Primal

But how is the idea of poetic man itself justified? It can only be by axiomic,infinite or circular reasoning. If there is another form of valid reasoning I'd like to hear it.

I'd really like to know if someone else came up with the above or if its something I invented though. Please tell so I can either find out a short-hand label for it for reference or invent one myself. Thanx.

[ September 18, 2002: Message edited by: Primal ]</p>

phaedrus

lets revisit hermeneutics

Truth and Meaning

Truth" no longer signifies the "correspondence" of "mental states" to "objective" reality, and "meaning" is no longer conceived of as some sort of objective, in-itself state of affairs which merely awaits being "discovered" and "represented" by a mirroring mind.

"Truth" and "meaning" refer instead to creative operations on the part of human understanding itself, which is always interpretive (never simply "representational"). Truth is inseparable from the interpretive process, and meaning is nothing other than what results from such a process, namely, the existential-practical transformation that occurs in the interpreting subject (in his or her world orientation) as a result of his or her active encounter with texts, other people, or "the world." Truth and meaning have nothing "objective" about them, in the modern, objectivistic sense of the term; they are integral aspects of the "event" of understanding itself, are inseparable from the "play" of understanding.

Knowldege

"Knowledge" is not the possession of a "transcendental signified," a translinguistic "essence". It is nothing other than the shared understanding that a community of inquirers comes to as a result of a free exchange of opinions. It is a process of "communication."

Edited to add : This rather long thread could also help, though it meandered off the topic a bit towards the end...

<a href="http://iidb.org/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic&f=21&t=000266&p=" target="_blank">Can truth be found in subjectivity? </a>

[ September 19, 2002: Message edited by: phaedrus ]</p>

John Galt, Jr.

Phaedrus,

Just a quick question to begin.

You said,
Does this mean that my belief that Paris is the Capital of France is a true belief not because Paris reallyis the Capital of France, butbecause of something else?

John Galt, Jr.

[ September 19, 2002: Message edited by: John Galt, Jr. ]</p>

Polemic

Primal,
Its not a matter of poetic "man". Man is the measure as long as it has the proper view ie. language. Logic has grafted itself onto the popular culture in order to make a mono-cromatic world. Its plainly false. You don't know a tree by objective observation. Reasoning is itself a tool of a large whole. Language is the third party arbitration by which you understand the world. In order to be right or wrong you have to look outside yourself for the standard. You are not born with such understandings(right/wrong)and so you are not the basis of knowledge. All forms of arguementation happen with in the bounds of language and since language changes, so does reason...and so all of the other stuff objective people love so much.

AtlanticCitySlave

The site that I suggested has course notes from several instructors (some of which are highly respected in espistemology. I would suggest looking through some of those course notes first, get a feel for the different positions, then look among the online papers. If you click on the online papers part it will bring up a large list of different philosophers. I find it very easy to just look down the list and most of the titles are very blunt about what they talk about.
It might do you some good to just buy a book on the topic. Nozick's book, Invariances, is out, which is kind of a hard read at times, but he discusses objective reality. You could also buy something by Popper, since there's usually some book by him in most book stores dealing with epistemology.
"How to Think About Weird Things" is a good starting book that deals with epistemology, although I'm biased because the author, Schick, is one of my favorite philosophers. I think you'll find that most philosophers you read argue for an objective type viewpoint, so you shouldn't have any trouble.

(Edit: Many, if not most, philosophers today do not think you need absolute certainty to know something, since it's so far impossible to be certain of most things. People who ask you how you can know something for sure are probably assuming this type of definition of what it is to know. )

[ September 19, 2002: Message edited by: AtlanticCitySlave ]</p>

Primal

Phaedrus: Again, how is this known? How was it proven or reasoned out? Was it just accepted as axiomic?

Again how do you know this to be the case? Aren't you taking it as axiomic that are arguments happen within the bonds of language? Otherwise how do you know, by mystical insight, by other standards? Or "just cause"?:in which case its taken as axiomic.

To the question I'd say I know a tree objectively via observations, and made sense of/established by certain concepts. I don't see how you can refute my claim.

Keith Russell

Greetings:

I haven't read all the posts here, yet, but I plan to make this thread my first stop tomorrow.

The first book on epistemology that I read was Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology by Ayn Rand. It could have been better written, although it is, after all, only an 'intro', as the title suggests. (Rand never wrote the definitive work, unfortunately.)

I later read Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, and some non-epistemological writing by Hume, Aristotle, and Nietzsche.

I've heard Wittgenstein mentioned a great deal, and also Karl Popper, and have read essays by both gentlemen.

Clearly, I need to do some book-shopping. Tomorrow's payday...

Keith.

Keith Russell

Polemic:

You would probably describe me as being one of those 'without poetry in my heart'. (I think you're engaging in ad hominem, though.)

Language exists to allow us to label our percepts, and later our concepts. But, we have to have percepts before we can use language. Language helps us organize our thoughts, but I don't believe that it creates those thoughts.

I also disageree that language must necessarily alter one's concepts, though I admit that some people do seem to have this problem.

Keith.

Keith Russell

Phaedrus said:
"Truth" no longer signifies the "correspondence" of "mental states" to "objective" reality, and "meaning" is no longer conceived of as some sort of objective, in-itself state of affairs which merely awaits being "discovered" and "represented" by a mirroring mind."

This is news to me, and the fact that you say it is so, certainly in no way makes it so. Do you believe that by saying it, we will somehow realize that it is true, or that it will somehow come to be?

Subjectivity is self-defeating, anyway. If nothing can be known, you can't even know that.

Keith.

Starboy

Keith, is there a difference between knowledge and truth? If there were then would any of these possibilities conflict with one another?

What if you took truth out of the equation and all you had was knowledge, what then? Would this just be a classification of knowledge? I would think that it is possible to hold all three points of view simultaneously. I would also think that in a place where there was no truth the objective point of view would be the most useful. If we were practical creatures wouldn’t that be the knowledge we would seek?

Isn’t that what science is, the pursuit of practical knowledge using a method that should result with something that works if you didn’t know the truth?

Starboy