DO YOU know how to be WRONG?? Should you TRY?

by Terry 54 Replies latest jw friends

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  Terry

  My limp

  Don't they make little blue pills for this??
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  Terry

  Good post, I agree with everything but the last point.

  But....why?

  Aristotle’slaw of noncontradiction states that “One cannot say of something that it is and that it is not in the same respect and at the same time.”
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  eclipse

  There are contradictions in nature (documentary I watched)...

  my brain is failing me right now, so when I can recall an example, I will let you know.
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  Paralipomenon

  I will agree that given absolute knowledge, there can be no contradictions, but nobody has absolute knowledge.
  
  That means that as we as a race make advancements, we are discarding old knowledge in favor of new information. The new understanding would be contradicting the current reality and should not be immediately dismissed.
  
  In my mind, because something is contradictory doesn't immediately invalidate it's worth.
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  eclipse

  My limp

  Don't they make little blue pills for this??

  LMAO!
• 

  Narkissos

  Actually, I couldn't think of anything that is true which was self-contradictory. Self-reference being the true context of self-contradiction. (Goedel, Escher, Bach)

  Terry: You said "no contradiction in the real world". In a sense, you're right, inasmuch as there is no such thing as meaning, hence no room for "contradiction," in the real world apart from the human (as far as we know) construction of language and symbols (numbers included). For a contradiction to occur something needs to be said (dictum), hence meant. The cost of non-contradiction is a potentially infinite regression of definitions (in "1 + 1 = 2," for instance, define "+," define "=," define "1," define "2," define the decimal system, define numbers, define meaning...), which ultimately leads "self-reference" to tautology (as Gödel, for instance, was certainly aware). At every step the relationship between the logical construction and (extra-linguistic) reality remains problematic. There is a considerable epistemological "leap of faith" in assuming that "2" "things" are "identical" enough to be "added". Actually it requires the idealistic creation of that which middle-age philosophy called "universals" (never succeeding to agree whether they were "real," as in "realism," or "only names," as in "nominalism"). To speak of "2 horses" you must create the idea of "horse" beyond phenomenal animals, disregarding any difference between real "horses". But how real is THE ideal "horse"?
• 

  educ8self

  DO YOU know how to be WRONG??

  The wise man knows only that he knows nothing.

  Knowing you are wrong is different from knowing you know nothing. Right and wrong is only a position, knowing nothing is open ended.

  The mind is only an outline - that is a good one, but the more structure you have the more information becomes filtered rather than being absorbed in its natural form. When it comes to knowing nothing, it can be a much more direct.
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  Terry

  The new understanding would be contradicting the current reality and should not be immediately dismissed.
  
  In my mind, because something is contradictory doesn't immediately invalidate it's worth.

  Contradictions, for me, are the mother of all red flags.

  I've never heard the phrase "current reality". I'd probably say "current thinking about reality" or "current theory about reality." But, that's me.
• 

  Terry

  Terry: You said "no contradiction in the real world". In a sense, you're right, inasmuch as there is no such thing as meaning, hence no room for "contradiction," in the real world apart from the human (as far as we know) construction of language and symbols (numbers included). For a contradiction to occur something needs to be said (dictum), hence meant. The cost of non-contradiction is a potentially infinite regression of definitions (in "1 + 1 = 2," for instance, define "+," define "=," define "1," define "2," define the decimal system, define numbers, define meaning...), which ultimately leads "self-reference" to tautology (as Gödel, for instance, was certainly aware). At every step the relationship between the logical construction and (extra-linguistic) reality remains problematic. There is a considerable epistemological "leap of faith" in assuming that "2" "things" are "identical" enough to be "added". Actually it requires the idealistic creation of that which middle-age philosophy called "universals" (never succeeding to agree whether they were "real," as in "realism," or "only names," as in "nominalism"). To speak of "2 horses" you must create the idea of "horse" beyond phenomenal animals, disregarding any difference between real "horses". But how real is THE ideal "horse"?

  Yes, it pretty much all comes down to language constructs. We think with language. We define with language. We perceive in terms of language.

  So, with language as a given, and that being the only way ostensibly to apprehend reality; no evident demonstration of contradiction can be tolerated for our recursive systems.

  Incidentally, mathematically you are describing a set. That is what makes math work. Defining a set in terms which will not (by convention) be violated. Thus, contradiction is the test by which a set stands or falls in praxis.
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  Terry

  Knowing you are wrong is different from knowing you know nothing. Right and wrong is only a position, knowing nothing is open ended.

  The mind is only an outline - that is a good one, but the more structure you have the more information becomes filtered rather than being absorbed in its natural form. When it comes to knowing nothing, it can be a much more direct.

  Knowing you know nothing is, of course, a reference to Socrate's famous saying, "I only know that I know nothing."

  I think he was being modest!

  One can't actually know nothing unless one can have first known something and then, by contrast, know nothing.

  Consciousness means consciousness of something.