I'll start this in the morning, 9:36 AM, and finish when I have time or fee like it but sorry if the style, ideas, and overall tone change. I can be cranky in the morning and my German professor is sexy enough to cheer me up even though I can't understand her.

So, I want you to think about this while you read. It's something my philosophy professor said and you might want to get out now if you don't like thinking deeply. "Truth is the correspondence between the way things are and how we understand them."

A little background is needed so you can see the philosophical schools this comes from. We're reading Simon Blackburn's book called Truth. He's a modern philosopher reviewing older philosopher. First he attacked Williams James and defended R.K. Clifford (those initials might be wrong). James is a pragmatist, but also a relativist who gives people the right to believe anything that's believable. That might sound great if you're not a philosopher and have never thought about Truth, but it's pretty crazy if you do think for a second. "Wait, you think that tree is possessed by a bear's tormented soul because you once saw a bear peeing on it before it died? So its last urination is where its soul will spend all of eternity?" The correct answer is no. Clearly a crazy belief. It is one that has no evidence behind it. This is why I'll often tell you "Opinions are the uneducated call their shitty arguments." It is a belief that they came up with without thinking about it, based on nothing but their limited view of the subject, with nothing to base it on. Blackburn calls it "soggy relativism"  and "a distraction."

Then the next chapter is about Absolutism and Socrates and therefore Plato. If you aren't familiar with the Socratic method, it's asking a bunch of questions until your opponent realizes a fallacy in their argument. He does this with Gorgias and with Protagoras and probably every other person he met. But Blackburn is not backing him up. Instead, Blackburn says that this little judo-flip of his can easily be avoided if the relativist is crafty by saying "It seems to me that..." and when you respond with a logical argument, he'll say "Yes, that's how it seems to you based on what evidence you have at hand. But you can't say that's the truth because other evidence that is later discovered will disprove you," as often is the case with science. This is something that's kind of hard to argue with, but at the same time irrelevant because if there is no truth except how it seems to me, then we're not really saying anything. "It seems to me that peanut butter is made out of bee vomit." "Yeah, well it seems to me bee vomit is not a real thing." "Well we don't agree so that's that." It's ridiculous and I realize now that this is less about Absolutism as the next chapter is.

Absolutism and Realism are two schools pretty closely related. Absolutism says that there is a Truth and we have found it. Realism says, "We haven't found it, but there is a Truth." And Blackburn agrees with the relativist on this point saying that whatever Truth you find might easily be wrong. It might be reasonable based on the evidence at hand, but in later years Copernicus is going to come along and say "Tolomy, you were wrong." This is when we come to Minimalism, which says "There are truths. Small truths. Not giant overarching Truths to explain reality." An example would be "It is sunny." That will always be true that at this time, in my area, it is sunny. It's not some giant discovery, but it's true. No relativist can say "That's just how it seems to you," without looking like a moron. Minimalism professes the belief that overarching beliefs, like religions but not science, are irrelevant and we can't argue against them and you can't argue for them, but they're unimportant enough that people shouldn't care. I like this idea.

Then our professor gives us the statement above. "Truth is the correspondence between the way things are and how we understand them." I don't like that. I don't even know if that's a minimalist idea, because he said it while talking about Absolutism and Minimalism. But I don't like it because it admits that things are a certain way. That's reality. But then it adds "...how we understand them." What? Since when does my piss-poor understanding of yoga change the way yoga actually works? How am I suppose to argue that "This is how I understand ionic bonds and therefore it's the truth."

But I wanted to come up with a good example before bringing this up in front of the class, professor and the sexy Ostrich. So I looked around for things to argue about. My Blackburn book. Okay, my book is a certain way. It is full of certain words, made up of certain paper and cardboard and all of that. It is this way. But it's a book. It wouldn't have been written if people didn't understand it a certain way. Language is just convention and if he had written "Sprachenwissenschaft ennui smorgesborg 7qteen" and convention had said that it was a legitimate sentence, then I'd have to accept it. The truth is the book says this, but those are just ink blots that we turn into sound and only through the mind do we understand them. So is it true to say the book says everything I posted above? I mean, I'm paraphrasing it based on my understanding. But I could be wrong about it. So then how is truth wrong? That bothers me!

So I chose something else, something not open to interpretation. The table. The table is made up of wood, weighs a certain amount, is cold, has gum under it, yadda yadda yadda. But its purpose is to put things on. There's no truth that says we have to put our books on it. It's only convention that we do that instead of sitting on it or coloring on it. So that's out.

So I looked over at Silvia, the Austrian exchange student who I call the sexy Ostrich (because in German, Austria is called Osterreich). She was probably creeped out by my intensive study of her. I wanted to argue that Silvia is certain way, whether I understand that or not. She is blonde, she is large chested, intelligent, multi-lingual, Austrian. Right? I couldn't think of a good counter-argument for that, which usually means I haven't thought about it enough or it's a good argument. But then I came to the conclusion that words and their meanings are just convention, as stated above, so no matter what I say it's going to be about understanding.

I'm not admitting defeat. I'm admitting it's a worthy opponent. Is it because these words express concepts that are intelligible, regardless of the language used? It is a necessary evil that through convention we express these concepts.

-Cantwhistle