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We Need Philosophers.
Aug. 26th, 2019 10:27 pmWe need philosophers.
Because sometimes when being right carries great amounts of importance, and people start claiming that they've got the truth, or that others are awful liars, it's good to know what truth is. Not what *the* truth is: what truth itself is.
And language is such a finicky and fiddly commodity, as it changes over the years, that we need to take that set of symbols and meanings - the ones we use to construct thoughts and ideas about our lives - and work out what truth is all over again. Maybe we can do it with a nice new translation of Plato. Maybe Heidegger and Kant and even *shudder* Derrida will be more helpful.
But philosophy is best engaged with one's own thought process. So let's do some thinking about what truth is.
When we look out into the world with our senses, we are bringing in to our brains the products of the phenomenon of observation. It's a phenomenon of observation, but it's also the observation of phenomena. Let's call that our phenomenological world. It's the world our senses bring to us. Can you think of anything else that is real to you? Even your thoughts are a phenomenology created by your brain activity, responding to your other senses and sensations.
Now, because we have this wonderful invention called "language," we can construct sets of symbols to say stuff about the world we inhabit. We can say it to other living beings of whom we've become phenomenologically aware: our Mom, first, then our Dad, other people over time since our birth. We have strong evidence from our senses that these people exist: The sensations that come from them persist.
And there is so much else about which to construct thoughts to share with these other beings! And we want to describe those thoughts about that sharing accurately.
Accuracy is the key to what we call "truth": When we represent the world accurately in language, we are making statements that are true to the world: They align with its features. Similarities and differences are ways we can talk about that truth. If I deduce something will happen, based on observation, the similarity or difference of what actually happens with what I predicted tells me whether my deduction was accurate. The extent to which they are similar is the extent of truth of my understanding of how the world - the part of the world I'm observing - works.
Fidelity of our words and perceptions and ideas to what is actually out there, to the extent that it comes back *in* *here* to our brains through our senses, is how we arrive at what we call truth. Fidelity/Truth: We talk about this in other contexts: Your faithfulness to your partner is how true you are to them, or that at least is the language we use.
So when people say we're in a post-truth society, and when other people throw around on news and social media so much commentary and speculation and noise and manipulation ... keep in mind that there is that which matches up quite nicely with - that is, it is TRUE to - the world which we can observe. And there is that which differs from it. And there is a whole industry, or set of industries, making themselves rich by calling something true, getting us to buy into it, and then cashing in on the difference between what they've sold us, and what is really true.
We need to get back to basics, be better and smarter at figuring out truth, and shame those who would profit from selling us something else.
Unless of course they're clever writers of fiction for fiction's sake. Those guys are GOLDEN.
