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Re: truth is a sweaty toothed madman blanket cold feet

i wanna play w/ the nice madman...

In a message dated 9/29/99 4:24:39 AM Eastern Daylight Time, 
hoopyfrood at juno_com writes:

<< Well.  Tough one.  First I gotta hold out for a flexibility in the term
 "truth."  There is societal truth, like, "That man is mad" versus "That
 man is demon-possessed" or "The world is flat" versus "The world is
 round."  These are totally relative.  Totally.  >>

jumping in early here.  the claims concerning the world's shape are not 
societal, they are physical which can be deemed as actually being the case or 
not being the case (unless you're chincing out and talking about the societal 
definitions of the terms "round" and "flat" or a buddhist koan "what is 
round/what is flat/IHOP calls).  because they are concerned with physical 
truth or untruth, they are not relative (of course, the caring about the 
status of the world's shape is societal, probably some type of misogynistic 
endeavor to oust women from power in social discourses, right?)
 
 <<but about the fact that I exist.>>

cogito ergo sum?  cogito ergo not working at a fast food chain?

 
 <<If solid Truth is out the window, then that's it for good and evil, too.>>

a) that must be a pretty big window, hopefully it was safety glass
b) the idea of truth being irreducible to the grasp of humyn's intelligence 
is not equivalent to good and evil being the same, or even existing.  
  
<< Because if there is no ground to stand on, as far as truth, and I
 recognize that, then there is no point in my declaring one thing
 positive, or another negative. >>

is this "t"ruth or "T"ruth?  either way, good and evil are just 
manifestations of the social process at a given time, and are simply moral 
judgments based on what is at hand.  my opinion is that the only things one 
should label negative and positive are lead wires and magnets.

<< It's all just existence, multiplying itself hysterically into infinity.>>

rabid rabbits?
 
  
 <>  

you were doing so well, and then POW!  not only do i exist, but i have a 
soul.  jumpin' jehosaphats! leaping frogs of calaveras county!  you haven't 
convinced me of this at all.

<<It's a moral sense, I think.  I think it's there.  I
 can't mathematically prove it in two paragraphs yet, though.>> 

without some type of proof i can't refute it, but lack of positive evidence 
is a far more serious situation than lack of negative evidence...

   <>

for someone who has disregarded truth, all of a sudden you know a whole lot 
(you can't know a false thing--Dr. D. Bradford).  How do you know this sense 
of justice and beauty is not just the warped product of some Timothy Leary 
foray into altering the mind of a test-tube fetus?  i don't buy justice and i 
don't buy beauty (at least for the sake of argument=-). 
 
  <<But you cannot argue for a society that has no ideal of truth or beauty.  
You
 cannot argue for a society that does not pursue truth and beauty.  You
 would be hard pressed to say that this pursuit is not cued up by the same
 human impulse and reducible to the same moral sense.  Everywhere,
 regardless of societal discourses.>>

now we've gone from the "i" to the "us".  is there a collective soul?  (i 
know chris emery [whom i don't know] believes there is--he was listening to 
it a while back=-)
 
 <<You may go the evolutionary impulse route.  We pursue what is best for
 the herd.  But no we don't.  Left to our own devices, we pursue what is
 best for ourselves.  And when we do it, we make endless excuses about how
 it was right to do that, to pursue what we wanted, because we know we
 were wrong to pursue our own ends.  No other animal makes excuses.  And
 then there's that moment where you defy the self-preservation instinct. 
 You go out on the ice to save your drowning friend, risking your own
 death.>>

a) we see herd preservation constantly in the course of human actions...even 
if it comes from an "evil" basis...hitler wanted to exterminate the jews 
because he thought they were a blight on humanity, nothing better than 
rodents weakening the gene pool.  the united states got involved in the 
asiatic squabbles because we (collective) didn't want the godless commies to 
have a larger gang than we did (when you're a jet you're a jet all the way...)
b)you have just contradicted yourself, saying first that we look out for 
number one, and then saying that we don't, we'll go out on the ice for a 
friend (or in my case, a neighbor)...which is it?

  <<One for the many.>>  

greatest good for the greatest number, or its fortune cookie corollary, my 
lucky numbers are 1, 34, 17, 0.
  
<<It's logical, but I will not send my brother out to die; I will not see 
that is right; I
 cannot.>>

yes you can, and all of us can; cf. WWII, when good ol' us of a didn't get 
involved until we got our asses kicked in Pearl Harbor.  It wasn't until we 
got invaded that g.i. joe and the doughboys got moving.  herd instinct baby.

<<Logic is ammoral.>>  so am i, until you show me i have morals.

 
<<If there is a such thing as morality, the floodgates are opened.>>

the levee's about to break and there's nowhere to hide. 
 
 <<God rushes in.  Here's your syllogism, mathematicians:
 Major premise: All effects must have a sufficient cause.
 Minor premise: Human beings have a moral sense--of good and evil.
 Therefore: Human beings must have been caused by an agent with moral
 sense.>>

Major premise:  see hume, who says there is no such thing as cause and 
effect, but simply a random conglomeration of events we confine to our handy 
concept called "time" and thereby prestigitate a connection which is not 
actually there.
("prestigitate" comes to you courtesy of bugs bunny's nemesis, the diabolical 
magician, Ala Bama)
Minor Premise:  unproven

 <<If God exists,>>

mighty big IF, pard.   


<<He will either communicate with his creation or not.  I think he did, but 
that's another world of argument.  But consider this: truth, little t, is 
realtive because so much of our human way of knowing is based on the 
discourses of our society.  If there were a God, this would not leave him 
powerless.  He could speak into the
 discourse, as well as, and in fact most definitely better than, any human 
being.  In the beginning *God spoke*.  John identifies Jesus as *the Word**.  
Truth comes from discourse; discourse begins with God.>>

all of a sudden we're quoting from the bible, as if it were simply understood 
that the way to understand an undefined god (undefined from above argument) 
is through an unsubstantiated claim to divine discourse.  who is to say god 
is non-discursive, the unmoved mover?  who can claim to know?



<<(assuming you're with me on the God thing)>>

oops, didn't read far enough...shamefaced, eating humble pie...etc...
 
 <<Where am I?>>
i don't know, but i hope you're taking it easy.
 
 
 
<< Binkley?
 Yes, Opus.
 I think it's time to sleep.>>

nice.
 
 
tim