Invention of truth
-
93, "Words such as "truth" are like that straw. Confusion of thought is concealed, and its impotence denied, by the invention." -MTP, pg. 343. This, to me, seems to say there is no such thing as truth, as we label it. So we know no truth?
-
This is a complicated topic and more in line with Classical philosophy than occult philosophy - although haveing said that the old Zen saying of "He who knows does not speak and he who speaks does not know."
In terms of classical philosophy, in the subject of epistemology (the study of knowledge), "truth" is regarded as a form of knowledge. Hence we make a statement (which convery's knowledge) which is either true or false such as "John Smith likes eating apples". This can be either true or false.
It's important to distinguish this kind of epistemological truth from ontological or metaphysical ideas becasue it boils down to human knowledge and ideas and how they are conveyed through models and language (even languages such as mathematics). As Nietzsche said "Truth is an ordering of the world not an order discovered in the world", indicating essentially that it is an ordering of categories within the human mind rather than some intrinsic quality of the world.
Ontological or metaphysical "truth", if there is such a thing, would technically be the "truth of the nature of being" or the "truth of the nature of reality" (respectively) and it's not even worth going there without opening a massive can of worms. This is the domain of mysticism and magick but it must be experienced and cannot be "accurately" conveyed through language or intellectual constructs.
93s
-
@modernPrimitive said
" and it's not even worth going there without opening a massive can of worms."
How can there be worms therein if there is no can to contain them?
the sound of wind blowing through bamboo
@FiliusBeastia said
"This, to me, seems to say there is no such thing as truth, as we label it. So we know no truth?"
I see it as saying that Hod is not Tiphareth, no matter how much you think it is.
-
93, Interesting responses. I was actually looking to open that can of worms. Lol. I take it, and it's not the first time this thought's occured to me, that truth is a thing of knowledge, thus flawed. I think you refer to two different things,prime, knowledge and understanding.
-
@Bryan said
"How can there be worms therein if there is no can to contain them?
the sound of wind blowing through bamboo"
Touche!
-
@FiliusBeastia said
"93, Interesting responses. I was actually looking to open that can of worms. Lol. I take it, and it's not the first time this thought's occured to me, that truth is a thing of knowledge, thus flawed. I think you refer to two different things,prime, knowledge and understanding."
Yes, I haven't translated my understanding of "classical" philosophy into mystical or occult thinking yet....I think philosophy plays mostly in the realm of "air" (intellectual and analytical) whereas magickal philosophy encompasses all the four worlds. that being said, continental philosophy delves into the meaning of life and hence can rely on intuition and emotion.
The analytic schools rely on metaphysical assertions - ie: we can invoke the problem of solipsism or Descartes's Cartesian "demon": for example we can say that the only thing one can know is their own subjective experience. Hence if we decide to say the world is independently "real" (from our thoughts and intuitions) then we are making an unfalsifiable and unprovable assumption. This kind of assumption would the basis for materialism, but also in say a mystical school of thought, one might say that "mind" is the basis for matter and that too would be a metaphysical assertion rather than an intellectually provable fact.
Immanuel Kant came up with a somewhat elegant solution by saying that "we know the world as it appears to us". In his philosophy of Transcendental Idealism he does not say that the world of matter is not real, but that we can only know it via the 5 senses which results in our ideas an intuitions about the world. He used the term "noumenal" to define an object of our experience as it is in and of itself, and the term "phenomenal" to describe our experience of said object. Hence, the noumenal cannot be known (as a thing-in-itself). According to him even space-time is more of a phenomenal "thing" than a noumenal thing. If you think about it our anthropocentric (human) predicament has a very large influence on how we perceive both space and time.
Nietzsche came along with the idea of perspectivism, saying that the idea of "true objectivity" is unrealistic because of our very human predicament. Incidentally Wikipedia defines objectivity as "mind-independent"....well show me any form of knowledge that is mind-independent then/ He kind of said that what we call objectivity is more an "inter-subjective consensus" and I agree with him on that point. However there are different levels of how much consensus we have. I think this influenced the Chaos and Discordian movements quite a lot.
Well that sort of barely covers analytical and continental philosophy (the intellectual stuff) and when it comes to Mystical and Magickal phiolsophy I think that Samadhi is a good example of the possibility that the "noumenal" can really be experienced, but again I don't know if there is any more truth to experiencing the "noumenal" than experiencing the "phenomenal". But here we are in the domain where the intellect fails and "truth" becomes an experience (ontological) - when we try to describe that experience with the intellect we distort it or simply fail miserably. This is why there are so many different schools of philosophy because everyone has a different level of experience and we simply can't agree or we simply can't agree on the semantics and definitions.
So in the end I think there is epistemological truth, which is quite straightforward...either a simple statement is true or false - "John is a man". When we enter the domain of metaphysics then we have to realize that we are working with "models" and "maps" that we have invented to intellectually bring an order to the chaos of our experience. These models are not truth in themselves ("e=mc2" is as much a descriptor of energy as Isis is a descriptor of our instinctive relationship with "Mother Nature") - they're just descriptors and they contain as much of a description of our "human disposition" as they contain descriptions of our supposedly "real" environment. In the domain of ontology (the philosophy of the nature of "being") well there we just have a mass of subjective opinions to go on, from the religious to the occult to the Buddhist etc, the materialist will claim that the mind is just a function of the brain but then he's basing that once again on a metaphysical assumption whereas the Buddhist would base his theory perhaps on first hand "subjective" experience. The materialist would argue that the Buddhist's subjective experience is inadmissible as evidence because of the materialist's buy-in into so-called objectivism. However as I pointed out objectivity is really only inter-subjective consensus....so it's really more about stating how many people or "experts" (like physicists) agree on a certain "fact". It gets very complicated as you can see....and the disagreements will probably continue for a very long time.
Personally, for me, I'm veering towards keeping it simple. I'm here, experiencing some kind of awareness. The question of "truth" is flawed, I'm simply here to live life and see where it takes me...in a kind of Nietzschean "will-to-power".
Anyway, hope that opened the can a little bit for you.
-
93, I'll have to reread this post later to fully soak it in, but from what I've read we seem to be in agreement for the most. I see knowledge as objective to the individual, though we have similar experiences in some cases.
-
I'm on a cell, so bear with me here. Lol. We can all come to similar conclusions, but when it comes down to it we're just trying to make sense of this thing we call life. knowledge, the realm of reason and philosophy, I view as different from understanding. I'm not sure how to explain what i mean.
-
I love Nietzsche, Kant has some great materials too. The whole Overman thing took me for a while. I like philosophy, but I agree, I'm here to live. When it comes down to it, I FEEL something behind our phenomenal experiences, as you put it. Be it true or false, does it really matter in the end?
-
@FiliusBestia said
"IWhen it comes down to it, I FEEL something behind our phenomenal experiences, as you put it. Be it true or false, does it really matter in the end?"
Netzach isn't Tiphareth either, no matter how much you feel that it is, which you don't seem to.
Not that because 'Hod and Netzach aren't Tiphareth' means that your feelings and thoughts aren't "true divine spheres" in their own right.
If truth is the essence of "effectiveness" (that's how I imagine it), then even lies can reflect truth in their own right. As in, "boy, that optical illusion truly made me think it was swirling." In other words, all things can, even if they're not Truth, indirectly disclose Truth by displaying effectiveness.
-
93,
I perceive this differently. (Everything is 'IMO only' of course.)
We lack English words for a lot of needed things, and must use the same word for many different meanings. Truth has more than one fundamental meaning, but our culture only knows the second, surface meaning.
The first meaning probably needs a new word. Truth (with a capital T) is a powerful energy. It doesn't involve accuracy/inaccuracy. It simply IS. Real Truth isn't the accuracy of a thing, it is the ISness of a thing.
The more you 'feel' this the less there is to say about it until only silence remains. Words can't touch it.
Although creativity (including that involving words) can carry some lesser degree of the energy 'through' it, which tends to make the creative product a lot more powerful.
The second meaning is the one we use. Our surface world is like flotsam and trivia floating about. Accuracy is the determinor there. One can question whether something is accurate or not and that determines its truth.
Although in a more primal sense it hardly matters since nothing at that level is fundamentally real anyway. In a daily life sense it obviously does matter though and much of what we need/want to discuss is "operating at that level" so that's just how it must be done.
One of the lessons I've had is that the farther I got from the feel of Truth, the more intellectual I got, and eventually downright technical. It was not any more True in the first ISness meaning; rather, it was 'leaning harder' on the second accuracy meaning, in greater compensation for lacking the first.
Another way of putting this, might be to say, that the more you can talk about a given thing, the less Truth the talk contains.
93 93/93,
RC -
93, I like that, Cairo. Of course I think the truth Crowley refers to is the second form you put forth. Thus Liber 333. To intellectualize is to fracture Truth, ergo Breaks. The question is, is this Because,and if not, at what point is it that?