Index 
Appearance and Reality Epistemology Idea of "Other"
Facts: Very important, those facts. They are our grounding in agreement. So ISTMRN, a “fact” is anything we agree is true. “2 + 2 = 4” or “God sent his only son to save the world.” I agree with the former (within limits of my capacity, both rational and emotional), but have serious doubts about the latter, even to the point of disagreeing. Many would agree with me, many others would not, especially about the latter, but few about the former. So consensus contributes to “factualness”. But what of Einstein’s comment that “only one distinguished scientist (or anyone) would be enough to discredit his ideas, IF he were right”. So there is “fact” internalized, no longer in need of concurrence. A product of a system of thought and feeling constructed from many concurrences. If an idea does not concur, comport, it is “other”, “not true”. The system builds, grows, decays, re-invigorates, changes with each word, thought or spoken, strengthened or weaken, confirmed or challenged. Often an experience (sense perception filtered through our genes) provides a possible or even obvious new “fact” (conjecture of possible fact) to be incorporated in the system of explanation. Sometimes the system changes (actually always), sometimes the new experience is classified as “other” to be safely ignored, at least for the time being. “Whatever” agrees with that system at any one time is true, is “fact”. I just set my level of concurrence that represents “authority” to “everyone”, well almost everyone. Like Descartes opined, that I am, am aware, is a fact. But opposed to Descartes, I doubt such a “fact” established the goodness of God. I haven’t found consensus about anything such a “fact” entails. But stories? Stories? Stories? so many beautiful (my aesthetic “system”) stories. God, Ananke, Atman, Newton’s Laws, the Iliad, Einstein’s Relativity, Shakespeare and his descendants, the Devil, Quantum Uncertainty, Evil, Nirvana, Samsara, Immortality and so many more. Which one, or ones, if any, are the “truth”. I sure don’t know, and so far I’ve found no one else does either. I have found not one common thread, other than perhaps, “We humans are GREAT”. Many claim to require humility before God or Nature while screaming arrogance with respect to all else. A big part of “We are great” is “We are SPECIAL”. Perhaps I became a contrarian in that locker room at Davidson in August 1964. |