Truth

Discussion of the nature of Ultimate Reality and the path to Enlightenment.
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Leyla Shen
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A=A

Post by Leyla Shen »

This ambiguity will never stop.
Retract that statement, hypocrite! It's far too ambiguous to be true. Is context the dog or the tail?
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Bobo
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Re: Truth

Post by Bobo »

I think the ambiguity may be more clear in the statement 'false is false' it can mean the identity 'false = false' or the claim that 'false' is false, the same in 'this statement is true'.
I think there's something of that in Kierkegaard's quote when he talks of the negative as a phantom or a contraposition. But more importantly where he talks about logic having no movement, diebert was talking about statements in formation, nothing about Hegel though.
Dennis Mahar
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Re: Truth

Post by Dennis Mahar »

the only thing being said is

this statement is 'characteristics, properties, functions'.

causes/conditions
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Diebert van Rhijn
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Re: A=A

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

Leyla Shen wrote:Is context the dog or the tail?
Truth is not trying to seperate them: otherwise suffering folllows! :)
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Re: Truth

Post by Leyla Shen »

Indeed. And just so there's no room for ambiguity: precisely this kind of suffering!
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Re: Truth

Post by Leyla Shen »

Bobo wrote:I think the ambiguity may be more clear in the statement 'false is false' it can mean the identity 'false = false' or the claim that 'false' is false, the same in 'this statement is true'.
I think there's something of that in Kierkegaard's quote when he talks of the negative as a phantom or a contraposition. But more importantly where he talks about logic having no movement, diebert was talking about statements in formation, nothing about Hegel though.
If neither you nor Diebert understand the relation between what Kierkegaard is saying and Hegel and/or the Hegelian School (and Diebert has confessed to me is affection for Hegel!), then neither you nor Diebert understand what Kierkegaard is saying here at all. Kierkegaard is arguing that the concretisation of logic is impotent because logic is absolute and the empirical world is contingent. Even if one could “concretise” logic, logic itself never changes; what is logical, is logical always and not contingent or ambiguous. Only an arbitrary conflation of empirical contingency as logical certainty produces such appearances as objects of logic.

Who and what do you think Kierkegaard is talking about when he refers to concretion (and "dogmatists"):
In logic no movement can come about, for logic is, and everything logical simply is, and this impotence of logic is the transition to the sphere of being where existence and reality appear. So when logic is absorbed in the concretion of the categories it is constantly the same that it was from the beginning. In logic every movement (if for an instant one would use this expression) is an immanent movement, which in a deeper sense is no movement, as one will easily convince oneself if one reflects that the very concept of movement is a transcendence which can find no place in logic.
To say we are moving anything (even a sentence) with logic is the phantom!

So, I am still waiting to see a sufficiently elegant and coherent argument from you or Diebert as to why the statement “this statement is true” is necessarily ambiguous when, by definition, it is clearly true and its negation “this statement is not true/false” is therefore clearly false.

Is it because whilst it is true they have the same identity “statement”, each makes a claim contradictory to the other in terms of truth value which can’t be verified outside of identity? Why would we call that “ambiguous”?
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Diebert van Rhijn
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Re: Truth

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

Leyla Shen wrote:If neither you nor Diebert understand the relation between what Kierkegaard is saying and Hegel and/or the Hegelian School (and Diebert has confessed to me is affection for Hegel!), then neither you nor Diebert understand what Kierkegaard is saying here at all. Kierkegaard is arguing that the concretisation of logic is impotent because logic is absolute and the empirical world is contingent. Even if one could “concretise” logic, logic itself never changes; what is logical, is logical always and not contingent or ambiguous. Only an arbitrary conflation of empirical contingency as logical certainty produces such appearances as objects of logic.
Lets first be clear that Kierkegaard, Nietzsche as well as Diebert or any Stoic would always find themselves in fundamental opposition to anything Hegelian and not just as something to expand or critique. It's a very fundamental issue. What I think Kierkegaard is talking about is the concretion of the experience and inward existentialism of a philosopher (or any "true Christian"). Feel free to start a separate topic on Hegel vs Someone Else.
So, I am still waiting to see a sufficiently elegant and coherent argument from you or Diebert as to why the statement “this statement is true” is necessarily ambiguous when, by definition, it is clearly true and its negation “this statement is not true/false” is therefore clearly false.
I was actually introduced to this "strange" loop a long time ago, when reading Gödel, Escher, Bach by Hofstadter. It surfaces as well in Gödel's incompleteness ("all consistent axiomatic formulations of number theory include undecidable propositions"). Gödel was however a Platonist very much and Hofstadter summarized Gödel with the interesting "provability is a weaker notion than truth". Yes, it's true that this refers mostly to Tarski's "fully interpreted languages" while common language is not formal at all, and sentences can be true and false simultaneously or have multiple meanings. Another reason to raise the flag of ambiguity!

Or lets put it in another way. We're actually saying "this statement has proof" and its negative "this statement has no proof". But since the sentence has not absolute boundaries, like some isolated system, the proof would normally include external supply or could still be delivered, eventually by axioms - including always some "undecidable proposition". This is not only in mathematical sense and one could only appreciate the strange loop: "the ambivalence of all experience" which is well caught with the OP.
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Re: Truth

Post by Bobo »

I see some obscurities as True seems to have the property of being true while false doesn´t have the property of being false. When defining true or false it we use words like ´proper´ or ´improper´ which are undefined or defined in terms of true and false or taken intuitively. And still true and false are defined in a general way, they don´t refer to a specific truth or falsity, and are used as such in statements. The statement that refer to itself...
About Kierkegaard´s point on the difference of the contigent (not his words) and logical I think they are pretty general, not applying only to Hegel´s system.
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Re: Truth

Post by Dennis Mahar »

It still holds D despite the sideswipe.

What is being said is:

this statement is 'characteristics, properties functions'.

can't be refuted.
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Diebert van Rhijn
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Re: Truth

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

Dennis Mahar wrote:This statement is 'characteristics, properties functions'. Can't be refuted.
Backup up your fellow Scientologist, are we now? ;)

There are a couple of problems:

1. informal language always remains ambiguous since its context is always in flux.
2. "true" is not simply a characteristic, function or description that some object can be assigned.
3. "this statement" is not a thing or even a reference to one, it acts like a self-reference.
4. while A=A must be accepted, A cannot also act like a property assigned to same A.
Dennis Mahar
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Re: Truth

Post by Dennis Mahar »

You've just provided 'characteristics, properties, functions'.
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Diebert van Rhijn
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Re: Truth

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

Dennis Mahar wrote:You've just provided 'characteristics, properties, functions'.
But they can all be refuted. It's called reasoning.

All reasoning revolves around refutation as all thought revolves around opposition.

Yes, indeed: no-thought revolves around affirmation, is nothing but affirmation. Eternity. No-being.
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Re: Truth

Post by Dennis Mahar »

Submission.

Because thought deals in characteristics, properties, functions and Quinn plays the 'trust in the infinite card.
that means a limit to thought.
no-mind.
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Diebert van Rhijn
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Re: Truth

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

Dennis Mahar wrote:Because thought deals in characteristics, properties, functions and Quinn plays the 'trust in the infinite card. That means a limit to thought. No-mind.
That sounds a bit too much as dumbing down thought. Like saying a car deals in driving roads and air pollution. It sounds almost like spite but perhaps you don't mean that. It's just how it sounds to me and perhaps others.

Trust can only be in God, the universe and causality - concrete, right now as much as in the abstract. Quinn says: "trust your mind" and talks about "limitless understanding", meaning its open-ended nature as well as understanding of the limitless. But mind always arrives at mind and nowhere else. Thoughts exist by grace of limitation.

It's important to be clear about this. Just abandoning mind or self is not enough: it can become a "hide out". A negation. A hidden thought.
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Re: Truth

Post by Leyla Shen »

diebert's tactical approach is to suffocate everything with the value of meaninglessness and ambiguity.

~

Have you tried a quick search on how many times "Hegel" appears in the body of the work beyond the Introduction to it, bobo?
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Dread!

Post by Leyla Shen »

Lol

It's actually a good read, even though the available electronic copy has its problems:
Everything turns upon dread coming into view. Man is a syn thesis of the soulish and the bodily. But a synthesis is unthinkable if the two are not united in a third factor. This third factor is the spirit. In the state of innocence man is not merely an animal, for if at any time of his life he was merely an animal, he never would become a man. So then the spirit is present, but in a state of immediacy, a dreaming state. Forasmuch as it is present, it is in one way a hostile power, for it constantly disturbs the relation between soul and body, a relation which endures, and vet does not endure, inasmuch as it has endurance only by means of the spirit. On the other hand, it is a friendly power which has precisely the function of constituting the relationship. What then is man’s relation to this ambiguous power? How is spirit related to itself and to its situation? It is related as dread. The spirit cannot do away with itself; nor can it grasp itself so long as it has itself outside of itself. Neither can man sink down into the vegetative life, for he is determined as spirit. He cannot flee from dread, for he loves it; really he does not love it, for he flees from it. Innocence has now reached its apex. It is ignorance, but not an animal brutality, but an ignorance which is qualified by spirit, but which precisely is dread, because its ignorance is about nothing. Here there is no knowledge of good and evil, etc., but the whole reality of knowledge is projected in dread as the immense nothing ot ignorance. Innocence still is, but one word suffices, and with that ignorance is concentrated. Innocence of course cannot understand this word; but dread has as it were obtained its first prey; instead of nothing, innocence gets an enigmatic word. So when it is related in Genesis that God said to Adam, “Only of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not eat,” it is a matter of course that Adam did not really understand this word. For how could he have understood the difference between good and evil, seeing that this distinction was in fact consequent upon the enjoyment of the fruit?
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Dennis Mahar
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Re: Truth

Post by Dennis Mahar »

Hegel's 'on the money'.
The experience of true nature is of indescribable beauty.
Majesty.

You have to make yourself sick with the logic.
Who am I?
Who am I?
Who am I being?

meanwhile, the matter of survival options.
buddy, can you spare a dime?
web of intrigue.

Marx understood Hegel and asking 'who am I being' turned the dialectic to worldly matters/survival options and generated a conversation concerning the dime and distribution of.
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Re: Truth

Post by Leyla Shen »

Question: What is the difference between dogmatism and insight, Dennis?
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Dennis Mahar
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Re: Truth

Post by Dennis Mahar »

mind stuff.
Leyla Shen
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Re: Truth

Post by Leyla Shen »

Well, show me some. As it is, you have not provided a difference but a sameness, so you have not answered the question.
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Re: Truth

Post by Dennis Mahar »

The answer is the question.
mind stuff.
Leyla Shen
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Re: Truth

Post by Leyla Shen »

Then answer it.
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The Whole Truth

Post by Leyla Shen »

Or, just admit that in so lacking it, you can't answer it and therefore must simply avoid it altogether.
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Dennis Mahar
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Re: Truth

Post by Dennis Mahar »

The World is Mind.
Spirit in all things.

Listen knuckles, I ain't cruisin' for a bruisin'.
I can see the indescribable beauty of your spirit.
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Dread of dread!

Post by Leyla Shen »

Oh, I see. You be cruisin' for your next fuck with a drunken woman then...
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