Understanding the futility of TRUE and NOT TRUE as assertions of fact

by Terry 21 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

• 

  Terry

  The following is a sentence.

  The sentence contains an assertion of fact.

  Here is the sentence:

  "This statement is not true."

  Question: Is the sentence TRUE? Is it a statement of FACT?

  Obviously that is a Paradox because it is recursive (self-reference).

  If it were true it would automatically be false. If it were false it would automatically be true.

  Self-contradiction IDENTIFIES illogic.

  So, can that statement "This statement is not true." be anything?

  Yes, it is an ASSERTION which exists in a different realm altogether: Antinomy.

  Define Antinomy:

  the equally rational but contradictory results of applying to the universe of pure thought the categories or criteria of reason that are proper to the universe of sensible perception or experience (phenomena). Empirical reason cannot here play the role of establishing rational truths because it goes beyond possible experience and is applied to the sphere of that which transcends it.

  Pithy? Not really.

  Let's break it down.

  Pure thought (ideas, concepts, imagination, etc) cannot establish rational truth when those sorts of thoughts are about TRANSCENDENT things.

  Why?

  1.We cannot experience what is beyond experience. Duh! Therefore we cannot validate through experience.

  2.Transcendent things are beyond the senses because our senses only verify actual and measurable things in this realm of reality.

  3.Imagination and thoughts about numinous things is emotional rather than perceptual.

  You can ASSERT but you cannot prove what you assert.

  Why? It is like using metric wrenches to work on an American made automobile.

  Let's take our newfound knowledge about self-reference about paradox and antinomy and try another one.

  What about this statement?

  2 Timothy 3:16

  New King James Version (NKJV)

  16 All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness....(snip)

  IF that is a scripture it is a Pardox because it is SELF-referential.

  If it is not a scripture and just an ASSERTION it may or may not be factually TRUE.

  Assertions made by Authority are as only good as the Authority.

  It becomes more complicated...

  How do we establish Authority IF it is only by assertion the authority itself is in effect?

  If the Governing Body of Jehovah's Witnesses claims authority from Scripture is it a simple matter of True/Not True?

  A chain of logic must be established in which each link is greater than mere ASSERTION. In fact, each link must be provable by the test of Falsifiability.

  1. Are the scriptures True?

  2.Are the interpretations and applications of scripture True?

  3.Are the conclusions drawn from interpretations True?

  Understanding the futility of TRUE and NOT TRUE as assertions of fact becomes an easier task

  by identifying CLEAR CATEGORY separations!

  Have you heard of Isomorphism?

  Isomorphism consists of mapping two separate things by demonstrating parts that serve the same functions.

  A skate board and an automobile, for example.

  Each item can map to the other (up to a point) isomorphically!

  1.Wheels

  2.Driver/passenger

  This isomorphic relationship only goes just so far and stops.

  A skateboard can be transportation, for example, just as a car is transportation.

  A skateboard can be autonomously set in motion , change directions, gain speed/slow down, stop SIMILAR to an automobile.

  However, a skateboard is not equal to a car beyond that "map".

  So what?

  So this:

  Just because we CAN map our imagination with similarities between REAL things and imaginary things it does not make imaginary things:

  1.Real

  2.Testable

  3.Provable

  And therein lies the problem with using LOGIC and REASONING to understand, explain, prove or test GOD, scriptures, numinous "truths".

  As the phrase goes: These are not overlapping magesteria.

  IT IS CONFUSING when we use the same language about matters of FAITH as we do matters of TRUTH and fact.

  The vocabulary words "seem" to create an isomorphic MAP and yet it is only a metaphorical one!

  Poetic

  Literary

  Imaginary

  Mythic

  Emotional

  But--not testable or provable.

  Next time somebody tries to PROVE the logic of scripture or interpretation to you--stand up and shout:

  "You are using metric wrenches on my American automobile!"
• 

  Larsinger58

  ROFL! This is sooo intellectual. But it is a trick of language and concept. In the Bible, for instance, we read that there is only one god and one lord in one place, but in another that there are many gods and many lords.

  Sometimes Akenaten is referred to as a "monotheist" but some people will claim that belief in any other god makes you a "polytheist" thus just admitting that "Satan is the god of this system of things" makes you a polytheist.

  Therefore, there are many statements that are both true and false, depending on the interpretation and concept. That's because words can have different meanings.

  Take for example if I told you, "I stopped drinking 10 years ago." Is that true of an ex-alcoholic? Well, yes, if "drinking" is understood to refer to alcohol and not water or Diet Dr. Pepper!

  So in this case, someone who loves word games has set up a false premise. They use a complex premise that has no meaning and then try to apply it to something dissimilar to it and create a conundrum out of it. Here's a famous example of Greek logic:

  The Tortoise challenged Achilles to a race, claiming that he would win as long as Achilles gave him a small head start. Achilles laughed at this, for of course he was a mighty warrior and swift of foot, whereas the Tortoise was heavy and slow.
  “How big a head start do you need?” he asked the Tortoise with a smile.
  “Ten meters,” the latter replied.
  Achilles laughed louder than ever. “You will surely lose, my friend, in that case,” he told the Tortoise, “but let us race, if you wish it.”
  “On the contrary,” said the Tortoise, “I will win, and I can prove it to you by a simple argument.”
  “Go on then,” Achilles replied, with less confidence than he felt before. He knew he was the superior athlete, but he also knew the Tortoise had the sharper wits, and he had lost many a bewildering argument with him before this.
  “Suppose,” began the Tortoise, “that you give me a 10-meter head start. Would you say that you could cover that 10 meters between us very quickly?”
  “Very quickly,” Achilles affirmed.
  “And in that time, how far should I have gone, do you think?”
  “Perhaps a meter – no more,” said Achilles after a moment's thought.
  “Very well,” replied the Tortoise, “so now there is a meter between us. And you would catch up that distance very quickly?”
  “Very quickly indeed!”
  “And yet, in that time I shall have gone a little way farther, so that now you must catch that distance up, yes?”

  “Ye-es,” said Achilles slowly.
  “And while you are doing so, I shall have gone a little way farther, so that you must then catch up the new distance,” the Tortoise continued smoothly.
  Achilles said nothing.
  “And so you see, in each moment you must be catching up the distance between us, and yet I – at the same time – will be adding a new distance, however small, for you to catch up again.”
  “Indeed, it must be so,” said Achilles wearily.
  “And so you can never catch up,” the Tortoise concluded sympathetically.
  “You are right, as always,” said Achilles sadly – and conceded the race.

  Now this might seem logical as presented, but it is not REAL. Why not? Because if Achilles could travel 10 meters to every 1 meter the Tortoise could travel, Achilles would immediately take him over in the next ten meters. That is, if Achilles traveled ten times as fast as the tortoise, he would take him over because Achilles would have traveled 20 meters by the time the tortoise traveled a little over 1 meter.

  So in the case of "This statement is false" we have an example of a non-statement. There is no true-false statement here. You're applying a non-statement to something of a different context and thus it is a false premise.

  One common misconception for JWs is that they call themselves the "one true religion" which, in fact, that would not be as accurate as saying they are the "one truest religion."

  Thus you could say "JWs are the one true religion" and that would be false. But if you said they were the "one truest religion" that would be true -- but only up until 1996. Even so, that's speaking generally.

  Even so, mind games for extreme intellectuals are fun, as long as they don't get confused.
• 

  zed is dead

  Pedantic semantics.

  zed
• 

  cyberjesus

  The statement is incomplete
• 

  Terry

  Short version: we waste our time using the words "prove" and "truth" when the object of the description is not accessible to the senses.

  Religious conversation is in and of itself a "trick of semantics".

  The fact that most of us here learned to "abuse" language while in Jehovah's Witnesses is what warped our mind.

  We took honest tools of description and misapplied them.

  It was continues to frustrate people when attempting to communicate about god.
• 

  Larsinger58

  Short version: we waste our time using the words "prove" and "truth" when the object of the description is not accessible to the senses.

  Religious conversation is in and of itself a "trick of semantics".

  I think God addresses this by providing at least one modern "miracle" that many experience to add a degree of "reality" to what happens in our minds. For all that is in the Bible and in the universe to perceive God, sometimes you do need a miracle to reaffirm. In the case of modern times, God provides the Bible and the fulfilled prophecies is what impresses us of God's power to see into the future. Case in point, the precise activities and description of the U.N. For for the elect, God has provided the "sign of the son of man." This sign is mentioned at Matthew 24:29-30. It appears in the sky and causes the elect to weep and mourn.

  We know it appears to the elect because the WTS put it in their cryptic artwork in the Revelation book:

  

  The image is from God. It shows a huge face in the clouds. The huge face is created so that you can see that the eyes are closed. The face is of an infant so that could convey the concept of a "son." But also the face is made up of black clouds because the messiah is dark complected at the second coming.

  But if you don't know this image of the sleeping/dead black child is part of the "sign of the son of man" then it means nothing. It's just a curiosity. If you know it is a sign seen by the elect, then you know WHY it is in the Revelation Book and it also confirms that the WTS is quite aware of what the sign is and what it means.

  So a lot depends on how much you know. That goes for languate too. The secret socities use language to hide things as well. Like the term, "bar-be-cue". Bar means son, as in a bar mitzvah. Cue is a reference to Cush and thus to black people. So "bar-b-que" means "son of cush." It reflects that blacks in Europe were eaten as high "CUI-sine" for centuries. Apparently, some of that got transferred over to the antebellum South and killing blacks for sport and then eating them was part of the Southern culture at one point. Apparently, black flesh tastes sweet, like pork and a common practice was to pepare a black infant in a meat pie. Terms like "honechile" and "sugar baby" reflect on the sweetness of black flesh as compared to white flesh.

  In the esoteric world of secret socities, the CUBE is linked with Christ and the TRIANGLE with Satan. Thus the well known symbol of the compass and square simply represents how Satan will conquer Christ and "bruise him in the heel" which means cutting off his foot at the heel symbolically.

  

  This simply represents the triangle dominating the square. Or the pyramid dominating the cube. The nation of Israel is based on the CUBE. The 144,000. The 12 tribes of Israel made up of three tribes on each side. The triangle represents the woman. The pyramid the breast. Or the triangle of the woman's pelvic area.

  So since you're dealing with language and usage and mind control and all that, you may as well also know how the secret socities use symbolism and language to hide secrets and meanings.

  For instance, its not a mistake that Hanzel and Gretal are described as eating from a "gingerbread house." The gingerbread man represents the black man, who was a favorite disch of Euorpeans for a while, that is, black children who were put into meat pies. Meaning? Meaning when some issues are hard to deal with, historians put some of these details in fables.

  or take the word: "buck." That's a term Southerners often applied to black male slaves. But a buck is otherwise a male deer, an animal that is both hunted as well as eaten. So what that says is that black men were once killed for sport and then eaten; he was like a buck to the slave owners.

  Or take the term, the "faithful and discreet slave." Now in the 7th Volume put out by apostate JF Rutherford, he tried to claim that CT Russell was that "wise and faithful servant" as well as the "angel of the congregation of Laodicea." That was the cultic nature of the WTS back then until it stopped working. So in 1927, JF Rutherford wanting to inherit the mantle of Russell as the FDS claimed that assigning that to an individual was "creature worship." Only now it applies to the GB. So why is that now not creature worship? The god has simply changed from an individual to a group. The average witness thinks that if they stick with this FDS they will get life. If they rebel against them, they will be cast out. By adopting this title, the FDS has become a god to the witnesses and they no longer pay any attention to what the Bible says.

  So, yes, LANGUAGE and WORDS are very fascinating. But why not explore all aspects of their usage, including occult usage?

  There are "many gods and many lords" yet only "one god and one lord." Both statements are true.
• 

  Finkelstein

  True = Larsiger58 is mentally off balanced in a state psychotic delusion

  Not True = Larsinger58 is Jesus Christ and has been given divine spiritual knowledge from god to offer to all mankind

  True = Larsiger58 is not playing with a full deck

  Not true = Larsinger58 has both oars in the water
• 

  Terry

  The Grelling–Nelson paradox arises when we consider the adjective "heterological". One can ask: Is "heterological" a heterological word? If the answer is 'no', "heterological" is autological. This leads to a contradiction. In this case, "heterological" does not describe itself: it must be a heterological word. If the answer is 'yes', "heterological" is heterological. This again leads to a contradiction, because if the word "heterological" describes itself, it is autological.
• 

  Terry

  Analogy is the Interstate Fwy system of cognition in human thought.

  Creating specific categories is the name of the cognition game.

  Analogy is the mechanism that drives it ( analogy is to thinking as a motor is to a car)

  Analogy is the motor of the car of thought

  Making an analogy=the perception of finding common essence/function/connection between 2 things. (Skateboard__Automobile)

  Analogies do not "serve" a purpose. They simply occur because we observe and connect.

  'Capture' those observations and assign significances= CATEGORIES

  The sun...a tree....the cast shadow under the tree (deficit of light)

  Snow..a tree....snow shadow (deficit of snow) (The use of the word shadow in the second instance is an inflation into a category)

  Analogies inflate observed instances into shadow concepts=Imaginary infalted categories. How? Through abstraction (removing qualities)

  Pluralizing an anology

  A single entity becomes a Category w/o any difference between entity and category.

  There may be a new young Eisnstein among us here tonight (Pluralizing concept of Einstein into a category).

  It may be the next Catcher in the Rye (Inflated into a category of kinds of books)

  Beirut is the Paris of the Middle East (analogy into category by abstracting qualities)

  Jerusalem is a Mecca for tourists (abstracted into a category)

  CHUNKING

  person/marriage unit/family/society The single entity is subsumed by the chunked unit. (The person is swallowed up into subsequent categories.)

  Our mental units are packed in until invisible and must be UNpacked to extract back into units.

  Think/write/speak=word choice guided by personal analogy (decision is subjective)

  Which word do we choose and how?

  "Dog" ugly one in the selection? or best friend example: If a fellow's best friend was his girlfriend would he choose "dog" to describe her?

  Word choice is a competition among alternatives guided by personal analogy

  Pose/Poise

  Count your blessings/thank my lucky stars

  Human thought is seeking highest level of ABSTRACTION (removing categories by analogy)
• 

  OnTheWayOut

  "This statement is not true."

  That's the stuff of cocktail party philosophers.

  There's also Legalese, the language of dodging the correct understanding of a matter and answering in a technically correct way, dependent upon circumstances or strained definitions. This is the language of lawyers and especially of politicians.

  But true debate and discussion can be had. We can actually assert what we really mean and debate/discuss it. When someone ducks into legalese or the silly realm of extreme philosophy, others can call them out on it.

  "Does God exist?" Well, that depends on how you define "God," "exist," and sometimes even the word "Does."

  What we really mean is "Does (or did) at least one force greater than man exist that has intelligence and had something to do with man being here on earth?" But we don't have to say all that. It's pretty much a given. If you further want to define "force" and "greater" and "intelligence" and all those other words, then buy me another beverage and I might listen to you until it runs out.

  If you want to impress the lowest denominator in a room and twist logic and reason the same way as those who would be twisting mathematical equations (as long as you do the same thing to both sides of the equal sign), then the highest denominator in the room should leave you to your fun. But if you want to seriously debate/discuss, you would not play "legalese" with your words.

  A prime example: The Flying Spaghetti Monster is used as a serious counter-argument to validating Intelligent Design by teaching it in school. But it is just legalese designed to point out that ID is just legalese also. There are no serious debates at universities, or on public television or anywhere about whether FSM actually exists. (Because you know he does.)