Intellectual Virtue #3: T. Ryan Byerly – Part II: Definition of Virtue

Terminology note: 'Intellectual virtue', 'philosophical virtue', and 'virtues of inquiry' all mean the same thing.

 

"When a person fails in these ways—not caring about the truth, not believing what is warranted, attending only selectively to relevant evidence—he fails in a particularly bad way. He fails as an inquirer." (151)

 

 "These virtues [intellectual virtues] are united in being conceived of as habits or dispositions of inquiry that orient us toward achieving good intellectual ends. They are, we might say, excellent ways of being good for intellectual goals—goals such as obtaining true beliefs, believing responsibly, and achieving knowledge and understanding. Intellectual virtues are traits that make persons and their communities good at accomplishing these valuable intellectual goals. They are stable features of our character that help us to carry out the task of inquiry with excellence.

    It is a basic assumption of part 2 that these intellectual virtues can be acquired and strengthened. Those who don't have them can gain them through practice, and those who have them to some degree can have them in greater measure." (152)

 

So it sounds like virtues are:

 

1) Stable features of our character;

 

2) Dispositions, which I take to be a specific kind of feature of a person's character (character being something you have but are not identical to). A disposition is a tendency to behave, react, or take on a certain attitude given a particular context.

 

(Thus, virtues are stable dispositions.) 

 

So an angry person is a person who tends to behave angrily, to react with anger, or to become angry given relevant contexts.

 

So 'disposition' is basically synonymous with 'habit' or 'tendency'. An angry person has a habit of behaving angrily, reacting with anger, or becoming angry. But 'habit' may not be the best word, as it evokes the idea of bad habits versus good habits, which are frequent behaviors built up through repeated action, like the habit of brushing your teeth after every meal or turning on the coffee machine every morning. But a person with a disposition might not have a habit in that sense of a frequent or common behavior. If someone has a habit of being generous, it sounds like they are often generous. But someone could be disposed toward generosity and yet never be generous because they lack the disposable funds. This of course can be clarified by: a habit or tendency given such and such circumstances. A generous person has a habit or tendency of being generous given that they have enough money.

 

'Habit' still doesn't sound quite right to me, as it evokes the idea of subconscious reflex, like muscle memory. But when a person decides to be generous, it may not be like muscle memory at all, but quite conscious and deliberate, but still evidence that this person has a disposition for being generous.

 

You might want to say that a generous person is disposed to give even when they don't have enough money. After all, when a poor person gives, isn't that much more meaningful, more indicative of their heart? (Jesus and the Widow's Offering comes to mind.)

 

I think common sense would say that it's not prudent to give when doing so places yourself in a position of needing aid, unless you have good reason for making that sacrifice. It's undeniable that there are many wealthy people who could easily afford to give a much larger percentage of their income or wealth and still live a highly comfortable life, but they refuse to do this, perhaps because a) they don't want to empower people they look down upon, b) they believe that "the poors" don't deserve the money and don't want to express, or be seen expressing, any sense of valuing someone they, or others, deem lesser, and c) they want to maximize the power differential between them and everyone else. So 'generous' to me evokes the idea of a person who refuses to be greedy and hateful in this way, and gives when they aren't forced to, giving out of a genuine love of others and desire to help them.

Setting generosity aside and taking another example: it makes sense to say that someone would save people from a burning building had they the power to do so and were in the right place at the right time. ‘Disposed’ is like ‘poised’ in this way, and dispositions answer modal questions about what a person would do (or very likely would do) or how they would react or what attitude they would take under certain circumstances. (Could it be that dispositions are what ground modal facts about human behavior? What makes it true that I would fly around for fun were I granted the power to fly? Why, features of my character! My dispositions! Hypothetical truths can be grounded by current, non-hypothetical facts. So true modal claims about myself make reference to real properties about myself.)

Virtues are, after all, a matter of where the heart is at and not where the body is at.

It might be tempting to say that a person who is merely disposed to be brave and yet never gets the opportunity to be brave can’t be a brave person. A brave person is someone who in fact acts bravely. But the problem in that case is that there is no evidence that this person is a brave person. So when we describe someone as brave, we are describing them as evidently brave.

In short, dispositions are not the same as habits or tendencies.

So a person can be virtuous without opportunity. But there will be no evidence of said virtue without opportunity.

 

3) Virtues orient us toward achieving good goals.

So more specific kinds of virtues will specify that goal. Intellectual virtues orient us toward achieving good goals related to truth: the goal of maximizing one’s true beliefs, minimizing one’s false beliefs, and increasing one’s knowledge and understanding. 

So in a nutshell virtues are stable dispositions that orient us toward achieving good goals.

Four extra notes:

1) When I get to Aristotle I will discuss the relationship between virtue and emotion. While in this post I defined the disposition in terms of behavior, reaction, or attitude (which sounds fine to me), it may be more accurate to define the disposition purely in terms of emotion (which of course leads to corresponding action).

2) The language here (e.g. ‘orient us’) is consequentialist. So virtues result in good consequences; they enable us and indeed cause us to achieve good goals.

3) ‘Good goals’ refers to goals related to maximizing flourishing, maximizing eudaimonia, or more simply maximizing goodness.

 

4) We might also want our definition of virtue to touch on the relationship between virtue and wisdom, vice, and golden mean. Perhaps by this: Wisdom is a particular mental power, the power to discern the golden mean (to discern what is a vice and what is a virtue), which is the balance between two vices – the virtuous behavior / emotional proportion / reaction / attitude. And so wisdom leads to virtue, and virtues are stable dispositions of behavior / emotional proportion / reaction / attitude that orient us toward achieving good goals, behavior / emotional proportion / reaction / attitude that strikes a balance between two vices that fail to orient us toward achieving good goals.

This means that good intellectual goals are subordinate to the more fundamental goal of maximizing flourishing, and are good because they are necessary for the more fundamental goal of maximizing flourishing.

Intellectual Virtue #3: T. Ryan Byerly – Part I: Skills vs Virtues

Byerly, T. Ryan. Introducing logic and critical thinking: the skills of reasoning and the virtues of inquiry. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2017.

 

Part I: Skills vs Virtues 

 

"There are various ways to distinguish between skills on the one hand and virtues on the other. But perhaps the most important difference between the two is the following: a person is not deficient as a person for lacking any particular skills, but a person is deficient as a person for lacking virtues, including intellectual ones." (1)

 

Because I reject free will, I reject the notion of someone being deficient as a person. Byerly goes on to give the example: Lacking in basketball skills makes you deficient as a basketball player, but not as a person. But I think this kind of specification must be carried through in all contexts. Being deficient "as a person" is too vague and doesn't make any sense to me. Being deficient as a reasoner or as a decision-maker or as a flourishing-maximizer or as an empathizer – that is more specific and makes more sense to me.

 

A person's ability to reason or to make decisions or to maximize flourishing is largely dependent on their intelligence, which is something beyond their control. And so one's reasoning abilities, decision-making abilities, empathy, and abilities with respect to maximizing flourishing are likewise beyond one's control, and so they do not reflect in any meaningful way the quality of the person, but rather the quality of what the person happens to have. In the same way that basketball skills are something a person has, but is not identical to, so too are virtues something a person has but is not identical to.

 

The idea of a "bad person", as in an evil person, is a simplified shorthand for a person who lacks empathy, lacks understanding of the badness of the pain of others, lacks the understanding needed to maximize flourishing and minimize suffering, and who disregards the well-being of others (this being still an oversimplification of what it means to be an evil person).

 

Many skills don't speak to a person's empathy or understanding of the goodness of the flourishing of others, while virtues do*, so in that sense there is a moral distinction between skill and virtue, but I see no reason to make a moral distinction between skill and virtue in the sense of what either says about the quality of the person per se rather than the quality of what the person has. 

 

*Some skills, like being a skilled parent or doctor, do indicate high empathy (I'm including empathy-based skills like bedside manner, care, and genuine listening), while a person's "virtues" of self-control and discipline with respect to diet and exercise might reflect their desire to take advantage of the halo effect and manipulate others. So what appears to be a mere skill may indicate serious virtue, and what may appear to be a virtue may ironically indicate vice, or a mix of virtue and vice.

 

If skills reflect a person's understanding, capacity, dispositions, and habits, and if virtues also reflect a person's understanding, capacity, dispositions, and habits, then skills and virtues are very similar. Except skills are generally value-neutral in that they can be used in virtuous or vicious ways.

 

I imagine I will return to the topic of skills vs virtues when I read Zagzebski's book on virtue. I also imagine that the conversation of skill vs virtue will be similar to the conversation of capacity (ability) vs virtue. E.g. Intelligence is usually not taken to be a skill or virtue, but a capacity / ability.

07 Sep 2025 - Objectivity vs Subjectivity

Daily Thoughts: Sharon Rawlette shares this quote from RM Hare in her book The Feeling of Value, pg 9:

"I really think the terms 'objective' and 'subjective' have introduced nothing but confusion into moral philosophy; that they have never been given a clear meaning, and have frustrated all serious discussion of the subject."

Rawlette goes on to make a distinction between mind-dependence and judgment-dependence. She says (pgs 14,15):

Quote:

I don't myself use the term 'mind-independence' because, given what I take to be the most plausible form of realism—a theory based on the intrinsic value and disvalue of certain forms of phenomenology—to define moral realism as a claim about the "mind-independence" of moral facts would be misleading. On my view, moral facts are not mind-independent. They are quite dependent on whether people are in the mental states of pleasure or pain. And indeed, most mainstream realist views do take moral facts to be at least in part dependent on facts about pleasure and pain. However, on my view and on these other realist views, facts about the goodness of pleasure and the badness of pain . . . are judgment-independent.

End quote.

Thoughts, which aim to clarify the situation: 

* We have experiences and we have judgments.

 
* For example, Bob has an experience of a certain image in Bob's mind. Bob judges this image to be a memory: Bob remembers having pancakes for breakfast today. Bob's experience cannot be "wrong"; it's just data. It's the judgment that can be wrong: the image in Bob's mind is a memory of him eating pancakes for breakfast, but it was yesterday, not today! Bob misremembered. Bob's interpretation of his experience is wrong.

 
* So we have experience facts and judgment facts—facts about what experiences have taken place, who had them, what caused them, etc., and facts about what judgments have taken place, who made them, what caused them, etc.

 
* Experience facts are phenomenal facts / qualia facts. E.g. the experience of tasting food that is too salty.

 
* Judgment facts are not phenomenal facts, though maybe there is always a quale / qualia that accompanies a judgment. And so for every judgment fact, there is a corresponding phenomenal fact or facts (the mental experience of making the judgment or having the judgment form in your mind).

 
* Some true propositions are made true by experience facts (experience-dependent truths) and some true propositions are made true by judgment facts (judgment-dependent truths).

 
* I guess both of these are subjective facts? And so 'subjective fact' is vague over experience-dependent truth and judgment-dependent truth.

 
* Some true propositions are made true by facts that do not depend on either experience or judgment. These are objective truths.

 
* Facts are states of affairs.

 
* States of affairs have an objectivity to them. So subjective facts are in some sense objective by virtue of being facts.

 
* That sense is this: There are objective facts about subjective facts. For any subjective fact, there is the state of affairs that includes the subjective fact. So for every subjective fact, there is an objective fact about that fact.

 
* This is why there can be mind-dependent truths, which sound subjective, that are objectively (judgment-independently) true.

 
* E.g. "Bob liked the movie." This is mind-dependently true (which is the same as saying experience-dependently true) as it depends on Bob's mind (i.e. Bob's experience), but it's judgment-independently true because people can be mistaken about this claim. E.g. Alice believes Bob liked the movie because Bob told her he did, but little does Alice know that Bob was lying. So Alice's judgment that "Bob liked the movie" is mistaken.

 
* (So are judgments the same as beliefs?)

 
* "This food is too salty." Is this a statement made true by an experience (experience-dependent claim) or is it made true by a judgment (judgment-dependent claim), or both?

 
* Bob has a certain experience (the experience fact) which causes Bob to form the belief that the food is 'too salty' (the judgment fact).

 
* Bob shares his food with Alice. She does not have the too salty experience and thus does not form the judgment that the food is too salty. So the judgment "This food is too salty" is true or false depending on the experience fact that grounds the judgment (i.e. the judgment is explained by the experience).

 
* But doesn't that mean the truth of "This food is too salty" is not exactly judgment-dependent, but experience-dependent? Because it's not the judgment that makes the claim true or false, but the experience behind the judgment. (You could say that if the judgment is sincere, then the judgment just is a report of the experience, so a proposition being made true by a judgment or experience is the same kind of proposition. So judgment-dependent truths and experience-dependent truths are the same, both made true by the experience. What would an example be of a proposition whose truth is judgment-dependent and yet not experience-dependent? That is, a statement that is made true by the belief or judgment itself, but not an experience? I can't think of any. Even the judgment "I am in pain" is a report of an experience, and it's the experience of pain, not the judgment, that makes it true that I am in pain.)

 
* If that's right, then we have experience-based truths (propositions made true by experience facts), which are subjective truths, and objective truths (propositions made true by non-experience facts).

 
* But where does that leave a proposition like "I liked the song"?

 
* On the one hand, it's a subjective fact because its truth depends on who you ask – on whose experience you are referring to. But on the other hand, if someone says "No you didn't!", then they have said something false about my experience (assuming I really did like the song). It's true that I liked the song regardless of what someone else says.

 
* I guess it depends on the referent: The statement "This song sounds great!" is true or false depending on who you ask (on whose experience you are referring to). There's no fixed referent. But "This song sounds great to Ben" is true or false depending on Ben's experience. Ben's experience is the fixed referent. So while "This song sounds great" is subjective (true or false depending on someone's experience), "This song sounds great to Ben" is objective (true or false regardless of anyone's experience, with exception to Ben's experience).

 
* So "This song sounds great" has no definite truth value, because its truth value depends on someone's experience, and so you need a referent (a person's experience) to determine the truth value.

 
* "This song sounds great to Ben" has a definite truth value, because it depends on Ben's experience, and so you have your referent.

 
* But that means both of these statements have their truth dependent on experience facts. So both are subjective. The difference is that the first has no definite truth value while the second does, which is why people can have mistaken judgments about the second.

 
* So does that mean the better distinction than 'objective vs subjective' is between propositions with definite vs indefinite truth values? Because "This song sounds great to Ben" has a definite truth value, a person can be wrong when making this claim. But "This song sounds great" has no definite truth value, so you cannot be wrong when making this claim until you clarify: to whom the song sounds good.

 
* (But there are still propositions whose truth does not depend on anyone's experience.)

 
* This is not necessarily to say that "This song sounds great" is a gappy sentence, i.e. a genuine proposition that is neither true nor false (because its truth is indefinite, lacking the referent needed to make it definite). Rather, "This song sounds great" is too vague to express a proposition until made precise.

 
Maybe we need to first answer the question of what it means to be mistaken?

 
* Correspondence / representational theory of truth: Propositional beliefs are sentences. Sentences represent propositions. Propositions represent facts. Representation is transitive, so sentences represent facts. Propositions, and thus sentences, are made out of properties bound together by grammatical rules which set out the exact properties and how they relate within a sentence.

 
* This means you have "inner" properties and "outer" properties. When there is an inner/outer property match, you have truth, and when there is a mismatch, a misrepresentation, then you have falsity.

 
* E.g. a map of the US has inner properties representing the outer properties of the US territory. If the map shows that there is a pond somewhere and you go there and the pond has since dried up, then the inner properties do not match the outer properties and the map is now misrepresenting the area.

 
* In some cases misrepresentation occurs at a higher level of representation. E.g. let's say a picture is taken of a mountain. By coincidence, the photo contains an optical illusion that causes humans to, at least initially, form a false belief about the area the photo is taken of. The representation of the mountain by the photo is fairly accurate (though only capturing a tiny portion of the whole thing), but because of the optical illusion our belief, an interpretation of what we are seeing, is not accurate.

 
* So the order of representation is:

 
* Mountain -> Photo -> Visual data -> Belief (judgment). The visual data is corrupted by the optical illusion, leading to a false belief (until the illusion is recognized and the belief corrected).

 
* So when I say "The moon is smaller than the sun", that should be an objective statement, i.e. a statement whose truth does not depend on anyone's experience. But if truth just is a match between inner and outer properties, and if the inner properties are the properties of my belief (and the outer properties are the properties of the moon and sun), then all truth claims depend on inner properties of beliefs. And all beliefs depend on consciousness, and thus experience, and so really all claims are experience-dependent in some sense.

 
* So I started off saying that all propositions are objective because propositions are made true by facts and the very notion of 'fact' is objective, and now I'm saying that all propositions are subjective because all propositions involve inner properties which are experience-dependent.

 
* Maybe all beliefs have inner properties which are experience-dependent, but the propositions represented by the beliefs have inner properties which are not experience-dependent. This is why propositions are discovered, and why we have necessary propositions which exist (okay, it's debatable whether propositions exist; substitute this with a paraphrase from your favored nominal theory if applicable) independently of any consciousness whatsoever. Beliefs represent the proposition, so propositions ground our beliefs.

 
* So the order of representation is:

 
* Beliefs (Sentences) -> Propositions -> Facts.

 
* Properties can play a dual-role; for example, the properties of propositions are inner with respect to facts (because they represent facts), but are outer with respect to beliefs (because beliefs represent propositions).

 
* This could relate to how fictions work: The claim "Sauron reunited with the One Ring" is false with respect to the outer properties of the Lord of the Rings canon, and the stories within the Lord of the Rings canon are false with respect to the outer properties of real life. (And the claim "Sauron reunited with the One Ring" could be true with respect to the outer properties of a fan fiction, which in turn are false with respect to the outer properties of the main canon.)

 
* An objective proposition is supposed to be a proposition made true by a non-experience fact, and a subjective proposition is made true by an experience fact. But being "made true" means there is a match between representation and represented, between inner and outer properties.

 
* So the distinction between objectivity and subjectivity was supposed to be what makes each claim true. But really what makes each claim true is property matching.

 
* So "The moon is smaller than the sun" is true because the inner properties of the proposition (as represented by the sentence) represent, i.e. match, the properties of the moon and sun and the relational properties between the two.

 
* "Ben liked the song" is true because the inner properties of the proposition match the properties of the fact, which happens to be an experience fact. If Ben did not like the song, then there would be a property mismatch and the statement would be false.

 
* "The song is great" – by itself this is too vague to express a proper proposition.

 
* Precisfy(1): "This song sounds great to Ben" – made true or false by an experience fact.

 
* Precisify(2): "The song sounds great to many people" – made true or false by a collection of experience facts.

 
* Precisify(3): "The song is 1) Not extremely short, like one second; 2) Not extremely long, like one thousand hours; 3) Takes advantage of music theory in a number of ways; 4) The song 'comes from the soul' of the composer, meaning that it expresses emotions and feelings that come from a place of deep feeling and imagination; 5) The song achieves a balance between simplicity and complexity – not so complex so as to alienate the audience but not so simple so as to be uninteresting; 6) Is original and not too similar to any song already composed, providing novelty, entertainment, excitement, and a kind of 'horizon-expanding' effect on those who hear it, showing a musical space hitherto unexplored, inspiring future musicians to further explore that space; 7) Contains virtuosity on the part of the performers; 8) Is recorded in high-fidelity by sophisticated equipment in an acoustically appropriate environment; 9) Is well-mastered and produced, ensuring perfect rhythm for the whole song and balanced volume for each track; 10) Contains mathematical, puzzle-like symmetries and patterns that appeal to the human brain in the form of motifs, phrases, novelty, variation, repetition, melody, harmony, etc.; 11) Contains a story-like structure of rising and falling, and climax and resolution, and it is because of these features of the song that explain why it sounds great to many people."

 
* Some of these, maybe all of them, are non-experience facts about the song itself. So in some combination of these senses, "The song is great" is not only meaningful (and thus a genuine proposition), but true without an experience fact making it true.

 
* But you might argue that what counts as "not too short", "not too long", "a story-like structure", etc., depends on how people experience the song. A song being "too short" just is a song producing the "Huh? That's it?" feeling when someone listens to it.

 
* But on the other hand, it seems objective to me whether a song has a story-like structure to it, and you can't fit that structure in a one second song. (And even if you could, it would not be a substantial story.) It's not a coincidence or an unexplained fact that a very short song produces the "Huh?" feeling it does. There's something true about the song itself (in combination with truths about our brains and psychology) that explains that experience. And so music has some objectivity to it. By denying that objectivity, you fail to fully explain why it is that songs have the effects they do on us.

 

Question 1: Are experiences representational? Surely we would at least say visual experiences are representational; my visual experience of a tree represents the tree. So my visual experience of the tree contains inner properties that can match or fail to match the tree. But then that means my experiences (at least visual ones) can be inaccurate.

 

Answer 1: Even if there is visual representation, it's still important to distinguish which representation is inaccurate: the visual representation itself or my interpretation of the visual data.

 

Let's say I see a photo of a Lego figure next to a human. The Lego figure is massive compared to the human. I interpret this visual experience as meaning there is a very large Lego figure next to a normal human. But really, the Lego figure is actually a normal Lego figure set very close to the camera lens, and the human is far away, and the background is neutralized so that context clues don't immediately give away what's happening. In this case it might be tempting to say that my visual image of a large Lego figure next to a human was inaccurate. But actually the visual image is a perfectly accurate representation of a Lego figure set very close to the camera, etc. It was my interpretation of the image that was inaccurate.

 

Answer 2: This reminds me of Kant's concept of noumenal vs phenomenal. A tree has noumenal properties, and my visual experience of the tree has phenomenal properties. There's no reason to think, says Kant, that there is any match at all between the two. We can be confident, even certain, in the phenomenal properties, but we can have no confidence that there is any match at all between the inner properties of the phenomenal data and the outer, noumenal properties.

 

I suppose I'm just not that skeptical. I suspect that what's happening is that we recognize that a tree has many, many properties that we can't see, and so our visual image fails to capture the tree in its totality. So the hidden properties are the "noumenal" properties. But even if that's true, it could still be that a tree truly has the shape, color, texture, etc., that it has as represented by our visual experience. It helps that we have multiple ways of perceiving the tree; we can touch the tree and "see" its shape that way, and the "touch shape" and the "sight shape" match each other, increasing our confidence that the tree really has that shape, texture, etc. Plus, other people report seeing and feeling the same thing we do, so we know it's not just a hallucination, but something real and external to us that affects others in the exact same way.

 

Just because our first person data fails to represent the entirety of an object (because we lack total data, not because the data we have is inaccurate), that doesn't mean it fails to represent some of the object. But again, that would be a misrepresentation at the level of interpretation, not experience. If I see a tree and conclude that that's all there is to the tree, then that's a false conclusion.

 

So my guess is that our first person data is always an accurate representation of something, and it's our interpretation that goes wrong.

 

Even if I hallucinate and see a pink rabbit dashing by, that first person data is not representing an actual pink rabbit dashing by. Rather, that first person data is coming from within my brain, representing a certain brain state, and my brain presents that experience to me as if it is genuine visual data when it's not. This is why the statement "I saw a pink rabbit!" is false but the statement "I hallucinated a pink rabbit!" is true. The inner pink rabbit properties of the experience do not match any outer pink rabbit properties, because there is no pink rabbit. But the inner properties of the proposition "I hallucinated a pink rabbit!" match the outer phenomenal properties of the hallucination.

 

Answer 3: Representations cannot misrepresent themselves. So in the case of representations themselves, such as first person data / qualia, there is a phenomenal / noumenal collapse; the phenomenon and the noumenon are one and the same. The phenomenal properties of qualia and the noumenal properties of qualia are identical. Or put another way, when you have properties that aren't in a representing / represented relationship, then there is no representation – no inner or outer properties, only properties.

 

This is why our experiences, our first person data, cannot be wrong. But our interpretations of that data involve representation, which entails a separation between inner and outer properties, allowing for a mismatch.

 

Question 2: The properties of a representation need not match the properties of what is represented, and indeed this cannot be the case. A mountain is large and heavy, while a photo of a mountain is small and light. A pipe can be smoked, while a painting of a pipe cannot be. Kansas is roughly 82,000 square miles; a map of Kansas is not. So how are the properties of a representation supposed to match the properties of what's being represented?

 

Answer: There need not be total property matching between representation and represented to have an accurate representation, and indeed there cannot be. The property 'representing' and the property 'being represented' are two different properties, so it's always trivially necessary that representing objects and represented objects are different. But 'representation' itself just is a concept about property matching.

 

While a painting of a pipe cannot be smoked, a painting of a pipe can create within us a visual image of something brown, curvy, etc., the same visual image that a pipe creates within us. A hallucination of a pink rabbit represents a pink rabbit in the sense that both hallucinating a pink rabbit and seeing an actual pink rabbit produce within us an experience of seeing a pink rabbit. So you have partial representation, and this partial representation explains why it is that a person who hallucinates a pink rabbit might incorrectly conclude that they really saw a pink rabbit. But the experience does not represent an actual pink rabbit anymore than an experience of imagining a unicorn represents a real unicorn. Instead, both represent something going on in the brain (or, in the case of identity theory, both are identical to a particular brain state caused by something other than an actual pink rabbit or unicorn).

 

Question 3: What about self-justifying beliefs / self-fulfilling prophecies? Example: Medical reports say that if I believe I will get better, then I am more likely to get better. So my belief that I will get better might make it true that I do get better. So this would be an example of a judgment-dependent truth; the judgment that I will get better makes it true that I will.

 

Stress can worsen your health. So illness can create a feedback loop: The illness causes you emotional stress, which worsens the illness, which causes more stress. Being convinced that you will get better lessens stress. If the stress caused by worrying is the tipping point for recovery, and believing you will get better prevents your stress from reaching that tipping point, thus allowing you to recover, then it seems as though believing you will get better truly did cause the absence of stress and thus caused your recovery. Assuming that future contingents can be meaningful and true (which may not be the case), and assuming that your recovery is a future contingent (which may not be the case, as it could be necessary), then "I will get better" in this case is a future contingent made true by the judgment itself, and thus is a judgment-dependent, but not experience-dependent, truth.

 

I doubt that future contingents can be meaningful, I doubt that they can be true, and I suspect that everything is necessary, so I doubt their possibility.

 

Second set of thoughts:

 

* What does it mean for something to be objectively versus subjectively true?

 

* What does it mean for something to be true?

 

* First, what does it mean for something to exist? It seems that any attempt to define existence leads to circularity:

 

Exist(1): To exist is to be (exist as) the value of a bound variable;

 

Exist(2): To exist is to instantiate (exist with) at least one property;

 

Exist(3): To exist is to be a property. 

 

And so on.

 

When a concept is phenomenally defined, trying to define it leads to circularity / tautology:

 

Red: A red color.

 

Pain: A painful feeling. 

 

What is that which is intrinsically good? Happiness. And what is happiness? That which is intrinsically good.

 

The reason we run into circular or tautologous definitions for phenomenal concepts like red and happiness is because these concepts cannot be defined semantically, but only phenomenally. So we can only gesture to the real definition, which is a phenomenal definition.

 

So one theory is that the reason why attempts to define 'exist' leads to circularity / tautology is because 'exist' must be, like red and happiness, phenomenally defined.

 

(Another theory is that 'exist' is a basic concept that cannot be analyzed. There's probably other competing theories, including one which says 'exist' can be reduced and need not result in circularity.)

 

What is the best way to gesture toward phenomenal definitions?

 

Red is an experience, a visual experience of a particular color that is different from other colors. There is an intrinsic redness to this experience.

 

Happiness is an experience, an experience with certain qualities to it: it is desirable for its own sake, it motivates us to pursue it, it has a worthiness to it, it makes life worth living, a complete lack of it would make life not worth living (at least, in the absence of any pains, no more worth living than not). There is an intrinsic happiness or goodness to this experience.

 

For something to exist is for it to have a certain kind of "ontological positivity to it", as opposed to not existing, which lacks that positivity. There is a somethingness to that which exists, and there is a nothingness to that which does not.

 

But how to capture this notion of positivity? Certainly our experiences have a self-evident somethingness to them. And a lack of experience lacks this somethingness.

 

So to exist is to be an experience, to be that which grounds / causes / explains experience, or to be that which is disposed to be an experience or disposed to ground / cause / explain an experience.

 

The undeniable positivity to experience transfers to that which grounds / causes / explains the experience. So that which causes experiences, either dispositionally or in practice, inherits that positivity.

 

So for a property to exist is for that property to be an experiential property, to ground / cause / explain experiential properties, or to be disposed to ground / cause / explain experiential properties.

 

Even if there were no experiencers in our universe, the stars and planets would still exist because 'star' and 'planet' denote bundles of properties disposed to ground / cause / explain experiential properties, which certainly exist and could not exist without those prior properties.

 

So for God to exist is for God to be an experiential property, to ground / cause / explain our experiential properties, or to be disposed to ground / cause / explain any experiential properties under possible circumstances. For God to fail to exist is for God to not be an experienced property, to fail to ground / cause / explain our experiential properties, and to fail to be disposed to ground / cause / explain any experiential properties under possible circumstances.

 

In short, to exist is to be a first-person property or to be a third-person property. To put in oversimplified terms, to exist is to be an experience or to be that which causes an experience. This is a circular definition because 'exist' must be phenomenally defined, just as definitions for red and intrinsic good are circular because they too must be phenomenally defined.

 

Note: The word 'red' can refer to phenomenal red – the first-person experience of redness – but it can also refer to non-phenomenal red – the third-person properties responsible for causing phenomenal redness. So if I say "That car is red", it may be vague whether I am making a phenomenal claim: "I am having a red-car experience right now" or a non-phenomenal claim: "There are non-phenomenal red-car properties out there disposed to generate phenomenal red-car properties." Plausibly, both claims entail each other, so there is no need, in our everyday language, to disambiguate the claim. Indeed, this is how existence works: To say there exists a red car is to say the same thing as "That car is red". To say of anything that it exists just is to comment on its status as an experience and/or its status as that which generates experiences.

 

* Propositions can be true or false.

 

* Non-problematic sentences (complete, grammatical, not too vague) refer to propositions. E.g. "Snow is white" and "La neige est blanche" are two different sentences that refer to the same proposition.

 

* Things that express (refer to? represent?) propositions, like sentences, take on the truth value of their corresponding proposition.

 

* Propositions are arrangements of properties (See: Josh Rasmussen, "About Aboutness", Metaphysica). ('Arrangement' being synonymous with 'combination' and 'bundle' as far as I can see.)

 

* For every property, and every combination of properties, there is a proposition (or propositions) about that property or combination of properties.

 

* This is because properties can be referred to and propositions are arrangements of references to properties. (Hmm... so propositions are bundles of references to properties, and not of the properties themselves. Of course propositions have properties of their own, like properties of reference.)

 

* Because propositions have properties of their own, every proposition has a proposition about it. E.g. "The proposition 'The moon is smaller than the sun' is true." Here is a proposition about the truth of another proposition.

 

* Propositions refer to facts (facts are states of affairs, and states of affairs are bundles of properties). So all propositions have a referring property, with the properties referred to taking on an additional referred property.

 

* A proposition is true when it refers to real properties, i.e. properties that are experienced, explain experiences, or dispositionally explain experiences. (Put another way: properties that are experienced, explain experiences in practice, or explain experiences in theory.)

 

* Does Sauron exist? Sauron is a fictional character, and as such is made up of a fictional bundle of properties. That means either one or more of the properties of Sauron are fictional (e.g. being magical) and/or the bundle of real properties of Sauron is itself fictional (e.g. being a golden mountain). Fictional properties themselves are fictional bundles of real properties (so the fictional property of being magical can be analyzed in terms of real properties combined in a non-real way). We can trace this fictional bundle of properties to the imagination of an author, JRR Tolkien. We experience reading sentences and thinking thoughts about the fictional bundle that is Sauron. Those experiences are explained by the real properties of the writings of JRR Tolkien, which are in turn explained by the real properties of the events of imagination of Tolkien. The real properties of Sauron do not explain our experiences of Sauron, because there are no such properties and there are no such experiences.

 

* We can use our imagination to abstract out properties and combine them in novel ways, allowing us to invent fictions. We can write sentences that refer to these fictional properties.

 

* When it comes to propositions about fictions like: "Sauron was defeated", these are true in one sense and false in another. They are true in the sense that they refer to the fictional properties of the events of the main canon. They are false in the sense that they don't refer to any real properties.

 

* While it's true that in some sense a mismatch between inner and outer properties means falsity – a mismatch between repraesentans (that which does the representing) and repraesentandum (that which is represented) – perhaps more fundamentally, in the case of representation, it's the representation failing to "refer" to real properties that drives that falsity. What makes something true is not property matching, but property reference.

 

I can't really make sense of this notion of inner and outer properties, because it's undeniable that the properties of a proposition are different from the properties of what the proposition is about. In the case of a photo of a mountain, the photo doesn't refer to the mountain but represents it. The concept of accurate representation may not make sense if it's always interpretations of representation that are true or false. Even if we allow for accurate vs inaccurate representation, the difference between a photo being an accurate representation of a mountain and a sentence about the mountain being true is that the photo has no words, and truth is a linguistic notion, and that's because language involves words which refer to properties, and so truth is fundamentally about property reference. When representation is linguistic, as in "He did not accurately represent my views", then you have a failed property reference, which is a falsehood.

 

* Objective properties are properties that do not depend on a subject. They are non-phenomenal, non-mental, non-experiential properties.

 

* Subjective properties are properties that do depend on a subject. They are phenomenal, mental, experiential properties.

 

* When a proposition accurately refers to a particular bundle of objective and/or subjective properties, then that proposition is true. Otherwise, the proposition is false.

 

* Adapted from Rasmussen's theory of aboutness: A proposition is about a bundle of properties when it refers to a bundle of unique properties. So if something fails to refer to unique properties, it's too vague to be a proposition.

 

* When someone says "Bach's music is objectively good!", the subjectivist can take this as false because this proposition is trying and failing to refer to properties about Bach's music that are independent of experience that make Bach's music good. But, so can the subjectivist say, such properties are not possible. Because goodness is itself phenomenal, any talk of good music, good movies, good art, good games, good anything (including good behavior and good actions) will itself be phenomenal. So all good-related properties are experience-dependent.

 

* The realist can say that while it's true that whether an experience is good or bad depends on the experiential property, it's nonetheless true that the experiential property has the quality it does; i.e., that it is in fact good or bad. So even if goodness and badness is subjective in the sense of being experience-dependent, it's objective in the sense that it's true that there are good and bad experiential properties.

 

* This means axiological realism is true. People can be wrong or right about value facts, facts about goodness and badness. For example, if I experience a pain and say "This pain is intrinsically bad", that's true, and its denial is false. If someone says "Ben's pain is not intrinsically bad", then this proposition is about unique properties – the properties of my pain – but refers to properties that don't exist (Ben's pain minus intrinsic badness).

 

* Hmm... this sounds like I'm saying that if a proposition fails to refer, then it's too vague to be a proposition, and yet if a proposition fails to refer, then it's false. Which is it? 

 

* One option: Trying and Failing: In the case of "Ben's pain gyres and gimbles", this is too vague and meaningless to be a proposition, and so is not true or false. But "Ben's pain is not intrinsically bad" is trying and failing to refer to Ben's pain and its relationship to intrinsic badness. It's the trying to refer and failing to refer that makes something false. The vague proposition fails to try to refer to anything (perhaps successfully referring to 'Ben's pain', but failing to try to refer to anything by 'gyres and gimbles', giving an overall failed attempt of reference, as there must be enough semantic content to all referring terms for there to be an attempt at reference).

 

* Option two: Matching: For every property or bundle of properties there are true propositions about those properties. They are made true by the fact that they successfully refer to real properties and real relationships about those properties. Our sentences are true when they match one of these true propositions in meaning. So "Ben's pain is not intrinsically bad" fails to match any proposition made true by referring to real properties, and thus is false. Our sentences are vague when they fail to match a true proposition by lacking meaning. So a sentence is false when it's meaningful enough to match a true proposition, but doesn't. A sentence is not true when it is either false or too vague to even potentially match a true proposition. True propositions are precise enough to refer to real, unique properties, and so cannot be vague.

 

* These options may be compatible with one another.

 

* If we allow for axiological realism, then other forms of realism might get their foot in the door. If there are truths about intrinsic goodness and badness such that people can be mistaken about them, then it seems to follow that there are truths about extrinsic goodness and badness such that people can be mistaken about them. "Bach's music is extrinsically good" is a true statement, and so is "The happiness caused by Bach's music is intrinsically good."

 

* Similar true statements can be made about aesthetics, gustatory goods, and morality. If there are truths about intrinsic goods, then there are truths about extrinsic goods. And if there are truths about extrinsic goods, then there are truths about the extrinsic goodness of actions, goals, beliefs, attitudes, behaviors, habits, and so on. If "You should not kill for fun" means "Killing for fun is extrinsically bad" and/or "Killing for fun fails to bring about the most good compared to other actions available to you" then "You should not kill for fun" is true. And so a kind of moral realism is true.

04 Sep 2025 - Clayton Atreus

Daily thoughts 1: I read a lot of Clayton Atreus' book Two Arms and a Head over the past few days. It's a tragic story of a man who became paralyzed from the waist down in a motorcycle accident, fell into a depression, and took his life something like 20 months after the accident. The book is a diary of sorts, explaining what it's like to be paralyzed and why he decided to end his life. It's painful to read and I skipped or skimmed many parts, looking for the more philosophically substantive bits. Some curious takeaways:

 

1) The author himself somewhat hated the book. It seems that he knew on some level that the bitterness and ugliness contained in the book was a bad thing. But maybe he felt, or should have felt, that the ugliness of the book appropriately reflected the ugliness of being paralyzed, and the ugliness of the lies that disabled and non-disabled people tell about disability, lies that serve to comfort both the disabled (because the alternative, suicide, is unbearable) and to comfort the non-disabled (because seeing miserable people makes us miserable, so we're biased to delude ourselves into thinking that someone's miserable circumstances aren't all that bad after all). 

 

2) I agree with many of the frustrations of the author as it pertains to all the stupid platitudes folks say when it comes to the evils of the world. The simple fact is this: Basically no one wants to think about bad things, like death, old age, disease, the misery of others, etc., because thinking about such things makes us miserable and we really don't like being miserable. So of course people are naturally going to be quite thoughtless when it comes to issues surrounding evil, misery, and disability. So naturally that thoughtlessness is going to translate into stupid cliches and false beliefs when it comes to these things.

 

I very much understand and relate to frustrations in the vein of:

 

a) People around me have many, many false beliefs about something.

 

b) I'm certain these beliefs are false. It's actually quite easy to prove that these beliefs are false.

 

c) And yet, even if you set the record straight, it's probably not going to change any of these people's minds. They will probably just go on believing their false beliefs. Or, these folks would have changed their minds had they heard my words, but they will simply never hear my words.

 

3) The book is not sophisticated or well-researched, often making claims without much if any defense. Though the book appears to have been written in a short time span and by an author who is in as poor a mental state as one can be in. And the book is basically a suicide note, not exactly a proper research project. I have full confidence that the author could have written something sophisticated and well-researched had their circumstances hadn't been so unlucky. As it stands, the book has a ranting, venting tone about it, a tone the author himself acknowledges and explains.

 

4) With that said, I appreciate some features of the book: The author demonstrates intellectual virtue and engages in that kind of pleading when someone is desperate for others to see what they see. I very much understand and relate to that pleading.

 

5) If I were in the author's shoes, I probably too would end my life, and I agree with the author that probably 99% of people would, or at least would say they would, want to end their life too in similar circumstances, and yet this means there is a very strange kind of hypocrisy taking place when it comes to disability.

 

It is completely hypocritical for everyone to silently think to themselves "Of course I would take myself out in those horrible circumstances" while publicly saying "Of course disabled people should continue to live and take perspective and have a good and admirable attitude about the whole thing." 

 

When someone other than me is disabled, I am tempted to say "Chin up! Get over it! Stop wailing and whining and wallowing in self-pity. Show some strength and bravery and get on with your life and do the right thing!"

 

But if I were in that position, I would absolutely be wailing and whining and wallowing in self-pity, and I too would think (as Atreus seems to) that "strength" and "bravery" are stupid and meaningless if all they do is trick you into prolonging your torture. And I too would think (as Atreus seems to) that the real strength and bravery is in facing reality head-on, and facing death head-on, instead of burying your head in the sand and ignoring reality because you are too weak to face the truth, and ignoring death because you are too cowardly. So I very much appreciate the author discussing the relationship between virtue and suicide, because that really is, it seems to me, where the rubber meets the road. Everyone is certain that suicide and virtue come apart, but that's not necessarily true.

 

It seems that the default mentality of people is to say "Huh, that sucks for you. Anyway, for dinner today I think I'm gonna have..." 

 

And I'm not sure what to make of this. On one hand this is, like the author says, callous, unloving, anti-empathetic, anti-sympathetic, and anti-compassionate. The moral failing is not at all on the disabled person who commits suicide; the moral failing is on the disabled and disabled "allies" who parrot shallow cliches and/or turn their faces away, because that's the easy thing to do. And it's easy to place the moral burden on the disabled person in despair ("Don't you know that suicide is selfish?" or "Don't you know that despair is a sin?"), because that distracts everyone from the fact that you are trying to absolve yourself from any responsibility with respect to the hurting person in front of you. Everyone tries to take the lazy way out; it's our default setting. That's the easier thing to do, and so trivially it will be the more common thing. The hard thing to do is to actually try to place yourself in someone else's shoes, to actually sympathize with them and feel their pain.

 

On the other hand, I'm not sure exactly what the "outsiders", the living, healthy, normal people with ordinary luck, are supposed to do. Are they supposed to whine and wail and wallow in pity too alongside the despairing person? One of the reasons why the "outsiders" behave in the "callous" and "apathetic" way they do is because it's deeply painful to feel powerless and weak, and when we see someone in dire circumstances and there's nothing we can do, then all that's there for us is pain, powerlessness, and so on. It's not exactly loving to expect people to sit there with you and bask in their own powerlessness. And I'm not sure disabled people at all want people to wail or whine or wallow in pity. What good does that do? It's not like being pitied is a cure. On the contrary, pity adds insult to injury.

 

What makes matters worse is that a lot of people basically believe in karma. So if they see someone suffering, they jump to the conclusion that this person did something to deserve it. This is another self-serving lie that brings comfort to outsiders. If someone deserves their misery, then you are excused from the responsibility of empathizing with this person or caring about what they want.

 

I think what Atreus wants is something like this: A culture that is far more open to death as a solution to incurable misery. The author doesn't want people to shower him with pity or to bask in their own powerlessness for hours and hours. Instead, the author just wants to be seen and heard and understood, empathized with and genuinely listened to. That entails a culture that is more open to death as a solution to misery, because a culture that actually listens and actually cares, and throws out all the the hypocrisy, the lies, the cliches, the painfully obviously false beliefs, just would be a culture that offers death as a commonsense end-of-life care solution to miserable conditions. This is true both from the compassion angle and from the anti-hypocrisy angle. That is, if society were compassionate, loving, moral, understanding, empathetic, etc., then death would be offered as a commonsense solution, but even putting all of that aside, if society were just not completely hypocritical, then the same would be true.

 

6) However, the experience of reading the book convinced me that if you're going to do something like this, it's better to approach it in a different way. Like I said, even the author saw the ugliness of his own book. It's better to write something more beautiful; that's more likely to have an impact. Beautiful things are more marketable, attractive and more likely to spread by word of mouth. Again, I think there is value in letting the ugliness of your words match the ugliness of a situation, and I don't see how I can fault someone for having ugly thoughts about an ugly situation. It's all too understandable from my point of view. (Not that I believe in fault anyway.)

 

However...

 

I do think in those circumstances I would write quite differently.

 

And maybe I would write fiction that featured characters who could do all the things I wanted to do, and maybe I would live vicariously through those characters. But then again, maybe that kind of escapism is exactly the kind of reality-denying that I would want to champion against.

 

But I certainly would write in a loving way, with the reader in mind, wanting to give the reader something, if not entertaining or happy exactly, at least that gives some sense of positivity, hope, triumph, satisfaction, or catharsis, and has some readability to it.

 

How much better would it be to have written something beautiful for people to enjoy and profit from at the same time? Sure, it's a creative and intellectual puzzle to write something that accomplishes 1) Exposing the stupidity and hypocrisy of the cliches and arguments surrounding disability and suicide; 2) Shows what's actually true about disability and suicide; and 3) Does so in a way that's winsome, engaging, entertaining, beautiful, readable, well-reasoned, etc. That's a deeply difficult puzzle to solve, but if the author is smart enough then he can pull it off. The author comes off as arrogant; he repeatedly boasts his intelligence, but the book isn't smart; beauty is smart, and the book, for the most part, is ugly.

 

Luke 6:45 (NRSVUE):

 

"The good person out of the good treasure of the heart produces good, and the evil person out of evil treasure produces evil, for it is out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks." 

 

I doubt hardly anyone would recommend this book, and it's hard for me to recommend it to anyone except those who research suicide or the problem of evil.

31 August 2025

Today:

• Continue Intellectual Virtue series, working on Intellectual Virtue #3: T. Ryan Byerly.

 Future:

• Intellectual Virtue #4: Josh Rasmussen
• Intellectual Virtue #5: Aristotle
• Intellectual Virtue #6 (19 parts): Zagzebski's book
• Intellectual Virtue #7 (15 parts): Philip Dow's book
• Intellectual Virtue #8: Gabriel Citron paper
• Intellectual Virtue #9? Misc papers

Speaking from truth vs speaking from power

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ti-3M04eW4 

 

When I claim to be a genuine truthseeker, and when I make truth claims like: There is no God, Christianity is false, there is no free will, morality works in such and such way, and so on, it's worth asking the question: What do I take myself to be doing when I make these kinds of truth claims?

A similar question: What do I take truth to be for?

Per the video above (52:50), Alasdair MacIntyre, a critic of postmodernism, says that, per postmodernism, whenever someone makes a truth claim they are always making a power claim (my paraphrase) – they are trying to influence people to gain power. MacIntyre says of postmodernism: "Any profession of truth is nothing more than a reflection of the political ideology of the person who is making it." The podcast hosts go on to push against this characterization of postmodernism. In any case, I want to consider the view, whether it's postmodern or not, that truth claims are always power claims.

 

I could say truth is worth pursuing for its own sake, and that's why I make truth claims. But I don't believe that truth or knowledge is intrinsically valuable. (Is visual knowledge about the gruesome details of certain crimes or medical emergencies valuable in and of itself? Not only is it not, but it's extrinsically disvaluable!)  

 

I think the ultimate pursuit is to be more happy and to be less miserable. Truth is only valuable insofar as it helps us become happier and less miserable.

 

That might sound like I advocate for "noble lies" – lies that make people happy and thus are worth telling. But that's not quite right.

 

I don't think people can deliberately believe falsehoods. If you know something is false or suspect that it's false, but choose to believe it anyway because it is a "noble lie", that would mean believing and not believing in something – a contradiction that our rationality blocks us from making. Contradictions bother us to the point that we reject them. The idea of believing something false bothers us to the point that we can't believe something we worry is false. We can't help but desire to believe what's true and to reject what's false.

 

The idea that I believe something false is a painful idea for me, so my happiness very much depends on my being convinced that I don't believe false things. That motivates me to reduce my false beliefs as far as I can, either by withdrawing beliefs and becoming more agnostic, or by investigating the truth of my beliefs until I can continue believing them confidently.

 

So even if my final goal is happiness, that does not mean I place happiness above truth. Being convinced that the truth is on our side is often a prerequisite for our happiness. So even if our ultimate goal is happiness, that doesn't mean we can set truth aside for the sake of happiness. Truth is still required to get there, so there is a genuine desire for truth. Put another way, if my ultimate goal is happiness, and truth is necessary to achieve that goal, then truth is part of my ultimate goal.

 

What about ugly truths that we don't want to accept or can't accept because they are too painful? That's the thing – if you desire truth to the point that the idea of holding false beliefs is painful to you to the point that you would rather face ugly truths than live in blissful ignorance, then the ugly truth / happiness dichotomy won't apply to you. Ugly truth is still the path for optimal happiness for the genuine truthseeker, even if ugly truth makes the genuine truthseeker miserable in its own right.

It's also true that power is needed for happiness. Perhaps the single greatest driver for misery is powerlessness. At the core of misery is a lack of freedom. Truth gives us understanding, which is itself a power, and this is one way truth leads to happiness.

So: truth -> understanding -> power -> freedom -> happiness.

That sounds like truth IS subordinate to power. The quest for truth just is a quest for power. So does that mean truth claims are power claims after all? No. We must translate the above key question to: Do I make truth claims not because I believe them myself but purely because of the effect making these claims will have?

The answer is no. My claims come from a place of curiosity and desire for understanding rather than a desire to influence.

An obvious proof of this: I have no influence. If I were trying to influence others, I don't think I'd be using a blog that gets zero views. The purpose of my writing is just personal improvement of my worldview and understanding, purely out of genuine curiosity and desire for truth.

 

There are different kinds of power, which is why "knowledge is power" is true in some ways and false in others.

 

Knowledge is power in the sense that by understanding your environment, you can manipulate it to suit your needs and fulfill your desires.

 

Knowledge is not power in the sense that when you speak truth to power, you can be destroyed for it. Whistleblowers can be sued and buried by legal fees by the corrupt company. Dietrich Bonhoeffer opposed the Nazis and was killed for it. When an innocent person is wrongly convicted and sent to prison, their knowledge of their innocence has no power at all.

 

So a better, more pointed question than Are your truth claims power claims? is: When you make claims, what kind of power are you after? 

 

If you are after powers related to social capital, manipulation, money, optics, political strategy, and things like that, then you are a power seeker, not a truth seeker. Politicians, pathological liars, and narcissists are known to occupy this psychological space.

 

If you are after powers related to understanding how the world works, then your truth claims are honest truth claims.

If someone asks me the question of what my intentions are when I make truth claims, what are they after? Are they asking from a place of power, or a place of curiosity? It seems obvious that they are asking from a place of curiosity, a place of a desire for knowledge and to understand what my intentions are. So the very internal state of the questioner proves that people can and do have this internal state of curiosity and desire for truth. It's not necessarily the case that every truth claim comes from a place of power or word games. Indeed, some brave individuals, like whistleblowers or martyrs, trade powers related to survival and comfort for powers related to truth, morality, duty, understanding, value, legacy, self-respect, and virtue.

 

It's a matter of what powers you are after, of which powers are essential to your happiness. For some of us, powers of understanding are essential to our happiness, to the point that we are willing to sacrifice powers of survival for them. There is, thus, something of a dichotomy between survival and truth.

 

This dichotomy appears in the conversation of natural selection. We are selected to be quite good at believing truths related to basic survival; of course we are: if we weren't we would be extinct. But the same survival pressures do not apply for more abstract and philosophical truths, and so it's basically a trivial truth that we are bad at discovering truths about metaphysical things. So you can have Scientologists, Mormons, Baptists, Catholics, atheists, Muslims, etc., all surviving roughly equally well despite having radically different philosophical beliefs. Having true beliefs about morality, God, etc., need not grant any serious survival advantage, and having horrendously false beliefs about morality, God, etc., need not grant any serious survival disadvantage. Truth and survival very much come apart when it comes to more abstract truths.

 

The topic of power versus truth also appears when it comes to the deep difference between propaganda and philosophy:

 

Propaganda:

 

-Discourages asking 'why' questions, ignores 'why' questions, and even treats 'why' questions with hostility, judgment, and punishment;

 

-Commands you to believe something or attempts to deceive or manipulate you into believing something, something that empowers whoever administers the propaganda. Just as deception needn't be all that conscious or deliberate of an act, neither does spreading propaganda.

 

Philosophy:

 

-Encourages asking 'why' questions, takes 'why' questions seriously, and offers praise to those who ask questions;

 

-Gives you the tools to discover the truth for yourself rather than relying on the word of authorities. 

 

This is one of the reasons why philosophy is a good and necessary thing.