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Re: [ontolog-forum] {Disarmed} Reality and Truth

To: "[ontolog-forum]" <ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
From: Ingvar Johansson <ingvar.johansson@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 18 May 2007 16:33:03 +0200
Message-id: <464DB91F.9000604@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Deborah MacPherson schrieb:
> Hi Ingvar,
>
> If it was possible to have any type of statement that was without any 
> qualifications completely true I believe this would require numbers 
> and mathematics, and may not be possible using words.     (01)

I do see, believe me, the point you and Pat want to make. I just wanted 
to (as other philosophers has done before me) fasten attention to the 
fact that you become involved in self-referential problems. With your 
statement "Reality is messy and long" you seem to want to say something 
that really is "without any qualifications completely true ".    (02)

best,
Ingvar    (03)

> The "tidy end of the spectrum" as Pat said, with an acceptable degree 
> of ambiguity to facilitate interpretation, convey ideas, and look at 
> similar relationships in different ways.
>
> Parts of reality that are not in need of editing is a super tough 
> question. I can only imagine short instances like playing with a puppy 
> that is bound to grow up soon, holding hands watching a sunset kind of 
> thing - temporary. Sustainable, reusable reality made into truth over 
> long periods of time requires examination and editing... the editing 
> process makes ideas stick, unedited messy reality slips away sooner or 
> later, is too large to consider, eventually forgotten and replaced 
> with whatever is new on the radar.
>
> Debbie
>
>
> On 5/18/07, *Ingvar Johansson* 
> <ingvar.johansson@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
> <mailto:ingvar.johansson@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> > wrote:
>
>     Deborah MacPherson schrieb:
>     > Yes Pat - Nailed it. Thank you.
>     >
>     > Debbie
>
>     He didn't nail it completely. What about your statement "Reality is
>     messy and long"? Can it (to quote Pat below) "only describe a
>     limited part of the actual world of reality"? If you say 'yes', then
>     there may be parts of reality that are not in need of "editing" in
>     your
>     sense. And if you say 'no', then you have an example of a
>     statement that
>     is without any qualifications straightforwardly true.
>
>     best,
>     Ingvar
>
>     >
>     >
>     >
>     > On 5/17/07, *Pat Hayes* <phayes@xxxxxxx <mailto:phayes@xxxxxxx>
>     <mailto:phayes@xxxxxxx <mailto:phayes@xxxxxxx>>> wrote:
>     >
>     >
>     >
>     >     If I may intervene here (before someone starts up
>     >     a fan) I think that everyone here in fact agrees,
>     >     but they are using the terminology in exactly
>     >     opposite senses. Let me try to state what I think
>     >     is the agreement in neutral terms.
>     >
>     >     There is a world out there. It is quite amazingly
>     >     big and complicated, however you look at it. If
>     >     you think of it as physical then every cubic cm
>     >     of it in the immediate vicinity has about 10|14
>     >     atoms in it all buzzing around in a quantum
>     >     dance, not to mention all the photons. If you
>     >     think of it as social then it has hundreds of
>     >     millions of people engaged in all sorts of
>     >     activities every few seconds, all from different
>     >     cultures and zeitgeists and so on. If
>     >     biologically, just the lichens are enough to make
>     >     you feel dizzy. However you think of it, its WAY
>     >     too big to describe fully or to even think about
>     >     without getting a headache. And anyway, in order
>     >     to think about it, we have to use some way to
>     >     describe it to ourselves. We have to think about
>     >     it using some set of ideas or concepts or
>     >     thoughts or words, or whatever these things are
>     >     that we have in our heads and use to think with.
>     >     And these - call them our ideas - are both
>     >     limited and limiting.
>     >
>     >     *They can only describe a
>     >     limited part of the actual world of reality*:
>     >
>     >     there is just too much of it to think about it
>     >     all. Moreover, we can't think about reality
>     >     "raw", as it actually IS, without using some set
>     >     of ideas. So what we think about it - reality,
>     >     that is - is always in some sense colored, and no
>     >     doubt distorted, by the ideas that we have to
>     >     think about it with. Indeed, if there are some
>     >     aspects of reality about which we have no ideas -
>     >     and there almost certainly are, for all of us -
>     >     then we can't think about that part or aspect of
>     >     reality at all. And we may not all have the same
>     >     set of ideas, so our thoughts may be
>     >     incommensurate with one another.
>     >
>     >     (Now, one position is that since we can only
>     >     think with ideas, and cannot ever get hold of raw
>     >     reality uncolored by some mental framework, that
>     >     even to postulate the existence of a reality is
>     >     wrong or maybe unnecessary or un-Ockhamist. All
>     >     there are are the thoughts that we all have.
>     >     We've had that particular argument on this list
>     >     already: I mention it only to show how it fits
>     >     into this picture, or at any rate into the
>     >     picture frame.)
>     >
>     >     I think that what Debbie means by the above is
>     >     only this: that reality is large and messy, but
>     >     that 'truth' is always the truth of some
>     >     idea/thought/ontology/assertion, so is always at
>     >     the tidy conceptualized, thinking end of the
>     >     spectrum. And Bill and Don are puzzled, because
>     >     they are living at the tidy end and think of
>     >     truth as a relationship to reality, so the word
>     >     used alone seems to them to be more concerned
>     >     with the reality than the concept or thought. But
>     >     the only sensible way to talk about truth,
>     >     surely, is that it is a relationship BETWEEN
>     >     concepts/thoughts/ideas/assertions and reality.
>     >     If you chop off either end of this relation, the
>     >     notion of truth isn't really meaningful any more.
>     >     If there is no reality, then truth has nothing to
>     >     be true with respect to. And if we aren't talking
>     >     about some conceptualization, then all there is
>     >     is the actual world, and of course that is
>     >     'true': but that statement is vacuous.
>     >
>     >     Pat
>     >     --
>     >    
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>     > --
>     >
>     > *************************************************
>     > Deborah L. MacPherson
>     > Specifier, WDG Architecture PLLC
>     > Projects Director, Accuracy&Aesthetics
>     >
>     > **************************************************
>     >
>     ------------------------------------------------------------------------
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>     --
>     Ingvar Johansson
>     IFOMIS, Saarland University
>          home site: http://ifomis.org/
>          personal home site:
>          http://hem.passagen.se/ijohansson/index.html
>
>
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> -- 
>
> *************************************************
> Deborah L. MacPherson
> Specifier, WDG Architecture PLLC
> Projects Director, Accuracy&Aesthetics
>
> **************************************************
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>  
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>       (04)


-- 
Ingvar Johansson
IFOMIS, Saarland University
     home site: http://ifomis.org/
     personal home site:
     http://hem.passagen.se/ijohansson/index.html      (05)



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