TimeSeeker wrote: ↑Mon Oct 22, 2018 9:05 pm
A_Seagull wrote: ↑Mon Oct 22, 2018 9:02 pm
surreptitious57 wrote: ↑Mon Oct 22, 2018 2:43 pm
True and absolute knowledge can really only be arrived at through falsification
So you are saying that something is either not true or it is false?
I take a rather pragmatic stance on truth.
Truth is whatever works. Or rather - if it doesn’t work it isn’t true.
All descriptions of realty are incomplete. Some are worse than others...
https://chem.tufts.edu/answersinscience ... fwrong.htm
How complete a description do you want/need and why? If truth has no use then what is it for etc.
And what is pragmatic exactly? That really is the problem, considering it in itself is subjective.
Take for example industrialization. It was deemed as pragmatic because of its ability, as a philosophy because industrialization is a way of looking at the world, to give us abundant resources quickly and efficiently.
The problem occurs in that the resources it manifests causes:
1. A drain on the natural environment at a rate not replenishable.
2. The formation of items which we do not really need, but rather must be forced upon a populace by manipulating them.
3. A rewiring of the balance of nature where not just the previously mentioned resources, but human reproduction and sexuality, standard manual labor (which was available to everyone), basic physical fitness, the nutritional quality of the foods produced, etc has changed.
4. Constant expression of people's opinions over social media devices, negating the ability for the average person to not just think clearly, but silence there minds and hearts and be satisfied where they are at (no one in the western world is satisfied with themselves when they are continually told they do not fit a specific standard, should not be satisified with what they have, etc.)
5. The eradication of any form of natural social structure where people "must" rely on eachother for survival and make various grades of sacrifices (time, money, patience, etc.) to eachother. People, generally speaking, feel a greater degree of isolation and lack of meaning because there inability to not just be a contributing member to some group or society, but because they are not entirely sure what constitutes a society in the face of relativistic individualism where materialistic goals are the only value.
6. Etc....I can go further. The issue really breaks down to whether pragmaticism is really pragmatic when countries, such as the US or Modern Japan, which embody those values lead the way in not just mental health problems but also suicides. Major depression is argued by some to eventually be the leading cause of death in the western world.
We cannot even take statistical arguments at point blank anymore, as the fake news phenomena, observes an inherent distrust and problems of ethics reflected everywhere.
How pragmatic is any of this?
Ideas form societies....