Greetings Reilly,
You are extremely talented in decontextualization. Bravo.
> [...] nothing is *provable* in science, only
> refutable. [More]
If science cannot prove something as true or false, then science cannot
attain truth.
Once again, truth is not attainable by science. Even if you yourself are
completely obsessed with attaining truth via science, you will not get
it. Science predicts things, its a modern form of divination. It
predicts and nothing else. It cannot do anything more than predict, and
due to phenomena such as entropy and the butterfly effect we can never
be certain that those predictions will always be 100% correct.
Your desire for truth is more of a religious fixation than any I have
displayed.
Science is fundamentally driven by need and desire. We need to be able
to predict such and such to survive. I desire to predict such and such
in order to survive forever. Science is a tool of need and desire. It is
an emotive tool, yet it denies the emotions. Science is not a tool for
attaining truth. And even if it were, the desire to attain truth, is a
desire in-and-of-itself. I am interested in predicting that which is
necessary in order to enable me to attain that which I need and desire.
I have no desire to attain truth. We cannot even prove that absolute
truth exists. It does not matter. It would not even matter if in some
freakish sense that I myself did not "truely" exist. As long as I
"believe" that I exist, that is all that matters. If this is all an
illusion, who cares? Real or illusion, the truth does not matter.
Today people say, "God is dead". Tomorrow people will realize that truth
died with him.
The concept of "truth" is not even compatible with Pancritical
Rationalism. Truth is truth, its either true or false. Truth cannot
sorta be truth ... thus the concept of truth is not open to criticism.
I think the concept of truth is kept around in order to sustain
epistemology. It perpetuates a priority for knowledge and cognition over
intuition and emotion [the latter including need and desire].
Without emotion science could not even exist. No one would feel the
emotion of need or the emotion of desire in order to create science.
Science can exist without truth though. It can exist in a subjective
world without absolute absolutes just as long as things remain nearly
the same long enough for us to treat them as objective and thus to
enable us to predict things. We can functionally entertain the idea of
absolute things without them truely being absolute. Suppose what we
think of as constants are merely shifting in degree at an infintessimal
level beyond our ability to measure. Its possible. But in the end it
does not matter.
I think Descartes proved once and for all with his evil genius theory
that we can never attain truth, because we can never prove it. But we
discard such circular theories in science because deep down we know its
not important. Then we must ask ourselves, "For what reason do we cling
to it?"
> Well, chalk up yet one more twentieth-century vote in favor of lies and
> propaganda.
Ah, lets talk about honesty. I imagine that you believe yourself to be
an upright honest individual. However, I have serious doubts that anyone
is truely honest. Why? Because we are not even aware of all our
underlying motivations. How much of what I say is determined by my
genetics, by my subconscious, and by the particular chemical content of
my CNS at any given moment? How can you be absolutely honest with others
when you cannot even by honest with yourself. You do not know yourself
well enough. You are not aware enough of whats going on subconsciously
to imagine that you are being truthful. To a degree we attempt to be
honest, but only to a degree. If we were truly interested in genuine
interaction with others without underlying subconscious motivations
affecting our thoughts and actions, then we would spend a great deal
more time attempting to make conscious what is now subconscious. This
requires a lot of attention given to the emotions.
Gregory Houston
vertigo@triberian.com
816.561.1524