Curt Doolittle

Theme: Truth

  • THE GOAL OF READING FICTION IS ANALYSIS ITSELF Benjamin Franklin If a person’s g

    THE GOAL OF READING FICTION IS ANALYSIS ITSELF

    Benjamin Franklin

    If a person’s goal in reading narrative fiction is only to come to an understanding of the truth, then that is indeed childlike. In my view, the goal is not to come to an understanding of the ideas, but the goal is the analysis itself.

    It’s the same goal one has when they are solving a puzzle. Of course you eventually solve the puzzle, but the outcome is not that important compared to the act of solving the puzzle. Someone could just give you the solved puzzle, i.e just present the ideas in essay format, but the subjective experience would be qualitatively different from solving it yourself.

    Those who study fiction in the way one would study science or law are misguided, in my view. The level of seriousness in the two pursuits are incomparable. I find serious commentators who quote fiction to be as annoying as you probably do.

    The worst authors of fiction are those who put ideas or some notion of truth in the foreground. It comes off as preachy. Ayn Rand is a notorious culprit of this style of writing. For these kinds of authors, the philosophy does indeed transform into the veneer and the narrative slips into the background. Good authors make the narrative the veneer and the ideas become a puzzle to be solved by the observer.

    Now, you can argue about the time worthiness of analyzing fiction. It is potentially not as worthy of a time investment as doing science. But, if you consider the long term, the potential inevitable extinction of humanity along with all traces of their existence, then all actions are equally worthy of time or equally unworthy of time.

    Source date (UTC): 2018-06-12 08:55:00 UTC

  • The Rational Veneer of Literary Philosophy

    The problem with those who favor literary thought is that they mistake the suspension of disbelief necessary to empathize, sympathize, and comprehend an author’s work, with the truth, goodness, and possibility of it. They rationally justify the quality and desirability of whatever arguments, no matter how sophomoric, but they are only making excuses for the fact that they as suggestible as children, and entirely dependent upon intuition: their reason is just a veneer. Science and Law are not seductive. Just the opposite. They are commercial transactions of commodities that allow you to act in the real world, with real costs, and real consequences. Fairy tales are for children. Even children of adult and later ages.

  • The Rational Veneer of Literary Philosophy

    The problem with those who favor literary thought is that they mistake the suspension of disbelief necessary to empathize, sympathize, and comprehend an author’s work, with the truth, goodness, and possibility of it. They rationally justify the quality and desirability of whatever arguments, no matter how sophomoric, but they are only making excuses for the fact that they as suggestible as children, and entirely dependent upon intuition: their reason is just a veneer. Science and Law are not seductive. Just the opposite. They are commercial transactions of commodities that allow you to act in the real world, with real costs, and real consequences. Fairy tales are for children. Even children of adult and later ages.

  • THE WEST’S STRATEGY: TRUTH, DUTY, SOVEREIGNTY, RECIPROCITY AND MARKETS IN EVERYT

    THE WEST’S STRATEGY: TRUTH, DUTY, SOVEREIGNTY, RECIPROCITY AND MARKETS IN EVERYTHING. Trump is demanding truth, duty, sovereignty, reciprocity and markets in everything. The outcome of constructing only FAIR DEALS produces western civilization, and the balance of powers. #Trump

    Source date (UTC): 2018-06-11 14:04:14 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1006175276622143488

  • THE WEST’S STRATEGY: TRUTH, DUTY, SOVEREIGNTY, RECIPROCITY AND MARKETS IN EVERYT

    THE WEST’S STRATEGY: TRUTH, DUTY, SOVEREIGNTY, RECIPROCITY AND MARKETS IN EVERYTHING. Trump is demanding truth, duty, sovereignty, reciprocity and markets in everything. The outcome of constructing only FAIR DEALS produces western civilization, and the balance of powers. #Trump

    Source date (UTC): 2018-06-11 10:04:00 UTC

  • THE WEST’S UNIQUE STRATEGY: TRUTH, DUTY, SOVEREIGNTY, RECIPROCITY AND MARKETS IN

    THE WEST’S UNIQUE STRATEGY: TRUTH, DUTY, SOVEREIGNTY, RECIPROCITY AND MARKETS IN EVERYTHING. Trump is demanding truth, duty, sovereignty, reciprocity and markets in everything. The outcome of simply constructing only fair deals produces western civilization. And the balance of powers.

    Source date (UTC): 2018-06-11 10:03:00 UTC

  • THE RATIONAL VENEER OF LITERARY PHILOSOPHY The problem with those who favor lite

    THE RATIONAL VENEER OF LITERARY PHILOSOPHY

    The problem with those who favor literary thought is that they mistake the suspension of disbelief necessary to empathize, sympathize, and comprehend an author’s work, with the truth, goodness, and possibility of it.

    They rationally justify the quality and desirability of whatever arguments, no matter how sophomoric, but they are only making excuses for the fact that they as suggestible as children, and entirely dependent upon intuition: their reason is just a veneer.

    Science and Law are not seductive. Just the opposite. They are commercial transactions of commodities that allow you to act in the real world, with real costs, and real consequences.

    Fairy tales are for children. Even children of adult and later ages.

    Source date (UTC): 2018-06-11 09:59:00 UTC

  • A Universally Verifiable Truth?

    —“Curt do you believe in the notion of a universally verifiable truth?”—Mark Joyner (FWIW apparently this post was interpreted by mark as offensive. I didn’t mean it to be.) Um. You probably can’t comprehend how …. sophomoric that question is, because it’s so common a sophomoric question that like belief in flying donkeys it’s a given. 1) A person may speak truthfully… if you know what that means: For every phenomenon there exists a most parsimonious description possible in a language that can be uttered by man. To state the most parsimonious description of possible one needs perfect knowledge. We are rarely if ever possessed of perfect knowledge. When we are, it is all but certain we speak of a tautology or a triviality (reductio) – and meaningless. So even if we speak the most parsimonious description possible we may not know we do, and as such must assume our description is forever contingent. Ergo all *testimony* (truth claim) of any substance is forever contingent. 2) We can speak in at least three categories: axiomatic, theoretic, and fictional(analogistic). We can verify the internal consistency of an axiomatic statement, and we can attempt to construct of proof of such an axiomatic statement – assuming that the axioms themselves are internally consistent. We can declare axioms. We call internally consistent tests ‘true’ but they are merely proofs, not truths. Mathematics is axiomatic. They are only contingent upon the declared axioms. We can only try to falsify the theoretical, and see if it survives falsification. We cannot declare laws, only discover them. We call theories (descriptions) true if they are consistent, correspondent, possible, complete, and coherent. This is a far higher standard that the must ‘simpler’ axiomatic. Real world phenomenon are theoretic. We do not recognize the need to test the internal consistency or external correspondence (operational possibility) or coherence of fictions (analogies). Imaginary phenomenon only need be meaningful, nothing else. One can verify the existence of evidence. But this tells us only that the evidence exists and therefore claims are not false. It does not tell us that the theory is true. So, one does not ‘verify’ a truth proposition, only a test of internal consistency of axioms. One tests the survivability of a theory. Because it is forever contingent. Hence why we have juries.

  • A Universally Verifiable Truth?

    —“Curt do you believe in the notion of a universally verifiable truth?”—Mark Joyner (FWIW apparently this post was interpreted by mark as offensive. I didn’t mean it to be.) Um. You probably can’t comprehend how …. sophomoric that question is, because it’s so common a sophomoric question that like belief in flying donkeys it’s a given. 1) A person may speak truthfully… if you know what that means: For every phenomenon there exists a most parsimonious description possible in a language that can be uttered by man. To state the most parsimonious description of possible one needs perfect knowledge. We are rarely if ever possessed of perfect knowledge. When we are, it is all but certain we speak of a tautology or a triviality (reductio) – and meaningless. So even if we speak the most parsimonious description possible we may not know we do, and as such must assume our description is forever contingent. Ergo all *testimony* (truth claim) of any substance is forever contingent. 2) We can speak in at least three categories: axiomatic, theoretic, and fictional(analogistic). We can verify the internal consistency of an axiomatic statement, and we can attempt to construct of proof of such an axiomatic statement – assuming that the axioms themselves are internally consistent. We can declare axioms. We call internally consistent tests ‘true’ but they are merely proofs, not truths. Mathematics is axiomatic. They are only contingent upon the declared axioms. We can only try to falsify the theoretical, and see if it survives falsification. We cannot declare laws, only discover them. We call theories (descriptions) true if they are consistent, correspondent, possible, complete, and coherent. This is a far higher standard that the must ‘simpler’ axiomatic. Real world phenomenon are theoretic. We do not recognize the need to test the internal consistency or external correspondence (operational possibility) or coherence of fictions (analogies). Imaginary phenomenon only need be meaningful, nothing else. One can verify the existence of evidence. But this tells us only that the evidence exists and therefore claims are not false. It does not tell us that the theory is true. So, one does not ‘verify’ a truth proposition, only a test of internal consistency of axioms. One tests the survivability of a theory. Because it is forever contingent. Hence why we have juries.

  • Truth is an adjective not a noun.

    By Bill Joslin Truth is an adjective not a noun. The subtle difference between truth as semantic axioms and truth as an asymptotic correspondence resolves the above. The ability to test a statement against a criteria (correspondence, coherence , utility, meaning or any combination thereof) makes “true” possible (the only time “true” us relevant) – thus “true” exists as a property of speech and thought (not a prooerty of the world or reality).