On Truth By Frankfurt discussion points
Some ideas that I plan to discuss tomorrow on Truth.
First in the spirit of on truth I have great agreement with Frankfurt and the importance's of truth for society and for individuals.
First point is Frankfurt goes to Spinoza for love of truth, but I believe we are raised in a culture of truth. Truth and the value of it is celebrated in multiple traditions. We grow up with the truth, but I am not sure if Frankfurt is ignoring religious indoctrination in truth traditions.
Second point is we approach the truth but often we are not near it but working towards it. I think this is a letter of the idea rather than the spirit and Frankfurt wants to be firm in his idea of truth. But finding the truth must center on doubting the things we hold as truth to some degree. We do not have the truth or the means to the full truth, in spirit we should be searching for it and we should welcome our fellows who are looking for it. There are ideas of close enough to the truth.
Third. There are obvious and high cost truths those are the easiest to recognize since we suffer the impacts or they are right before our eyes, but less high cost truths and less obvious one allow us to tolerate errors. A mild form of BS exist in this errors and opacity. It is those who weaponize BS that are the most dangerous. Most of us BS a little and in domains it is tolerated and nurture eg the bar on a Friday or college dorm room debate. We should be careful not to be so rigous on low cost errors that we don’t allow any because truth is often found in the trials and test of partially erroneous statements.
I think that the idea of weaponization of BS, sincerity and lies has manifested itself since the publication of on BS and On Truth. We see this in Bitcoin, Covid, NFT, politics etc. This weaponization is the danger of BS and disrespect for the truth. Now we live where there are personal truths instead of truths. We all want our own personal truth (like our own personal Jesus.)
