Re: Can Postmodernism Survive?

This contains the gist of the other post, so I'll respond to both here.

on 5/20/00 10:11 AM, Matthew King at making@xxxxxxxx wrote:

> On Sat, 20 May 2000 JBCM2@xxxxxxx wrote:
>
>> as diogenes might have said, "plato, there is truth, and then there is
>> truth."
>
> Aye, there's the rub. First we have to know what kind of truth we're
> talking about. One odd thing about debates of this sort is that the people
> who say there is no truth are usually assuming a correspondence theory of
> truth which, if asked, they would say is a bad theory of truth. But if
> it's a bad theory of truth, then truth must *be* something else, so they
> must not actually believe that there is no truth!
>

It seems much simpler than this. There are "truths" and there are "Truths"
-- the difference being that there are things we can observe as occurring
(death, gravity, etc) and ways we can interpret them. The point is not that
nothing is observable, but that our interpretations are constructed based on
our existing knowledge/understanding, which is always arbitrary.

We can all observe that if I throw my wallet in the air it will fall to the
ground -- that is not the point. The question of Truth is a question of
_why_ it falls to the ground. We call it gravity, but what does that mean?
What is to say that the scientific principle of gravity is any more accurate
than a large demon in the center of the Earth that sucks everything back
toward her?

It sounds ridiculous, but can you prove that it isn't the case?

Beyond this, even if you can prove such a thing, can you prove that the
scientific description of gravity is _accurate_ rather than merely the most
acceptable interpretation of what we observe that we have yet found?

>> for (the most obvious) example, there is death.
>
> And, as they say, 2+2=4, even for very large values of 2.
>

Certainly. But we can also "prove" that 0=1. Regardless - 2+2=4 is only true
in our world of math. Maybe it is an accurate description, but what does it
mean to say that it is "True"?

---

Asher Haig ahaig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Greenhill Debate Dartmouth 2004



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