Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id WAA25713 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Fri, 16 Mar 2001 22:32:23 GMT From: <joedees@bellsouth.net> To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2001 16:35:02 -0600 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: RE: Toggling nature's auto-erase Message-ID: <3AB240B6.17614.504F0B@localhost> In-reply-to: <JJEIIFOCALCJKOFDFAHBMECHCHAA.richard@brodietech.com> References: <3AB0DAED.33.6217BF@localhost> X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.12c) Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
On 15 Mar 2001, at 20:16, Richard Brodie wrote:
> Joe Dees wrote:
>
> <<Brodie's Level 3 begins there, then goes on to state that one
> should choose in what to believe, regardless of its truth, based
> upon its usefulness to oneself, and continue to believe it only so
> long as it is useful. I have not achieved that ability to believe my
> own lies when I know that what I'm telling to myself are pragmatically
> chosen lies, nor do I wish to achieve such a hypocritical condition.
> Once one begins lying to oneself, and begins to accept that lying to
> oneself for selfish social, political or economic reasons is OK, it
> becomes shamefully (or shamelessly) easy to lie to others, a
> Nietszchean observation concerning a basic principle underlying the
> proliferation of ridiculously irrational beliefs and belief systems,
> literal christianity chief among them.>>
>
> There are plenty of beliefs that are neither "truth" nor "lie." Many
> of these can be broadly categorized as attitudes. Others are labels or
> distinctions. Choosing not to believe a truth is rarely useful, but
> choosing among attitudes and labels is immensely so.
>
People may take attitudes towards assertions, but attitudes are
not root assertions themselves, but reference such assertions;
there is a primorial 'aboutness' about attitudes - they are about
assertions other than themselves.
May one reasonably choose, within limits, the perspective one
takes regarding the demonstrably true or the demonstrably false?
Iff that perspective is denial, it will certainly fail. When the
Alabama Congress passed a law that in the state pi was to equal
three, not 3.14159.., because of a bible passage, state buildings
built according to the legally ratified falsity would not stand, and the
absurdity was repealed. Remembering, following Popper, that it is
impossible to prove a universal empirical assertion absolutely true
(for to do so would foreclose a future in which contrafactual
evidence might appear) but possible to prove such an assertion
absolutely false (by means of contrefactual evidence or internal/self-
contradiction), what perspective does one choose with reference to
the demonstrably (provisionally) true or (absolutely) false? Is it
useful to say that one does not like a particular truth one
nevertheless acknowledges, or that one likes a particular lie one
knows to be untrue, and how do such choices generalize to one's
perspective upon truth and lies generally, and how does that effect
one's personal and/or intellectual integrity? If an assertion is not
testable, then it may or may not be believed in, but one must be
honest enough with oneself and others to acknowledge that one is
in a state of believing, not a state of knowing. Of course, internally,
that is, subjectively, believing-in and knowing may feel the same,
but externally, the distinction is easily made, by reference to the
presence or absence of evidence for the contention, and whether
the contention is even in principle testable (ref. ON MEANING by
Algirdas Julien Greimas, ch. 10 (pp. 165-179): "Knowing and
Believing: A Single Cognitive Universe"). It is also impossible to
believe in (or not believe in) a meaningless assertion; one may
simply ascertain whether or not an assertion is meaningless by
subjecting it to syntactic and semantic analysis. It is impossible,
for example, to believe that "colorless green ideas sleep furiously"
(an example of ac semantically meaningless yet syntactically
unobjectionable statement from INTRODUCTION TO LOGIC by
Irving Copi).
To close, there are four categories:
1) (provisionally) true
2) false
3) untestable yet meaningful (metaphysical, ethical, aesthetic and
religious assertions)
4) meaningless
Only in category #3 can Richard's caveat apply.
>
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>
>
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This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
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