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Old 07-08-2003, 02:10 PM   #131
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Yes introspection ‘feels’ private and I personally trust that feeling to some extent. Although of course Wittgenstein’s response that a private language has no meaning and therefore pure introspection is impossible carries weight. Even introspection is culturally specific.

There is no escape from culture while we are alive and able to communicate……. even with ourselves. But that does not mean we are entirely our culture, any more than we are entirely physical, spiritual, or whatever. Its no real problem as long as one does not look to an extremist authority to enable one to relate to the world.
 
Old 07-08-2003, 02:39 PM   #132
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Although of course Wittgenstein’s response that a private language has no meaning and therefore pure introspection is impossible carries weight.
I think the private language issue is a non-issue. If there is no meaning there is no language because the parts of language refer to something other than themselves. Irrespective of how one defines introspective mind/brain activity, that activity has purpose and meaning analyzing the information provided to it.

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Old 07-08-2003, 03:03 PM   #133
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Of course if you believe that a private language has meaning then introspection using it can reach truths beyond your cultural reference. Personally I don’t think a private language has any major relevance to me or anyone I have ever met, except in chance misinterpretations.of the one we inherit. But of course it isn’t just language. Learning French in addition to English won’t necessarily change your world view that much, because both reside in capitalist democracy and historical representations aren’t that different. Having said that the French significantly embraced postmodernism before the USA did, which is ironic.

Private thoughts using our culturally inherited language is good enough for me. Our culture is hardly static.

"Irrespective of how one defines introspective mind/brain activity, that activity has purpose and meaning analyzing the information provided to it."

Well I have to disagree there. Past understandings of being human didn’t even have the concept of brain let alone analysis. The only way that statement could be true is if you believe the truth about mind brain is not culturally specific. As I said I think truth necessarily is.
 
Old 07-08-2003, 03:18 PM   #134
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yes "or accepted as true" does not meet that standard. I agree. So by the act of including that definition, that particular dictionary not only recognises a valid definition of truth as being culturally relativistic, but in doing so is in danger of undermining any absolutist definitions that it places alongside.

Dictionaries are often seen as very important authorities. So much so that the authors themselves are deliberately omitted from each written definition in order to emphasise an absolutist cultural element.
Yes, thats why I always use Webster's New Collegiate, so many of the online dictionaries are abridged to the point of being useless.

If we are not going to accept "private language", then we must accept some authority when it comes to defining language. I believe Webster's New Collegiate could be considered as just such an authority. If that is so then I would say that by definition truth does not meet the standard of being absolute.
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Old 07-08-2003, 03:41 PM   #135
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I judge hitler, the aztecs, neanderthals etc from the perspective of 21st century capitalist uk democracy. How on earth does this translate into thinking about hitlers "only mistake" as you put it??
Since you have owned that human sacrifice as practiced by the Aztecs was moral within the context of Aztec society, it hardly seems a quantum leap to confer culturally contextual morality upon the Holocaust. It may not have been moral in the eyes of the rest of western civilization, but who made them the benchmark for morality?

The western world had given up on human sacrifice by the time it encountered the Aztecs. Did their making contact with them somehow confer immorality on the practice? If so, it appears the practice was perfectly moral until independent observers saw it as immoral. You OK with that?

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That plays a formative part of my truth values and i do not recognise how this translates to agreeing with Hitler in any way.
You're missing the point. I'm saying that the very same logic by which you assert that human sacrifice was moral to the Aztecs leads to the conclusion that the gassing of Jews was moral to the Nazis.

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Of course if i had been born in 1910 say, in germany, then i may have been a supporter of Hitler, just like you may have. We cannot tell because we do not know what it was like then.
But at some point, any German with half a brain would have figured out (as obviously many did who got out while the getting was good) that Hitler was a power-mad tyrant even if they didn't know about the camps. The question is, was it moral for such a German to conform to the cultural context which Nazi Germany had become? If it was, then those who did not conform were immoral. Right?
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Old 07-08-2003, 03:45 PM   #136
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Originally posted by leyline
"Irrespective of how one defines introspective mind/brain activity, that activity has purpose and meaning analyzing the information provided to it."

Well I have to disagree there. Past understandings of being human didn’t even have the concept of brain let alone analysis. The only way that statement could be true is if you believe the truth about mind brain is not culturally specific. As I said I think truth necessarily is.
But what if I suggested that the introspective mind/brain activity was concerned with (retained) information that can be classified as cultural, scientific etc?

In turn, this would present scenarios where a) mind/brain activity is culturally specific because even though our brain structures are similar their informational content comes from nurture and b) brain structure is plastic - evidence studies of musician's brains etc. - depending on stimuli, so there may be a Bell Curve typs case for enhanced cultural functionality etc.

Imaging - a specific set of neurons for Morris dancing!!

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Old 07-08-2003, 03:49 PM   #137
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You're missing the point. I'm saying that the very same logic by which you assert that human sacrifice was moral to the Aztecs leads to the conclusion that the gassing of Jews was moral to the Nazis.
Morals, logic?
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Old 07-08-2003, 04:06 PM   #138
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"You're missing the point. I'm saying that the very same logic by which you assert that human sacrifice was moral to the Aztecs leads to the conclusion that the gassing of Jews was moral to the Nazis."

yes of course......... and neither is moral within the capitalist democrat cultural context.

But i repeat that i think many nazi's were liars. Some were duped. You cannot judge either absolutely, but only within the relativity of your own cultural context. Thus a fleeing nazi who convinces you that they were duped presents a difficulty within some cultural contexts. Grey areas abound. There are no absolutes.

"But at some point, any German with half a brain would have figured out (as obviously many did who got out while the getting was good) that Hitler was a power-mad tyrant even if they didn't know about the camps. "

well that's easier said than lived. Political authority isn't something that we can all ignore with the same intellectual equinamity, because not everyone chooses or is capable of making rationality their ultimate authority. Hitler twisted Christianity into anti-semitism for a start. National identity too. He was also a prolific performer with great presense. Presumably you wouldn't dismiss politics, religion, patriotism and talent all as half brained culture?
 
Old 07-08-2003, 04:26 PM   #139
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"Imaging - a specific set of neurons for Morris dancing!!"

Lol

Well yeh if you want to and maybe its useful too! But such a perspective on the truth feels to me to be very close to the scientific one, where truth is seen as not culturally specific, but superior to it. Eg the law of conservation of energy is seen by many as a truth independent of whether a living creature is aware of it. Similarly for the new laws of conservation of information.

That whole philosophical standpoint is simply placing scientific measurement as the only true authority for deciding truth. In doing so it tries to use the trick that truth is independent of culture on the basis that its predictions of the physical universe, such as eclipses, would happen to any culture that existed at the time. It is merging ‘the truth’ with existence. (or reality)

But although an eclipse can be seen as reality, how it is seen as a truth remains culturally specific. Scientifically, religiously, commercially or otherwise.
 
Old 07-08-2003, 04:32 PM   #140
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Quote:
Originally posted by leyline
"You're missing the point. I'm saying that the very same logic by which you assert that human sacrifice was moral to the Aztecs leads to the conclusion that the gassing of Jews was moral to the Nazis."

yes of course......... and neither is moral within the capitalist democrat cultural context.
How is this relevant?

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But i repeat that i think many nazi's were liars. Some were duped. You cannot judge either absolutely, but only within the relativity of your own cultural context.
This brings us back to one of the questions you dodged from my previous post: if it was moral for Germans to behave according to the cultural context provided by Naziism, wouldn't that make it immoral for anyone to behave counter to that context by hiding Jews in their basements or the like?

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Thus a fleeing nazi who convinces you that they were duped presents a difficulty within some cultural contexts. Grey areas abound. There are no absolutes.
And you are absolutely sure of that, I suppose.

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"But at some point, any German with half a brain would have figured out (as obviously many did who got out while the getting was good) that Hitler was a power-mad tyrant even if they didn't know about the camps. "

well that's easier said than lived.
Gosh, you mean taking the high road is harder than going with the flow? Whodathunkit.

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Political authority isn't something that we can all ignore with the same intellectual equinamity, because not everyone chooses or is capable of making rationality their ultimate authority.
And why would that be?

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Hitler twisted Christianity into anti-semitism for a start. National identity too. He was also a prolific performer with great presense.
He was only one guy. Like all dictators, his power came ultimately from popular sufferance, from a people dying to be led.
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