[FRIAM] Truth: “Hunh! What is it good for? Absolutely Nothing!”

[Prof David West]

truth is — the persistence of a particular wiring path in an immensely
complicated, and otherwise dynamic, web of connections among billions of
sensors capturing input and hundreds of thousands of effectors
generating output from one state of the sensors-web-effectors to
another.    truth is a 'failure', a 'defect';  a means for avoiding
constant re-establishment of the entirety of the web in response to
constantly changing inputs / values of inputs.

Truth isn't.

To anthropomorphize the definition: truth is behavior that persists
because the individual fails to re-evaluate the totality of
inputs/outputs/connections that, in some previous state of that
individual, first established the particular behavior. Like cancer,
these persistences can be relatively benign, sometimes fatal, but they
are always a defect.

Nothing about language or thought, but a hint of the truth-preserving
machine in which people squirm that Glen described.

It is certainly possible for one sensor-web-effector state machine to
"infect" another, i.e. stimulate a second machine to replicate the
behavior. If that happens we have 'convergence' which is nothing more
than collective 'fault'/ 'defectiveness'.

As to dualism/ naive-realism - I give no more truck to Descartes than
Nick. Perhaps, ala Vedism, once in the near infinite past there was
'mind-stuff' and 'matter-stuff' and perhaps once again in the near
infinite future that dualism will be re-established. But in the meantime
issues of dualism tend not to edification.

dave


On Tue, Oct 17, 2017, at 12:54 PM, gⅼеɳ ☣ wrote:
> Excellent!  So, now, if we listen to Dave with some empathy, we can ask
> him if his "local truth" is similar to the naive realist's "with respect
> to what you or I think"?  Dave?
> 
> FWIW, I predict Dave will respond with something like the assertion that
> locality (scope) is set by the language.  And so, it's less about what
> one *thinks* and more about the platform/context/truth-preserving-machine
> in which the people find themselves squirming around.  If such
> truth-scope is defined in that way, then we're a lot closer to Peirce's
> concept of reality being whatever consequences our language *deduces* to
> ... whatever sentences are evaluated as true in that language.  And, here
> Dave and Peirce agree.  Change the language, and you change what
> evaluates to true in that language.
> 
> 
> On 10/17/2017 11:41 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> > Taking up your challenge as penance:  A Naïve realist would, I suppose, say that there is a real world out there that we have clues to.  Sometimes we get it right; sometimes we get it wrong.  It's a dualist position because there are two kinds of stuff in the world, the world stuff out there and the mind stuff in here.  Truth can apply to both kinds of stuff.  I E, there is a truth-of-the-matter with respect to what you think or what I think, as well as a truth of the matter with respect to whether what we think is true of the world. 
> 
> -- 
> ☣ gⅼеɳ
> 
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