Truth versus Trueness
20 Jun '07 06:25Something that Blakbuzzard said about truth versus facticity triggered this—
I am somewhat skeptical about applying the word “truth” to religious/spiritual propositions, at least in terms of a truth that one can epistemologically confirm.
By this statement, I am really not talking about violating the logical rule that A and ~A cannot both be true at the same time. Dualism and non-dualism cannot both be propositionally true, as propositions. However—
If I say that Beethoven’s Ninth symphony is “true,” I do not mean that it somehow contains or expresses a propositional truth claim. I am saying that it exhibits a certain kind of harmony and coherence that I might call “trueness.” As in the “trueness” of the grain of wood; or “true-ing up” the corners of a house; or sighting down a piece of lumber to see if it’s “true” or warped.
In this sense, to say that if a Bach fugue is “true,” then a Ravi Shankar raga must be “false” is nonsensical. To say that if a shade of blue in the visible spectrum is true, then the color yellow must be false is nonsensical (I may be experiencing blue; you may be experiencing yellow). A certain wavelength range cannot exhibit both blueness and yellowness at the same time, but light contains those and other wavelengths (some invisible to humans) as well.
I really think that, at its best, religious experience/expression is more like Beethoven (or Ravi Shankar) than like propositional logic—or empirical science.
All spiritual (for lack of a better word) experience is, I believe, participatory. “I” am never separate from that experience, any more than “I” am separate from my experience of music—and what I ultimately know of music (as opposed to knowing things about it—composition and the like) is known in that experience. That is also true, I think, for the writers of various religious texts—as well as for readers of such texts. That is why I adhere to the rabbinical dictum (I forget where I first came across it) that one must bring one’s own torah to the torah-text—and out of that hermeneutical engagement, new Torah may be generated. I adhere to that principle in reading, say, the Upanishads as well.
Of course, there is in all that, some propositional content—i.e., statements about the nature of religion at its “truest.” I am only proposing that we can push the propositional (truth-claim) content of religions too far. The mystics seem to have little trouble communicating beyond the barriers of particular truth-claims, in order to share the “trueness” that lies behind them.
I am somewhat skeptical about applying the word “truth” to religious/spiritual propositions, at least in terms of a truth that one can epistemologically confirm.
By this statement, I am really not talking about violating the logical rule that A and ~A cannot both be true at the same time. Dualism and non-dualism cannot both be propositionally true, as propositions. However—
If I say that Beethoven’s Ninth symphony is “true,” I do not mean that it somehow contains or expresses a propositional truth claim. I am saying that it exhibits a certain kind of harmony and coherence that I might call “trueness.” As in the “trueness” of the grain of wood; or “true-ing up” the corners of a house; or sighting down a piece of lumber to see if it’s “true” or warped.
In this sense, to say that if a Bach fugue is “true,” then a Ravi Shankar raga must be “false” is nonsensical. To say that if a shade of blue in the visible spectrum is true, then the color yellow must be false is nonsensical (I may be experiencing blue; you may be experiencing yellow). A certain wavelength range cannot exhibit both blueness and yellowness at the same time, but light contains those and other wavelengths (some invisible to humans) as well.
I really think that, at its best, religious experience/expression is more like Beethoven (or Ravi Shankar) than like propositional logic—or empirical science.
All spiritual (for lack of a better word) experience is, I believe, participatory. “I” am never separate from that experience, any more than “I” am separate from my experience of music—and what I ultimately know of music (as opposed to knowing things about it—composition and the like) is known in that experience. That is also true, I think, for the writers of various religious texts—as well as for readers of such texts. That is why I adhere to the rabbinical dictum (I forget where I first came across it) that one must bring one’s own torah to the torah-text—and out of that hermeneutical engagement, new Torah may be generated. I adhere to that principle in reading, say, the Upanishads as well.
Of course, there is in all that, some propositional content—i.e., statements about the nature of religion at its “truest.” I am only proposing that we can push the propositional (truth-claim) content of religions too far. The mystics seem to have little trouble communicating beyond the barriers of particular truth-claims, in order to share the “trueness” that lies behind them.
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