A HIGHER STANDARD OF TRUTH (reposted for archival purposes) I’m arguing about ne

A HIGHER STANDARD OF TRUTH

(reposted for archival purposes)

I’m arguing about necessary properties of truth (knowledge claims) not mere utility (correspondence), which are two different things. Determining Truth is a matter of testing our knowledge of use (external correspondence), of knowledge of internal consistency, and knowledge of construction. I don’t think I’m really addressing the problem of hypothesis creation (conjecture). I’m addressing the problem of truth. I think ultimate truth is addressed already: unknowable, ultimately parsimonious, proof of knowledge of correspondence, consistency and construction, for any given theoretical, non-tautological statement. Since we cannot know this we can only testify to the truth of the most currently most parsimonious, proof of knowledge, correspondence, consistency and construction for any given theoretical, non-tautological statement. These two definitions are often conflated: truth we can currently testify to, and the truth we aspire to one day testify to.

For me to succeed in quashing postmodernism, mysticism, and even ‘continental and cosmopolitan rationalist empty verbalisms’ in political and legal speech, then I have to get to the (unsolved) nature of truth. Which I think I have. (above)

All other variations on truth are simply analogies for proofs that make use of fewer properties of necessary truth. LIke “numbers” we use the word “truth”, imprecisely, as an analogy in multiple contexts.

Only one ‘truth’ can be demonstrated to exist: performative truth. Everything else is a rough analogy. And almost all is proof not truth. And most of those proofs are limited to very narrow conditions.

I find it terribly interesting that the problem of truth was not solved, despite all the work on it. And the reason it was not solved, is that all statements are ethically contingent. And that is a troublesome thing to tell a scientist or logician trying to escape the false ethics of religious mysticism and that tradition, rather than the objective ethics and morality of propertarianism

Maybe this is a greater change in conventional thought than appears to me. I know that for mathematicians the idea that they’re utilitarian traditions and contrivances are unethical (untrue) appears absurd. But I’m sure to most critical rationalists, the idea of using analogies as truth claims as immoral and unethical might seem absurdly burdensome. And I know that for Austrians, the idea that apriorism is immoral and unethical is not only absurd but extremely burdensome. I know that for average speakers, the fact that using the word “is” for other than existence, set membership or location (specifically for properties) is extremely cognitively burdensome.

But there is a vast difference between internal dialog, and public speech. And while internal dialog can suffice for utilitarian purposes, and places no criminal, ethical or moral constraint upon others, the moment we speak , write or publish to others, we have entered into an ethical and moral realm, and are engaged in unethical and immoral action if we make truth claims that we cannot demonstrate we have the knowledge to make. If we must state the truth in public, or hypothesis in public, or rumour in public, or myth in public, is it not immoral and unethical to misrepresent one’s statement?

Only under very rare conditions may we make truth claims. In the most part we are communicating rough analogies, others we are hypothesizing, and rarely are we engaged theorizing – and almost never are we capable of making truth claims.

Under performative truth, we are making a promise. That promise is implied. Most of the time, we are not making a truth claim. But an hypothetical claim. And that is implied too. The question is, do we know when we are doing one or the other.

And I think not.