[om-list] Re: Hebrew perception of Truth

[Tom and other Packers]

Mark

    I'm just now getting back into researching this subject, too, as I try
to formulate a theoretical foundation on which to present my senior project
(a set of machine-learning algorithms which I will compare).  Two things I
have just found:

    (1) "Pragmatism".  Did you know that pragmatism is thought among the
philosophical community to be the only substantial American contribution to
philosophy?  Perhaps the biggest proponent of it was William James, which
was where I was reading about it, in his book by the same name.  (I forget
the name of the guy who coined the term, but he was American, too, and an
associate of William James.)  Pragmatism seems to be nearly the same idea
that your quote on the Hebrew perception of truth says.  It's all about
tying theoretical truth to concrete reality, which has a "practical"
consequence, ("practicality" is just part of the full meaning of
"pragmatism").

    I heard about this idea before, in "Four Philosophies: and their
Practice in Education and Religion", by J. Donald Butler, a book my grandpa
gave me just before he died.  ("Practice" is an etymological cousin to
"pragmatism".)  Do you know if you're related to this Butler?

    (2) I almost thought I finally found a
philosopher/logician/mathematician who realised that deduction and induction
are inverses of each other, and therefore mutually interdependent.  His name
was W. S. Jevons.  Actually, it turns out that what he said was that
deduction is basic and that induction is the inverse of deduction, (not
necessarily vice versa).  Whether or not he ever realised that each are
interdependent, and that all logical inference is one, big, circular
argument, without a foundation, I have yet to discover.  But, you can be
sure, I will continue looking.

    It seems silly to me that any of these famous philosophers would not
have found what I call "the symmetry heuristic", and used it to discover all
of these complimentary aspects of knowledge modelling and inference
methodology.

    Another interesting thing he said (in the form of the title of one of
his books) was that logic is "the science of quality, apart from quantity",
which is exactly how I've been using those words.  Mathematics would
therefore be the science of quantity, apart from quality; but again, I'm not
sure he saw that complementary side of the issue.

    I about to read a book by Karl Popper.  He has much to say about
induction, and the philosophy of science, and therefore about pragmatics;
and so far I think he is on our side, recognising the necessity of concrete
reality in formulating any ideas about truth and reality.

ciao,
tomp

----- Original Message -----
From: "Mark Butler" <butlerm at middle.net>
To: "Thomas L. Packer" <TomP at burgoyne.com>
Sent: Sunday, February 25, 2001 1:07 PM
Subject: Hebrew perception of Truth


Hi Tom,

I found this quote of Thorlief Bowman about the Hebrew perception of truth
in
an article called '"What Has Athens to Do with Jerusalem?": Apostasy and
Restoration in the Big Picture' on the F.A.R.M.S web site
(http://farms.byu.edu/free/index.html) to be quite interesting:

"The . . . Hebrew concept of truth is expressed by means of derivatives of
the
verb aman-"to be steady, faithful"; amen-"verily, surely";
omen-"faithfulness"; umnam-"really"; emeth-"constancy, trustworthiness,
certainty, fidelity to reported facts, truth"; cf. omenah-"pillar,
door-post".
In short, the Hebrews really do not ask what is true in the objective sense
but what is subjectively certain, what is faithful in the existential sense;
therefore, it is not what is in agreement with impersonal objective being
that
interests them, but what is in agreement with the facts that are meaningful
for them. This shows that Hebrew thought is directed toward events, living,
and history in which the question of truth is of another sort than in
natural
science. In such matters the true is the completely certain, sure, steady,
faithful."

I think the whole article is interesting, but I thought this quote lends
some
support to using induction as a method for approximating the truth.  Perhaps
this comes up because I have recently read a blistering criticism of recent
scientific philosophers like the well known Thomas Kuhn who apparently
actually believe that induction (i.e. the scientific method) is completely
worthless as a means for determining the truth.   The criticism was by the
recently deceased Australian philosopher David Stove in a book called
"Against
the Idols of the Age".   I think you would like it, if you want to borrow
it.

- Mark



--
Mark Butler        ( butlerm at middle.net )
Software Engineer
Epic Systems
(801)-451-4583