A few minutes of key ideas!
The research & wisdom reminders.
These are the six key ideas that guided the high-level topics of this week’s column.
This week:
Truth.
Truth requires alignment with reality.
1.
Absolute Truth
The Idea of the Unknowable Dao
New Look
If you embrace that absolute truth exists only in objective reality, then our human claims can remain provisional and always open to refinement, correction, and falsification.
2.
“The Dao that can be told is not the eternal Dao; The name that can be named is not the eternal name.”
- Laozi
- circa 550 BCE
Laozi opens the Dao De Jing by reminding us that ultimate reality cannot be captured by words, names, or ideas. He opens with the split.
3.
Why do scientific models work if they aren’t literally true?
Scientific models are powerful because they organize important patterns, relationships, and variables in the world. They help us predict, explain, and navigate reality, even when they simplify it. Think well by using models with confidence, but also with humility. They are maps that improve over time, not final pictures of the territory.
4.
Does Agrippa’s Trilemma Disprove the Idea of Ideas?
Agrippa’s Trilemma does not break the Idea of Ideas. It helps show why we need a clear split between reality itself and our human ideas about it.
5.
How do I know what is true and what is just an opinion?
Evidence. Inductive reasoning is evidence based; abductive reasoning is a best guess from limited evidence.
6.
Is Philo’s interpretation related to the split in the Idea of Ideas?
Philo’s allegorical reading of Scripture reflects an early awareness that a text and our interpretation of that text are not the same thing.
That’s it. The end.