Communication is a funny business. By definition it has to have a common mode of operation for any one to make use of it. Nevertheless, it can be extremely personal and idiosyncratic. I pity the non English speaking community who try to make sense of our language. "Lost in translation" is the understatement of all understatements when describing some of the cultural nuances which we convey. Small groups, through familiarity, develop what is, essentially, a private language with a history of its own built up from many exchanges and interactions. The members of such a group do not have to ask if they are making sense because they have defined "sense" in a way which is acceptable to their own members.
The philosophical search for truth is not, as it turns out, a million miles away from that private group. Let us first attempt to define the nature of the quest, however. In its simplest form we are concerned to discover "what is the case" or in other words are there certain things which are "true" or "real"? Oh dear! Already we have stumbled upon a couple of scary ideas which are far from the "simplest" form of the problem. Both "truth" and "reality" are so packed with complex ideas that they must both be laid aside for the time being for detailed analysis at a later time.
So let us try again. We need to find something which is "true" in a simpler form, in other words, "correct". Ah ha. Now we are getting somewhere. There are, as it turns out, quite a lot of rather nice examples of things which have to be true in this sense. The most famous of these is the one that states that something cannot be a contradiction of itself. For example, a book cannot be red and green at the same time. All very well, I hear you say, but that does not tell us even if the book is red or green. So all we know for certain, so far, is that it cannot be both.
Well, in a way, it does tell us more because there is a message hidden in our universal truth. If we really have found something which makes sense then we have to accept that there is such a thing as "sense". Can we conceive of any circumstance, any alternative universe, any private group, any fictitious story in which something can be at one and the same time 2 different and contradictory things? I think not.
In a way this astounding "truth" is a bit disappointing. Where is the proof? Wot no clever argument? Well, there wouldn't be, would there. At this stage we have not defined what constitutes a valid argument, only what makes sense. So, begging the question, how do we know it makes sense? Did I miss something? 'fraid not. The answer is, it just does. We call this intuition...
Let us slip into a little Latin at this point - always good when the going gets tough! We have identified 2 kinds of "truth" namely, those which are self defined as in the group with its private language and those which are intuitively discerned as following on from some self evident fact. In Latin these are called a posteriori and a priori respectively and they traditionally constitute the basis of all rational thinking in Western Philosophy. Impressed? Well I'm not. What this amounts to is a statement, confession even, that all arguments are based on something that is "given", assumed, a premise and so, obviously, in order to demolish someone's argument you simply find which bit is assumed and attack it. That is what philosophers have been doing for centuries.
Just to put this into context a little consider the scientific community. You will remember that in the previous blog entry I described the notion of scientific constructs in which everyone agrees on the nature of the current paradigm and set about testing it to the point of destruction. They then replace it with a new paradigm based on the short fallings of the previous one and the whole process continues. In Latin, they proceed from a priori assumptions or, in other words, the same method as our search for universal truth. We have already established that they have no hope of finding any universal truths, indeed, the whole point of the enterprise is to re-group every so often and continue the search. So why should our search for "that is the case" truth be any different?
One answer, and a very powerful one, is that it has to be so. We began looking for the basis of "truth" and therein is the problem. How can anything be the first thing to be true? And for that matter, how can you prove that something has to be true before you have proved that anything is true? Well, it just goes round in circles. Another conundrum. And yet the impasse this creates gives us another of those "contradiction" moments in which you can't just forget it because it seems to be telling you that to believe it makes more sense than not to believe it...
Pierre
Tags: sense communication language truth reality contradiction proof intuition Latin a posteriori a priori paradigm contradiction
The philosophical search for truth is not, as it turns out, a million miles away from that private group. Let us first attempt to define the nature of the quest, however. In its simplest form we are concerned to discover "what is the case" or in other words are there certain things which are "true" or "real"? Oh dear! Already we have stumbled upon a couple of scary ideas which are far from the "simplest" form of the problem. Both "truth" and "reality" are so packed with complex ideas that they must both be laid aside for the time being for detailed analysis at a later time.
So let us try again. We need to find something which is "true" in a simpler form, in other words, "correct". Ah ha. Now we are getting somewhere. There are, as it turns out, quite a lot of rather nice examples of things which have to be true in this sense. The most famous of these is the one that states that something cannot be a contradiction of itself. For example, a book cannot be red and green at the same time. All very well, I hear you say, but that does not tell us even if the book is red or green. So all we know for certain, so far, is that it cannot be both.
Well, in a way, it does tell us more because there is a message hidden in our universal truth. If we really have found something which makes sense then we have to accept that there is such a thing as "sense". Can we conceive of any circumstance, any alternative universe, any private group, any fictitious story in which something can be at one and the same time 2 different and contradictory things? I think not.
In a way this astounding "truth" is a bit disappointing. Where is the proof? Wot no clever argument? Well, there wouldn't be, would there. At this stage we have not defined what constitutes a valid argument, only what makes sense. So, begging the question, how do we know it makes sense? Did I miss something? 'fraid not. The answer is, it just does. We call this intuition...
Let us slip into a little Latin at this point - always good when the going gets tough! We have identified 2 kinds of "truth" namely, those which are self defined as in the group with its private language and those which are intuitively discerned as following on from some self evident fact. In Latin these are called a posteriori and a priori respectively and they traditionally constitute the basis of all rational thinking in Western Philosophy. Impressed? Well I'm not. What this amounts to is a statement, confession even, that all arguments are based on something that is "given", assumed, a premise and so, obviously, in order to demolish someone's argument you simply find which bit is assumed and attack it. That is what philosophers have been doing for centuries.
Just to put this into context a little consider the scientific community. You will remember that in the previous blog entry I described the notion of scientific constructs in which everyone agrees on the nature of the current paradigm and set about testing it to the point of destruction. They then replace it with a new paradigm based on the short fallings of the previous one and the whole process continues. In Latin, they proceed from a priori assumptions or, in other words, the same method as our search for universal truth. We have already established that they have no hope of finding any universal truths, indeed, the whole point of the enterprise is to re-group every so often and continue the search. So why should our search for "that is the case" truth be any different?
One answer, and a very powerful one, is that it has to be so. We began looking for the basis of "truth" and therein is the problem. How can anything be the first thing to be true? And for that matter, how can you prove that something has to be true before you have proved that anything is true? Well, it just goes round in circles. Another conundrum. And yet the impasse this creates gives us another of those "contradiction" moments in which you can't just forget it because it seems to be telling you that to believe it makes more sense than not to believe it...
Pierre
Tags: sense communication language truth reality contradiction proof intuition Latin a posteriori a priori paradigm contradiction
