Leaving Truth edition by Keith Sewell Politics Social Sciences eBooks
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"Leaving Truth" offers a radically new, and potentially conclusive, contribution to our ancient science vs. religion debate. It is a collection of five essays, one main and four subsidiary. The collection addresses how we can most coherently select proposals as knowledge, and the limitation from this on the kinds of proposals that we can select. Though at first glance abstruse and academic, addressing this most basic epistemic question seems to yield a very surprising result That we have been maintaining our concept "truth" either redundantly or as an independent and reason-antithetical basis for knowledge; and that the proposals of all of our authoritarian systems of emotionally seductive irrationality -- in particular, but not limited to, our theistic religions -- can only be maintained from this basis. "Leaving Truth" suggests that our past 250 years of progress in epistemology can be summarized through the injunction that we should stop asking of any knowledge proposal, "Is this 'true'?" and start asking instead, "Can I honestly qualify this as knowledge?" It then shows how and why our theists cannot do this for their proposals. Its logical core demonstrates that both of the modern epistemological developments that are broadly assumed by theists and atheists alike to support the theists' position (David Hume's dismissal of Induction as our basis for "objective proof", and Karl Popper's demonstration that science can provide only "best present" knowledge, as opposed to certainty) achieve instead the opposite. That they undercut the theists' position at a level from which no coherent defense can be made. Leaving Truth thereby offers atheists and free-thinkers a prospect for the kind clear victory at the intellectual and academic level that we have not dared to hope for since collapse of the Radical Enlightenment.
Leaving Truth edition by Keith Sewell Politics Social Sciences eBooks
The author is clearly very well read and a capable philosopher. In a nutshell, he claims that all of our ideas or "knowledge proposals" fail the test of what we normally understand by "truth". Knowledge grows and flourishes at a greater pace once we make this realization.A good paradox will get my attention every time.
The refutation of truth's coherence was fairly clear, and the author tries to maximize this by repeating it from many different angles. He also explains its history. Basically, it's that we apprehend reality based on our own agenda and cannot do otherwise. So we can never legitimately speak reality-as-such. But it's precisely this reality-as-such that we think we mean by "truth".
Once truth has been dismissed, you might wonder if we are left with anything at all. The author recounts the history of post-structuralism, which indeed came to the conclusion that we are left with nothing that we could call a shared body of knowledge. That is to say, I have my truth and you have yours, and they are equally valued. The author rejects this notion and introduces the "knowledge selection procedure". He gives his own knowledge selection procedure as an example, but not a prescription. For everyone else he gives the bare-bones requirements such a procedure would have to satisfy, which state that the procedure has to be able to sort knowledge proposals in a functional and coherent way. He is confident that if we only follow this minimum and obvious rule, we can settle on a shared body of knowledge, without the need to claim any of it as "true". This being the case, we'll finally able to settle all of our arguments without resort to violence.
What really motivates this book, then, is "saving the world". The author blames just about every human ill on our truth concept, or if that is going too far, he at least thinks that all will be improved by our abandoning this concept. The main conduit by which truth corrupts humankind is presented as religion. The author seems genuinely to have struggled with the question of how you convince someone of such ideas as virgin births and flying horses. He concludes that without truth, religion would collapse like a house of cards. He does not allow that religion might change trains, as it were, and adopt a knowledge selection procedure, as he does not believe that any procedure which is functional and coherent can also be shown to yield religious doctrines. He is very keen to debate this with the theists. "Leaving Truth" is his attempt to provide a roadmap to finally winning this debate by dramatically altering its terms. He hopes that others will follow that map.
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Leaving Truth edition by Keith Sewell Politics Social Sciences eBooks Reviews
Sewell purports to give us the "truth" about "truth", but in my view he misses the mark. He believes that most of the ills of humanity arise from the belief that our "truth" is "THE TRUTH", leading to what Bob Dylan described as a country that believes it has "God on our side". Sewell characterizes this attitude as tribal and outworn. Hard to disagree with him on that point. Most of the arguments he makes are based on epistemology, and may be difficult to follow for those not versed in this branch of philosophy. Sewell derives his line of reasoning from the empiricism of David Hume, and argues that rather than "truth" we should be talking about verifiable knowledge that can be confirmed using the principle that is at the basis of scientific investigation, ODRPO, or on-demand reproducible physically observable events. Perhaps believing that this line of reasoning will be insufficient to convince the average reader, or knowing that in general people don't base their beliefs and decisions on this hyper-rational thinking modality, Sewell then ventures into the realm of neuroscience to bolster his argmuents. He says that the rationality that characterizes the cerebral cortex, the part of the brain that could be said to make us uniquely human, should supplant all the emotion-based decision making of the mammalian brain or limbic system, and the automatic instinctual reactions of the reptilian brain. It is here that I think Sewell is way off in his understanding of brain science. As I understand it the model of the triune brain that sees the various layers as nested like Russian dolls is a vast oversimplification. As the newer layers evolved they became deeply integrated with the more ancient layers and turned the older functions to their new purposes. In Sewell's model it is as if the newest rational layer should be able to dominate and repress the older emotional and instinctual functions. This is simply not how it works. The brain is intrinsically integrated, and though we speak of certain regions as having certain functions the myriad connections among the neurons connects all brain areas to all others. As Jaak Panksepp points out ("Brain Emotional Systems and Qualities of Life", in "The Healing Power of Emotion", Daniel Siegel ed.) we have certain basic emotions or primal affects that are much, much quicker in their reaction time and often much stronger than our newer and slower rational thought processes. We cannot simply shut off these emotional processes. Nor should be even try to do so, if we wish to be healthy, whole, integral beings. Panksepp argues that the "rationalism" that dominates cognitive psychology often makes those who have trouble controlling their primal affects (all of us at one time or another, or most of the time) feel guilty about our inability to act in a rational manner. All the writers in "The Healing Power of Emotion", part of the Norton Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology, argue for the need to integrate rather than repress our emotions. This repression seems to me inherent in Sewell's argument. Sewell concludes the book with a couple of little essays, one of which is a poetic plea for a kind of nature mysticism. I liked this essay. But personally I think it is the human need to create a rational framework for our ineffable mystical experiences, combined with our primitive tribal need to belong to the "right" group, that has created all the religious and political systems Sewell rails against. Sewell says that the rationalism for which he argues is the purview of a small elite group of thinkers but must become widespread to save us from disaster. As I said, I think he misses the mark, both in his arguments, and in the probability of this happening. He should have a look at Tom Wolfe's new novel "Back to Blood", which is a hilarious description of the ubiquitous tribalism Sewell deplores.
I was intrigued by the title and bought the book partly because of the low cost. When I finally got around to reading it, I became engrossed. As a mathematician, I was particularly concerned about the truth of statements in logic and math. Could I abandon these notions? Yes. There is something more human that can, instead, do the needed job. It has to do with "supported knowledge." The author expands on Karl Popper's work on what science is and what its limits are. The "final" answer in the book is an important contribution to epistemology.
Truth is a religious concept not a scientific one. Knowlegde is what science in all about and Sewell's formula of "knowledge equals justified belief" is quite insightful. In the formula, belief is the starting point--the hypothosis. It is "justified" by data. When the data supports the belief, knowlegde is the result. The thing that drives the religious right crazy is that this knowledge is always conditional, for new data could render the initial belief as being errant. So forget about "truth" for it is an end point--not the stuff of science.
Not an easy read, it takes a couple of times through the book to get an understanding of the material - that said, it is well worth the effort. The concepts in this book will give you a new perspective on how verifiable knowledge can be distinguished from non-verifiable beliefs. In my opinion Sewell's concept of "Justifiable Beliefs," via a "Knowledge Selection Procedure," is extremely important because it gives a person a standard for measuring their own beliefs and judging the statements and beliefs of others. His concepts are not just philosophic, they are also extremely valuable and viable for anyone working in today's world who must make decisions based upon imperfect knowledge.
The author is clearly very well read and a capable philosopher. In a nutshell, he claims that all of our ideas or "knowledge proposals" fail the test of what we normally understand by "truth". Knowledge grows and flourishes at a greater pace once we make this realization.
A good paradox will get my attention every time.
The refutation of truth's coherence was fairly clear, and the author tries to maximize this by repeating it from many different angles. He also explains its history. Basically, it's that we apprehend reality based on our own agenda and cannot do otherwise. So we can never legitimately speak reality-as-such. But it's precisely this reality-as-such that we think we mean by "truth".
Once truth has been dismissed, you might wonder if we are left with anything at all. The author recounts the history of post-structuralism, which indeed came to the conclusion that we are left with nothing that we could call a shared body of knowledge. That is to say, I have my truth and you have yours, and they are equally valued. The author rejects this notion and introduces the "knowledge selection procedure". He gives his own knowledge selection procedure as an example, but not a prescription. For everyone else he gives the bare-bones requirements such a procedure would have to satisfy, which state that the procedure has to be able to sort knowledge proposals in a functional and coherent way. He is confident that if we only follow this minimum and obvious rule, we can settle on a shared body of knowledge, without the need to claim any of it as "true". This being the case, we'll finally able to settle all of our arguments without resort to violence.
What really motivates this book, then, is "saving the world". The author blames just about every human ill on our truth concept, or if that is going too far, he at least thinks that all will be improved by our abandoning this concept. The main conduit by which truth corrupts humankind is presented as religion. The author seems genuinely to have struggled with the question of how you convince someone of such ideas as virgin births and flying horses. He concludes that without truth, religion would collapse like a house of cards. He does not allow that religion might change trains, as it were, and adopt a knowledge selection procedure, as he does not believe that any procedure which is functional and coherent can also be shown to yield religious doctrines. He is very keen to debate this with the theists. "Leaving Truth" is his attempt to provide a roadmap to finally winning this debate by dramatically altering its terms. He hopes that others will follow that map.
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