HELP!!!! Need to debate new stream of Philosophy

Comments, questions, arguments for/against welcomed!

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Two travellers approach a town. On the outskirts is a sign denoting the name of the town - Gynomypisteology. The travelers are in disagreement as to the correct pronounciation of the name. So heated is the debate that the travelers agree to stop at the first place and ask one of the locals what the correct pronounciation is.

They arrive at a food outlet and then argue for another 1/2 hour about the best approach to use so as to elicit an answer untainted by their differential interpretations. The nominated traveler approaches the service counter and asks the service person "Have you lived here all your life?" to which the girl answered yes and pointed to the Church across the street in which she was baptised and which her ancestors built.

It seems the travelers had found their quarry and the nominated traveler continued - "So what do YOU call this place?" Since the girl had never been out of the town and her only experience with the outside world was via passing travelers, she gave the nominated traveler an empathic look and smile and then begins to phonetically sound out the name, "B-u-r-g-e-r K-i-n-g".

This illustrates the underpinnnigs of "Gynomypisteology" taken from the greek and translated into "view + faith".

I'm postulating that this sits shoulder to shoulder with Epistemology, Logic and Metaphysics - ie a fourth stream of Philosophy.

The proprosition is that belief in something has been taken to mean "truth" and we think that without belief, truth would exist, but it does not.

Belief is ego (or homo)-centric and thus so are all current truths. Knowledge (Epistemology) is based on belief; Logic is based on belief and any conceptions of reality (Metaphysics) are based on belief.

Within Gynomypisteology the concept of reality is ego (or homo)-centric, "truth" is held to be different eg:

Self-consciousness >> Self-awareness >> Consciousness >> Unconciousness

In the above - between Self-consciousness and awareness lies "belief", "reality" lies under Consciousness and "truth" lies under Unconsciousness.

Self-consciousness is aligned with ego (homo-)centrity.

So, in basic applicaiton that, all things being equal, "bird" can be said not to be self-aware nor self-conscious and man can, bird is closer to truth than man and man is closer to belief.

Belief is almost solely driven by pervasive power structures (including but not limited to socio-cultural forces) and not necessarily by majority rule (regardless of the definition or scope of "majority") as is assumed.

Partially underpinning this is directive psycho-social learning, cognitive processes, perceptual processes and finally, several and collective perceptual capacity.

Perceptual capacity and/or the degree of specialisation has been taken to indicate consciousness - which is not an automatic by-product of existence, it is a by-product of perceptual capacity measured against lessening degrees of specialisation. That man has LESS specialised several and collective percepetual capacity, contributes to man being imbued with "self"-consciousness.

Truth, if it indeed exists, is unconstructed by the mind's eye, man and mind.

Collective human beliefs contribute to truth, but can never reflect it in its entirety. By analogy, truth, if it exists, is like a hologram glass - if broken each minute shard contains a replica of the entire image. Collective beliefs are synonymous with taking a photo and asking each of 100 human beings to reconstruct the photo - if broken apart the final constructed photo would resemble a piece of abstract art. Even 1 human being could not reconstruct the photo accurately.

Thus, one human being can not know anything outside their own belief and may never understand that they have one to the exclusion of others. To the extent that one is self-conscious one can only ever contribute to the truth because one can not step outside ones' self.

Each individual is a collection of beliefs. Whilst they are self-conscious they can never step outside themselves and are therefore wholly ego (or homo)-centric and everything is always relative to them.

Perceptual capacities, being the fundamental building blocks of belief (and differentiator of man from that which is not man), alongside perceptual "opportunities" necessarily dictates some vairability in belief.

Beliefs can show the truth being driven by pervasive power structures.

Interpretation of belief is subject to bias and is therefore less true.

Human truth would therefore seem to lie at the unconscious level.

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Gnomypisyeology can be applied to Religion, Science, Language etc.

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The proprosition is that belief in something has been taken to mean "truth" and we think that without belief, truth would exist, but it does not.

How is this different from postmodernism, or coherentism?

Certainly truth is relative to the system you're using. If you use a different construction of the world you'll end up with different truths. Since the objective viewpoint is independent of any kind of perception, obviously there can't be any objective truths. What we really mean when we call something objective truth is that it's deemed fully consistent with the rest our system of descriptions and we find it useful enough that we don't expect to ever attempt revision.

 

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If the two travellers were Australians, they would have agreed to just call it that place with the silly name. Or called it Bob.

 

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Adam....


Nailed it

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I like it.

Good Ideas. One of my favorite quotes has always been "Have you been taught to think or have you been taught to believe" have to ask a former teacher where its from though, might of been his. Anyway, "Belief is almost solely driven by pervasive power structures (including but not limited to socio-cultural forces) and not necessarily by majority rule (regardless of the definition or scope of "majority") as is assumed. ": These "power structures" have known this all along, its an ongoing circle between the manafacturers of belief and the believers. That's why religion is truthfully just another tool of control. One that has been used to it's full advantage over the ages by governmental bodies.


Once again, good Ideas.

 

welcome Busy Lizzy,

I would like to know more, and i think you would help me by answering Hoth's post.

Merlijn

 

Good pick up Hoth

I'm suggesting there is truth, but that it is beyond our means to comprehend. We have very shallow perceptual apparatus (ie 5 senses) compared to other beings and probably an over-engineered perceptual processing mechanism (to compensate).

For example, elephants can audibly communicate between 20 to 100kms away from one another without "technological" intervention. If I yelled as loud as I could I doubt my neighbours would hear me let alone you. In fact here am I tapping away at a keyboard. To this extent we have created "Technologies" that merely compensate for lacking percpetual apparatus.

Having created this "structure" (AKA a "system" in your parlance) we then attemtp to distinguish objective and subjective reality. The problem is that, even at a semantic level, these two terms imply the existence of something "central" which we use as a yard stick for differentiating objective and subjective - to this extent it is still relative to us and what we believe, rather than what is.

In the elephant example, we assume elephants to be of a lower order in the evolutionary tree and have "objective" proof that this may be the case - so they are not bipedal and don't have prehensile thumbs, they are still way advanced than we are based on their perceptual ability.

Put simply it's the "garbage in-garbage out" principle. It doesn't matter how much you process data if the data is only a relative sample then that is the what the representative conclusion is likely to be.

The problem with us is that we ask small questions and the answers (and truth) will always be too big to fit them because the question is always relative to us - it's like the insecure person at a party constantly talking about themselves.

 

Scary stuff Cactus Jack

Did you know that the Roman Inquisition (the one responsible for killing Giordano Bruno & putting Galileo to trial) actually killed in excess of 1 million men, (mostly) women and children. At that time in history with the estimated size of the population this equates to killing 1 in 200 people (making everything that came after it a kindegarten playground squabble)!

In my research I've picked up a lot of negative sentiment to do with "the government" but governments for the most part have far less sway than the things our culture is based on (eg religious "lore", culturally-based rituals and unwritten lore etc) - they are just able (with the help of PR consultants) to pick up the threads and sew an appealing tapestry weaving together potent parts of things which make all the people living in a jurisdiction similar and different - that's why sometimes there statements are obvious and/or meaningless.

 

Yeah, that's what I meant. Not that the government creates religion, but can use it to their advantage most indefinetely. By using the (or one of) the major force in the society to one's advantage, one effectively controls society.

And the first part of your post makes me think of The pit and the pendullum by Poe. Good story.

 

Busy Lizzy ...

We have very shallow perceptual apparatus (ie 5 senses) compared to other beings.

'Beings' or other life forms on this planet?

If the latter: Isn't that what technology compensates for?

If the former: What 'other beings' are you talking about?

Re. Elephants subsonic communication: I can communicate worldwide
using technology, and I don't have to 'yell'. So what is the point you
were trying to make?

Take care, and welcome to Sciforums

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Chagur:

Other beings are the plants and animals we claim supremacy over.

And yes technology compensates to some extent, however it too promulgates the concept of egocentricity (see opening text on subject) -

1. We depend on technology and "worship" it as an entity in its own right which is wrong because we invented it the first place (witness a bank teller blaming the "system" or the PC for your account balance or address being wrong - who inputted the information in the first place?).

2. An elephant did not invent subsonic hearing we labeled it as such. To an elephant it is "normal". Our poor substitute (think of the scale and infrastructure related to these following things and what tiny mechanism it actually emulates in an elephant) - is a telephone, a car, the internet - and, a keyboard. Keyboards are the most archaic things on the planet - I talk faster than I type and I think faster than I talk. Even with all this talking and typing I still can't adequately convey the concepts in my head all I can do is use words and hope you have the same understanding of their meaning as I do - elephants don't have this problem.

3. It is still the garbage in/garbage out principle (refer to argument about bank teller re. information being inputted wrongly) - we invent technologies basically reflecting ourselves and our inadequacies and to a lesser or greater extent these technologies assist in "processing" our desires to do things (eg getting in a car & driving fast from one place to another) they can never compensate for our lack of ability to comprehend things prima facie. Our sight, which we rely on 90% of the time, is pathetic.

We then invent magnifiers (eg binoculars, telescopes etc) which have inbuilt in them our own shortcomings. We look out into space and think we are seeing more - we are actually seeing more of the same (in the same colour spectrum and light densities).

It's like humanity has a tailor made prosthesic leg and for their apparent "achievement" they claim to have a right to superiority for being able to run faster - I don't think so.

Good points Chagur. Thanks for your input.

 

That's the thing about human beings though, we do have these shortcommings. However, we have a superior intellect to deal with them.

Oh, some interesting ironic thought. The purpose of a species is to live and also help ensure the survival of that species for years to come. We think by creating technology and making things easier for ourselves and other benefits of such technology we are doing this. However, because we are destroying and using up the Earth and its natural resources in the end we are actualy hindering our chances of survival.

 

Cactus Jack...

I don't know whether I've adequately explained the way I see the relationship between "data capture" and intellgence (ie garbage in/garbage out) principle. If you can't see, feel, taste, hear or smell very well your experience of the world is going to be very narrow. It doesn't matter how much intelligence or "processing power" you have, you are still going to be pretty "dumb" when it comes to interpreting your environment. You're going to miss fundamental things like paying attention to the physical environment in favour of what your "apparent" intelligience is directing you to (eg technology).

If you can't see it - if you're truly incapable of sight, even if you trip over it, it will still ellude you. Now think about this in terms of how much better say, dogs are at smelling and seeing than us - but we STILL think we are superior to them.

My contention is - within the theory of Gnomypisteology, that even dogs will see and know THE truth (if it exists) before we do because 1) they have the apparatus to comprehend it and, 2) perhaps they lack the bias that the "higher intelligence" we purport to have, brings to bear in interpreting it.

I think our "superior" intelligence is a form of over-compensation for our lack of basic sense - we only see something like 10% of what a dog can and perhaps smell .00001% of what they can. Our thoughts and judgements about things are therefore half-cocked as are our subsequenct actions. I find that frightening. But even more frightening is this weird proclamation that we are somehow superior to everything around us.

We can't be of course because we're made up of the same elements as our surroundings - a fortuitous re-shuffling does not make for genIus it makes for plain old GENUS.

 

Busy Lizzy ...

"It doesn't matter how much intelligence or "processing power"
you have, you are still going to be pretty "dumb" when it comes
to interpreting your environment."

Hm ... Apparently our dumbness, even without current technology
was more that adequate for our species survival from the earliest
of times (pre-technology) unless you are taking the position that
our species has an 'inate' bent toward 'technology'. A 'sense', if
you would, that was an evolutionary step.

So, is that the point you're trying to make - but dancing around?

Take care

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I don't believe you.

 

Chagur...

(I think I agree with Hoth?!!) Your thoughts on technology sound to me like "this is the race and I am the winner". What does it matter to any other species on this planet?

Humanity suffers from gross insecurity, so gross in fact it propels itself into creating "idolatries" and making up stories around them - ethereal or corporeal is beside the point.

Technology is a crutch. It purports to simply life and makes it far more complex than it ever has to be and ever has been.

It used to be the case that one would wake up and go find food. What do we do now to find food - we've made ourselves into the same monkeys we train.

The piece below, satirically demonstrating the above, actually made it into our daily newspaper - some were so taken by the point they wrote to me after getting my contact details from the paper.


THE FOOD CHAIN

You have to have a job, so you can make money, so you can buy a car, so you can drive down the supermarket, so you can buy some food which is trucked in from a regional distribution centre who bought it from a company who cooked the food with ingredients they bought from a wholesaler who sourced the ingredients from a wholesalers market which sells farm produce trucked in from individual farms one of which is located 150 kilometres from the supermarket.

You have to have a job, so you can make money, so you can buy a house, so you have somewhere to drive home to from the supermarket with the food so you can pay bills to the local council for the rest of your life so they can get rid of the rubbish (inorganic and organic) which comes from the food you bought at the supermarket so people can live in more compact spaces without having to accumulate rubbish, too much of which causes disease and so developers can subdivide larger blocks and rip people off blind by selling them smaller houses on more compact blocks so they can buy themselves bigger blocks and build bigger houses so Councils will still pick up their rubbish from more food they bought home from the supermarket in their bigger cars.

You have to have a job, so you can buy furniture to sit on, plates and cutlery with which to eat the food you bought from the supermarket, but as the type of cutlery you use depends on the type of food you have you have to drive to the department store to buy cutlery sourced locally and internationally in a number of colours and styles so you have a choice so you can match the décor in your home to represent your individuality so that people who you invite into your home to share meals with you get to know the unique person you are.

You have to have a job, so you can make money, so you can buy a microwave oven in order to cook the food you bought home in the car from the supermarket, which are assembled locally and manufactured overseas so that an economist has evidence to support the theory of globalisation of trade and markets which is used by politicians as an excuse for the economy doing badly so if you lose your job its no one’s fault or responsibility.

(C) ERS, 2000

 

Busy Lizzy,
is your hypothesis that because humans do not have senses equal to other creatures that our perception of truth or reality is not the same as theirs and that because of our inadaquacies we have created artificial ways to interpret this truth and yet by doing so we have biased our views of truth.

 

Yes Thoth. Except we haven't biased OUR views of the truth, we bias THE truth.

This works at a lot of different levels in Philosophy.

For example, if you take the fable of Adam and Eve (a version of which permeates many religions much like the "great flood), our "original sin" relates to taking a bite of the fruit from the tree of knowledge. That knowledge doomed or relegated us to a future predicated on belief alone.

(Going off on a tangent....)

If creation is not your cup of tea, evolution-wise Gynomypisteology submits that our "species" is either 1) a "blip" in the horizon of paleo-history or 2) alien to this planet altogether.

These two are underpinned by our inability to adapt.

That is to say, one could argue our evolutionary milestones have been reached (IF you "believe" it - opposable thumbed, becoming bipedal which coincided with an increase in head size etc).

Our level and degree of adaption is unlike any other species in that we don't seem to be able to adapt to our environment - we make the environment adapt to us.

Insecurity and inferiority complexes aside (the ones that make us triumphantly yell "then.....I'm the king of the castle!"; or come up with theories to MAKE us fit in) this anomaly begs the question is THE truth lost to us forever?

 

Busy Lizzy,
I have doubt about the conclusions drawn from the analogies you have presented.
First I would put to you that a TRUTH is just that.
It cannot change, but the interpretation of a truth can.
Interpretations, based upon our senses which can be inadequate, misled, fooled, over-compensated or enhanced are subjective.
Belief is just that, it does not require a multitude of other observers or facts or even the truth.
However, I must say that a dog may have better or more specialised senses but this does not say that the dog will see the truth any clearer than any other creature, remembering it too will have biased perceptions.
Now as to the superiority of homo sapian.
? Is a worm superior to man?
? Does the worm even care?
The problem here is the interpretation of the word Superior.
Once again this interpretation would be subjective from the point of view of the creature asking this.
But take this example,
A man stands on a snail and kills it.
Truth, snail is dead.
Man knows snail is dead.
Snail doesn't know cause it didn't see foot coming ahahahahahah
sorry, digressed there for a while,
From either perspective the snail is dead and no greater or lesser amounts of senses can interpret it any different.
No subjective or biased view can change the truth, the snail is still dead.
I would also like to point out that Homo sapien evolved without enhanced senses but the ability to use whatever came along that would help enhance those abilities; so what do we do with them when we get them, we try to discover what the truth is from all possible perceptives and views.
If by doing so we find that the current "belief" is wrong we change our way of thought or life or perspective.
We are not perfect, but given the chance we strive for the Truth

 

Busy Lizzie ...

"Your thoughts on technology sound to me like "this is the race and I am the winner". What does it matter to any other species on this planet?
Race? Winner? What are you talking about? There's survival or extinction. The species that survives, wins.

Humanity suffers from gross insecurity, so gross in fact it propels itself into creating "idolatries" and making up stories around them - ethereal or corporeal is beside the point.
Maybe fear of the unknown, but insecurity? Come off of it. I would say it is our terribly inflated ego: We are the best! that contributes to our idiocyncratic behavior.

Technology is a crutch. It purports to simply life and makes it far more complex than it ever has to be and ever has been.
Sure, like picking up a phone and ordering your food to be delivered as opposed to scrounging for it in 'nature'. Again, come off of it!

It used to be the case that one would wake up and go find food.
You could always wake up and look for 'road' kill ... Far easier than hunting for, or growing, your food. Or are you speaking about living and on a polynesian island and surviving on coconuts?

"... we've made ourselves into the same monkeys we train.
Okay, I'll accept what should have been obvious a while back: You have no point to make.

Take care

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