Donald T Palmgren (lonewolf@utkux.utcc.utk.edu)
Mon, 30 Mar 1998 08:25:59 +0100
On Sat, 21 Mar 1998, Keith A. Gillette wrote:
> I suppose it may be the case that saying "society" determines the truth or
> falsehood of an idea is the most accurate way to speak. That's part of
> Pirsig's point in the Mythos over Logos argument and the Cultural Immune
> System. Truth *is* largely culturally determined.
>
> However, I don't believe this implies that society unilaterally decides
> what's true. Instead, I'd argue (with Pirsig) that individual intellects
> determine what they believe to be true based on their cultural
> conditioning, including, to an extent, the very language they use, and also
> based on their experience of reality. These individual determinations of
> truth, or more accurately, valuation of ideas, in turn 'determine'
> society's view of a belief, forming a feedback loop. Not a closed loop,
> however, otherwise Plato's Truth would still be with us. Individual
> experience, even as patterned by cultural preconceptions, influences the
> process.
>
> Stop and think. If this were not the case, how would society's preferred
> method of proof have changed over the eras? Start with an arbitrary
> culture--Christendom. Their society thinks that experimentation is
> unnecessary and we can accept truth as revealed in the bible and as
> supplemented by reason where it does not discord with revelation. Somewhere
> between them and us, that cultural belief changed. Now our culture, by and
> large, believes that the proof of the pudding is in the tasting and we want
> experimental verification. How did this change occur? If society "changed
> its mind", how did it do that? "Society" was dead-set that the revealed
> word of God was the never-changing eternal Truth. Now that's not the
> case--multiple truths and all that. How did this happen?
Your argument seems to be that if what counts as proof (and in
turn - what is true/a proven fact) were socialy determined then it would
never change, it would be the same now as it was 3,000 years ago.
But why sould that be the case? Fasion is socially determined and
it changes constantly. Trends in movies and TV and books come and go. The
art world is always on the move. Societies change from one dacade to
another; one generation to another; and on the grandest scale one age (or
era or epoch) to another (That's what Hegel is about, the shifting from
one age to the next through history.) For example: today we think in very
psychological terme -- the jargan of "esteem" "self-image" "ego" and the
like prevade our culture. Why? The First World War and "shell shock." WWI
was the transition point from the Victorian-Edwardian world to the Modern
world.
(One very good book about ages and time and society, that I higly
recomend is Peter Hoeg's *The History of Dannish Dreams*.)
This is why I said in "Hegel for the Masses" (about a month back)
that the necessity that Hegel aplyies to philosophy is not the abstract
logical necessity of "All M are X. S is M. Therefor S is X," but historic
necessity: "Because of the uneven socio-economic conditions in France, the
Revolution was *necessary*."
FROM KEVEN (quating me in the : section):
* * *
: If Newton were rejected F would still equal ma? Come on. F=ma is
: a law, an abstraction, an explanation -- a projection from time-space up
: onto the Platonic Heavens of absolute TRUTH. But what really exists isn't
: this timeless Platonic world of TRUTH, but the activity of projecting. (I
: could say "the morality of projecting.") F=ma didn't exist before Newton
: -- it *couldn't* exist before the scientific method and the Calculus
which
: alowed Newton to derive that particuler explanation/law/intelectual
: SPoV/whatever you want to call it.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
The "Got'cha Proof" Turned Around:
1. Even if I persuaded everyone that F does not equal ma, it would
still
be true and everyone I told would NOT be floating into space. If this was
not true, we indeed would be weigthless, because gravity existed before
our
perception of it. In the womb we don't feel gravity, yet still every
second
of our lives we are pulled doward at 9.8 meters per seconds squared.
* * *
What your saying is "F=ma no mater what you or I or anyone says or
thinks about it." That view is called "logocentricism" -- there are
abstract , absolute Truths up on the Platonic Heavens. But surly you can
see that that's just an asumption (and perhaps not even a necessary one).
You say "This is True no mater what!" --but that's something you *say* --
frome here and now -- from society (for your ability to mean that depends
upon our ability to understand you to have ment that.)
1) F=ma is an *IDEA*
Ideas need people to have them.
2) F=ma is a *fact*
It is a fact because it is proven -- it is the result of a proof.
What counts as a proof for us here and now, has not always counted
as a proof for everyone. What counts as proof changes from one age to
another (and not only does the form change but the content does as well --
that is, the questions asked and taken seriously change from age to age.
[How many angels can dance on the head of a pen?])
Proof and the activity of proving is a social phenomina.
At bottom facts are generated by society.
What really exists isn't this logocentric, platonic heavens.
What's *really* going on is the activity of projecting that
"Correct picture of the world." In other words, the Truth is always the
Truth *FOR* somebody.
AND FROM STRUAN (>) AND MAGNUS:
* * *
> Are you joking here? Of course it is a philosophy. All investigation
into
> the fundamental assumptions that govern our understandings is philosophy
and
> if that doesn't include quantum mechanics then I don't know what does.
How
> strange.
Yeah, we're a strange bunch. Are physics, chemistry and medicine
philosophies
too?
* * *
Look, Phil. is a disciplin w/o form or content. What it includes
and how it exists changes over time.
200 years ago there were 3 divisions in German univercitys (which
ours [anglo-america] were based on: Theology, Medicine, and Philosophy.
Phil. was everything else: meterology, geology, astronomy... Guys like
Kant and Franklin and Jefferson wrote on all or many of these subjects.
Natural science was "natural phil." and social science was "social phil."
Now before that era Phil. didn't even center around the university
(Decartes, Spinoza, Locke, Libniz, Berkley and Hume never taught school;
Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel all did), but w/ the death of Hegel in
1831 "Phil." retreats into clasrooms and becomes defined in terms of that
ciricula. So it goes from something in monastaries to something in the
Enlightenment that middle-class gentry types do in their free time, to a
college division. Do they teach QM, chemistry, medicine, etc. in our
school phil. departments? No. Here in America (and in England) Phil. is
all about "the exploration of logical space" (WVO Quine) or else it's the
study of its own history. In France it's Postmodernism (existintialism +
linguistics).
If you want to bicker about what's included in Phil. put it in
context: When and where and (best put) *for whome*?
I feel a need to coment on the Magnus-Bo-Struan war:
I've said time and again that most people aproch Phil. w/ this "we
are saved; you are damned" attitude. Pick a position, choose a side, take
your favorite -ism word as a war cry, and set pikes to recieve the charge.
How many times do I have to say it: That is not only unphilosophical it's
undignified (in other words, some of us feel your acting like children).
Come on, that's square one stuff and here we are, The Lila Squad!, we're
supposed to be on square 3 or 4.
Phil.'s not about reaching conclusions, finding the highest/truist
possition, uncovering the TRUTH. (I like what Wittgenstein said: If you
want to know the truth go study science. Science pursues truth; phil.
pursues clarity.) It's more important to be clear that to be correct!!!!
Phil. is about exploring the wider view ("Hey, wait! What really is going
on here?") and exploring alternative POVs, approches, and thinking about
good questions.
I want to get a cultural immune system alert. A bell maybe?
BING!BING!BING!BING!BING!BING!BING!
It goes off whenever this cultural immune system -- thinking about
positions -- kicks in.
Magnus, you're the High Priest of Pirsig; why don't you be in
charge of that? :-7
TTFN (ta-ta for now)
Donny
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