[ExI] What can be said to be "wrong", and what is "Truth"

Jef Allbright jef at jefallbright.net
Thu Oct 2 22:53:53 UTC 2008


On Thu, Oct 2, 2008 at 3:06 PM, Mike Dougherty <msd001 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 2, 2008 at 1:29 PM, Jef Allbright <jef at jefallbright.net> wrote:
>> street.  But why this death-grip with which you appear to hold on to
>> superficially reassuring but superfluous concepts of absolute truth,
>> or absolute personal identity, when to relax such a grip is to lose
>> nothing real, while gaining the flexibility to better examine and
>> enjoy that which remains?
>
> I think you need to stand somewhere. Or you need to stand nowhere.  It
> may not seem sensible to be both somewhere and nowhere, but that
> superposition may be a more accurate description of what is real [sic]
> than either of the extremes.

Argh.  ;-)  Show me a functional (versus operational) model of a
"superposition."  This is crucial.  You MUST stand somewhere to be a
"you."  I emphasize that you MUST have a subjective point of view.
But there is no need or basis for any attempt to define that
subjective POV in (fundamentally unfounded and unfoundable) objective
terms.  Don't need it, never did, although it's quite clear from
cognitive and evolutionary psychology why we as individuals and as a
culture tend to think and reinforce our thinking in terms of discrete
selves, absolute truth, fear of the unknown, respect for authority,
and so on.  But that environment of evolutionary adaptation is rapidly
slipping behind us and the effective heuristics of our ancestors are
decreasing in utility.  Let the unfounded ontological assumption go,
and everything is seen to work as before, but according to a more
coherent and thus more extensible model.

- Jef



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