Saturday, February 12, 2022

On Medium: Is The Truth Necessarily Good for Us?

Here's an article about nature’s monstrousness, existential revolt, John Vervaeke on platonic wisdom, and whether we should conform to nature or create an alternative world.

16 comments:

  1. Depends on what truth you are referring to and on the people who will to ''receive'' it.

    ''Is The Truth Necessarily Good for Us?''

    Ask this question to a person who suffers from schizophrenia and experiences on a constant basis of visceral doubts about what she's seeing or feeling.

    Philosophers love to construct generalist thoughts, but they tend to forget that context matters. The truth of the non-existence of God or eternity for an atheist and a religious individual is perceived in completely opposite ways.

    “that there isn’t an intrinsic value or goodness to discovering what’s real. And I think there is.”

    We are interacting with reality all the time and any false movement can result in problems. For example, if I miscalculate a step, it may hurt me. This is a way to show that the truth is extremely important, even in our simplest actions.

    Denying its worth is a way of lowering to the level of immaturity of many people, perhaps most human beings.

    ''Far from discovering that truth aligns with goodness, modern scientists and philosophers seem to have found that the truth is amoral, neutral, and therefore alien to the sensibilities of social creatures like us''

    Not because there is no truth without living beings, especially humans.

    Truth is not reality.

    Truth is a variably objective reflection of reality from a life perspective.

    Like an imperfect mirror.

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    1. Indeed, if truth is a way of understanding the facts, the question is whether the best way of understanding them at the cosmic level is likely to redeem us. The context here is existentialism. We're talking about the basic existential conditions of our position in the universe. Is knowing that truth generally a good thing? Is it necessarily good to know the deepest truths? Vervaeke says yes, and I say no.

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    2. The truth, a priori, does not have to be a good thing.

      If i understand your point.

      What do you mean when you say good?

      A believer asks this question, and when he realizes that the truth does not please him, he opts for fantasy.He says no

      I used a basic example of how the truth is important and therefore a good thing.

      The problem is that this example refers to something that helps us while knowing that everything we do will be in vain definitely doesn't help us, a priori.

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    3. I mean to ask whether the ultimate philosophical and scientific truth facilitates the social life of intelligent creatures (people). Vervaeke says it does because he takes a mind-first, Neoplatonic view of ontology. At least, he doesn't find that truth to be alienating.

      I'll likely write another article on the choices here, and on how different meanings of life follow from mind-first or mind-secondary ontologies.

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    4. I think a truth, primarily, has no secondary utility If not understandingself.

      This is a kind of truth where if we dont defend it believers will distort it. Humans can live without knowing the existence of very distant alienigenal life but not if life is eternal and absolutely unequal or the opposite.

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  2. I believe there is a hierarchy of truths. Some truths are very banal, others are complex and have the most important ones.
    I call them existential truths. But they can also be called absolute truths.They are more important because they are ubiquitous and essential.One of these truths is the equality, in essence, of all living beings.

    There is the perspective of appearances which is also of inequalities or hierarchical differences and the perspective of essence which is of equality.

    This truth tells us that it doesn't matter who we are, because in essence we are all the same.
    No matter your physical appearance, race or social status, we are all living beings and we are doomed to an end.
    This makes us conclude that we must help each other precisely because we are equal.
    I also understand that the expansion of knowledge or understanding of the world is directly associated with the expansion of moral accuracy, justice.

    An ultimate truth.

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    1. Right, so should we rush to understand and acknowledge those ultimate truths? Don't we, rather, flee from them in bad faith, preferring our parochial illusions and distractions?

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    2. I tend to differentiate distraction from delusion/illusion. It is possible to distract ourselves without deceiving us. But almost every illusion is a profound distraction from the reality.

      Isn't that what most people do?

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    3. They're different but they can both lead to bad faith or existential inauthenticity. Most of us don't obsess over ultimate truth. We prefer our stories, our myths and noble lies, and our pop cultural flatteries and brain-draining amusements. I'm just suggesting that one reason we submit to that temptation is that the ultimate truth is disheartening or even horrifying.

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    4. Ultimate truth as you named i believe there is a relative compensation for our finite nature, that we are the same, essentially. But i think just believers who can seeing or interpret a godless world as horrifying or disheartening. I think is beautiful imagine or accept that the humans, the brightest life form is exactly the same as the tiniest and simpler ones. And knowing we are just superficially unequal give me and for many people a deeper sense of solidarity.

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    5. There's a song I recently heard that very nicely captures this idea. I might write something on it, and the video really adds to it. It's Beach House's "Sunset":

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YckmBs53Lfg

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  3. ''And if truth is so popular, why is philosophy so unpopular?''

    Partly because philosophy deals with the most important or ultimate truths, the most difficult to accept.

    Another reason is that academic philosophy is often viewed pejoratively as meaningless verbal pomposity.

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    1. That's true on both counts, but the first one is more relevant.

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  4. ''Far from conforming to natural reality''

    What is or what could be the natural reality of the human being? Is it something that is no longer in process or has it already been determined?

    Going beyond instincts is not natural or characteristic of the human being?

    I understand that we must conform to facts... that are not just those of the natural world.

    Conservatives don't want to conform for the fact that we are all the same, in essence, which is why we must learn to live together in a more supportive way.

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    1. It's a question of fulfilling a predetermined purpose. A machine, for example, conforms to its programming, so the question is whether we're machines in that sense. The existentialist says we're condemned, rather, to be free of any such programming. We're the self-programmers, rather like how nature is making it up as she goes along like a zombie self-creator.

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    2. But human autonomy in relation to nature, even if it exists, proves to be very limited.

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