From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Fri Mar 07 2003 - 16:44:17 GMT
Hi Johnny:
> I don't have a problem with the notion of Truth as being a fully meaningful
> word, that supplies the useful meaning to the "true" that we use in
> sentences. I don't see how we can use "true" in sentences without there
> being a notion of Truth in an ultimate sense.
Me neither. This is one my doubts about the postmodernist's
foundational stance against the existence of ultimate Truth.
> And I think I've got one, an Objective Ultimate Truth that no one could
> cast doubt on:
>
> I think it is ultimately true that we will never know everything, both in a
> general sense and about any specific thing.
I'll buy that. I wonder if Matt, Matt and Rick agree?
> I think it can be logically
> shown that there will always be more to know, because we can always invent
> new questions about anything, even ridiculous ones, and we can also keep
> asking the same old questions over and over again to see if the answer is
> still the same.
Ultimately true. :-)
> So that's an ultimate truth, and from that ultimate truth, we have a
> foundational meaning on which we can build card houses of relatively
> uncertain truth. We can be certain that we will never be certain of
> anything but that. I claim that as the one and only Ultimate Truth.
Well, I'd call the statement "We can be certain that we will never be
certain about anything but that" another Ultimate Truth.
> Unless perhaps, death is a form of certainty.
An "absolute" certainty wouldn't you agree, even if redundant?
> If we were all dead, there
> would be no more questions, so the cycle of not knowing would end. And it
> is possible that consciouness is caused by uncertainty itself, it is the
> asking of the questions that continue uncertainty and so continue to give
> real meaning to ultimate truth.
Could be a chicken-egg problem--consciousness caused by doubt or
doubt caused by consciousness. In either case, I believe your right in
pointing to the relationship.
> Uncertainty of course is related to my favorite word Expectation, otherwise
> Expectation would be Will. Will * Uncertainty = Expectation. And the
> moral quotient of expectation (what is expected of us) is to answer the
> questions in order to reduce Uncertainty so as to bring Expectation as
> equal to Will as we can, while at the same time asking new questions so as
> to continue conscious life and supplying ultimate truth with its meaning.
I need further enlightenment because I see Will as a dynamic force and
both Expectation and Uncertainty as static states of consciousness.
How a dynamic force times a static state = a static state isn't clear. It's
clear that doubt--a state of uncertainty--stirs Will to action. We cannot
survive in a constant state of doubt. It's also clear that static patterns
formed by past solutions to doubt create expectations. But I'm not clear
how expectations can create an uncertain future.
Platt
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