From: "Aaron Agassi" <agassi@erols.com>
To: <Critical-Cafe@mjmail.eeng.dcu.ie>
Subject: RE: CRITICAL-CAFE: Truth
Date: Mon, 12 Jul 1999 22:26:16 -0400
In-Reply-To: <000801beccc3$4146ca80$74d56ccb@ddiamond>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-critical-cafe@mjmail.eeng.dcu.ie
> [mailto:owner-critical-cafe@mjmail.eeng.dcu.ie]On Behalf Of Chris
> Lofting
> Sent: Monday, July 12, 1999 8:03 PM
> To: Critical-Cafe@mjmail.eeng.dcu.ie
> Subject: Re: CRITICAL-CAFE: Truth
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Aaron Agassi <agassi@erols.com>
> To: Critical-Cafe@mjmail.eeng.dcu.ie <Critical-Cafe@mjmail.eeng.dcu.ie>
> Date: Monday, 12 July 1999 7:55
> Subject: RE: CRITICAL-CAFE: Truth
>
>
>
> >>
> >> >How is an emotion based upon a logical principle?
> >>
> >> Logic is based on an emotion, that of 'correct'/'incorrect'.
> >Bullshit. Truth (correctness) or untruth (incorrectness) are not so
> >arbitrarily defined. Truth is the quality of a statement of
> correspondence
> >to logic and/or reality; and often by degrees, multi-values boy! Nor can
> >emotion be reduced to a zero one gate. Every aspect of the Psyche is more
> >than the sum of the neurons. Emotion is part of the emergent Neurological
> >Gestalt, as is the human capacity for logic, by which we conduct
> logic and
> >apprehend logic, in order to make truer statements about matters
> of logic.
> >
>
> Here is your problem Aaron, you are totally lacking in understanding about
> the mechanisms behind information processing
This is an ad homonym objection, and not a refutation or clarification of my
statements.
>and probably dont
> want to know
This is an ad homonym objection, and not a refutation or clarification of my
statements.
> as it can reduce your ideals about truth
This claim remains undemonstrated.
>etc perhaps all to much
> for you to
> take.
Again, ad homonym.
>
> The experience of truth
What are you talking about? "The experience of truth", indeed! Wouldn't it
be better to start by asking if truth can be experienced? If it is
meaningful to speak of the experience of truth? What is meant by the
experience of truth?
Truth may be indicated by reality tests. You would speak of mapping reality.
But we have agreed that we live in that aspect of the Phenomena that
functions as ongoing simulation of reality from input. Thus, the meaning of
any such expression as "the experience of truth", is something less than
obvious, and bears explanation before barreling on ahead.
>is an abstraction of the 'correct'
> feeling elicited
> when our reptilian cousins make maps of their surroundings as they find
> their way around. In humans this 'correct/incorrect' emotion is sourced in
> the left hemisphere of the brain (see Demasio's work on this). This
> hemisphere is also the one biased to objects.
I'm sure that there is a better description for this than "the experience of
truth", which sounds rather Evangelical! But then, the religious experience
of the Evangelists, as the Evangelists describe it, does sound rather like
an extremely intense instance of the sensation where of you speak. Even
though the Evangelists are arguably so far off the mark on so many issues.
So, can the Evangelists be experiencing truth? Is the lizard, successfully
navigating his way back to his cave, experiencing truth, as such? Hume would
say no. If the redness that we see in the red object is secondary, and
distinct from the object's tendency to reflect red wavelengths, and the
stomach ache, likewise, is the gastric response, distinct from the decay of
the food that caused it (contrary to Aristotelian Essentialism), then the
"truth" experience is distinct from the truth value of a proposition (it's
degree of correspondence to reality), which is, in turn, distinct from
reality itself.
Perhaps a better term might be "the sensation of" something or other.
Because, the sensation is what is being experienced. This is an important
Phenomenological fine point. But the sensation of what? A sensation of
rightness does not need to be an Ontological question. It might be moral,
esthetic, or a life style choice, from which an individual gains peace and
satisfaction, rather than whatever uneasy feeling a lost lizard might
experience.
Thus, a less imprecise and biased description might be "the sensation of
rightness" or even "the naive feeling of confidence". And truth value
remains a separate question, because other questions than Ontology, other
processes but Epistemological Methodology, may evoke sensations of
rightness, peace, and confidence, versus wrongness or uneasy doubt.
>
> I am sure if you were to go deeper into the human brain you would find the
> same patterns
Which patterns?
>in the limbic system. The waypoint mapping has been
> linked to
> the hippocampus in rats and this area is responsible for the linking of
> memories in general and this linking process of the hippocampus has been
> found implicitly in humans in that damage to the hippocampus means you can
> no link new memories.
>
> The waypoint mapping process is where a path/direction is set out using
> objects in the form of points (first tree on the left, go right to stream,
> then go left to rabbit hole etc etc abstracted to "A to B to C". The
> hippocampus processes this information as it functions to link
> memories and
> this data is fedback to the neocortex)
>
> There is nothing arbitrary about this, the neurological studies are well
> done.
>
> Perhaps you find this difficult to accept since it reduces you to a well
> developed reptile? :-)
No. Frankly, I could hardly care less.
>
> Logic emerges from object oriented data processing.
What is object oriented data processing? The process that is used in
Waypoint Mapping?
>The law
Why law?
>of
> the excluded
> middle
What is the excluded middle? Just the fact of neurological switches with two
settings? And this signifies something about the analytical capacities of
lizard navigation?
>is tracable to this where we 'jump' the middle.
What is 'jump' in single quotes (yours)? If I understand you, the lizard
brain has no 'middle' to jump.
>As we have
> developed
> logic, which requires us to apply A/~A recursively, so we move from the
> rigid A/~A to a probabilities emphasis; we get more and more into
> consideration of complex relational processes and so shift from a left
> thread EITHER/OR to a more right thread BOTH/AND.
But the word 'both' and the word 'and' mean roughly the same thing. "Both
swans are white" means the same thing as "This swan and that swan are
white." So what is a 'BOTH/AND' choice? Do you mean MORE or LESS, perhaps?
-As in more true or less true? Polar rather than dichotomous? If not, then I
don't get you.
>
> ALL lifeforms that utilise neurons that are sensitive to feedback
> will have
> a sense of 'logic', the only problem is that compared to us,
> these lifeforms
> lack a sense of continuity (Chicks show memories for coloured objects but
> lose them after a number of hours, we dont in that we (a)memorise the
> objects for life and/or (b) put the information in books where
> the memories
> can be recalled)
>
> All of your thinking is reducable to information processing at the
> neurological level.
I don't think that I have disputed this.
>Find out how that works (see my template at
> http://www.ozemail.com.au/~ddiamond/plate.html ) and you can then
> study the
> mechanism and so derive the set of all possible meanings, and the range of
> 'true' feelings :-)
>
> These feelings will be general in that to particularise, to link the
> feelings to a context, we use words. What we
What you mean 'we', Solopsist-boy? I am far more careful in choosing my
words than you are.
>often forget is that
> the words
> are not the thing, they are just pointers
The wrong choice of words make for a useless pointer.
>to the feelings, the words act
> like stones in that when thrown into the pool of feelings we all
> share are a
> species they create patterns that cause us to resonate with meaning.
Still a ghastly confusing and ambiguous linguistic formulation, if sans
explanatory context!
But is not the affect where of you speak in turn only another set of
pointers? Is not any map no more than a pointer to that which it maps?
> Would you like some references for all of this?
No thank you. My needs are specific. Without basic clarification references
are useless, and with those basic clarifications the references become
unnecessary.
>
>
> Chris.
> http://www.ozemail.com.au/~ddiamond
>
>
>
>
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