SUPPOSING
that Truth is a woman—what then? Is there not ground for suspecting that all
philosophers, in so far as they have been dogmatists, have failed to understand
women—that the terrible seriousness and clumsy importunity with which they have
usually paid their addresses to Truth, have been unskilled and unseemly methods
for winning a woman? -- Sils Maria Upper Engadine, JUNE, 1885.
Nietzsche’s percpectivism
posits a similar assertion that I am about to make. Logical truths are founded on the concept of
absolute truths, those truths which are universal. Are the statements I am about to make a set
of truth-claims or simply claims? Does Nietzsche’s posit of
truth stand firm if we hold percpectivism (Nietzsche & Hollingdale, 2003) as the subjective
consumption and synthesizing of information, which during a transitive phase,
becomes neutral? For instance, my truth
is my truth at the time of writing these words, however, perhaps, upon the
commitment of these words to paper, the words become neutral and devoid of a
truth value (Evans 1982: 227). At this point, the reader can choose to
agree or disagree with these claims, devoid of assigning a boolean value to it.
My paper can neither be true nor false, because truth does not exist, nor does
false exist. Does the absence of truth
default to fallacy? Does the intention
of truth hold sway over the received truth, or does the received truth trump
that of intention? An anecdote: there
once was an individual who claimed that Nietzsche had
a somewhat narcissistic perception
of man and self. At this point, said
person was redressed for his “cavalier” and “judgmental” reproach of
Nietzsche. Further it was explained to
the former by the latter that his statement was ad hominem – an attack on the
author directly as opposed to the intellect or content of said author. If the former’s intention was not one of
attack but an intended compliment to Nietzsche, was the author ever attacked? Who should judge whether the author was
attacked, the former individual or the latter (Kant & Gregor, 1998)?
In
our culture and rhetoric, “Truth” is a fallacy because it presupposes that
there is something opposite to it when in fact there is no false or “Untruth”
within the realm of our existence. There
is simply a truth which is wrapped by other truths until we render it
false. I say the word WE, not by error
or by whimsical assertions of poetic measure, but quite on purpose. I will speak of the measures of truth as they
pertain to our culture because my knowledge and experience regarding other
cultures are both limited, at best.
Throughout all of my readings, scientific, philosophical and otherwise,
the determination has been made that “way leads on to way” and that we do not
arrive at a thing spontaneously – neither individually, nor as a group. With so much said, we must begin from a place
to go to a place, further we are all assumed to have a common origin,
birth. We all have an intuitive
predisposition to survive (Wilson 1975).
This may be genetic; however there may be an overarching universal law
that governs survival.
Albeit, there are exceptions such as suicidal individuals and
warriors that sacrifice their lives for the life of others; I would fancy both
of these tendencies to be derivatives of the social contract, wherein the
suicidal is opting out of the social contract by means of premature termination
and the warrior upholds the social contract—sacrificing oneself for the
continuity of members of the social contract, thereby supporting the survival
of the contract. Both of these cases are
beyond the scope of this essay and so I will not continue to digress any
further. Before I branch away from my
initial statements any further, let us circle back to the last point and align
that with the aforementioned.
To survive – means to
persist. Everything which we
collectively, and or, individually accept as an existing thing, strives to
survive. This survival goes beyond the
base survival of the thing itself, but of its kind. To put this into context, let us explore a
human being. A person first strives to
survive with immediacy, seeking the Maslowian elements of base survival, such
as: food, shelter, sex, sleep, breathing, and so on (Maslow 1943). The search to consume these elements of
physiological survival is the first priority of survival. The anxieties of termination, death in the
human, not only catalyze this search and development of survival products, but
spur the innovation of ways to cheat death.
Cheating death comes in many forms, most of which have to do with the
creation of a thing that will persist beyond the lifetime of the individual. Here I do not speak of the basic
survival tactics found in every living thing such as natural reproduction –
participation in the conception and birthing of another entity of the same
species (procreation). We all originate
in this fashion, we will always return to this base. The ancillary creation of the persistence set
that will persist beyond the natural life of the human being can be the
creation of wealth, knowledge, ideas, physical structures, art in audio or
digital form, or anything else that one may produce which will be consumed by
others, after the individual’s physical death.
Natural reproduction, birth, is the most basic form of transcendence
beyond one’s lifetime in that it promotes generational survival (Watson, 2006).
If
the aforementioned survival technique is basic to the existence of man, then
what is to follow? For something to be
given, the thing must be received. Logically,
the recipient of a thing may be the same giver of a thing. The contrary is true – the giver of a thing
may well be one and the same as the recipient of a thing, however where
survival of an entity beyond its lifetime is the goal, it is impossible for one
to give to oneself any element of self in order to forestall the termination of
one’s existence. And so in human beings
this “cheat of death” technique, the search for immortality must be a group
exercise. A group in this case may be
more, but not equal to or less than one – two individuals can be considered a
group. What does any of this have to do
with “truth”? All of the aforementioned
are indicative to the measures we employ to do a thing: the building and negotiation of social
contracts, and finally the performance of said contract. There is a quote that I have yet to disprove
on any level – “how we do anything is how we do everything”. Perhaps the exploration of the correlation of
the Fibonacci sequence and the Mandelbrot Set as it correlates with the
formation of natural structures would elucidate the premise of this quote,
however, qualitatively speaking; I have never experienced the contrary. Social contracts are at the heart of
individual survival, let alone the survival and persistence of a group. Which brings us back to our original point,
truth is true in and of itself, “untruth” is the collective wrapping of other
truths around a truth until it renders said truth false. I used the word “we” quite deliberately, and
in the same fashion I use the word “render”.
The definition of render is: …creating, shading and texturing of an
image. In this discussion, the image is
the truth. Truth, much like the word
underprivileged, by dint of its definition, is a fallacy in and of itself. Underprivileged infers the existence of an overprivileged,
yet the word overprivileged does not exist in the English language (The Pathology of White Priviledge, 2008). When something is rendered false, it is
thought to be false in its entirety; if this statement is untrue then something
false must be in part true. If something
is true and that same something is false then should it be considered true or
false? If we contextualize a thing and
say that this thing is true at this time but false at this time, then we must
include the time vector in the assertion.
If the total composition of the assertion is true, that assertion
remains true, regardless of its false cousin, because it is not the same thing,
but a derivative or modification of the first true thing. The first true thing remains true and the
false thing is an inversion of a truth.
We can then reduce the inversion – the fallacy, and have an equivalent
truth. If the reduction of a fallacious
thing results in a truth, it follows that the fallacy was derived from the
truth. This brings us full circle to the
assertion that truth is a fallacy, because there is no such thing as false only
true comprised of other truths that render the first truth false. If truth is a fallacy, and there is no such
thing as a fallacy, then truth may not exist either.
Truth
is a descriptor which is subjective in measure and objective by agreement. We apply this descriptor after the consumption
of a thing and the rendering of a thing.
We derive categorical attributes of the thing; assign ancillary
descriptors of the thing, and then further assign a value to the descriptor of
the categorized thing consumed which we agreed on to build an objective base,
which we first had to perceive subjectively to arrive at an initial descriptor (Hughes, 2010). Yes, this was a run on sentence, and yes, it
dilutes the point, and that is in itself the point. Once a thing is diluted it is no longer the
thing. From a chemical science point of
view, H2O is the descriptor for water (both well-established social contracts). If an additional part of hydrogen or water is
added to this construct, it can no longer be called water. This is exemplary of the homeostatic
contract. We agree that a thing is a
thing and once changed becomes another thing.
If this is agreed, then the truth is the truth until it is changed. It cannot be changed by taking something
away, or it will become different from the first truth. This makes the derivative false, but the
derivative remains true unto itself.
These
assertions may lead one say, I agree, there is no such thing as false, and
truth becomes truth unto itself, so how could there be no truth? One may further use counterpoint, leveraging
my statement of “no fallacy” to say that to render the truth false is not
possible, because applying further truths, to the truth would either change the
first truth or further modify the first truth to render it more true (if the
aggregation of truth is accepted as being an augmentation of the first truth
and not a separation from said truth).
These counterpoints would in fact render my argument ineffective if not
for one simple fact – a thing is only a thing if that thing could ever be
something else. The opposite of love is
not hate but indifference. What under
this construct would be the opposite of truth, ambiguity? If so, can we say that it is true that this
thing is ambiguous? How can a thing be
ambiguous and true at the same time, would they not cancel themselves out? The semiotics regarding a thing and the thing
are not the same thing. A rose by any
other name would still be just as sweet – and thorny. What we define as the truth in our western
culture is perhaps the closest thing to “The Way” found in the Tao Te Ching (as
I interpreted it, subjectively) (Tzu, 1995). Laoists believe in a natural order of things,
or natural form, Confucianism would push for “the Way”, which is his own system
and could be thought of as his way. Laoists unfortunately have interpreted “the
way” to be our way (Tao, 2010). My interpretation of the way, is that there
is no way, no tangible way -- but the thing is what it is unto itself as it
presents itself, to whom it presents itself, and is a collection of all of
these perceived and unperceived aspects.
The sum of all of this is the way of the thing, only that way is active
and not passive and by the time the way is perceived it is already not the way,
in that the thing is transient – and is continuously on its way to being the
way in another form. Further, time is in
itself both a human and relative construct.
Assigning an attribute to a thing is a subjective and oppressive measure
that modifies the thing. The
modification of the thing becomes the symbol of the thing we discuss, and not
the thing itself.
The
truth is the nothing which resides equidistant of every conceivable inquiry
into it. Our interpretation of the truth
then becomes an approximation of the sum of all results of our inquiries. The accuracy of our truth then becomes
subject to the qualified number of dimensions of our inquiry – the aspect of
the truth we inquire upon. Lastly, the
vector of currency of the reporting must be taken into consideration. All of this – and still only an approximation
of nothing – and if it something, it would be an incomplete artifact – can an
incomplete artifact then be true? Is
causation a matter of fact or a matter of inference? Is there order in the universe or a unified
ignorance of the disorder of our everyday habitat? What is the truth? The truth is a fallacy because it is wholly
subjective, and because there is no thing as false the truth cannot exist.
Let
us take a look into the relativistic and subjective nature of man. Our archaic measuring system is bound to the
relative as if there is no other form of measure. Perhaps we may become a grander species once
we have innovated or adopted such a form of measure, free of relativism. Many philosophers and scientists have
inferred that to explore the new in freedom, one must first delve into the
mouth of madness. Madness, in that they
must free themselves from the social contracts that bind every man. He must elevate, remediate, and eliminate every
governing notion of what is known – he must question everything. The philosophical question then becomes how a
person can elevate, remediate or eliminate these notions if the only tools at
the actor’s disposal are these notions. The eastern philosophy answer is to “remove a
wedge with a wedge”. In this light, we
may fashion the tools at our disposal –
the learned elements, to unlearn what has been accepted in the social contract
and explore a personal madness for the sake of returning to reality – the
social contract with the bounties of free thought. Perhaps we can go to the Tao Te Ching for a
third way – perhaps we can look at the truth cycle discussed in this paper –
perhaps we can question everything by questioning nothing. To be more specific, we can question every
social notion by questioning nothing of the natural order of anything (actively
excluding the social contract).
Earlier
I mentioned inversion of truth and fallacy – what happens when we begin to
invert notions? Weird things happen,
like the discovery of heliocentricity, God Forbid (or so said the Catholic
church). When we exert inversion against
the concepts that we hold dear, we open the opportunity to use the reality that
we have all accepted as our collective and everyday habitat as a springboard
into the realm of possibility. The
inquiry into plausibility will naturally follow; however, from rote, our
natural inclination and predisposition to pursue homeostasis will cause us to
digress and to quickly revoke the rights acquired by freedom of thought in
exchange for the security of the known.
How do we then take our experience out of the “cave”? We must force ourselves into the question of
plausibility of an inverted notion. I do
not suggest that we propel ourselves recklessly into this state, but rather
leave bread crumbs in our wake so that we may return to the collective contract
of our reality, more knowledgeable and open minded. We must follow and record the path from
our sanity to our personal madness so that we may find our way back to sanity
with the booty of madness in hand. Once
we have crossed the threshold of possibility, we must then challenge what is
plausible – redefine the notion of statistical evidence and suspend its hold on
us. There is an eastern philosophy that
says (and I paraphrase), just because you’ve dropped something and it has
fallen to the floor a hundred times, does not mean that we should take for
granted that on the hundred and first time it will occur in the same manner and
not fly into the sky. A tool that can be
employed here is inversion of statistical evidence. There are several ways to analyze the
evidence of statistics and to infer upon it the result of an action. One way – the traditional way, is that if the
sun has risen every morning for over one thousand years, it will continue to do
so. It is then a plausible and valid
inference to believe that the sun will rise on Tuesday, as it did on
Monday. This arrogance is tantamount to
the ignorance encapsulated in beliefs such as yelling at the sky during an
eclipse will scare the wolf god away, that he will not eat the sun because we
have frightened him and that the sun will appear again. How arrogant is it of us to assume that we
have such an intimate knowledge of the universe, that we can presuppose
anything upon it, let alone the “rising” of the sun. Does not our archaic and semiotic vernacular
indicate the immaturity of our notions?
Perhaps the sun has “risen” over 200,000,000,000,000 times since man’s
inception and the odds of the sun NOT rising is 200,000,000,000,000 to 1 then does it not follow that if Monday was
in deed that magical tick of the clock, that we are now overdue (statistically
speaking) for the sun NOT to rise?
Again, the barometer of our relativistic measurement subject man to the
aggregate social contracts he holds dear concerning truth.
Let
us investigate the madness of subjectivity and its correlation to truth. I see a color, I call it red, you see a
color, you call it red, we agree that the color we see is red, however, I will
never know that my red really looks blue to you or otherwise, we just know that
we agree that whenever we both see this color that we will call it red. What experience is not subjective? Do you know for a “fact” that you were ever
born? Perhaps the whole life that you
have you experienced is a scenario, a notion or idea played out in the mind of
God, as he decides whether to bring you into reality. Perhaps there is no God, and you are the
first of your kind and the whole lot of us, including the self you project is
your personal pondering on what the structure of reality should be. Perhaps still, your notion to survive is
driven by Freud’s definition of the id which is fully aware of God’s conjecture
and so it drives you to prove that you are useful and worthy of birth – that
you are good, or wise, or intelligent and worthy.
What
if you were born but only had three hours of life. You lay unconscious in the hospital, you are
not reading this writing, but have conjured it up. Likewise, you have conjured up all that you
have perceived to exist. In your
dwindling state, you have never seen the light of day, if in fact such a thing
exists, and your infantile mind has simply grabbed the bits and pieces of
whatever sensory functions are available to you and have constructed the notion
of the life of which you live? You are
trying to make sense of the anxiety of your impending death, and so attempt to
justify it and rectify it in any manner you can. If you were truly born, you would have
knowledge that you would never die. You
would see how silly your concept of war is – why would there ever be any such
thing? You would do something comparable
to laughing if you had the opportunity to consider the way that you have
imagined people to look, or the notion that there is such a thing as animal or
love or hate. Because time is relative
to the expected lifetime of the agent, it follows that the experience of 43
years would be divided by the three years of life of which you actually existed
in your semi-slumbering state. The
notion of subjectivity remains a social contract still in that when we all
thought the world was flat, the notion to follow, you fall off of the earth if
you travel to far out was an easy correlation to come by. In our contemporary and relatively enlightened
state, we take for granted all of the discrete corollaries that both
individuals and the social construct would effect as rote, without
question. When we were the center of the
universe, what did this mean to an individual?
What did it mean to society? What
if it were a fact that we think that we are born with eyes facing forward, as
opposed to eyes facing inward? What
would that mean? What if it is a “fact”
that what we have perceived as looking out into the world is us actually
peering into our very own body? What if
the notion of biology is in fact astronomy, a microscope allows us to peer into
the workings of the universe? What if
the galaxies that you perceive are really your very own synaptic pathways, that
the trees that you see are the nerve endings of your very own nervous system? What if I am not a man, but a cell or some
other entity in your system? If this
social contract were to be adopted, would war exist? Would we fight for power over one another, or
would a natural synergistic order go into play?
Would not our selfishness and notion to preserve oneself force us to
protect each other for the sake of our own preservation? Is it really so implausible? Once we discount the notion of why would that
be true, and replace it with how can that be true, the notion begins to
crystalize itself.
There
is no such thing as truth as it is subjective.
Truth is a fallacy and there is no such thing as fallacy, simply other
truths wrapped around a single truth until we render it false.
Bibliography
The Pathology of White Priviledge (2008). [Motion Picture].
Evans, G. (1982), The Varieties
of Reference. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hughes, F. (2010). Kant's Critique of Aesthetic
Judgment: A Reader's Guide. New York: Continuum International Publishing
Group.
Kant, I., & Gregor, M. J. (1998). Groundwork of the
Metaphysics of Morals. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Lagattuta, K. H., & Wellman, H. M. (2001). Thinking
about the Past: Early Knowledge about Links between Prior Experience,
Thinking, and Emotion. Child Development, 82-102.
merriam-webster.com.
(n.d.). Retrieved April 26, 2012, from Merriam Webster - Dictionary Online:
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/perception
Nietzsche, F. W., & Hollingdale, R. J. (2003). Beyond
Good and Evil. Penguin Classics.
Tao, L. (2010). RETURNING TO 'ZISI':THE CONFUCIAN THEORY OF
THE LINEAGE OF THE WAY. Journal of Chinese Philosophy, 85-100.
Tzu, L. (1995). The Tao Te Ching of Lao Tzu. New
York: St. Martin's Press.
Watson, A. (2006). Self-Deception and Survival: Mental COping
Strategies on the Western Front, 1914-1918. Journal of Contemporary
History, 247-268.
Posts
