<aside> 🕰️ From Guy's Lifetoward wiki : TruthTetheredToExistence, April 2013 Original posted by Guy to lifetoward @ Yahoo Groups 12 Mar 2001

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<aside> 💡 This post is a keeper, but I’ve just written what might be seen as a brand new edition from the ground up here.

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New comments from Apr 2013: In light of recent discussions in the Philosophy for Real Life APDG group, this posting in one sense strongly supports Jim Davis' initial thread-starting views. On the other hand it also leaves open the idea that truth remains subjective in essence, suggesting that we come to confidence in truth only by continually subjecting it as honestly as we can to our experience of common reality.

I suppose for me the difference between philosophy and religion is what level of premise you'd take on faith. If one is to accept a premise which one cannot support with any evidence or reasoning, then one is in the realm of religion, where anything can be true, if only one convinces oneself of it. e.g.: "God said it, I believe it, that settles it!" -- This approach to truth is in fact the enemy of the pursuit of the true life.

More from Apr 2013: See the key here is that while taking an "objective reality" as absolute has some problems, namely that no one has access to objective reality except through subjective model-laden means, taking a "non-objective assertion" as absolute has even more problems (ie. the "my god is the one and only God" problem). What I understand better now is that appealing to absolute truths of any kind is always a political expedient or a type of narcissism or both. It demonstrates a lack of exactly the form of humility which matters philosophically.

That to me is not the idea of philosophy, which says that we merely discover what's already true regardless of our beliefs.

Some will say there's no such thing as discovery free of beliefs, and with that I'd have to agree in certain contexts, however, it has to do with the "priniciples vs. values" discussion. No tenet must be held beyond being proved obsolete or inaccurate. Our minds don't dictate how the universe is. Instead our minds only learn to discover what the universe is. I was quick to shoot down Lewis' idea of a common absolute morality because I myself had to grow through the rigorous disproof of that. I know that it is unfounded, and furthermore I know that much greater happiness and understanding and peace in the world is gained when that bit of untruth is rejected. To learn what I have learned about that allows for a cessation of dreary judgment, acceptance of change, and therefore a more true appreciation of the beauty of this life.

This phrase "where anything can be true" is a very scary thing. To live in a paradigm lacking provable consistent behaviors is paramount to having one's mind erased or randomized, rather like what sensory deprivation would do to one's mind. Interestingly, one of my best images about the dangers and horrible fear that should rightly be associated with living in a paradigm lacking provable truth comes from CSLewis himself. In his book "Voyage of the Dawn Treader", the ship encounters an island of darkness supposed by rumor to be "where dreams come true". At first they row into it bravely to discover what is there. It's pitch dark and even their lanterns glow no further than a few feet. After a while they hear a crazy man yelling for help, but also exhorting them to flee for their lives. They find and rescue this man by sound, and ask him "What's so terrible here? Is this not where dreams come true?" He says, "No you don't understand. This is where dreams come true." ie. Here you never wake up. As the meaning of this dawns on the travellers, they all rush to the oars, turn the boat around and row as hard as they can, all the while trying to control their thoughts. They almost completely give up hope because rowing out takes longer than rowing in. But a white bird eventually comes to guide them out and they make it, exhausted, away from there. Meanwhile the man they rescued is later to be delivered to a place where he is allowed to "sleep without dreams", his heaven. (BTW Star Trek TNG has had an episode of a very similar theme... they travel to a place where people's thoughts become reality... they get the heck outta there as soon as they can figure out how.)

We see it over and over again in human experience. The mind is capable of running amuck when separated from the senses and from proof of real existence. Contrary to what some Yogis might say, total chaos (entropy) is no place for a living creature to be seeking a home for his mind. (Admittedly, the context of my statement is very important, as there are certain advantages to studying chaos.) Life is the synthetic process which brings together meaning and structure and definition, in pursuit of unbounded development of order. However, it must be noted that the mind tends to contain much chaos by default, to the extent it is active but not disciplined to the ways of reality. Were the travelers on the Dawn Treader or Enterprise to have the ability to maintain full discipline of their minds, they could have lived as gods where they were going.

But we live on the battlefront between chaos and order. (See this poem.) As living creatures we always will. We will never fully understand ourselves and so, total discipline of that variety will likely never be ours. But that is well. For I think you would not want another person you know to be a god in your world. It probably is not even possible for more fundamental reasons that I'm sorta pointing at here.

The chaos in our minds gives us creativity, problem solving ability, uniqueness, emotion, and mystery. (See the part about "my heart is" in this poem.) The advantage of it also lies in our keeping our selves clear of self-definition. We never need to limit ourselves, if we recognize only that we are not gods in reality. We can change. We do change. Our minds would be best brought along for that beautiful ride, not as a stubborn mule but as a happy child at play and full of wonder.