Human Person: The Integer of Truth

Pondering yesterday's essay it occurs to me how pernicious are the scientific dogmas which in some manner or other decompose the act of perception into so-called discrete wavelengths or any other discreta. This is not only bad poetry but it also vilifies the human bearer of truth.

I might have learned this from reading Dostoevsky. If the initial guarantor or evidence of truth is not the living contact and encounter that each person enjoys with reality, then it can never be  grasped ex post facto through facts, or evidence or any other sort of science!

What scientists of all stripes take for granted is that it the human eye or ear or perceptual act which guarantees whatever digital or discrete data may accrue. Yes, the Hubble telescope renders data in digital quanta---however, the telescope does not "see" anything if must be rendered to the biped mammal truth-bearer. This principle can be universalized---With regards to the material universe here can be no truth that is not ultimately verified by a human person.

Thus the starting-point of science is the perceptual truth---now what must ensue in order that the human act of perception deliver truth? What must be the case, a priori, for there to be truth at all? The truth must be for a someone! A someone is a human person. What is the basis for this contact with truth? That the human person be capable of bearing truth and that things be true.  2 essential ingredients: the human person as integer of truth and the universe as truthful in its being.

Both of these poles must be held in tension for the phenomenon of truth to be possible. The 'bridge' is the soul. That God exists is self-evident. Above and beyond the two poles: the one for whom truth is and being as true, there is no other Thing! And yet, the way to truth disintegrates as the burden of proof for truth is placed upon either pole! Both fallacious ways are errors that science takes. Only a philosophy based upon psychological Realism such as I am describing can account for truth adequately.

Truth must be and it must be for someone! If this is not the case then the point of pursuing science is moot altogether! (There is a scenario where science proceeds altogether in violation of truth as portrayed in the Matrix or Plato's cave.) Science is pursued because of an attempt to secure a truthful account of things or being in some particular sense. A culture governed by a science devoid of truth such as Orwell depicts in 1984 may be possible but it is not desirable.

Evenso, if one assumes the current quantum mechanics interpretation of physical reality---the view that states that there are manifold levels of energy which cannot be detected in human perception and that of all of the possible truth to be conveyed by light, the human perceiver is only getting a sliver of nanometers---hence, by default there is an enormous amount of stuff out there that in principle cannot be known save for perfectible pursuit of scientific equipment which will render evermore of these myterious nanoworlds to the diligent scientist.

Here is the realist view: I look out the window, I see an Arbor Vita tree in my lawn---to see? Yes, to have seen and encountered the truth of the bush in the true perception of my visual act. And beyond this----? That's it folks!!!

Now I will concede reason wants to figure out this state of affairs as if it were some sort of puzzle. So in order to satisfy reason I allow my mind to proceed interrogatively. So, how is it that the Arbor Vita is there and how is it that I am here and how is it that both of these hang together? The first act of reason is philosophical and interrogative. The account which renders optimally the answer to this triad of questions is the best account.

The only account of reality which guarantees and "saves" truth for human persons in principle is the Gospel. It is the son of God which saves the truth for the integral human person and guarantees the human ability to bear truth. It is the truth of creation which guarantees the truth of the being of the universe.

Now it is clear why the reductive, and analytic 'scientific' account of human perception and action is flawed and pernicious. Each one of these violates the harmony of the person and the person's world which the soul alone bridges.

I look out the window and I see the bush. My act of seeing delivers truth, and I am in the truth insofar as I acknowledge this harmony, in other words to live in my soul. The contemporary undergraduate who studies perceptual psychology 101 gets this account instead:
a) the person may or may not exist, all we know for sure is that that perception is finite, can be measured and analyzed. b)the universe may or may not be true c)the soul has not been discussed in psychology (to quote the Eagles): "We haven't had that spirit here since 1969." and finally d). God may or may not exist.

Now taking such skepticism at face value I ask what guarantees truth? It is not the person rendered scientifically, it is not the universe, it is not the soul and it is not God. Truth may or may not exist in the scientific account, it is through and through skeptical!

But reality is not like this! Truth either is or is not. If it is then it is on account of the human truth bearer, and the ensemble of circumstances (true being, soul, and God) which particpate in its possibility. If it is not then science is futile, religion is futile, business and economy is futile. In short human existence is futile! This is the Underground Man's antheap---Harvard's professor EO Wilson beloved ants become the most successful species---not man!

That this is not the case is proved by the fact that you stop at the red light, that you continue to go on eating, that you do not strip naked and dive into the subfrost river!! You conduct yourself in a reasonable human manner because deep down you believe that human life is worth living. This spark of human truth drives you to go on existing. The only reason you dear reader are not in full possession of the truth is that you have parlayed your soul in an exchange for earthly comfort and ease which the scientific view provides. You are a comfortable citizen in this empire of scientific reason---after all, it gives one the chance to have regular check-ups at the doctor and to have your blood chemically analyzed. When the state gets better you will be able to have your blood analyzed for free thanks to the great economy! You will trust your Audi to deliver safety to your drive. Oh! the benefits of the scientific society are unending! Only one thing sears your conscience---that you had to deny your true soul and being in the truth to participate in this worldly kingdom and go along with the scientific dogmas. 

"When did I do this?" you ask. To this I answer: "When first you denied your perception to your parents, schoolteachers and professors, and allowed them to teach you how to explain what you see! (Parallels to Serpent's promise in the Garden!)

Pondering Light: Impenetrable

Some random thoughts on the visible:
Vision, according to Aristotle is the 'highest' ---most spiritual sense. Attempts at explaining this sense, and its act are quite difficult for me to grasp. The viewpoint of Robt. Archer Smith is also very imponderable and yet vision provides me with no end of wonder and questionability!

What strikes me as ludicrous are contemporary psychological theories of light---the kind of thing I studied at university as an undergraduate. At the time I presumed to have learned something about the 'psychology of light' when I studied the textbook, and passed the exams. To be honest this kind of bookish learning has nothing to do with authentic understanding of the phenomenon. Never once did we experiment with the phenomenon or empirical fact of light---all was discussed hypothetically, speculatively. I can grasp now that such "learning" is a sleight of hand.

It has the wonderful effect of giving hundreds of thousands of educated people the sense that they have grasped something about light (the same goes for acoustics and motion). Such an effect has a beneficial quality for the government, giving the sense that there is an objective science  of vision and light---that such things are in principle graspable by at least the authors of the texts and the profs who lecture on these subjects. 

However, effect is all it is! When I honestly ponder the truth about light and vision, I must confess to ignorance and the difficulty of its grasp. Reading treatises are of no help whatsoever for the sleight of hand renders the wonderfully mysterious phenomenon (color-light) into pieces of a theory, each one finitely graspable. Now all of these added up are supposed to bring about an understanding of the phenomenon. The social-educative praxis based upon intellectual pride, social conformity and deceit (i.e. the American University education in toto.) confers degrees not for the amount of natural phenomena actually grasped and understood, i.e. truth, but for the effective handling of the text, lectures and exams in such a way that the proper GPA is achieved. Truth and actual understanding are bypassed entirely by sleight of hand.

Such a praxis is effective for governing and ruling over citizens who have been granted degrees for knowledge which they presume to possess. It produces a consistent theoretical framework in which to conduct science, industry, education and business. It is much more effective to operate upon a coherent, commonly held ignorance, than to admit that each individual faces imponderable mysteries such as light, color and vision which are experienced as true without the foggiest clue of how to explain the truth of these phenomena. And yet, each individual, if honest, would admit that his or her experience of light phenomena is indelibly true fact. But how rarely does this individual with their own personally held experiential truth muster the courage to join Socrates in declaring the wisdom of their ignorance (that is commonly held 'doxa' or culturally accepted "truths")? Without this commonly held ignorance it would not be easy to govern, in fact the nation-state would not survive. Ironically the natural state of human beings in ignorance without the pretension to learning is the best manner of government, which never rises to the behemoth scale of the nation-state, laden with its certain "scientific" dogma. Scale is preserved by the "learned ignorance" in other words, the perpetual sense of humility and intellectual humiliation in the face of wonder and the experience of truth. Such praxis of gigantism in economy and transport is only achievable upon a de facto achievement of institutional ignorance and dogma which the modern university effectively governs! What a paradox.