Unmaking Sense

Episode 9.21: The difference between success as a pointer to truth and truth as defined by success.

A clarification of something potentially ambiguous about episode 9.20. Success does not disclose truth as a pointer to the eternal; success defines truth as temporarily the best we can do.

Episode 9.20: Truths as productive fictions; lies; intentions; foreseeability and responsibility.

If truths are productive fictions, are all truths really lies? The distinction between lies and fictions. Intention, foreseeability, responsibility and chains of events set in train by actions. Elizabeth Anscombe and Harry S. Truman.

Episode 9.19: Although our truths are chosen fictions, metaphysics promises us stronger foundations.

The attraction of metaphysics is that it promises to ground us in eternity, the laws of the universe, or a Supreme Being. But nothing exempts us for responsibly for the fictions we choose, nothing can, and nothing should.

Episode 9.18: Three core principles of truth as the most productive fiction available right now.

All truths are fictions, but not all fictions merit our allegiance as truths: the task of a culture, an education, a life is to discover which of the available fictions to endorse as truths; which to believe in; which to advocate; which to fight for; which to dissent from; which to oppose and fight against. All governed by our collective take on what it is to be human, and so what - which of the available fictions - it is best for us to believe.

Episode 9.17: Truth as the most productive of the available fictions; illustrations from science.

As an alternative to regarding truth as the best we can do right now, but not a a way that is a contradiction to it, we can also regard truth as the most productive of the available fictions. The more we think about the way we describe the world, even in science, the more we come to the conclusion that it is just one fiction after another. The question then being not whether something is or is not a fiction but whether and to what extent it is a useful fiction, where useful is to be construed in some way chosen by us.

Episode 9.16: The obsessional pursuit of something called “truth” destroys rather than frees us.

We reflect on Sophocles’ great “Oedipus Rex” and what it tells us about the obsessive, relentless pursuit of a truth that will destroy us.

Episode 9.15: Truth as an instrument of repression and control.

The truth is not “out there”: we make it; and if we fail to make it, others will make it for us, and control us in the process to their gain and our loss.

Episode 9.14: We should not defer to a truth outside ourselves unless we take responsibility for it.

Nothing exempts us from responsibility for the things we hold dear, the things we regard as the best for us to believe, the facts we attest. We are always responsible for whatever we do, believe, think or say. Nothing exempts us from that responsibility.

Episode 9.13: Truths and facts are made for us, not we for them. The difference is profound.

If truths are what it is best for us to believe, they serve us, not we them. Yes, that makes what it is to be human and so to dictate what we will deem true as paramount; but that has always been so, like it or not. Truth is there for us, not we for it.

Episode 9.12: Educational systems also prefer criteria that govern attribution of truth over truth.

We repeat the argument about civilisations preferring criteria of truth over truths as the handmaids of well-being and human thriving in the case of education.