hey dave, dmb: But anyway, around here > truth is the pragmatic truth. It's provisional, > self-correcting and grounded out in actual experience. Truth > and falsity are what happens to an idea in the course of > experience. It's contextual and perspectival but reality, > which is to say experience, has a way of keeping us honest > and that's what prevents the MOQ from being a relativism.
gav: isn't this splitting hairs? i mean if truth is contextual and perspectival isn't that a form of relativism? 'truth is relative'... another way of saying that might be 'context-dependent'. > > Gav said: > a la hesse in glass bead game, the highest activity of > reason seems to be the most elegant demonstrations of > conceptual interrelatedness. at the intellectual level truth > becomes the truth of relativity. > > i think there is another function too. at the intellectual > level the search for truth becomes internalised. at the > social level, truth is the truth of society - one size fits > all. at the intellectual level, via the nullifying effect of > relativity, the search for truth becomes personal. > > dmb says: > Well, I just spent a week making a case against relativism > so I gotta disagree. Disagree with the personal thing too. > Kuhn, for example, who is usually cited in support of the > revolutionary scientist, says that innovations actually come > out of science teams and the history of science shows that > very little progress occurs except when there is first a > long sustained period of consensus when everybody is more or > less on the same page. As he would put it, successful > divergent thinking almost always springs from successful > convergent thinking. In other words, it takes a lot of > discipline to be creative in the sciences. gav: evolution is intrinsic to the MOQ. at the intellectual level this evolution becomes personal. we are no longer a species or culture - we are, potentially, conscious agents of evolution. the intellectual level puts the individual above society. what is true at this level is what is true *for the individual*. it does not matter to me at all what people consider to be true in politics, philosophy, religion or science or anything. external truths have no value to me. i don't want progress in science - i want progress in people. whether it is science or religion they are both social patterns - external authorities. dawkins is a great example of this: he mirrors the blinkered mindset he rails against in doctrinaire religion. karen armstrong is very good at critiquing this. as long as we are focussed on external truth we are still caught in duality. the moment we say something is true, its opposite presents itself as an equal candidate for this label. only by allowing both poles do we reveal the truth of their dynamic unity...only then do we get the total rather than partial view. the notion of pragmatic truth, to me, only makes sense at a personal level. what is true for you or what works for you may not be so for me. *i* have to work it out - i have to work out my own truth - no-one else can do that: not religion, not science, not philosophy. it is only by working out my own truth that i become better..and this is the only way to improve the world. it is this notion of truth that has meaning to me. it reminds me of krishnamurti's saying 'truth is a pathless land', which he coined i think after deciding to stop being a public figure. he realised he was hindering rather than helping because his disciples were asking him what was true instead of asking themselves. > > _________________________________________________________________ > Hotmail: Trusted email with Microsoft’s powerful SPAM > protection. > http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/201469226/direct/01/ > Moq_Discuss mailing list > Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. > http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org > Archives: > http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ > http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/ > __________________________________________________________________________________ Yahoo!7: Catch-up on your favourite Channel 7 TV shows easily, legally, and for free at PLUS7. www.tv.yahoo.com.au/plus7 Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
