Sometimes, we can perceive things without seeing any of the truth in them. This allows us to work with them without suffering the contradictions or other inconveniences that that their truth would entail.
I think we generally see untruthful things that are detached from true reality.
Is this offered as a truth, or a perception?
Philosophy’s generally seen as an investigation into the truth of things, with all their consequences and inconveniences. What sort of things did you have in mind?
I can’t offer it “as” anything, truth is understandable only on an individual basis and a claim to it means exactly nothing. Fetishized perception however…
I wrote the OP when listening to Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew. First time I heard it, I got a pretty clear image of Miles as a guy trying too hard and wasn’t impressed.
This time, my mood was for some reason right to deeeply enjoy it. I mean, the thing is obviously a masterpiece. I think music is a perfect example: if you enjoy it, you see the truth of it. If you don’t, it doesn’t mean you don’t hear it, it just means that you fetishize it into a conceptual box that requires no direct truth.
What do you mean by ‘seeing truth in’? And by things, is this like chairs and trees, or are ‘things’ here ideas or…? I suppose this all means I am not sure how you are using the term ‘perceive’ here either.
This helps me, though I am still not sure what ‘truth’ would mean. Truth as in reflects the real nature of things? Like a true statement.
Also I had to read the second part a number of times, since we tend to make a fetish of things we enjoy. Though I like the bringing close ‘true’ and ‘fetish’ or false and fetish as the case may be, but I don’t think I am getting this yet.
Good preception can lead to truth.
Einstein theorized “Black Holes” yet never observed in his lifetime, but we should know that Black Holes exist.
Yes, this is good. I like this distinction you make here. This seems to me a sort of difference in personal investment, interest, and attachment to the objects of our conscious thought/perception. To “see the truth” within an object seems to mean, to you here, to enjoy or subsume oneself within the experience of the object, whereas to “see without truth” would then mean being more impersonal or dispassionate, effecting larger distance between oneself and the object of one’s contemplation. Certainly there are times where either perspective would be ideal or called for.
I also think we can project these two conditions into and through each other, to edify our powers of conscious apprehending, our rational contemplation and imagination. Fiction does this, in a way: we invest in, align with/in a fictive object which we nonetheless experience with some degree of impersonality, distance, since we are aware that this object is “false”, is a fictitional construction. In philosophy we can achieve this more consciously, intentionally and directly by making an object of these very processes of subjective objectification themselves, and then setting them within a broader analytic context and meaningful relation. For example: what is the value of either approach, what you here call “seeing with truth” versus “seeing without truth”? How, and in what sense/situation, with respect to what, and why? What is the value of seeing one of these vantages from the perspective of the other, or of seeing both alongside each other, through the perspective of a third, larger view?
Truth isn’t something you “see” or “know,” it is something which even now I am not talking about. This is a fetishization.
Precicely because fetishization isn’t pure, it is a kind of cerebral “remix” that allows a person to spin conceptual webs, which are webs of distorted reality. The craziest thing that I know I believe is that every single abstract element, down to the concept of a chair, is not a thing in itself but a juxtaposition of distorted truth, which allow us to adapt to the environment we are in while managing our emotional action in a way that keeps us going: a self-feeding system, if you will.
i know, right? boom.
I wouldn’t use the term ‘truth’ here either, I just used it because you did. I am far more interested in the, “. . .within an object seems to mean, to you here, to enjoy or subsume oneself within the experience of the object, whereas . . . would mean being more impersonal or dispassionate, effecting larger distance between oneself and the object of one’s contemplation.” I am interested in trying to articulate rationally the structure/s of consciousness, not to have a metaphysical debate about “what is truth”. Truth is a conceptual category which we all habituate to using, because it is an effective way to differentiate between types of our experiences.
How about this: whatever isn’t truth is fetishism?
Then you need to tell me what you mean by “truth” and what you mean by “fetishism”.
Well, “truth” is a fetishization of the experience of truth. I know, but a short circuit is exactly what I would expect when trying to say the un-sayable.
“Fetishism” is the collection of distorted perceptions that allow us to percieve facts without seeing any or much of the truth about them. It’s a survival mechanism (and, of course, the term “survival mechanism” is also fetishism).
Ok, so then truth is a sort of absolute Totality of the conditions/effects/causality/significance of a thing, of a part of reality, whereas fetishism is a partial, limited and inherently biased perspective upon this truth? Because language is a subjective process, inherently perspectivist and partial in its objectifying, it can only attain to fetishism and cannot disclose or refer to truth “itself”?
Truth is personal, I cannot describe it to you. Go listen to Bitches Brew. If you are able to slip into the moment for a while, and enjoy the song, you will probably have noticed a truth.
Language, precisely because it is not subjective, cannot breach the wall between fetishism and truth. It is objective, and objectivism is a very disciplined form of fetishizing.
I think it would help if you said if you are using fetishism in the sense of applying mystical qualities to something or if you mean it in the more sexual sense, where a part of a body (universe) takes on the meaning of the whole, sexually. Like a foot gets all the sexual energy an entire woman might get otherwise. To take this latter metaphorically, a kind of synechdoche.
I liked this…
I might even agree, though I am still chasing the meaning. Perhaps this means, in your terms, I am chasing a satisfying fetishization of an experience. Which would seem to be an oops kind of thing.
Is knowledge a process or a thing? Seems like it must be a process but it is generally imagined to be a thing.
Like ‘I have (some specific) knowledge about that’ ((Where? well, in the head. It’s in there))
Which reminds of me of reification.
Bingo. Of course, you are also looking for the morally correct way of processing this hypothesis, which is the real mistake.
Truth and Morality go together like piss and and open wound.
It can be said that there are two truths. One is called, “apparent truth” and the other, “absolute truth”
Apparent truth is created by one’s belief system and absolute truth is “what is.”
Apparent truth changes, absolute truth is always the same for everybody all the time.
Apparent truth is a product of the intellect, absolute truth might be said to be the absense of any intellectual process.
I don’t agree with the “absolute truth” remark. If I had to guess, I would say that that-which-“truth”-is-a-fetishization-of is in constant flow, from what I have noted about the fluidity of the history of nature.
I don’t think ‘Oops’ is a sound one makes when one realizes one is immoral. Unless one is a psychopath.
Heck, I was just trying to understand what you meant. It all sounded interesting, I love what seem like odd juxtapositions that end up being spot on. Fetish and truth. Ummm.