Monday, May 8, 2023

Living under suspicion, appearances.

 F. Nietzsche maintains, "appearance is the living reality itself acting that, ironically with itself, had come to make me believe that here there is nothing more than appearance, will-o'-the-wisp, dances of goblins and nothing else."

The installation of a 'truth', by whatever group it is, solely by the use of the power that they tend to exercise, leads to produce an incongruous situation, on the one hand the enlightened believers of possessing the truth and on the other the total skepticism of not consider that it is possible to reach a certain degree of veracity.

In the first case, the enlightened, José Rafael Herrera, expresses: “As is known, all senteces– is made up of a verb and a predicate. In Spinoza's key, verb is principle, substance. Predicate is attribute and mode. Preaching is the action of someone who pre-says, of someone who is empowered to anticipate what is imminent and says-it-before. He is, then, the one who warns, because his function consists precisely in preaching the verb, the truth that he already knows, because it has been revealed to him. The "bearer of the truth" anticipates the event, warns what is coming and, therefore, must take the forecasts and act accordingly. He is, all of him, "enlightened" by the effect of the spark, by the splendor of divine revelation. He is the radiance itself of the flash in the face of the bearer of the "philosophy of the pistol shot". And that was what Queen Isabella the Catholic of  Spain,could see in Torquemada's sullen countenance – and still smudged by the abrasive flashes of truth –: at the request of the queen, and by means of a bull from Pope Sixtus IV, the bruciante is appointed general inquisitor, directly dependent on the Spanish Crown. His cruelty and fanaticism against the “enemies of the Christian faith” –particularly against the Jews– are still an object of astonishment. Spain has paid dearly – and with it a good part of the Western world – the hatred spread by that sinister character, in the name of truth”. How many 'bruciantes', 'torquemadas', exist and are imposing their truths on the rest of society, as holders, illuminated by a superior being, of absolute truth.

At the other extreme, skepticism, which leads us to think that nothing is true, and that even this itself is not true either, leaves us unable to know, that knowledge, not even as a form of adaptation and mastery of nature is useless.

In antiquity, Plato already warned of the need to respond to this dilemma and in the "Allegory of the Cave" he expressed that the world we observe, which we call reality, is appearance. The true, the truth is beyond what we see, in another dimension, it is not in this world. If the truth is absolute, lack does not fit, it cannot be a part, it has to be the whole. So he solves it by creating a world of 'Archetypes', today we would say in another dimension, of which what we see are more or less similar copies.

Darío Sztajnszrajber, maintains “the question of truth moves between two poles: it exists and it is impossible, or it does not exist. Although it doesn't exist, you can't stop looking for it, but if it exists, it's not for us."

Aristotle maintained that 'the truth is hidden behind appearances, so it must be revealed'. Plato's archetypes were located in things, in reality, in essences, which must be apprehended, made conscious.

You have to look for the truth, it slips away from our gaze like a wild animal that feels the danger of being found and devoured.

“Doing philosophy is the permanent construction of an existential insecurity; we flee when we fight with the assurances of that numbness that we provoke at the same time, because we are looking for a knowledge that we know we will never reach”

Which means living in the appearance, in the shadows.

“The penumbra has the property of not allowing us to perceive where the darkness ends and where the light begins. Its gloomy circular presence does not allow us to accurately specify the beginning of one and the end of the other. Not without a certain risk - which, led by the hand by the temptation of its singular beauty, may well seem divine, like almost all risks - it is possible to read in the semi-darkness. The enchantment of the risk in question is saved by the fact of being able to perceive a certain magic in the blurred characters that suddenly come to life and that allow surprising, for the daring gaze, and behind the dead letter, nothing less than the Spirit: the Logos re-acquiring immanent reality, exercising the purity of the fire that is his being and that, at the same time, is not. Philosophy itself, that is, the one that carries an emphatic meaning, undoubtedly lives between lights and shadows for the sake of ideas. Only those who have penetrated the densest darkness can conquer the light of truth: "in the circle the beginning and the end coincide", observe, in the penumbra, the dark Ephesus (Heraclitus)."

For his part, Darío Sztajnszrajber said that currently "the real-apparent dichotomy is an archaic category, it makes no sense in the digital age" and that "technology does not destroy or improve human beings, it transforms them." , problematized the concepts of truth and lie in today's society”. “Post-truth has to do with lying, with lying to oneself. The opposite of the truth is not a lie, it is fiction, appearance, ”he said. In relation to what we conceive as reality, he assured that it is a social construction. “The most interesting thing is that the show of the show convinces. Everyone knows it's not like that, but it doesn't seem to matter."

J. A. López maintains that “perhaps this absent life that we lead, where the virtual gains ground on reality, is not so bad, deep down. We lose a dimension, yes, but we gain another. Perhaps we are not very present in the place where we are, but the photos and comments that we post about it build another that is similar to it. Isn't that, for better or worse, what we've always done? We create our own imaginary world - built with our perceptions, our impressions, our expectations... - and we develop in it as if it were real. In this game of "as if..." resides meaning, which is complete in itself, and is closer to us than the always fragmentary reality".

The search for a way to return to an objective reality, independent of the observer, is an effort that even scientists have to toil.

 

Thus S. Hawkins says: "Philosophers, from Plato to now, have argued over the centuries about the nature of reality. Classical science is based on the belief that there is an external real world whose properties are defined and independent of the observer who perceives them. According to classical science, certain objects exist and have physical properties, such as velocity and mass, with well-defined values. In that view, our theories are attempts to describe such objects and their properties, and our measurements and perceptions correspond to them. Both the observer and the observed are parts of a world that has an objective existence, and any distinction between the two is of no significant importance."...however "Different theories may describe the same phenomenon through frames different conceptual concepts”… and “David Hume (1711-1776) wrote that although we do not have rational guarantees to believe in an objective reality, we have no other option but to act as if said reality were true.” That is why he proposes “There is no image —or theory— independent of the concept of reality. Thus, we will adopt a perspective that we will call model-dependent realism: the idea that a physical theory or picture of the world is a model (usually of a mathematical nature) and a set of rules that relate the elements of the model to the observations. It provides a framework in which to interpret modern science."

About this we can say: “We have always lived in a parallel world: that of our fantasies, our fears and our hopes. Now we've made it faster and bigger. If this ends up dragging our life, and making it "liquid", as Zygmunt Bauman reflects, perhaps it is because we do not want to be in it, because we do not dare to stay and we prefer to run and run... Life was already an illusion, sometimes happy and others terrible.”

“The denial of the truth leads us towards a life devoid of facts. Which also denies knowledge, where there is no truth there is no knowledge. To later sink into ignorance of a reality, which ends up denying the facts. While the present is diluted between desires and illusions, which feed a life of collective unconsciousness. This is one of the realities in which the social masses develop. Domesticated and chained to an existence of darkness, which runs through the corridors of the labyrinths of shared ignorance. The truth will always be denied by the unconscious crowds, because the truth destroys their useless illusions and unfulfilled desires."

We are here faced with the loss of meaning of the category error.

There can no longer be truth, there is no possibility of confronting it with reality, since reality is illusion.

Everything is mere illusion, desire, penumbra, which hides the truth from us. Affirming something is taken as an attempt to install a lie, pass it off as the truth, without understanding that in order to lie it is necessary to know the truth. For lying is a moral concept. On the other hand, from a epistemological perspective, the error, the misunderstanding, are the opposite of the truth.

        And the possibility of 'conspiracy theory' comes to us. "The truth does not matter, but who can install it."

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