Truth, reality and the meling pot

Truth, reality and the meling pot [+ favourites]

I don't know what reality is.

However, I think I'm starting to understand truth. I believe truth is something to be acquired, or a void to be filled, between the descriptors of what is 'out there' and what is 'out there'. Trith will exist when what we describe matches perfectly what is reality. As such, truth is never going to be perfect, but truth is a concept to be achieved by the exact correspondence between our description of reality and what reality is.

The problem is I do not know what reality is. This gets confusing because our language itself can self contain; that is it can define itself within itself and yet contradict iself within itself;
e.g. "This is not a sentence". This is our problem-our language is finite and its trying to describe an open system. Hence, true understanding can only be when our conciousness is in sync with the pure order of systems. Humans are part of this system but make it complicated by being able ot analyse it (most people badly-especially when using English, French, etc. and not more refined systems like binomial language).

On these principles, I have devise my own 5 ways and means to seek truth:

1. Intelligence (the ability to dig deep and the rate of digging into problems). I believe short-term memory is within this, i.e. the ability to remember and stick with the origin of thought to keep a logical order.
2. Imagination. This is the ability to see wider than the problem itself and to see options that to others would not be there.
3. Wisdom. This is the ability to know when to stop and when to start.
4. Judgement. This is the ability to balance probability and reward.
5. Intuition. I would suggest this is the least occupied of gifts. It is the ability to sense where you are going and because of this is hard to explain rationally.

I believe this is how to seek truth. At the start I stated i do not know what reality is. However, a part of it, possibly a large part, is the ability to comprehend the laws of nature. The second part then is when the laws of nature are themselves used to create a new reality. Thus the degreed of understanding now is proportional to the ability to change tommorrow.

""No words""

"3. Wisdom. This is the ability to know when to stop and when to start."

The hell is that supposed to mean? I have never, in all my years of life, heard of wisdom defined as the ability to know when to stop and when to start. I have to agree with wittgenstein when I say you are too vague. I legitimately tried to analyze this trainwreck of coherent thought (no offense) and it seems that maybe you have some idea of what you're saying but absolutely no idea on how to write it down or help others to understand it. Might I suggest gathering your thoughts before writing them down? Possibly proof reading when you're finished with your post (hell, you mispelled the title, did you mean 'melting pot'?)? I don't mean to sound vindictive, but this is my honest response to your post.

"I try my best to be just like I am but everybody wants you to be just like them."

3. "Wisdom. This is the ability to know when to stop and when to start."

Take relativity. Had Einstein know what he would his voyage would have predominantly ben used for he would have kept his mouth shut. Wisdom is the ability to know what to say, when, where how and what for. It is also knowing when not to say anything. My mind is faster than my ability to keep up with it. However, I will get there. When I do-people will understand. Anyway, most great minds are misunderstood. I know this beause I know people smarter than me in certain things understand what I try to get at. So, I know I'm on the right track. I just need to be more definitive to help those who don't. Rather this way though, than the precautionary way.

Reading my own words if you require a summary maybe:

Truth is what has occurred and maybe reality is what is, and thus the relationship is defined by how well the description of reality (and thus the amount of truth known) accords to the reality itself. Reality, however, is itself dictated into the future by the amount of truth we ourselves are able to utilise so to adapt things that would be so in the absence of our existence, or to be precise, the absence of our ability to think and to act.

""No words""

"My mind is faster than my ability to keep up with it. However, I will get there. When I do-people will understand. Anyway, most great minds are misunderstood. I know this beause I know people smarter than me in certain things understand what I try to get at. So, I know I'm on the right track."

You think you are an undiscovered genius or something... a prophet, who will discover great things soon to come. You say most great minds are often misunderstood but usually by the things they do... not because of the fact they speak incoherently. If you don't strive to be understood, then you are losing all meaning in what you say. Your summary was just as vague as your first post leaving me, still, with no clue as to the point you are trying to make. Maybe I'm the only one who feels this way, or perhaps it's just my feeble mind biting me in the ass.

"I try my best to be just like I am but everybody wants you to be just like them."

There is a fairly recent philosophical tradition the main feature of which is that it posits a gulf between "truth" and "reality", but your ideas would seem to occupy a very strange place within that tradition. In the 18th century, the Enlightenment brought about a period of revolution: science triumphed and mankind gloried, razing to the ground all the established autocracies of Europe, and tearing asunder the religous doctrines that had hitherto guided men's souls. I paraphrase, of course; what is important is that these sociological phenomena can loosely be said to be the antecedents of the French Revolution and, finally, the philosophy of Marx, who in his own view provided their logical culmination. Offhand, this probably seems dubious. Marx was, after all, the self-proclaimed prophet of capitalist doom, and the first to puncture bourgeoisie pretensions of freedom.

The key 'political' idea in Marxian theory is that the 'weltschauung' (or ideology) of the common man is nothing more than what he called a 'false consciousness' - that is, a materially cultivated illusion designed to to ensure his subjugation to the social system he inhabits, whatever position he may finds himself in.

Now this obviously entails some sort of truth/reality dichotomy itself. It would not be overly spurious to suggest that this represents the most extreme variant of the notion that science can somehow triumph over religion and unreason - in the process stripping the status quo bare to reveal its rotting and flagitious underbelly. Not only was this the essence of Revolutionary thought: this idea, whether implicit or explicit, remains resonant and topical today. It is evident in the works of Chomsky; it is ever-present in Foucault; it is the impulse, might I suggest,
behind the flood of hysterical 'conspiracy' theories which currently fill the internet. The enduring assumptions seem to be that "truth" is something that has been manufactured by evil forces which prey upon and cultivate the effeminate irrationality of human beings, and that it must be unmasked to reveal to us that pure, unadulterated realm we call "reality".

Your idea appears to be an inversion of all this. You agree that truth and reality are disjunctive elements; in your estimation, truth can be no more than the mere simulacrum of reality. It is not to be entirely trusted. Yet, according to you, truth is not entirely capricious either: in fact, it represents the only pathway towards truth, a never-ending stairway that ascends infinitely towards 'reality'. Forgive me if I am getting vague, but
you are partly blame for that. I think you're also saying something like this: since the process of history means that 'reality' changes - that it is what you might call 'evolutionary' - we must also alter our stock of 'truth' accordingly, lest our preternally limited mortal thoughts become even less felicitious than they already are. Ergo, the importance of 'widsom'?

Hmmmm. Much here is arbitrary, more is questionable, and all of it inadequately argued. Uneven in tempo, lacking the will to logical cleanliness, self-assured and therefore impatient of the idea of proof - disdainful even of the propriety of proof - there may nevertheless be good ideas concealed behind the bluster. I don't see that, however. I see a fairly simple idea lost in a fog of wayward simile and unconscious self-analysis. But who knows, maybe we're just being impatient. Am I at least on the right lines?

[  Edited by wittgensteins at   ]

good reply.

1st my assumptions:

1. Reality is all that is.
2. Absolute determinism does not exist; i.e. one does have the ability to change things.

If evil forces create truth and truth has to be stripped down to reveal reality then what causes truth in the first place? Answer: reality.

The truth is the part which has occurred in the past. It is the accuracy of the descrition of reality; aka the truth, which reveals reality. Just like in geology where we get information from rocks we can form enough descriptors to deduce or induce the reality of the past. With the laws of nature, we attempt to find reality through plurality and, commonly, the methods of rationality and criticism.

On the other hand we have theorists of human behaviour. This is a different place. Freud, for example, gave us theories which have been tried and tested and shown to be working in certain situations. The difference is that by being conciously aware of the unconious actions of individuals, Freud, by attempting to model reality (and by being 'truthful' )gave us the ability to change and thereby disprove his truths, creating, as it were, a new reality. If I know the methods of hypnosis, I can choose to be hypnotised or not to be hypnotised; thus as I said before:

"Truth is what has occurred and maybe reality is what is, and thus the relationship is defined by how well the description of reality (and thus the amount of truth known) accords to the reality itself. Reality, however, is itself dictated into the future by the amount of truth we ourselves are able to utilise so to adapt things that would be so in the absence of our existence, or to be precise, the absence of our ability to think and to act."

The reason I say truth is what has occured and not reality is what has occurred is because I believe if one is not there; it is impossible to state reality is what has occurred. But, I am experiencing part of reality right now (this can be taken two ways and both are right). And todays thoughts and actions (i.e. the amount of truth we can gather about today) will change tomorrows reality.

I guess the difference is most philosophers analyse the past and present to try and understand the past and present. Whilst I do do this, I also recognise that knowledge of the past and present affects the futre. Think on the relativity idea; how it was thought and how it was used. Also, note the difference between laws of nature and laws of human behaviour.

I do recognise that one day science might answer all the whats, hows, where and whens, BUT it may never say why. I can see that some philosphers really have looked deeply so that when they say that we need to unravel all the evil doings, etc. to get the basic laws and principles, they do mean the absolute fabric of stuff, both natural and social, still I am skeptical we will ever know why.


Here's a scenario. Imagine someone has caused a crime. And the police have found as much evidence as possible to convince the jury that this person is guilty. Let us say the crime carries a sentence of between 2 and 6 years. The person goes to court. In the UK, the accused is asked to state 'the truth, the whole truth and noting but the truth'. Of course, this is impossible. But thats the aim of judgement relative to the defined law.

Lets assume the clienty is guilty, he knows he will be found guilty and the judge finds him guilty. Now, when it comes to judgement, there was a study that said that people who looked more attractive got more lenient sentences. So the accused, knowing he is guilty, also knows the judge knows little of hi; so if he acts in the roght way he will get a more lenient sentence. I just wonder that if I managed, immediately beforehand the cvourt hearing, to get the findings of this story on the headlines of every newspaper, what sentence the judge would give to this more attractive person...


For my own reference; I must reiterate to myself that the observer is not independent of what is being observed.

""No words""
[  Edited by heyjme1 at   ]

Put yourself in the mind of an early human, you might call this man a savage. His stomach growls and so he searches the area for potential food. You're suggesting that once this man finds berries, tries them and realizes they quench his hunger, his reality changes? Surely the only thing that changes is his thought of the berries. He merely links the berries to his hunger. With our minds, we can link things to thoughts, so the only thing we can change with truth is our thought of the piece of reality.

What thought do we as humans have of the concept, infinity? Our minds can't comprehend a number with no bound. When you think of a simple thing like a berry, I'm guessing a picture comes to mind of what a berry is to you. When we think of things we don't know, we don't generate a definate picture. Is this lack of a mental picture a drive to understand it? I don't want to get off topic but let me end this saying that reality doesn't change, only our understanding of it.

"I try my best to be just like I am but everybody wants you to be just like them."

lol. i eat a berry of species a. I also eat a berry of species b. I like some parts of species a and some parts of species b. So I cultivate species a with species b and get a new species, species c. There reality has changed.

""No words""

lol. i eat a berry of species a. I also eat a berry of species b. I like some parts of species a and some parts of species b. So I cultivate species a with species b and get a new species, species c. There reality has changed.

quote:

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Okay...If a woman and man have sex is the baby not a new reality?

Another example; in evolution, what seperates a new species from an old one? What makes a mule somehow not a new form of reality?

Quantum physics still depended on mathematics and the theory evolved. What made it revolutionary?

In the big bang, what happened before the big bang?

The limits of what you call a new reality depend upon the limits of what you would find the difference between a revolutiona and a progression.

Time, of essence is a flow, since if it were not, the universe would surely freeze if it were to at any point stop. The theory of zero point energy means nothing is ever perfectly still. And absolute zero is a concept like infinity which is beyond our scope and as yet cant be tested to be.


What results is that the consituent parts always make a new sum such yet the sum is always different from its constiuent parts. I am led to believe everything is one big process. But at my level, right here, being human as I am, I cannot by virtue of this know everything. Thus, for me, the species c of that berry is a new reality maybe not for me, if not for me then for someone else.

""No words""

"Thus, for me, the species c of that berry is a new reality maybe not for me, if not for me then for someone else."

You can't say that, "maybe for someone else.". You can end any view point that way. "Well, it doesn't work for me but maybe for someone else." There is no way to prove or experience someone elses reality, therefore I do not believe it should ever be brought up to support a theory.

"I try my best to be just like I am but everybody wants you to be just like them."

Whn Flemming 'discovered' peniciln; he was not intending its use for himself-but recognised it might be useful for others.

""No words""

What are you getting at here? That lucky circumstances brought about a revolution in medical science? From the way it's worded it seems as if you're saying that he wasn't planning to take penicillin... which sort of obscures the point a bit.