Re: Postmodernism and Truth (was Re: virus: Simulacrum)

Twirlip of Greymist (phoenix@ugcs.caltech.edu)
Sun, 19 May 1996 16:14:44 -0700 (PDT)


/You forgot to mention quantum mechanics, which certainly is wreaking havoc
/on all approximations of truth, and I would say it has convincingly affected
/western views of objectivity.

It is? QED is itself more obviously an approximation of truth -- at
least, we're not quite sure what the hell is going on -- but at the same
time for practical purposes its predictive accuracy is unrivalled. So
we're getting close to something. And while the same weirdness about it
seems to threaten our previous ideas about objectivity, there aren't any
good alternatives. So I go on as before, at least.

/>To say that those who believe the earth is flat or that it rides
/>on the back of a giant turtle are correct in the context of their
/>own society seems silly to me. I think we are entirely justified
/You need to look into other cosmologies a bit more I think and you'll
/discover that your being very reductive. There is much more happening than

How so? And what's so wrong with intelligent reductionism?

Truth: what I can kill someone with without their believing in it, or
even knowing about it.

"Show me a cultural relativist at 30,000 feet and I'll show you a
hypocrite." -- Richard Dawkins

Merry part,
-xx- Damien R. Sullivan X-) <*> http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~phoenix

There are four kinds of homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable,
and praiseworthy ...
-- Ambrose Bierce, _The Devil's Dictionary_