Dave, Sounds like your definition of truth is a lot like Peirce's definition of "belief" -- "a believe is a conception upon which we are prepared to act". So, Peirce's belief, like West's Truth, is presumably local. Beliefs can be shared but they don't have to be to be beliefs.
So, on your account, Truth is defined as local. Can Truths be shared? Or, for the purposes of your definition of truth, each truth is unique to the person who holds it. Does a truth have to be unique to a person to be a truth? Nick Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ -----Original Message----- From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Prof David West Sent: Tuesday, October 17, 2017 2:19 PM To: friam@redfish.com Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Truth: “Hunh! What is it good for? Absolutely Nothing!” truth is — the persistence of a particular wiring path in an immensely complicated, and otherwise dynamic, web of connections among billions of sensors capturing input and hundreds of thousands of effectors generating output from one state of the sensors-web-effectors to another. truth is a 'failure', a 'defect'; a means for avoiding constant re-establishment of the entirety of the web in response to constantly changing inputs / values of inputs. Truth isn't. To anthropomorphize the definition: truth is behavior that persists because the individual fails to re-evaluate the totality of inputs/outputs/connections that, in some previous state of that individual, first established the particular behavior. Like cancer, these persistences can be relatively benign, sometimes fatal, but they are always a defect. Nothing about language or thought, but a hint of the truth-preserving machine in which people squirm that Glen described. It is certainly possible for one sensor-web-effector state machine to "infect" another, i.e. stimulate a second machine to replicate the behavior. If that happens we have 'convergence' which is nothing more than collective 'fault'/ 'defectiveness'. As to dualism/ naive-realism - I give no more truck to Descartes than Nick. Perhaps, ala Vedism, once in the near infinite past there was 'mind-stuff' and 'matter-stuff' and perhaps once again in the near infinite future that dualism will be re-established. But in the meantime issues of dualism tend not to edification. dave On Tue, Oct 17, 2017, at 12:54 PM, gⅼеɳ ☣ wrote: > Excellent! So, now, if we listen to Dave with some empathy, we can > ask him if his "local truth" is similar to the naive realist's "with > respect to what you or I think"? Dave? > > FWIW, I predict Dave will respond with something like the assertion > that locality (scope) is set by the language. And so, it's less about > what one *thinks* and more about the > platform/context/truth-preserving-machine > in which the people find themselves squirming around. If such > truth-scope is defined in that way, then we're a lot closer to > Peirce's concept of reality being whatever consequences our language > *deduces* to ... whatever sentences are evaluated as true in that > language. And, here Dave and Peirce agree. Change the language, and > you change what evaluates to true in that language. > > > On 10/17/2017 11:41 AM, Nick Thompson wrote: > > Taking up your challenge as penance: A Naïve realist would, I suppose, say > > that there is a real world out there that we have clues to. Sometimes we > > get it right; sometimes we get it wrong. It's a dualist position because > > there are two kinds of stuff in the world, the world stuff out there and > > the mind stuff in here. Truth can apply to both kinds of stuff. I E, > > there is a truth-of-the-matter with respect to what you think or what I > > think, as well as a truth of the matter with respect to whether what we > > think is true of the world. > > -- > ☣ gⅼеɳ > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe > at St. John's College to unsubscribe > http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
