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Truth ,What is your Source

yes it does seem like quite a lot of people take 'truth' to be simply 'fact'. that is a very narrow reductionist correspondence theory of truth.

"Truth, for phenomenology, is not the coherence of a discourse, or, before that, the adequation of discourse to its object. rather, as Heidegger rediscovered, truth is manifestness (alètheia).
within the correlation of subjectivity and objectivity, truth is the self-givenness of the object to the subject and the projection by the subject of the object. within the unity of reciprocal implication, the object makes itself manifest and thereby makes the subject manifest in it as at once the subject makes the object manifest and thereby makes itself manifest in it.
for a phenemenological ontology, truth is primarily the process of beings coming to manifestness, the process of their presencing, their unconcealing, the Being-process itself. whether subjective or objective, beings come to presence, they come into their own, they en-own (cf. Er-eignis); and this process from concealment to revealment is precisely truth or, perhaps better, truthing (Husserl's Bewahrheitung). for phenomenology, truth is secondarily unconcealedness, the stable acquisition of some moment in the process. this may have its subjective or objective side. presencing may congeal into a quasi-permanent stability, which is truth or, perhaps better, the truthed. In brief, "truth" is to be understood primarily as the process and secondarily as the stable acquisition (both subjective and objective)."

(to quote a relatively clear and concise explanation of phenomenological theory of truth, by a certain Daniel Guerrière.) (given that i'm a lazy bastard)
 
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Nope, I've read that through several times now azzazza and it's not all that clear to me either. TBH, it sounds like a load of pretentious twaddle.

Give me Hume over that any day - he might be dry as a bone, but at least he really is clear and concise.
 
And I'm all in favour of a rational, empirical enquiry, but even I don't think that Science has unique access to absolute, or objective truth.

Rather, the scientific process aims to select the one theory out of a number that is most likely to be closest to the truth. The latest theoretical model for any phenomena is only accepted in so far as it is less wrong than the one that it replaced.

There are no 'proofs' in Science.

Even mathematical proofs rest upon an assumption that the underlying rules of logic have been divined correctly.
 
^Yep. The work of Kuhn is very interesting, he shows how science in fact undergoes revolutions in the form of paradigm shift. If it were objective, we should expect a linear progression from ignorance to understanding. That doesn't happen at all.
Goddess, isn't what you're saying then essentially equivalent to "You should lead a good life"? I don't think anyone would contest that, but it doesn't tell us much about truth.
 
Yes, I should actually read Kuhn one day!

I think know his basic theory - kind of an un-idealised interpretation of the scientific method taking into account sociological factors, as opposed to Popper's idealised view.

How science is practised in reality, rather than how it ought to be.
 
Mr Wobble said:
TBH, it sounds like a load of pretentious twaddle.
Click to expand...

^now that is what i'd call pretty pretentious.

i'd be happy to try and explain what is not clear to you, if you wish. i'll give it a general whirl in reduced accurateness in an attempt to better uncover its sense.

there is a certain object. such as a compact disk. we do not have access to the world an sich. this is the object manifesting itself. it is given to itself, it entered into being through a process that is a world of connections (compact disks were created because of and for such and such reasons). it appears to the subject. the subject is inscribed into this world of connections and functionality in a unique way that is its own. for example, to a musician a CD will appear differently as to an engineer, because of the associations it brings up for each of them. it is inscribed differently into their experienced worlds. this is the projection of the subject unto the object. it is what a CD means for each of these individuals. thus, the truth of a CD is the way in which the intersection manifests itself between the manifestation of the CD as an object for itself (within the objective, thing-ly world) and the manifestation it takes before the subject in the subjective sense (your personal background and values etc. through which you look at something). a thing an sich does not exist (no access), and neither does a purely subjective thing. to make it even more complicated: the intersection between the object and the individual subject is marked by a 'subjective' (yet also objective in a sense) 'spirit' such as a zeitgeist, language, etc. (a Foucaultian discourse) that transcends the individual subject and as such gains a level of 'objectiveness'. while not strictly being such. more of a 'collective subject'. this is what Heidegger calls the 'lighting' of Being. i see a mention of Kuhn; well, the current paradigm is such light in which objects appear and are interpreted.

edit: the process that is truth is called a process of revealing, entering unconcealment. it is the progression of ones understanding as an individual (and the progression of collective understanding as well, ie. paradigms). the 'world' that opens up once you come to understand something that was beyond your previous horizon of understanding, and looking through which, your entire world comes to bathe in a new light and restructures, as it is renews its subjectively understood world trough that newly added understanding. for example: grasping the truth of a piece of classical music or, perhaps less confusing; 'grasping' a piece of classical music. or a work of philosophy. or a scientific theory.

perhaps put like this it sheds some light on the sense of what is ment by phenomenological truth. its hopelessly 'floating' and inaccurate, but well..

i think this theory does a much better job at capturing the whole of the human experience of truth then the narrow reductionist correspondence (not speaking of the loads of philosophical problems it has in its naive self-evident appearance).
 
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OK, so people perceive the CD in different ways. But, aside from the subjective nature of the experience, there is an objective reality, is there not (otherwise what causes the experience)? And surely there are objective truths about this reality? Or am I not grasping something?
Edit: I don't think Mr. Wobble was trying to be rude azzazza. We just come from very different philosophical traditions; in the same way that you perceive our ideas as being dry, scientific and limited much of the time, sometimes your thought seems pretentious and obscure to us. We have to put such differences aside to have a useful discourse.
 
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^they are wholly inaccesible but through the subject and its fundamental mental categories. we suppose there is. but it is unspeakable, unseeable, etc. (we could call this 'Source') as such, any expression (in the form of sensory data for instance) of this wholly objective reality will always be marked by margins of subjectivity.
so for the CD example, there is no archimedean point for seeing it. there is no purely objective CD. as such, a valuation of the truth of paradigmal 'facts' over any the subjective experience of truth is not possible, for the paradigm in which the facts appear as facts is subjective itself. yet the 'paradigmal fact' is an attempt at the highest consensus rate. coming as close as possible to objective. this however, requires serious reductions as to the possible subjective truths. my point is one of valuation. reducing subjective truths to objective and then calling them more 'true' in the absolute objective sense of the word is wrong. it is a kind of fundamentalism/foundationalism. scientific theory often assumes to be the only measure of truth. your valuation depends on the point of view you assume, eg what you value more. so for instance, if you value the measure 'highest possible consensus' over the measure of say, 'beauty'; the reductionist scientific truth is more 'true' then a subjective truth of interpretation. for said classical piece: the consensus notation is more true than a subjective experience of it. if you value beauty over consensus; certain subjective interpretations will become more true then others, and certainly the dry consesus notation; which doesn't "say" anything (well, almost nothing), by the vey nature of its attempted objectification.

yet even for a thing as highest possible consesus there are two ways: one is 'downward', through the reduction of everything to the physical objects, building blocks, the other is 'upward', through a continued mental abstraction of things towards the purest, most abstract idea. which of these two will you call 'objective' (in the sense of highest consensus) then? both are equal in general applicability. of course the word objective refers to general consesus on the object level. but its claim for Truth with the big letter T is fundamentally invalid. it denies a whole lot of real 'existence' of the human experience for being 'the' truth. the essence of the problem sits in the claim of the word truth, which denotes a singularity, but becomes a totalitarianism the minute its singularity is given a certain voice or letter (expressed), while remaining connected with the truth. it becomes a manifestation of Truth, its relative relation to Truth determined by its accompanying measure (which carries in its essence its opposite). so cf. the above: Truth is truthing.
 
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azzazza !? said:
^now that is what i'd call pretty pretentious.
Click to expand...

Yes, Yerg was right, that really wasn't directed at you.

You explanation was actually clearer. :)

I'm not sure whether phenomenological truth is such a useful concept; I'll have to ruminate on that. Sounds a bit like the Buddhist 'Cosmic Mirror'.




Pretentious? Moi?
 
^even then, you shouldn't say such things because you have not learned to value something. there really are good reasons for employing that contorted twaddle;

(edit: when i say dry or limited, its not in a pejorative sense. narrowness in the philosophical sense has clear advantages, a kind of 'concentration'. my only point is that it shouldn't become an absolute/totalitarian. reduction can be great, but it has its price, and that should be recognized imo.)

my explanation was a lot less precise. the problem with such a kind of explanation is that it may reveal a blunt 'sense' a little better, but it becomes much less delineated from other concepts, as you illustrate with your comparison. i opened it up so to speak, but that comes at a cost. the concept 'vaguens', especially in that it is put open to mostly partial interpretations that differ substantially from the original intended concept. im not acquainted with the concept of the cosmic mirror in detail, but the theory of truth in phenomenology seems to differ substantially from a cosmic mirror insofar as it does not emphasise the subject over the object. the object(ive) side does have a right in its own (its own existentiel in heideggerspeak) and is not reduced to the subject in a kind of idealism or as just a 'mirror' of the subject. its really not that simple. the subjective and the objective have equal parts in the origin of truth, but do not exist seperatly when they form a manifested truth. they only come to being within each other. but it does not mean they do not have an epistemological existence in which each counterpoint is equally valued and not reduced to the other. but that is a discernment in the secondary 'stasis'/stable acquisition described in the quote. it has a certain 'yin-yang' in it, the subject and the object seemlessly spill over and engulf eachother in their dynamism, yet are at the same time categorically discerned from each other. i cannot really find a way to put the exact sense better then in the quote mentioned without resorting to equally or most probably even unclearer contortions and technical heideggerian terms.

"Within the correlation of subjectivity and objectivity, truth is the self-givenness of the object to the subject and the projection by the subject of the object. within the unity of reciprocal implication, the object makes itself manifest and thereby makes the subject manifest in it as at once the subject makes the object manifest and thereby makes itself manifest in it."

step by step:

"Within the correlation ['the intersection'] of subjectivity and objectivity, truth is the self-givenness of the object [the object for itself, as procreated and procured from and by the world of objects, objects relating to objects] to the subject and the projection by the subject of the object [what the subject desires in the object, how it views the object, as how it is created for him by him]. within the unity of reciprocal implication [the world of object and the world of subject in manifested reality implicate each other. here the previously epistemologically static, dualistic concept is dynamized], the object makes itself manifest and thereby makes the subject manifest in it [the world of objects reflects the subject in itself, namely in its organisation of functionality, causality..] as at once the subject makes the object manifest and thereby makes itself manifest in it. [the mental structure/categories (the Kantian ones, such as identity/difference etc.) of the subject allow for it to appear, and this mind is as such reflected to himself]"

(edit: mind you, those things between brackets certainly do not exhaust its meaning. they have the same problem as described above. and that problem comes down to the fact that im making the opposite movement of what is intended in phenomenology; eg. i make a movement of narrowing analysis, in an attempt to provide 'step-ups', while its desired intention and goal is actually one of a broadening synthesis. it is counterproductive to hold fast to the analyzations, they are but sports on a Wittgensteinian ladder)

i think i'll just leave it at that. im afraid the voluptuous nuances of technical phenomenology are much too specialized to be of any use for people not that into this kind of twaddle :). (unless you insist on it, of course. i am a gentleman, after all)
 
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Azzazza, if one likens theories to tools with which we prod, poke and grapple reality, then the kind of theories that I reach for are sort of like this:

images


I think that the theories that appeal to you are probably more along these lines:

images


And that was a pretentious way of saying that I think that you enjoy the aesthetic qualities of such theories; elegance, novelty, form for its own sake. Whereas I put greater value on utility - form following function.

I would never recommend a philosophical thesis because it was "voluptuous". That's not a criticism Azzazza; I'm just pointing out a difference of perspective. ;)

And I might be wrong, but I don't see a wider utility for a theory of phenomenological truth outside of philosophy, whereas one might appeal to Popperian epistemology, or Kuhn when, for example, evaluating some scientific theory - "is the Anthropogenic Global Warming theory true?"
 
^well... no. i hope you can see that my reference to voluptuous is an expression of the enjoyment i find in philosophy. much as shulgin thinks chemistry has 'naughty pictures'.

the idea is synthesis; to build a theory that encompasses all phenomonena. And Kuhns theory of the advancement of objective knowledge is really a beautiful illustration of the workings of the phenomenological theory of truth-generation/manifestation. let me summarize Kuhns findings:

naievely, the scientific idea is that there is a factual world out there, that is observed using the scientific method. from observing these 'facts', a generalizing theory is then induced. Kuhn notes that if this were true, the scientific progress would be one of a linear accumulation of scientific knowledge. However, looking at the advancement of science, it appears it advances in suddon paradigmal leaps (paradigm shifts). this would mean that facts are not simply given facts. they are facts operating within a theory. so, Kuhn says, it is the subject himself that puts forward a theory/hypothesis; through which the scientific observer then looks at the world. it is only through the lens of the theory that the 'facts' reveal/manifest themselves. a scientific paradigm is the largest encompassing framework. within this framework, analysis of the facts revealed by it is done. until the outer edges of this framework begin to appear, in the form of paradoxes, need for unobservable hypothesis, unelegant patchwork solutions, etc. a bright individual then comes forth, and overlooking the current paradigm, breaks free from it and devises a new theoretical framework which solves the problems of the previous paradigm, yet houses it within itself as well. the 'facts' reorganize themselves, new 'facts' can be discerned/manifest themselves.
really, this is an exemplary illustration of the definition i repeated above.

poppers theory can be placed within it as well (which is no real surprise now, since its aim is synthesis). the idea of falsification again requires the subject to put forth theories in which the facts appear. the point of the endevour is not to have the theory be contradicted by a fact that appears in it. again you see the subjective-objective interplay emerging.

again the point of the phenomenological theory is to be as broad and abstract as possible. it doesn't 'speak' in the same way analysis does. its value lies in a kind of 'overseeing'. and starting from these high altitude abstract concepts, the various paths of analysis can be traced downward. its idea is to put these phenomena in perspective relative to all other phenomena as they appear to us, and devise a theory as broad as possible to suit all. what this in reality come down to is exploring the dualistic categories the human mind uses in its knowledge-forming, and trying to overcome the dualism of the opposition created by these categories. thats where all the paradoxal statements come from. the major dawback of it is the decrease in immediate functionality. its much too abstract to shed an immediate explanatory light on the particular inner workings of a certain specific/particular (eg. that what makes it particular), because of its distance to it.

and i can't see your point in your example of utility? if you evaluate a scientific theory for truth, surely you simply employ the scientific measures at hand as they have been revealed by the current paradigm? whithin the world of science, you employ the measure of truth that characterizes the scientific endeveour, ie. largest possible consensus on the level of the object itself. you never left the practice of science. what good is popperian epistemology for evaluating the truth of a scientific proposition? a philosophical theory of truth is a descriptive, it tries to find out how truth comes to be; what our idea of 'truth' really is, what are its limits, etc? you really can't use Kuhn or Popper to evaluate a scientific theory for truth. that is done by the scientific method itself. what Kuhn or Popper do is explore the inner workings of this method itself, a meta-analysis. the truth of a theory is evaluated by the method itself, not by the analysis of the method. the method itself has already defined what is truth or what is not, by the measure of truth that is put forth.
 
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I find Kuhn's work deeply compelling, and I understand the problems associated with the idea of objective reality, such as that we do not have any kind of access to this world. Still. I think that the idea that all of our subjective consciousnesses are "plugged in" to the same objective reality (I like to imagine a pincushion) to be the most appealing view. Yes, it's true that science isn't objective,and our theories may be false even if they match our observations. And there really is no way to know what the nature of the unobserved world is (besides the a priori). But that doesn't mean there isn't an objective world out there; what is the alternative metaphysical explanation?
 
^^ (at yerg) the objective world is not denied at all. it is pictured exactly as you just said. phenomenology is not subjectivism. the only thing it notes, is that the type of 'plug' employed determines our view of it. the plug colors our experience of it. the objective world is there, and has a working of its own without the subject. it even states that that working itself is determinative for the possible plugs the subject may use. yet the subject itself, through its plugs, in turn influences and determines the part of the objective world revealed to him through his employed plug. it is reciprocal. the point is: there is no absolute master plug. the whole of the objective reality, the objectivity as it is object to itself, escapes the subject because of the very nature of subjectivity. which is to place a certain division in which something appears (self-other, identity-difference, subject-object, ...). it is on this loom that reality is spun, or 'pulled open' from its singularity.
 
I guess the difference between our views is really more of a semantic one. I totally agree that science doesn't necessarily get the truth, that we have no real kind of access to the "objective" world, and that mind actively organises the world. However, I think of truth as the correspondence between propositions and the external world, and the fact that we can never really know whether our propositions are true isn't really a problem, where your idea of truth concerns propositions that I might call "valuable" or "reliable".
 
the idea of value is more of a level above. what you value as 'truth' is reponsable for the plug you will employ. what im trying to get at is that there are different 'truths', depending on the viewpoint you assume. the 'truth' of an artwork cannot be expressed in scientific 'truth'. in order for truth to appear, you have to define what truth is, you employ a measure of truth (a plug). much like Kuhns paradigms for science really. you set forth a framework, in which truth will appear in a certain way, depending on the framework you put forth, and what 'measurable' value you assume to discern between more true or less true (to that framework). (i say more or less, because the absolutes are, as you note, never certain) this measure may be correspondence to physical sense-data, or it may be coherence or correspondence with an inner or shared emotional world for instance. in this way, you can account for all the human strivings, beyond only that of science. science is true, but only within its own domain. at the present time, science takes its domain to be nearly everything. my point is that scientific truth is completely useless for discerning the truths that motivate quite a lot of other domains of human experience such as the arts, spirituality, human interpersonal relation, semantics of language, ... . in short, depending on your wish to be a scientist or an artist, you will see 'truth' in a very different way. a reduction of the artistic truth to scientific objectivity destroys the very heart that motivates the domain. much as doing it the other way around, reduce scientific truth to artistic truth, destroys the heart of science.

edit: it is in this margin of subjectivity of science that the reciprocal relativity and fundamental irreducability of science to the other domains of human experience is conservated. it remains an assumed point of view in the human catalogue of possible viewpoints
 
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I agree with you that there are subjective truths; for instance, a painting might be beautiful to one person but repugnant to another-it has no intrinsic beauty, for beauty is a product of the relation with the observer. However, I think there are objective truths about the mental states that underly these subjective truths. By this, I mean that to attempt to objectively determine whether or not "Sunflowers" is beautiful is fruitlessWe can, though, form propositions such as "azzazza believes that 'Sunflowers' is beautiful", which are much more objective and verifiable. I agree that science has been given too great a role though, and that reductionist accounts of such things as ethics, epistemology, ethics and experience can never provide a complete picture of existence.
 
i see it as a certain continuum. the subjective truth of beauty can also become more objective. such a subjective truth is not purely subjective either. the subject does not have a free choice or control over it, just as it has no absolute (magic) control over the objective world. for instance there are certain things, such as a certain beautiful girl, or a timeless masterpiece of art, that can have a very wide consensus in their being beautiful, bordering on an 'objective' beauty. the 'rules' by which such a consensus comes to be are not scientific. the truth of beauty has its own set of (emotional) rules by which such a truth is established, and these rules do not require widespread consensus, or any consensus at all, though it may be there. the essential nature of its truth is synthetic-idealistic (difference in identity), as opposed to analytic-objective (identity in difference).

another example may be 'the good'. resist the urge of analysing, breaking it in parts when asking "what is the good", but let is remain there as a whole of "the good" while asking yourself that question. you are left with a perfect, true idea by itself (or in descartes words; clear and distinct). it is exactly through its ideal nature, its non-existence, its perfection that this is truth in every sense of the word. yet it cannot be analysed or expressed. even the very word "good" is already a referential that actually lost or fails to capture its semantic essence. yet everyone "knows" what "the good" is/refers to.
in essence, it is neither objective or subjective
 
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