Truthiness

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Clive
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Truthiness

Post by Clive »

Fascinating discussion here - the answer to Pilate is that truth is something that does not exist!
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the philosophy of truth. Pontius Pilate famously asked: what is truth? In the twentieth century, the nature of truth became a subject of particular interest to philosophers, but they preferred to ask a slightly different question: what does it mean to say of any particular statement that it is true? What is the difference between these two questions, and how useful is the second of them?

With:

Simon Blackburn
Fellow of Trinity College, University of Cambridge, and Professor of Philosophy at the New College of the Humanities

Jennifer Hornsby
Professor of Philosophy at Birkbeck, University of London

Crispin Wright
Regius Professor of Logic at the University of Aberdeen, and Professor of Philosophy at New York University
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04v59gz
"We cannot slaughter each other out of the human impasse"
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DCHindley
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Re: Truthiness

Post by DCHindley »

Clive wrote:Fascinating discussion here - the answer to Pilate is that truth is something that does not exist!
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the philosophy of truth. Pontius Pilate famously asked: what is truth? In the twentieth century, the nature of truth became a subject of particular interest to philosophers, but they preferred to ask a slightly different question: what does it mean to say of any particular statement that it is true? What is the difference between these two questions, and how useful is the second of them?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04v59gz
I call it a commentary on the difference between the governing power's "truth" versus the gospel author's (or the author of his sources') "truth," which the author of course assumes to be God-given "truth". See James C Scott, Weapons of the Weak: the everyday forms of peasant resistance (1985) on the subject of "transcripts" (performances of patron-client relationships) [pp 284-289]*.

Jesus may have just spoken a little too freely to the "powers that be."

DCH

*
James C Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (1985)

[284] BEYOND THE WAR OF WORDS

...

CONFORMITY AND THE PARTIAL TRANSCRIPT

The poor of [the Malaysian village of] Sedaka nearly always adopt a protective disguise in their relations with more powerful villagers or outsiders. This disguise is apparent both in their conformity and in their resistance. Thus, [the peasant] Hamzah conceals his anger when he is underpaid by [the landlord] Haji Kadir but, in the privacy of his home, vents his anger at being unfairly treated. Thus, [the peasant] Pak Yah goes dutifully to [landlord] Bashir’s feast though he is seething with anger at having been excluded from the Village Improvement subsidy. An attempted boycott of machine users is presented as a delay in transplanting, which can be abandoned and disavowed. What amounts to a strike over threshing wages is conducted as if the workers had either been taken ill or had suddenly remembered prior commitments. The “full transcript” of class relations in [the Malaysian village of] Sedaka is simply not ascertainable from the public interaction between rich and poor, powerful and weak. To move beyond the domain in which poses and dissimulation prevail, it has in fact been necessary to talk to the poor alone or in small groups where they are among friends. Only then does one encounter that part of the full transcript that would, if openly declared in other contexts, jeopardize their livelihood.

That the poor should dissemble in the face of power is hardly an occasion for surprise. Dissimulation is the characteristic and necessary pose of subordinate classes everywhere most of the time — a fact that makes those rare and threatening moments when the pose is abandoned all the more remarkable. No close account of the life of subordinate classes can fail to distinguish between what is said “backstage” and what may be safely declared openly. One of the more remarkable oral histories ever collected, that of the French tenant farmer ‘Old Tiennon,’ who lived from 1823 until the beginning of the twentieth century, is literally filled with accounts of swallowed bile.80 Throughout his daily encounters with landlords, [285] overseers, officials, and powerful gentry, he was careful to adopt a public mask of deference and compliance and keep his dangerous opinions to himself:

When he [the landlord who had dismissed his father] crossed from Le Craux, going to Meillers, he would stop and speak to me and I forced myself to appear amiable, in spite of the contempt I felt for him.81

Old Tiennon knew at first hand the perils of candor from his own father’s rashness:

My father, who usually undertook the grooming and such duties, never failed to tell the master how annoying it was to have to stay at home when there was so much to be done elsewhere. He was absolutely ignorant of the art of dissimulation, so necessary in life.82

It is probably just this necessary “art of dissimulation” that has been largely responsible for much of the conservative historiography of the peasantry. As the sources are almost invariably created by classes above the peasantry, they are likely, quite apart from ideological intent, to see only that cautious and deferential aspect the peasantry adopts in the presence of power. What they may describe on this basis is not false, but it is at best a partial and misleading truth that takes a necessary pose for the whole reality. When that happens, we get a picture of rural society that is distorted in the way that E. P. Thompson described for eighteenth-century England:

On the surface all is consensus, deference, accommodation; the dependents petition abjectly for favor; every hind is touching his forelock; not a word against the illustrious House of Hanover or the Glorious Constitution breaks the agreeable waters of illusion. Then, from an anonymous or obscure level, there leaps to view for a moment violent Jacobite or levelling abuse. We should take neither the obesiances nor the imprecations as indications of final truth; both could flow from the same mind, as circumstance and calculation of advantage allowed.83

Even so close an observer as [Emile] Zola was led in this fashion to a view of the peasantry as a class that oscillated between abject, unquestioning deference and violent outrage. What is missing is the massive middle ground, in which conformity is often a self-conscious strategy and resistance is a carefuly hedged affair that avoids all-or-nothing confrontations. Had Zola taken a closer look at deference, he might have noticed what has become almost the leitmotif of modern studies of slavery: the gap between the beliefs and values that might find expression in the safety of the slave quarters and the typically prudent conduct of these same [286] men and women in the face of power.84 It is just such vital considerations that have led one perceptive sociologist to reject all those conceptions of deference that treat it as if it were an attribute or attitude of persons and to insist that it be seen as “the form of social interaction which occurs in situations involving the exercise of traditional authority.”85

The fact is that power-laden situations are nearly always inauthentic; the exercise of power nearly always drives a portion of the full transcript under¬ground. Allowing always for the exceptional moments of uncontrolled anger or desperation, the normal tendency will be for the dependent individual to reveal only that part of his or her full transcript in encounters with the powerful that it is both safe and appropriate to reveal. What is safe and appropriate is of course defined rather unilaterally by the powerful. The greater the disparity in power between the two parties, the greater the proportion of the full transcript that is likely to be concealed.86

Thus it might be possible to think of a continuum of situations ranging from the free dialogue between equals that is close to what Habermas has called the “ideal speech situation”87 all the way to the concentration camp in which most of the victims’ transcript is driven underground, leaving only a virtual parody of stereotyped, stilted deference born of mortal fear. In fact, in the most extreme situations of Caligulan terror [in 1st century CE Rome], where there are no rules of what is permissible, [287] the entire transcript may be concealed, leaving only paralysis. Ranged in between these extremes are a host of more common conditions in which subordinate classes typically find themselves: the boss and the worker, the landlord and the tenant, the lord and the serf, the master and the slave. In each case, the weaker party is unlikely to speak his or her mind; a part of the full transcript will be withheld in favor of a “performance” that is in keeping with the expectations of the powerholder.88

If we wish to recover more than just the performance, we must move backstage where the mask can be lifted, at least in part. In the case of slaves this means moving from the “big house” to the slave quarters; in the case of the working class it may mean moving from the choreographed encounters between rich and poor to the relative privacy of the house or the company of a few close companions. It is in these “non-mask” situations where some of what is habitually censored finally leaps to view. Much of this material, as we have seen, is in direct and stark contradiction to what takes place in the arena of power relations: Haji Kadir becomes Pak Ceti. The relationship between this non-mask, or backstage, transcript and the center stage transcript bears very directly on the issue of false¬consciousness. Much of the ethnographic material supporting the notion of “mystification” and “ideological hegemony” is, I suspect, simply the result of assuming that the transcript from power-laden situations is the full transcript. Short of total institutions such as the concentration camp, however, most subordinate classes can repair occasionally to a social setting that is not so confining. To the extent that the transcript found here is markedly different from or else negates what is found in the context of power relations, the case for false-consciousness is weakened.89

[288]

The public transcript of the powerful is likely to be rather more in accord with their total transcript than is the case with the weak. After all, they are freer, by virtue of their power, to speak their mind with relative impunity. [The peasant] Razak can be safely and publicly insulted in a way that [well-to-do landlords] Haji Kadir or Bashir cannot be. And yet the powerful are also somewhat constrained both by a due regard for their reputation — a commodity of declining but real value — and by the desire to uphold the “theater” of power. Thus they will excoriate many of the village poor in the privacy of their own homes but rarely to their face. This is also not surprising; the transcript of the factory manager speaking with his workers is different from the transcript when he is in the safety of his own club; the transcript of the slave owner dealing with his slaves is different from his unguarded remarks to other slaveholders over dinner. It is only when we compare the “unedited” transcript of elites with the unedited transcript of subordinate classes that we uncover the extent of mutual dissimulation that prevails in the context of power relations. In the usual day-to-day conduct of class relations, these unedited transcripts are never in direct contact. Only at rare moments of historical crisis are these transcripts and the actions they imply brought into a direct confrontation. When they are, it is often assumed that there has come into being a new consciousness, a new anger, a new ideology that has transformed class relations. It is far more likely, however, that this new “consciousness” was already there in the unedited transcript and it is the situation that has changed in a way that allows or requires one or both parties to act on that basis.

Both the rich and poor in [the Malaysian village Scott calls] Sedaka are, of course, aware that what takes place in the domain of power relations is not the whole story. They suspect and often know that a good portion of village discourse takes place behind their backs. Their knowledge is not, however, symmetrical. Here, at least, the poor have a slight advantage — if we can call it that — in the realm of information. They know a good deal about what the rich think of them, as we have seen from their comments. Their greater knowledge is due not only to the fact that the village elite is able to speak more freely, and disparagingly, of them but also to the fact that it is simply more important and vital for the poor to keep their ear to the ground. The rich, by contrast, know less about the unedited transcript of the poor because the poor are more discreet and because the rich can more easily afford not to listen. Knowing less, they are free to suspect the worst. What they do know is that they cannot easily penetrate behind the pose of dissimulation, though they sense that behind the public routines of deference and respect lie contempt and anger. They are in precisely the situation of the [289] lord as described in Hegel’s dialectic of lord and bondsman.90 The very exercise of power precludes the village elite from ever knowing what poorer villagers really think, thereby vitiating the value to the elite of their ritual compliance and deference. It is perhaps for this reason that the most dominant elites have historically so often credited their underclasses with all manner of malevolent powers and intentions emanating from the desire for revenge.91 The situation in [the Malaysian village of] Sedaka is not so extreme, but its form is qualitatively similar. The village elites suspect the worst from the poor in terms of anonymous thefts, slander, ingratitude, and dissimulating. Their fear, however, has a real basis in the nature of local power relations.92

...

Notes:

80. Emile Guillaumin, The Life of a Simple Man, ed. Eugene Weber, rev. trans. Margaret Crosland (Hanover, New Hampshire: University Press of New England, 1983).

81. Ibid., 83. See also 38, 62, 64, 102, 140, 153 for other instances.

82. Ibid., 48, emphasis added.

83. Thompson, “The Crime of Anonymity,” 307.

84. See, for example, Lawrence W. Levine, Black Culture and Black Consciousness (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1977); Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll; and Gerald W. Mullin, Flight and Rebellion: Slave Resistance in Eighteenth-Century Virginia (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1972).

85. Howard Newby, “The Deferential Dialectic,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 17, no. 2 (April 1975): 146.

86. Some qualifications should be noted here. In situations where power is balanced but each party can do considerable damage to the other, much of the full transcript will also be concealed. Superpowers, each of which can destroy the other, play their cards very close to the vest. Thus, unhindered communication may be most likely between two actors who are not only equal in power but who cannot appreciably affect each other with their power. The rule is also less applicable to situations where the exercise of power is firmly institutionalized and law regarding. In such cases the weaker party may not be so constrained to conceal those parts of his transcript that fall clearly outside the defined domain of power. Finally, one may also wish to exclude from this rule situations of normally benevolent power such as a parent-child relationship. The secure knowledge that the parent will act in the child’s interest may permit the child to reveal his or her full transcript without fear of victimization. In the case of unrequited love, however, the weaker party is led to conceal those parts of his or her transcript that are unlikely to win the love of the prized person.

87. See Jurgen Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests, trans. Jeremy J. Shapiro (Boston: Beacon, 1971), and “Towards a Theory of Communicative Competence,” Inquiry 13 (1970): 360-75.

88. How much of the full transcript is withheld cannot be simply deduced from the labeling of the power relationship. Different forms of slavery or serfdom, for example, are likely to vary considerably in this respect. Within a given form of subordination, moreover, a particular individual, say a blacksmith-slave with scarce and valuable skills, may enjoy a greater relative autonomy. In addition, most forms of subordination may permit a good deal of unconstrained communication in areas that are defined as neutral to the power relationship. Finally, in a more speculative vein, it would seem that, where the power situation drives most of the transcript of subordinates underground, the culture may often provide authorized ritual occasions when it is possible to break the rules. The Roman Saturnalia, the court jester, the Christian tradition of Carnival, the Hindu Feast of Holi are all rituals that allow subordinates, momentarily, to turn the tables. See, along these lines, James C. Scott, “Protest and Profanation: Agrarian Revolt and the Little Tradition,” Theory and Society 4, no. 1 (1977): 1-38, and 4, no. 2 (1977): 211-46.

89. To the extent that the backstage transcript confirms and reinforces the onstage behavior, of course, the case for ideological hegemony is strengthened. The real interest, however, lies in the detailed analysis of the relationship between the two transcripts, which are likely to be neither perfectly identical nor perfectly contradictory. I do not, in this analysis, mean for a moment to imply that the anthropologist-outsider is privy to the entire concealed transcript of various villagers. While outsider status confers some advantages, it surely blocks access to other information. I was, for example, always aware that most villagers were rather reluctant to talk about healing and magical practices that they imagined I might regard as superstitions.

90. See, for example, chapter 2 of George Kelly, Hegel’s Retreat from Eleusis (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1979); Hans-Georg Gadamer, Hegel’s Dialectic (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press), 54-74; and G. W. F. Hegel, Phenomenology of the Spirit, trans. A. V. Miller, with analysis and foreword by J. N. Findlay (Oxford: Clarendon, 1977), 111-19, 520-23.

91. It is at least plausible that there is something of a guilty conscience at work here that knows the poor must resent their marginalization from the village’s economic and social life. This interpretation is very much in keeping with I. M. Lewis’s analysis of possession by spirits among women and low-status men in a variety of cultures. In the context of a low-caste cult among the Nayar in India, he concludes, “Thus as so often elsewhere, from an objective viewpoint, these spirits can be seen to function as a sort of ‘conscience of the rich.’ ... Their malevolent power reflects the feelings of envy and resentment which people of high caste assume the less fortunate lower castes must harbour in relation to their superiors.” Ecstatic Religions: An Anthropological Study of Spirit Possession and Shamanism (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971), 115.

92. For an interesting account of this process as applied to both class and gender relations, see also Elizabeth Janeway, The Powers of the Weak (New York: Morrow Quill Paperbacks, 1981), chaps. 9-10.
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John T
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Re: Truthiness

Post by John T »

Pilate was asking a straight forward question of Jesus; are you King of the Jews?
Pilate wanted to know the plain truth. If Jesus claimed to be of the royal bloodline of David then indeed he could be put to death by Pilate as a direct threat to the reign of Herod who had an active campaign to kill anyone that might be descendents of David for fear they would retake the throne.

Jesus did not deny he was a king but denied his kingdom was a physical threat to Herod.

Pilate was confused as to just what is the truth behind this family feud?
"It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into."...Jonathan Swift
Stephan Huller
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Re: Truthiness

Post by Stephan Huller »

How is a human Jesus any more or less of a king of an imaginary place than you or I? Did they give him an imaginary crown too? Wow those are hard to come by. The nonsense you believe only makes sense after an organized Church established a group to sanction this make-believe messiah nonsense. A messiah can only be a king in this world and if that's the measure for your human Jesus he failed.
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