Truth and Knowledge

[Michael Olanich]

This guy sims to know what he's talking abbott.

[Cosmotheist]

This guy sims to know what he's talking abbott.

Funny play on words with his moniker, Jimmy!

Best regards,
Cosmotheist

[Jimmy Marr]

There is a branch of philosophy called "epistemology." An epistemology is a rationale by which someone claims to have knowledge, or to know truth. Epistemology isn't what you believe to be true. It is, instead, how you justify your claims for knowing what the truth is.

Another branch of philosophy is "ontology" which is devoted to the study of being. Some of us are concerned that the Western separation of these fields may lead us into a condition of knowing more and more about less and less, which could, and to a certain extent already has, produced a race of idiot savants.

Every group holding to a dogma has, as part of that dogma, the belief that they are infallibly and with utter certitude correct in holding to that dogma. The circularity of that reasoning, and hence the logical invalidity of it, however obvious it might be to others, is lost on them. A good example is the way in which Christians believe that they're going to Heaven, but nobody else is. Most of the time, this sort of attitude is pure presumption. However, there can be exceptions. Sometimes one group's point of view is right about something, while all of the other groups are wrong.

The primal use of the word "every" in the foregoing description gives me cause for wariness. It appears that Aryans in ancient India believed in the human potential for convergence "being" and "knowing" and had an entire cast of people devoted to it as the highest of cultural (racial?) pursuits. I suppose it is likely that they, or one among their number was considered the embodiment of infallibility, but this, while not without risk, because it is a living being and not a static dogma, is a horse of different color.

Christians say that the New Testament is God’s word on certain matters, such as what happens to people after they die, and the conditions for having good Afterlife circumstances rather than poor ones. But someone of a different religion will disagree, and I don’t see how aligning my thinking with the beliefs most common in my native land is a valid way of answering metaphysical questions.

Truth is not something that authority can create by decree.

Truth is not something that you can find by the method of voting on what the truth is.

Paradoxically, empiricism may lead us into this very condition. By denying the possibility of the human embodiment of a convergence of knowing and being, it implicitly relativizes human beings and their relative knowings.

There’s another, and a better, way to find truth. Use an empirical method, such as the scientific method. It might take a while to work, but when it does work, it works for everybody. Anyone with the intelligence and the material prerequisites can do the same research, carry out the same experiments, get the same results, and usually reach the same set of conclusions about what the truth is. You might need a microscope, a telescope, or a chemical laboratory. But you won’t need a priest.

It might also be said that the person behind the microscope becomes the priest at that point.

Because, really, there is no "my truth" and "your truth" and "their truth." There is only the truth. And opinion is either in accordance with the truth, or else it's simply wrong. The only question worth arguing is: How do you know when a method for seeking the truth actually does succeed in finding it?

Objectivism is certainly the paramount method for evaluating knowledge of relative truths and falsities, but if there is a potential for convergence of being and knowing in absolute truth it is destined to miss it for lack of awareness of being.

You know that a method for seeking truth works when it can, really can, cause a light to spring forth and banish darkness. Not an imaginary light, such as a delusional fanatic might pretend to see, but a real light that can show anyone with normally functioning eyes the way through an unfamiliar and otherwise dark place. You know that a method for seeking truth works when it can, really can, heal the sick. Or when it can reveal what would have gone unnoticed because of distance or smallness, or for some other reason. Or when it can enable people to communicate with each other across thousands, or even millions, of miles.

Not only can we transmit our science and technology across the planet, we have transmitted our science and technology across the planet, and it may well be our undoing.

In summary, you know that a method for seeking truth works when it has a history of giving to people powers that they did not have before.

Valid methods for seeking truth do this because useful truths are a subset of all truths, and it is a subset in which people have a particular interest and to which they devote a considerable amount of their time. Any efficacious method for pursuing truth, used by human beings, will uncover a significant proportion of useful truths over time.

Useful to whom, and for what purpose?

The only method for seeking truth that actually works, so far as is known, is empiricism augmented by logic. In other words: science.

Religious metaphysics cause factionalism because God doesn't really exist, except as an abstraction that different groups of people have defined in different ways. But you will notice that the nature of gravity or the nature of electricity has not caused any similar factionalism. That's because the principles behind those forces were discovered by empirical methods, which give the same knowledge to Europeans, to Arabs, to Chinese, or to anyone else who uses them.

I suspect that the conflation of religion and metaphysics may be part and parcel of the West's demise, but am unprepared to develop and expound that possibility at this point.

Western empiricism has undoubtedly been good for Arabs and Chinese, not to mention Africans. My concern, and one that I know you share, is that the race responsible for the elevation of the value of knowing to a position of intellectual supremacy has suffered a corresponding diminution in the value of its being. Whether or not there is a causal relationship between these two phenomena is unknown to me, but inasmuch as I was never very good at science, and have yet to be elevated to Buddhahood, I don't mind, as a temporal assignment, pulling existential guard duty at the temple of your laboratory.

[David York]

You know that a method for seeking truth works when it can, really can, cause a light to spring forth and banish darkness. Not an imaginary light, such as a delusional fanatic might pretend to see, but a real light that can show anyone with normally functioning eyes the way through an unfamiliar and otherwise dark place. You know that a method for seeking truth works when it can, really can, heal the sick. Or when it can reveal what would have gone unnoticed because of distance or smallness, or for some other reason. Or when it can enable people to communicate with each other across thousands, or even millions, of miles.

Not only can we transmit our science and technology across the planet, we have transmitted our science and technology across the planet, and it may well be our undoing.

Good point there. I think David Sims was arguing that Science was better than religion because it doesn't cause factionalism (factionalism among whites is what I assume he meant), but isn't factionalism between Europeans and non-Europeans what we want? And since Science has in essence been transmitted to our racial opponents it very well maybe our undoing and you can say that Science alone is not a sufficient means to the end we are seeking, which is the survival and unhindered development of our race on this planet.

The only method for seeking truth that actually works, so far as is known, is empiricism augmented by logic. In other words: science.

Religious metaphysics cause factionalism because God doesn't really exist, except as an abstraction that different groups of people have defined in different ways. But you will notice that the nature of gravity or the nature of electricity has not caused any similar factionalism. That's because the principles behind those forces were discovered by empirical methods, which give the same knowledge to Europeans, to Arabs, to Chinese, or to anyone else who uses them.

I suspect that the conflation of religion and metaphysics may be part and parcel of the West's demise, but am unprepared to develop and expound that possibility at this point.

I think your suspicion is correct, and the reason it is correct is because the White man embraced the Christian religion which was alien to his soul.

Western empiricism has undoubtedly been good for Arabs and Chinese, not to mention Africans. My concern, and one that I know you share, is that the race responsible for the elevation of the value of knowing to a position of intellectual supremacy has suffered a corresponding diminution in the value of its being. Whether or not there is a causal relationship between these two phenomena is unknown to me, but inasmuch as I was never very good at science, and have yet to be elevated to Buddhahood, I don't mind, as a temporal assignment, pulling existential guard duty at the temple of your laboratory.

I think our over-emphasis/over-reliance on Science and technology and at the same time our abandonment of spirituality/acceptance of alien spirituality is what has diminished our place in this world as a race. According to Francis Parker Yockey (in Imperium), by the middle of the 18th century Western history began to produce Rationalism and consequently caused us to lean away from spiritual values. This was our so called "Enlightenment" (a European intellectual movement of the late 17th and 18th centuries emphasizing reason and individualism rather than tradition.). We began to attempt to explain everything with reason and logic (science) but science ignores the irrational because it cannot be explained. He said that empiricism was merely a technique for justifying rational assumptions. Yockey predicted that the age of rationalism was destined to end and that a new age of spiritualism would follow. In other words he was saying that in order to fix the Western culture we have to abandon reason and individualism and fall back to tradition. Yockey said that Pragmatism(an approach that assesses the truth of meaning of theories or beliefs in terms of the success of their practical application.) was the suicide of Reason.

[Jimmy Marr]

Isn't factionalism between Europeans and non-Europeans what we want?

Yes, and to a certain degree, we may need turbulence even within the White racialist community in order for the best ideas and leaders to rise to the top

Yockey predicted that the age of rationalism was destined to end and that a new age of spiritualism would follow. In other words he was saying that in order to fix the Western culture we have to abandon reason and individualism and fall back to tradition.

I don't think we should abandon reason, but I suspect we might benefit from realizing its insufficiency as our highest authority.

Yockey said that Pragmatism(an approach that assesses the truth of meaning of theories or beliefs in terms of the success of their practical application.) was the suicide of [by] Reason.

We of a metaphysical inclination most also take note of this admonition. It's easy for us to say that we should accept a metaphysical assertion because without it we will die. That would be pragmatism as well. We must only accept something as Absolute Truth if and when it becomes apparent that it IS. That time has not come for me, but neither am I willing to renounce the possibility simply because it lacks scientific merit.

The other interesting thing about Yockey is that he felt and asserted that this metaphysical awakening, of which our race is in such dire need, would arise in Russia.

Well, lo and behold, who's the subject jewish nightmares today?

[David York]

I don't think we should abandon reason, but I suspect we might benefit from realizing its insufficiency as our highest authority.

Yeah you are correct, I don't think Yockey meant that we should abandon reason. In his chapter on "Association and DIssociation of Forms of Thought and Action", he says that every high culture "has a multiplicity of functions, a diversity that increases in refinement and articulation as we proceed upward" and that "the various functions all continue, but one is primary.". He listed the different categories of thoughts and actions. The thoughts included religion, philosophy, Science and Technics, and the actions are economics and politics. The culture, which to Yockey was equivalent to a living organism, places an emphasis on a certain thought or action depending on what age of development it is in. So reason wouldn't be abandoned but it would lose its primacy to pragmatism, which is a function of Technics.