leyline

"I never said anyone was lying, I said what they believed was a lie."

well if nobody was lying then nobody believed the lie.!


"Sacrificing children is moral because everyone in sight thinks it is?"

yes of course........... though by 'in sight' i would mean 'in culture'. If we were to be onlookers through time or space, but from a different culture, then we would judge it by that because it is a part of our cultural identity. This is because where a culture places its authority has a profound effect upon truth within it.

For Christians a major authority is the bible. For scientists it is measurement. Both are capable of throwing up extremist absolutisms by relying totally on those authorities. The bible basher and the determinist.

Generally though, cultures are far more diverse and the two types of extremist above usually form a sect within a generally more tolerant society. Poverty however, has a profound effect and seems to make the populace much more open to extremism, as in the case of nazi germany.

Western philosophy is beginning to move away from the extremism of analytical philosophy as wedded to science and its measurements. We are beginning to realise that not everything can be meaningfully measured by an ammeter, and that some of those things are very meaningful indeed.

Capitalism for example is seriously undermining the old philosophical paradigms of rational authority. Firstly it seriously challenges the authority of measurement with the authority of commercial value. There is not only great commercial value in the emotional manipulative fictions, but even more value in passing them off as fact. Secondly capitalism raises the authority of the ‘stimulator’ or performer, over the person who has studied the cultures ‘truth’, ie. the scholar or priest. It doesn’t matter how profound or ‘true’ the things you say, unless you can perform them well or get them performed well, they are simply not widely listened to. Ie Truth must have commercial authority in capitalism through emotional stimulation.

To those who value an extreme authority like physical measurement or a sacred text, then capitalism is a nightmare. It is a cultural catastrophe in their terms not through rejection, but by commercialisation. The X Files is a threat to both science and religion by packaging elements of both into a popular ‘entertainment’. The religious zealot and the bespeckled scientist each know deep down that their philosophies do not recognise a fundamental force in the universe called ‘fun’. How do you compete with that?

yguy

The point being...?

So if we all voted to sacrifice you, you would feel no sense of injustice. Right?

leyline

"So if we all voted to sacrifice you, you would feel no sense of injustice. Right?"

!!!! of course i would. Injustice is culturally specific as i have said all along. I am a UK 21st century capitalist citizen not a neanderthal. !! It isn't just mass that has inertia.

what bizarre logical reasoning could have possibly led you to ask such a question? It sounds more like an emotional response to me, which is not an insult as far as i am concerned. I think emotions reveal crucial truths, and if your sense of injustice is fuelling your words then good on ya!

Tristan Scott

I agree, but you should not rely on only the simple definitions of a word like truth, you should look at all of the complexities of such a word. like:

2a(3)often cap: a transcendent fundemental or spiritual reality

2b: a judgement, proposition, or idea that is true or accepted as true (emphasis mine).

In order for truth to be absolute, there can be no definition or sub-definition that varies from that strict standard of absolutism that you and others on this thread have placed on it. "or accepted as true", in my opinion does not meet that standard.

Also, since you appear to promote the use of the dictionary and for education, I thought you would want to know that in the 3rd paragraph of your above post you mispelled disfunctional 8 times.

leyline

"In order for truth to be absolute, there can be no definition or sub-definition that varies from that strict standard of absolutism that you and others on this thread have placed on it. "or accepted as true", in my opinion does not meet that standard."

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.

yguy

Were the Aztecs Neanderthals?

Ah. Evidently, then, Hitler's only mistake was failing to let cultural inertia catch up with his ground-breaking ideas.

Right?

YOU think MY reasoning is bizarre? LOL!

leyline

"YOU think MY reasoning is bizarre? "

yes i do very much so.

"Ah. Evidently, then, Hitler's only mistake was failing to let cultural inertia catch up with his ground-breaking ideas. "

i am at a complete loss as to how you deduce that this follows from a philosophy that recognises cultural relativism. 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?? From our cultural perspective he was a catastrophe to democracy.

As i have already stated i think it quite likely that the nazi's were liars and the power of cultural propaganda can dupe people. Moreover i have also stated that i think poverty can lead to cultural extremism and played a very important part in Hitler's rise to a power that democratically ditched the vast majority of our own values. Nazism was not a capitalist democracy, it abandoned it, so why would i sympathise with it simply because i recognise culture and truth as relativistic???? I am a capitalist democrat. That plays a formative part of my truth values and i do not recognise how this translates to agreeing with Hitler in any way.

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 that doesn't mean that we should identify with the culture of nazism or any other than our own! Patriotism is an emotional and powerful fact of life. In the case of nazism it was powerful enough to make people see Jews and others as non human. By contrast the judaic culture is far from being seen as a threat to modern capitalism.

What in Gods name are you on about?

John Page

Cartels? Exclusionism?

leyline

lol john page. I know what you mean. But then again although cartels and exclusionism are definitely a manifestation that exists within capitalist democracy, (and i would say that they are necessarily so) that does not mean that the capitalist culture cannot simultaneously condemn them. Especially as i have already said that Capitalist democracy replaces scientific measurement and reasoning with commercial value as the ultimate authority. This is why we really complain about cartels. They use the power to jack up the price. If they didn’t we the consumers would turn a blind eye.

After all the behaviour of the catholic pope dynasties could be seen similarly. Abberations of catholic power that are necessarily wrong within a catholic perspective.

This only emphasises the point that truth is not existence, but a cultural contextual relationship to existence, including itself. Truth exists as a cultural context and depends upon agreement. Agreement is fundamental to authority and authority can profoundly colour the truth. These recursive relationships as well as circumstance make cultural history dynamic and changing. It is intrinsically unstable.

Of course if you believe in progress then it is evolution. If not then you are in at least part agreement with postmodernism.

The matrix for example. Descartes Demon made commercial. Which is to say that instead of promising a rational argument that leads to the proof of gods existence from self evident observations........ it simply promises a sequel more exciting than the original. And if it fails, nobody really minds. At least they tried to entertain us and make money. Similarly for Descartes. At least he tried to do his best for his particular cultural identity.

John Page

For "public" truths I agree, but how do we reach truth from introspection? How do we "agree" or "disagree" with ourselves?

Cheers, John