Unmaking Sense

Episode 9.31: The true meaning of a text doesn’t lie in the intention of its author but our reading.

We explore how the truth does not lie in the past and cannot reside permanently in the present. Neither should we expect to find it in some final form in the future. Implications for writing, reading and interpretation.

Episode 9.30: An experiment in learning to live with a compound, complex, pluralist view of truth.

We modify the mountain summit metaphor because it encourages us to think that it is possible to find a single place that incorporates all the very best positions it is possible to adopt. It isn’t: to embrace the rich diversity of the world and life we have to be ready to be large, a multitude, and to relate to others, the world, truth and ourselves out of that rich plurality and diversity.

Episode 9.29: Truth as a combination of different aspects that may include contradictions.

Changing our Q from quantum theory, we argue for a view of truth in which it is a combination of different aspects different views of the world which may include those that are incompatible or even contradictory. When we make up our minds as societies so often demands that we do, we are forced to select one from a multitude of possibilities, when it might well be in our better interests to remain in a mixed state Where we hold many different and even contradictory views at once. Society doesn’t like this, because it means that we are much harder to place, and therefore our allegiances and our tribal loyalties are much harder to ascertain; but society is always richer when it is more diverse, and the view of truth advocated here leads naturally to such diversity.

Episode 9.28: Why do we take up unequivocal positions as society often demands? Truth and plurality.

Society loves us to make up our minds on things, and to stand unequivocally in favour of or against some of the options that are available. We talked about this in episode 26. But should we comply? What does single-minded dedication to one thing do that multiple-minded, equivocal, nuanced dedication to the same thing fails to do? What is it about our devotion to a writer, a composer, a cause, a sport, a team, or a tribe that has such power to command our loyalty? And should we allow it to do so?

Episode 9.27: Under what circumstances might we abandon a comfortable life to seek a better one?

We consider again the metaphor of the mountain summit, and leaving it to try to climb one even higher. Why might we do so? When is it right to do so? How do we assess our situation in order to make such a decision?

Episode 9.26: Truth, integrity and consistency; their connections or not.

Integrity, wholeness, consistency and truth: their relationship or lack of it.

Episode 9.25: Truth and Integrity; Integrity as a quest for wholeness that necessitates change.

What is integrity? Does it require consistency, coherence, changelessness; or can it involve, even require change; that we leave the mountain-top to pursue other, higher ambitions even if they will contradict what we have done, said and been before?

Episode 9.24: Progress is not a royal road, leading ever-upwards: to rise we must often first fall.

The mountain metaphor extended to other life-situations: that no matter how high we rise, the journey to the next achievement may - and usually does - require us first to climb down from the dizzy heights of our own fame and fortune, and begin again.

Episode 9.23: If truth evolves, how can we decide whether today’s truths are worth relinquishing?

The great dilemma of the conflict between today’s comfortable truths, often learned at great cost, and tomorrow’s, which may or may not be better but cannot be assessed unless and until we relinquish today’s.

Episode 9.22: That success defines truth explains why, as useful fiction, truth is not arbitrary.

Experiment as an arbiter of success and so as a definition of the best we can do right now that counters the notion that, as a useful fiction, truth becomes arbitrary, merely a matter of preference.