Re: <nettime> Forget who owns the truth. Just talk about the weather.

[Joseph Rabie via nettime-l <nettime-l@lists.nettime.org>]

Dear Christian,

Here are some thoughts and clarifications...

> thank you for your interesting argument. As I have mentioned, I work as a professor in a university. I'm thus surrounded by some people who consider themselves as rational beings. Most of them are interested in spirituality, religion, and stuff like that, while they do not consider themself as spiritual or religious, and I did not meet any colleagues who define themself as being on a spiritual quest. I thus have some evidence that makes me doubt your claims.

I have doubts whether a group of academics in a given university forms a sufficiently heterogenous sample for drawing general conclusions. From my experience, in conversation and reading, I encounter numerous cases of people expressing a need for what they refer to as some sort of spiritual content for their lives.


> My argument in this case is as before: The religious idea of truth and the scientific idea of truth are two different things. They are both called truth - but that's the same word for two different things (a homonymy). The consequence is simple: If a person says something true about religion as a scientist, that's a scientific truth, not a religious truth. And if a religious person says something true about science as a religious person, that's not scientific truth, but religious truth.

I agree with you. The sociologist Maurice Halbwachs spoke of how different groups (professions, for example) constitute a particular “world”, which has its particular knowledge, complicity, habitus... and truths. In this way, the idea that there are subjective truths appears to not contradict the idea that a truth must necessarily be absolute and objective. I do hesitate, though, because some truths (in physics, for example) do equate to objective facts.


> And neither religions nor sciences are art. Additionally, religion and science are not politics, which is connected to a third idea of truth. What happens quite often is that scientific arguments are picked up in politics to justify the execution of power. It's sometimes difficult to distinguish these things, but asking who says what through which channel with what effect already helps a bit: If politicians argue with data, that's politics, not science. Same for journalists - in journalism, "truth" is defined by attention rate, not but "research method".

I disagree with this. What you write appears to compartmentalise, in the way that academia compartmentalises disciplines. For me politics, religion, art and all other things have everything to do with everything, and a pluridisciplinary approach is essential.


> A second point is "the apparent meaningless of our existential condition". Again, I would doubt the "our" - for me at least that's not true. I can not see an apparent meaningless of myself. The meaning of my existence is cultural and biological transmission. It's thus apparent meaningful, has an essence and is not mysterious. I do not claim that this makes sense for anybody else, but I do claim that the "our" is wrong.

You are undoubtedly right about the “our”.

Apart from that, I personally find the idea that the meaning of existence lies in transmission of whatever kind profoundly nihilistic. It corresponds to the evolutionary idea (that I have come across here and there) that a species’s ultimate purpose is to assure its perennity through reproduction. In other words, its meaning comes from mothering the following generation, and beyond guaranteeing that, it does not live for itself. And so on, all the way down the line. I find this sort of utilitarianism profoundly depressing, the antithesis of the spiritual need I believe exists in many of us.


> And since you said that science rips things appart: If you take a look at theories of wholeness and structure, you will see that this is not true for every scientific theories. What scientists do not tell you is eternal truth. The consequence is: You have to take part in the decision of what is considered as truth. As I said: There is no truth unless you make it.

On this you misunderstood me. I was referring to humankind, not science, as the force that is ripping the planet apart.

Best wishes -
Joe.



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