thoughts.txt

                                                                  August 6, 2015
                                                                        Thursday

                                    THOUGHTS

What, if any, is the value in being wrong? First it must be established what
"wrong" is, in the first place. It is easy to be wrong about "external" things;
things outside of our own mind. "The rock will fall," one could say... and be
wrong when, after throwing it up, finds that it has gotten stuck in a tree. We
can make claims "internal" (and thus easier to defend) by qualifying them with
"I think," or "I feel." What makes these qualifications so truth-granting? It
might be that nobody has the ability to see into another's experience. Lying is
when some truth is believed yet the opposite is communicated; but how can claims
about one's own experience ever be called into question? We can only appeal to
the very same one for evidence that what was thought or felt isn't actually so;
yet that second inquiry deserves a third inquiry, and so on. ("I think I thought
that...") Such qualifications can also be used to communicate uncertainty; where
claiming "X" is to say "I am certain that X," claiming "I think that X" is to
say "I am not entirely certain about X." So what does it mean to be certain of
something? Perhaps one has some evidence, or some evidence as well as some
method for interpreting evidence. (It would seem that evidence is, after all,
just information with an interpretation.) Perhaps certainty is a construction.
"My construction exists; look, it is right here." Ideological constructions seem
to have the property of multiplicity: what has been conceived may have
consequences that we do not immediately understand. Truth about "nature" seems
to reveal itself over time; ideological constructions may not reveal themselves
at all. What is the process by which the consequences of an ideological
construction reveal themselves? The rock falls in front of our eyes to show us
gravity; but what happens to the natural numbers to show us that the sum of them
up to and including n is n(n+1)/2? Perhaps argument, or "proofs"...