Gary Childress wrote: ↑Sat Mar 11, 2023 3:13 am
Truth is supposedly important in the sciences.
If I may opine and to some degree to the contrary, I would say that the object of science (as we know it) is not *truth* but rather *accurate description*. So, if Lucretius in
De Rerum Natura tried to come up with a description of how it is that we see things -- he thought that the thing seen emitted something from itself, a ghost-like or ephemeral substance that made its way to our eye -- but we know now that that is not the case and we describe it better (light and luminescence is reflected off the object, the light strikes the retina, and these impulses are translated to our brain and we 'see') it is not so much a question of truth (or Truth) but rather the best description we can come up with.
The 'scientific description' of the world, as we all know, has supplanted metaphysical views, and these latter are often described now as vast hallucinations and the work of the imagination run wild. The 'science view' however, even though it explains phenomena, really does not explain much of anything. In fact it does away with explanation. It reduces Explanation to mere explanation.
Perhaps the confusion arises in and depends on what you mean by
truth? This is why I introduced the clip of James Dean in
Rebel Without a Cause. First, you say that Jesus is the most compassionate being that ever walked the Earth. Then, you are contradicted and you flip-flop to the opposite. "You're tearing me apart! You, you say one thing, and he says another, and then everybody changes back again!"
So as you might guess what I notice, about you, is your profound existential confusion. Immanuel, that tricky apologist, made every effort to rope you in. To get you to *bend a knee* and spill your heart before Jesus and through that act gain Heaven -- which is to say *escape* from this terrible and terrifying world. What that world has done to you!
You perceive the quagmire of planetary life. You may not grasp it at a biological/mechanical level and in a Nietzschean sense, and your perception seems to be (essentially) that you feel short-changed by it. You are trapped in sulkiness and not without ostensibly good reasons. You play a melancholic tune on a violin of self-pity and indeed draw a pitying audience. You are
pitied and that quantity of pity is like a remedial poison. If one says "Snap out of it!" you snap back "Why are you beating up on a poor defenseless mentally ill person!"
But
you do say that this is a philosophical forum and not a therapeutic way-station, and that is good news. Therefore this can be talked about in philosophical terms of a certain remove. I assume you are on board with this. It's rough though. We should decline to wallow in falseness and 'sentimental pettiness' --
My eyes collide head-on with stuffed
Graveyards, false gods, I scuff
At pettiness which plays so rough
Walk upside-down inside handcuffs
Kick my legs to crash it off
Say okay, I have had enough
what else can you show me?
But back to the question of the truth and
what is true. If we take the science-view to its ultimate point every human truth is shown to be sentimental clap-trap, a series of lies which lead to self-deception. I believe it is as I say: We live in a world where life consumes life in an unending cycle. If this is true ("What else can you show me?") then there seems to be just one alternative: the tragic view. And an attitude that arises from out of a man who has accepted his fate.
How do we define and how do we speak about the *truths* that arise from that attitude, that perspective, that interpretive turn?
The scientific method is supposed to help us arrive at the truth of everything that is. It begs the question of whether truth is something that would benefit us or else destroy us.
If I amy I would say "Look to yourself". Truth (as I am now proposing the question and the issue) is destroying you. I base this on what you write and what I have read over these months. You are a man coming apart at the seams. You wallow in a puddle. You seek 'women' who will coddle you not men who will encourage you to become stronger. If you think I am being mean to you -- wrong! -- I am really speaking to our general and present state. The 'wallow in existential self-pity' is the common theme. And I would say, bending and twisting the words of that interesting and rigorous song, that this is
the pettiness that plays rough. I know he meant petty social conventions but as I say I am deliberately bending meanings here
to my own purposes.
The scientific method -- a way of cataloging processes -- leads us to the undermining of all former truth and certainly Truth. But to say that it can lead to "the truth of everything that is" you are talking from a place of ignorance. I mean that in a literal sense. You seem to have a smidgen of crossed-up understanding of American-style Evangelical Christianity but you entirely lack a comprehension of the function of religious metaphysics. It had been through religious metaphysics that Truth was defined. Truth in this sense is not a category of science.
Philosophy is a little different from the sciences in that it puts wisdom at the top of the order of priority.
The term 'wisdom' is one closely linked with religious truth. And if there is 'philosophical wisdom' it is, it seems to me, the jibber-jabber of those who talk philosophically about essentially religious categories of value.
What is the *wisdom* of Nature? Let's be realistic: men project religious wisdm into Nature, isn't that right? But Nature when
actually seen is a terrifying mirror. So what is 'wisdom'?
I am not sure about your definition of *philosophy*. What it does, what it attempts, depends on the individual wielding it. Meaning, that we reveal our own will when we begin to make grand arguments based on tendentious interpretation. On what basis are these interpretations made? For when we reduce things to their elements it is really quite like what Nietzsche wrote: a terrifying closed system of energy exchange.
I mean, what if science eventually proves that a human genius would be able to create a universe identical to ours--perhaps using a laboratory or perhaps using some sort of holographic virtual reality machine? Is that a truth worth discovering? I don't know. So, if push were to come to shove, which is more important, truth or wisdom?
What are you going to cook for breakfast Gary? What is more important
protein or
carbohydrate?
I think in my next
wondrous essay I am going to have to tell the Story of the Jacobi family. The three siblings Ephraim, Elisabeth and Alexis and how Alexis won-out and got hold of the family wealth! I pushed Ephraim out of the metaphorical nest! He had all the spiritual talent and a great deal of the charisma, but
I had the Machiavellian will.
I survived, he collapsed.
I am
considering putting this behind a paywall though. It's fitting when you think it through ...
goes free — for now. 
