don't *agree* with an existentialist interpretation of John-- and I have no interest in trying to convert!--you do realize I hope that *if* it is correct, then "true for you/not for me" takes on *a* valid non-quibbling meaning. The ontology of pure apprehension--what is it? You got me, but it sure is fun contemplating! Would Jesus have ever come out and *asserted/denied* an Aristotelian or a Kierkegaardian approach had someone asked? Of course not; we'd get an an- swer along the lines of ``render unto Aristotle what is Aristotle's, and unto Kierkegaard what is Kierkegaard's''. And Pilate, I suppose, would have asked ``What is truth?'' all over again. Thus endeth the discussion. Words are slippery things ofttimes, and trying to put *meaning* back into them, because saying the same rituals too often has drained them of such, might be dangerous. Or it might be rewarding. But it should never be trivial. I don't mean to frighten you, but in my analogy, you come off sounding like a strange mirror image of the late Rich Rosen. That is, you have apparently defined the supernatural in positivistic terms, whereas Rich had defined the entire world in (physical only) positivistic terms. (Of course, this is not accurate, but wrangling your way around it should be amusing.) [The above had been in response to ">", but it applies just as well to Charley.] And if you think this is bad, just wait until we hit phenomenology.... Rather humorously(?), observe that I the atheist could honestly *believe* the existential interpretation I offered as being TRUE, without risking the slightest internal inconsistency! (OK, none worse than the standard Biblical "contradictions".) [Just in case it isn't clear, I should emphasize that I believe none of the above. You see, it isn't, uh, "true for me".] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The classic mathematical model of religious eclectism is due to David Har- wood, to whom I will forever be thankful for this gem: (reprinted without the permission of Captain Carnage) |From: harwood@cvl.umd.edu (David Harwood) |Subject: Re: Theology is hard on Ontology |Message-ID: <1825@cvl.umd.edu> |Date: 7 Dec 86 01:59:28 GMT | |In article <4089@jhunix.UUCP> ins_akaa@jhunix.UUCP (Ken Arromdee) writes: |>One religion says that Jesus is, in some sense, God. |>Another religion says that Jesus is not, in any sense, God. |> |>Would somebody please explain how both can possibly be true? |>-- | | | Hmm...ok... | We will start with your hint, and take the 2nd religion to be |different from the 1st. | (I must confess I could never have solved this recondite |theological problem without looking up the method of the "ne plus |ultra" -product construction of small finite first-order models, |found in my closet copy of Chang and Keisler. One never knows what |will prove to be useful ;-) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Despite surface appearances, and despite the fact that it is incredibly funny--well, OK, incredibly funny to people like me who take ultraproducts for the fun of it--the above reply *is* genuine. I refer you to Hilary Putnam, "Models and Reality", J of Symbolic Logic, 1980, v45, pp 464-82, reprinted in volume 3 of his _Philosophical Papers_, where almost the same reasoning--without tongue in cheek or any brilliant puns--is used to highlight a similar difficulty in the philosophy of science, about how the language of a scientific theory *cannot*, even in principle, identify its referents, or its "reality", or its "truth". An expanded form of this argument is in his book _Reason, Truth, and History_. (You may remember my "Cats on Mats--or--Rand in the Sand" article from long ago where I quoted from this book his example of "cats* on mats*" as an elementary illustration of this difficulty.) While I think Putnam's argu- ment is incomplete, by the way, since he hadn't ruled out second-order considerations, it nevertheless provides a very clear model with which to discuss religious eclectism non-paradoxically. As an aside, I'll mention that while such a project may be viewed as de- construction in one form or another, I consider deconstructionists, for all their sparkle, to have missed the boat entirely, since they can't even tell the difference between a second-order truth and a (w)hole in the (g)round. Pointing out the existence of non-standard interpretati- ons is one thing; showing why they deserve equal consideration is quite another. (Putnam, of course, knows full well about second-order matters: he dismissed them in this instance as too "mysterious", "unhelpful", and "unpersuasive". I think he needs to make a better argument.) [Hey, Gary, I forgot. Is it ()'s or /'s t/his time of year??] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Even if it is not inconsistent with realist semantics, taking the non-realist semantics as our picture of how the language is understood undoubtedly will affect the way we view questions about reality and truth. For one thing, verification in empirical science (and, to a lesser extent, in mathematics as well, perhaps) some- times depends on what we before called `decision' or `convention'. Thus facts may, on this picture, depend on our interests, saliencies, and decisions. There will be many `soft facts'. (Perhaps whether V=L or not is a `soft fact'.) I cannot, myself, regret this. If appear- ance and reality end up being endpoints on a continuum rather than being the two halves of a monster Dedekind Cut in all we conceive and don't conceive, it seems to me that philosophy will be much better off. The search for the `furniture of the universe' will have ended with the discovery that the universe is not a furnished room. --Hilary Putnam, "Models and Reality" It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks. --God, Acts 9:5, KJV ucbvax!garnet!weemba Matthew P Wiener/Brahms Gang/Berkeley CA 94720 The good Christian should beware of mathematicians and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that the mathematicians have made a covenant with the Devil to darken the spirit and to confine man in the bonds of Hell ... --Saint Augustine (heh heh heh)