Sci Fi Writer John C Wright on self-evidence, honesty and reason

_{kairosfocus

November 22, 2019

Atheism, Defending our Civilization, Epistemology, Logic and Reason, rhetoric}

Share: Facebook; Twitter; LinkedIn; Flipboard; Print; Email

From time to time it is useful for sane men in an insane world to remind themselves of basic truths.
The first truth is that truth is true. A statement that there is no truth, if true, is false.

We know this truth is basic because without it, no question can be answered, not even the question of whether or not truth is true.
Truth is a subtle and complex topic, but what we mean by the word can be said in a short sentence using words of one syllable: Truth is when one says ‘it is’, and it is as one says.
The second conclusion springs immediately from the first. We know that truth is true because to say truth is untrue is illogical. A statement that truth is true is a self-evident statement, hence a true one. A statement that truth is untrue is a self-contradiction, hence false.
The second truth is that logic is valid. Nothing follows from a statement that logic is invalid.
By saying this, we are not attempting to convince any being who does not use reason to adopt the use of reason. The only point of the comment is to point out that whatever is undeniable is true.
Even to answer the question of whether or not reasoning is valid, we must use reason.
One is free to put aside reason, from time to time, I suppose: but when one does, nothing necessarily follows.
A third truth is that one ought to be honest. Honesty is a virtue one ought to practice. Anyone who says otherwise is dishonest.
Even to answer the question of whether or not honesty is a virtue one ought to practice, one ought to be honest. A dishonest answer to this question is not only untruthful and illogical, it is also vice.
In other cases, there may be an honest difference of judgment among rational men as to whether the particular dishonesty is expedient, justified, or mitigated, but not in this case.
This is the general cases that includes all others: if there is no rule against dishonesty at all, then there is no rule against dishonesty in the particular case.

It is time to call the gaslighting of our civilisation in order to undermine basic first truths and first duties of reason out for what it is. And, Mr Wright also has some choice words for that stunt:

Reminders of the obvious are useful and necessary in world where all our major public institutions are engaged in a reckless policy of gaslighting the public, that is, of saying obviously false, absurdly illogical, and morally repugnant things with an assumed air of nonchalance, as if you, dear reader, were the madman for not conforming to the appearance of a consensus.

The resemblance of such to things that too often have popped up here at UD but also pop up all around us like mushrooms after rain, is NOT coincidental. A civilisation that arrogantly turned its back on the heritage of Christendom, despising God, is reducing itself to utter irrationality.

What a surprise — NOT! END

Comments

vmahuna @ 5 There are other things that point to an interesting history that is mostly unknown in North America. In 1860, David Wyrick was excavating an burial mound in Newark, OH. If you've ever heard of one of these things is not like the other, there were actually three in this case. He found a Keystone, a stone bowl, and a Decalogue Stone. All three are of Jewish origin and no one knows how it got into a burial mound. http://www.jhmuseum.org/index.php/onview/permanent-galleries/205-newark-holy-stones In 1881, British archeologist Flinders Petrie was at a site near the great pyramids in Giza. He found a 4000 year old chunk of construction debris called core sample 7. It's believed to be a plug of red granite drilled to form a door pivot. Drilled is the right word, not chiseled. The markings show they were able to drill through granite with a force that is 500 times greater than what we can do today. Ancient Egypt had the most powerful navy of its day and could have used currents to explore North America thousands of years before Columbus. http://www.theglobaleducationproject.org/egypt/articles/cdunn-3.php https://notestoponder.wordpress.com/tag/core-no-7-ancient-egypt/BobRyan_{November 22, 2019
November
11
Nov
22
22
2019
11:37 PM
11
11
37
PM
PDT}

PPS, another writer long since observed:
Rom 1:28 And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God or consider Him worth knowing [as their Creator], God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do things which are improper and repulsive, 29 until they were filled (permeated, saturated) with every kind of unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice and mean-spiritedness. They are gossips [spreading rumors], 30 slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors [of new forms] of evil, disobedient and disrespectful to parents, 31 without understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful [without pity]. [AMP]
kairosfocus_{November 22, 2019
November
11
Nov
22
22
2019
11:34 PM
11
11
34
PM
PDT}

EG, you first overlook the import of the three key SET's on the table here, one ontological, one logical, one moral. JCW (who is heavily influenced by Epictetus) has aptly pointed out that truth [that which says of what is, that it is etc . . . ] is undeniably real. Likewise, to deny the force of logic is instantly self-defeating and the duty of honesty is real, i.e. we are undeniably morally governed as a first truth. Where, a first point of honesty is the duty to truth and like onto it is the duty to justice, thus also duty to sound conscience, which undeniably provides a compass-sense regarding duty. Now, in haste to cast doubts on first principles and first duties of reason, on track record, your gambit is to suggest empty question-begging assertions on our part; in an attempt to impose the priority of selective hyperskepticism. In effect, prove to your satisfaction to arbitrary standard that first inescapable principles and duties of reason are so. But of course, you have long since been notified that the relevant duties are antecedent to and inescapably involved in any attempted proof. Indeed, your own attempted rebuttal implies appeal to first principles and duties of reason. Without distinct identity you cannot say or write anything, much less refer to any particular concrete or abstract entity; where distinct identity brings with it the triple cluster LOI, LEM, LNC. Similarly, without the first duties, there is no force in objection, and we are as free to ignore or slander as we would be to kill you to silence inconvenient objections. Moral government is an a priori of being a rational, responsible, significantly free creature. And without such freedom, reason collapses. That brings us back to the underlying nature of SET's. True. Seen as true and necessarily so for one in a position to understand what is being claimed. Further, necessary on pain of immediate, patent absurdity on the attempted denial. (Other necessary truths can be shown so on examination of steps of consequence that reduce the denial to absurdity indeed, but that is not patent, e.g. demonstrating that the sides and diagonal of a square are incommensurate. To do such demonstrations, self-evident first principles and duties will be involved at every step.) So, no, the mere assertion that someone can propose a self evident truth of undefined character in error does not suffice to overturn the relevant specific SET's on the table. Indeed, such brings the Josiah Royce truth to the fore, that error exists. Undeniably, not just as a matter of commonly recognised fact. The attempted denial, ~E, means that it is an error to assert E. The very possibility of error that motivates skeptical dismissals, turns on a SET and on the duty to truth and prudence requiring responsible warrant. Where, warrant for claims of knowledge can be explained:
warrant is the process and result of so fulfilling cognitive duties of care that the said result is credibly true and reliable, worthy of being acted on -- even, in those cases . . . the vast majority, in practice . . . that we cannot deliver utterly incorrigible certainty. Warrant, is not to be equated with mere persuasion, it is asking if the reason for a belief or opinion is sound or at least reliable (not, that we merely have a personal or collective right to it or that we may agree to accept it) . . . In effect, subjects S1 to Sn may agree to or hold a proposition p, but that is so far only opinion or belief that may be shared. They may also -- a further step -- be within epistemic rights to hold that p, but under certain circumstances . . . explored by Gettier and others . . . that personal justification and actual truth might be "accidentally" or otherwise "unreliably" connected due to circumstances faced by S1 to Sn that fail to justify independent of personalities and their particular situation. (For simple example, our visual, auditory and other senses can lose proper functionality or be in situations that create illusions, etc.) For p to be warranted (and notice the shift from subjects to the propositions), the connexion between epistemic rights and credible truth and reliability must not be accidental or personality/group-dependent. Warrant, in short, must be objective.
Here, we see how so-called intersubjective consensus [or reducing n to 1, intrasubjective view] fails to warrant knowledge and truth, or for that matter to redefine such successfully. That is relativism, authoritarianism of the guild of relevant ideologues or "scholars" forming a new magisterium, or subjectivism and emotivism all fail. Similarly, Wiki has described (against known general ideological tendency) regarding objectivity:
Objectivity is a philosophical concept of being true independently from individual subjectivity caused by perception, emotions, or imagination. A proposition is considered to have objective truth when its truth conditions are met without bias caused by a sentient subject.
That is, we may profitably discuss degrees of truth:
[i] subjective truth as perceived to be so by some individual or group (which is not at all to be dismissively equated with delusion or imagination or whim), with [ii] absolute truth which is true, the whole material truth and nothing but that truth (say, as known to God [who knows perfectly and completely]), and again with [iii] objective truth, i.e. what we [who are finite and fallible but rational . . . ] may have good warrant and even a duty to hold as credibly and reliably true independent of our particular subjectivity (given the adequacy of the warrants) but which is open in principle to sound correction.
Yes, we are fallible but that does not render self evident first principles and first duties of reason suspect or dismissible at hyperskeptical whim. It is time for the cultural marxist and ultra-modernist [ aka post modern] gaslighting to cease. KF PS: Gaslighting? Yes, JCW is apt: Reminders of the obvious are useful and necessary in world where all our major public institutions are engaged in a reckless policy of gaslighting the public, that is, of saying obviously false, absurdly illogical, and morally repugnant things with an assumed air of nonchalance, as if you, dear reader, were the madman for not conforming to the appearance of a consensus . . . . [a sign of the insanity of our age is that] to be gullible about impossible things and skeptical about self-evident things is [deemed] the height of intellectual achievement. Wisdom is [perceived to be] folly. KFkairosfocus_{November 22, 2019
November
11
Nov
22
22
2019
11:27 PM
11
11
27
PM
PDT}

Ed George:
If the premises that form the foundation of your “truth” are wrong then your “truth” may not be true.
Agreed. But there has to be a solid case made that the premises are wrong.ET_{November 22, 2019
November
11
Nov
22
22
2019
08:05 PM
8
08
05
PM
PDT}

The first truth is that truth is true. A statement that there is no truth, if true, is false.
Agreed. But the existence of self-evident truth doesn’t mean that everything you declare to be a self-evident truth, is one. I’m pretty sure we have been over this before. If the premises that form the foundation of your “truth” are wrong then your “truth” may not be true.Ed George_{November 22, 2019
November
11
Nov
22
22
2019
05:47 PM
5
05
47
PM
PDT}

Vmahuna @ 5, Do you have the name of the document(s) written on the birch bark, and the name of the Canadian museum currently housing them? Thank you. (I googled some, and didn't come up with anything.)EDTA_{November 22, 2019
November
11
Nov
22
22
2019
05:39 PM
5
05
39
PM
PDT}

VM, connections to the key and pivotal themes in the OP? KF PS: BTW, no competent history views the Kaiser as solely responsible for the needless catastrophe of 1914, though he and the German elites have more than their fair share.kairosfocus_{November 22, 2019
November
11
Nov
22
22
2019
03:48 PM
3
03
48
PM
PDT}

Peace and joy. I read a LOT of History. And the problem with History is which bits are "true". (Um, Europeans repeatedly came to North and South America before they were "discovered" by Columbus...) Certain things are rejected by the History Establishment, and so any non-compliant truth is declared to be false, by definition... The other major problem with History is what is now called "spin". Germany's Kaiser Bill was an evil, perhaps insane, man who is personally responsible for everything bad that happened during WWI... If any part of that is NOT True, then a huge body of mainstream History collapses. And mere mortals start asking questions they're not supposed to ask. But back to the False claims that Europeans repeatedly came to the Americas before Columbus. When French missionaries came to what is now called Canada, they found a tribe who had a written language. Not knowing how to make paper, they wrote on birch bark. And so the missionaries and some of the locals translated portions of the New Testament into the local language and wrote the translation out on birch, which was carefully preserved and is currently held by a Canadian museum. One of the more surprising things that the missionaries found was that a number of technical words, including "Redeemer", had corresponding words in the local language. This was all generally forgotten as the locals transitioned to French and English. Now skip ahead 300 years... Some amateur looking at the birch bark Bible noted that the alphabet used in the "Canadian" Bible was clearly Egyptian hieroglyphics. A quick check confirmed that this was true (It is True that the alphabet and the written words are Egyptian.). But this created another problem: from early in the Christian period until translation of the Rosetta Stone in the mid-19th Century NO ONE ON EARTH could read or write hieroglyphics... So, Mediterranean folk (or Space Aliens) MUST have come to Canada while the specific variant of hieroglyphs used by the Canadians was still in use. But that CANNOT be True because it contradicts a HUGE body of Established History. So the Bible still sits gently in the museum and NO ONE ever, ever, ever speaks in public about what is True, but must be False.vmahuna_{November 22, 2019
November
11
Nov
22
22
2019
03:30 PM
3
03
30
PM
PDT}

F/N: Picking up on logic, money shot clip no. 3:
The second truth is that logic is valid. Nothing follows from a statement that logic is invalid. By saying this, we are not attempting to convince any being who does not use reason to adopt the use of reason. The only point of the comment is to point out that whatever is undeniable is true. Even to answer the question of whether or not reasoning is valid, we must use reason. One is free to put aside reason, from time to time, I suppose: but when one does, nothing necessarily follows.
This indicts our civilisation in our time. KF PS: Noticed this one:
to be gullible about impossible things and skeptical about self-evident things is [deemed] the height of intellectual achievement. Wisdom is [perceived to be] folly.
kairosfocus_{November 22, 2019
November
11
Nov
22
22
2019
02:44 PM
2
02
44
PM
PDT}

F/N: Skipping over the logic point for the moment, notice, too, how first duties of reason appear:
A third truth is that one ought to be honest. Honesty is a virtue one ought to practice. Anyone who says otherwise is dishonest. Even to answer the question of whether or not honesty is a virtue one ought to practice, one ought to be honest. A dishonest answer to this question is not only untruthful and illogical, it is also vice.
Moral, self-evident truth and expression of first duties to truth, justice, sound conscience, etc. KFkairosfocus_{November 22, 2019
November
11
Nov
22
22
2019
02:41 PM
2
02
41
PM
PDT}

F/N: Notice, yet another undeniable, inescapable, self-evident, incorrigibly certainly known truth:
From time to time it is useful for sane men in an insane world to remind themselves of basic truths. The first truth is that truth is true. A statement that there is no truth, if true, is false
The legion of ideologies and worldviews pivoting on reducing truth to opinion, fail yet again. KFkairosfocus_{November 22, 2019
November
11
Nov
22
22
2019
02:37 PM
2
02
37
PM
PDT}

Sci Fi Writer John C Wright on self-evidence, honesty and reasonkairosfocus_{November 22, 2019
November
11
Nov
22
22
2019
10:51 AM
10
10
51
AM
PDT}

Prev 1 2

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Leave a Reply