Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id UAA11122 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Tue, 20 Jun 2000 20:40:35 +0100 Message-Id: <200006201918.PAA11206@mail5.lig.bellsouth.net> From: "Joe E. Dees" <joedees@bellsouth.net> To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2000 14:22:18 -0500 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: RE: Cons and Facades - more on truth In-reply-to: <LPBBICPHCJJBPJGHGMCIGEMPCGAA.ddiamond@ozemail.com.au> References: <200006192233.SAA10759@mail5.lig.bellsouth.net> X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.12b) Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
From: "Chris Lofting" <ddiamond@ozemail.com.au>
To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
Subject: RE: Cons and Facades - more on truth
Date sent: Tue, 20 Jun 2000 18:41:36 +1000
Send reply to: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
>
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk [mailto:fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk]On Behalf
> > Of Joe E. Dees
> > Sent: Tuesday, 20 June 2000 8:38
> > To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> > Subject: RE: Cons and Facades - more on truth
> >
> >
> >
> > > There IS a sense of 'truth', a feeling 'rightness',
> > 'correctness' that we
> > > all have and that feeling is very EITHER/OR, absolute, even if it can be
> > > wrong.
> > >
> > Feee-Lings! Ohh, ohh, ohh Feee-Lings! ;~) I thought we were
> > discussing not what one felt to be true, or wished to be true, or
> > believed to be true, but what one could logically, rationally and
> > reasonably maintain to be true, and this requires evidence of some
> > sort or other beyond one's emotional proclivities (unless what one
> > is maintaining is not the truth of X, but that one feels X is true).
> > >
> >
>
> Logic and rationality are not 'feelings free'. Logic and rationality are
> based on syntax processes linked to the basic feeling of correct/incorrect;
> we do not go past these distinctions, we do not amplify them, we do not
> exagerate them and so many seem to think that these feelings are not
> feelings at all but states 'outside' of feelings. They are not. What I call
> secondary thinking acts to take a distinction and exagerate it or suppress
> it, the aim is to bring-out an aspect for closer examination or to
> de-emphasise a boundary to bring out background. This secondary thinking
> will lead to a loss in precision in that you move from a single context
> IS/IS NOT to a multi-context COULD BE where we move into the use of
> probabilities and fuzzy logic. This may qualitatively seem rich ground but
> it is also more subjective and so approximations biased.
>
Despite all of your hebephrenic word salad, given the premises "if A
then B" and "A is the case", the conclusion "B is the case"
inevitably follows regardless of how you or anyone else feels about
it. We establish our preferred premises and preferences through
emotion-influenced choice, but the efficient, elegant and error-free
journey from premise to conclusion is by the utilization of logical
principles, not Loftingian "intuition". Your obfuscatory appeal to
pseudopsychological "primary" and "secondary" processes may
complicate, but does not obviate, this simple analysis.
>
> You can see this movement from rigid IS/IS NOT to more approximate states in
> the development of logic where the original universe of discourse (single
> context) combined with the use of dichotomisation (A/~A and 1:1 format)
> gives way to more context sensitive logic, thus propositional calculus leads
> to predicate calculus and then into modal logics and fuzzy logic, the latter
> where we use probabilities but this does not remove the assertion of an
> absolute truth, since you have moved past that area, you have moved from
> primary to secondary thinking.
>
Look, Chris, the Greimassian semiotic square (having-to-be
[necessity], having-not-to-be [impossibility], not-having-to-be
[possibility], not-having-not-to-be [contingency), the Aristotelian
logical schema (All A is B, No A is B, Some A is B, Some A is
Not B) the Predicate logical schema (For All X, if X then Y, (Not)
For All X, if X then Y, There Is At Least One X That if X then Y,
(Not) There Is At Least One X That if X then Y) and the Four Laws
of Thought (If A Then A, If Not-A Then Not-A, Either A Or Not-A,
Not Both A And Not-A) are ALL mappable without distortion upon a
single template. There is a deep logical structure which underlies
the calculus of Identity (Laws of Thought), Existenttial and
Universal Quantification (Predicate Logic), Relation (Aristotelian
Logic) and Signification (Greimassian Semiotic Square). This is
the case regardles of your feelings on the matter, or mine.
>
> What you have in rationalism is a perceived state of emotional neutrality
> where positive and negative 'cancel' each other out (using the wave metaphor
> to describe feelings). This neutral state 'maps' to specific persona types
> who favour this mode of thinking as well as the mode being available to
> other types with biases to different modes. (In the MBTI, a personality
> typology system, rationalists are called NT temperaments, combining
> intuition and thinking, the thinking is the A/~A and the intuition is the
> drive to discover what is behind expression)
>
> The rationalist type of thinking stems from the combination of sensation
> seeking (the expression, something local, and often fails to distinguish
> text/context or else asserts a single context) and identity seeking (looking
> behind the expression -- context sensitive, non-local). The psychological
> tie is to sensation seeking that has had a bad experience or simply lacks
> trust in themselves. This forces (a) the creation of a boundary and (b) the
> objectification of processes (nominalisation where a verb becomes a noun)
> such that we can map things and in doing so create a tool with which we can
> solve problems (the NT type is into problem solving, solution seeking); our
> explorations into sensation seeking is now done with by cautiously
> pushing-out the boundary with the aid of a map which we update as we go.
> (thus the map is truth captured on paper etc that we then make available to
> others in our group/species).
>
> There is NO SEPARATION of feelings from logic etc. other than the one you
> seem to make (as do a lot of others where local object distinctions are
> separated from the source of 'different' interpretations). It is revealing
> that you split feelings from the 'logical, rational, reasonable' suggesting
> that feelings are in the realm of the illogical, irrational, and
> unreasonable and yet the neurology/psychology demonstrate that feelings are
> foundations of the experience of 'logical, rational, reasonable'.
>
> IMHO you have cut yourself off from what makes you human.
>
I am both feeling and rational, thankyouverymuch, but unlike blind
syncretists such as yourself, I have the cognitive wherewithal to
recognize existing distinctions between the assumption of
premises and the process by which conclusions are drawn from
them. Feeling and thinking are neither nonrelational nor identical;
they proceed in relation to each other within recursive self-
conscious cognitive systems. IMHO you have abdicated your right
to claim that you are more-than-animal (IOW, to claim that you are
possess self-conscious awareness) if you cannot distinguish
between Freud's Pleasure and Reality Principles, And insist upon
subsuming all logical, rational, reasonable, cohesive and cogent
thought into some amorphously blended seamless mass of feeling.
>
>I think it could
> be useful to trace the roots of such concepts as 'logic' or 'rational' or
> 'reasonable' since the process leads you to discover that these are words
> linked to a particular perspective, one of many, and that perspective is
> single context, object-oriented thinking that aims to clearly identify
> something, to distinguish an IS from an IS NOT. It is in the realm of what I
> call primary processing and it has a syntax bias and a strong emphasis on
> precision and at times a degree to the exclusion of
> relational issues (manifest in your rejection of feelings :-))
>
I reject your veiled ad hominem.
>
> The development of feedback processes (memory etc) allows us to 'go beyond'
> the syntax into semantics where we move into multi-context, more qualitative
> processing that works to exagerate (+ or -) the object and so move us into
> personal and cultural subjectivities that include context sensitivity (which
> is what abduction deals with in that it is NOT particular-to-particular but
> more particular-to-general in that the context we link to the text is a
> general regardless of it being a particular context. I think you're confusing
> levels in your comments about this, the RELATIONSHIP of text to context is
> particular-to-general. The IDENTIFICATION of which context the text fits-in
> with identifies a particular but that particular is characteristically a
> general. All three methods, induction, abduction, deduction, map to a 1:many
> relationship where the 1 is held constant and we vary the many. This process
> is fundamental to our neurology where we play with the what(one)/where(many)
> dichotomy).
>
I refer you to Introducing Semiotics: It's History and Doctrine by
John Deely for the standard philosophical and semiotic definition of
abduction, as well as the distinctions between semantics (the
relations of signs to their signified referents), syntactics (the
relations between signs in a sign system) and pragmatics (the
relations of signs to their signifier) within semiotics.
>
> The area of semantics is the area of SECONDARY thinking (and includes the
> play of the deduction/abduction loop). Secondary thinking assumes meaning is
> present at all times since it assumes that the primary thinking process has
> applied the 'correct/incorrect' dichotomy, the syntax process precedes the
> semantic process. This means that random processes which have nothing
> 'behind' them, if allowed to 'slip-through' the screening process will be
> given meaning since the assumption of the secondary process is that anything
> that does get through must in some way be meaningful. The emphasise on
> probability processes ensures that some 'rubbish' WILL get through since the
> process itself is secondary and works with dichotomisations such as
> meaningless/meaningful which is replaced with a qualitative assessment of
> worthless/priceless -- strongly subjective terms.
>
> Genetic diversity alone will allow for a developing bias where semantic
> processing is seem as primary and that will lead you into such concepts as
> there is meaning 'out there' independent of 'us'
>
There is no meaning independent of us, for we impose meaning
upon the being we perceive, but there is definitely being
independent of us, or else we could never have evolved, solipsistic
fantasies notwithstanding.
>
>and everything is connected
> to everything else
>
Gravitationally this may be trivially true, but causality is not
universal (random appearances of electron-positron pairs, Brownian
motion, radioactive decay), nor is spatiotemporal contiguity.
>
>and there are no absolute truths since all is in flux etc
> etc
>
Do you maintain that truth ABSOLUTELY, or deny it
ABSOLUTELY?
>
> BTW I liked the absolute way you stated that there is no absolute truth etc
> very Popper, but then Popper's thinking starts in secondary space since
> extreme primary space is 'unscientific' due to it being too positive where
> the concept of negation is not even considered.
>
Actually Popperian falsifiability forbids absolute universal POSITIVE
empirical truth-claims, NOT NEGATIVE ones. A single
counterexample can disprove a universal positive empirical
assertion, in which the negation of such an assertion is absolutely
true. It is ABSOLUTELY true that the moon is NOT wholly
composed of green cheese, because we've tested part of it and
found that part not to possess the property of green-cheesiness.
>
> Science DEMANDS
> dichotomisations to work with since it is rooted in a lack of faith and as
> such needs to make comparisions, to get behind things and discover the
> algorithms and formulas that lead to expressions that can be tested -- the
> testing emphasis showing the underlying root of science, lack of trust in
> ones experiences that was then abstracted into the discipline of Science.
>
Sometimes the actually obtaining state or process of affairs is
indeed counterintuitive or contraperceptual; the most famous
example is that of Copernical heliocentrism (the sun does NOT
circle a fixed earth, regardless of how it appears to unaided
perception). Actually, relativistically speaking, the earth and sun
do a dance of mutual gravitational attraction, mutually revolving
around a point between their centers, calculable by considering
their distance and respective masses.
>
> The moment you move into secondary thinking you move into probabilities and
> that move will include your approach to such concepts as truth; truth
> becomes 'fuzzy' but when viewed from a hierarchic position then there are
> absolute truths within the given contexts of personal, cultural, universal.
> The fuzzyness emerges when you try to cross the boundaries and so confuse
> contexts which can lead to 'errors', this universal truths should span all
> levels but personal truths remain personal.
>
Hitler's personal truth that Jews were vermin richly deserving
extermination was indeed personal, although he quite widely
shared it, but I would hardly call it true.
>
> In this sense there ARE absolute truths (experienced as a feeling that is
> 100% 'true') you just have to make sure that the text-to-context link is the
> 'correct' one.
>
The difference between belief and knowledge (of truth) is the
presence of external evidence for the candidate contention. While
belief and knowledge may be cognitively undifferentiable brain
states, the appeal to empirical demonstration separates the
scientific wheat from the mythic chaff (see "Knowing and Believing:
A Single Cognitive Universe" in ON MEANING: SELECTED
WRITINGS IN SEMIOTIC THEORY by Algirdas Julien Greimas).
>
> best,
>
> Chris.
>
And also to you.
>
> ===============================================================
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