Soros on truth

James Farmelant farmelantj at juno.com
Sun Feb 7 17:21:18 PST 1999


It should be kept in mind that Soros studied philosophy at the LSE under Karl Popper. Soros is probably the best known and certainly the wealthiest Popperian in the cosmos.

Jim Farmelant

On Sun, 07 Feb 1999 16:03:55 -0800 "Henry C.K. Liu" <hliu at mindspring.com> writes:
>Soros' sorrowful half truths.
>
>Th pathetic aspect of a capitalistic culture is its tendency to equate
>wealth
>with wisdom.
>In Chinese culture, a rich man is automatically disqualified as a wise
>intellectual. Preoccupation with counting money is considereed an
>insurmountable obstacle to the task of finding truth.
>
>Henry
>
>Doug Henwood wrote:
>
>> George Soros writes:
>>
>> "What reflexivity and self-reference have in common is the element
>of
>> indeterminacy. Logical positivism outlawed self-referent statements
>as
>> meaningless, but by introducing the concept of reflexivity I am
>setting
>> logical positivism on its head. Far from being meaningless, I claim
>that
>> statements whose truth value is indeterminate are even more
>significant
>> than statements whose truth value is known. The latter constitute
>> knowledge: They help us understand the world as it is. But the
>former,
>> expressions of our inherently imperfect understanding, help to shape
>the
>> world in which we live.
>>
>> At the time I reached this conclusion, I considered it a great
>insight. Now
>> that natural science no longer insists on a deterministic
>interpretation of
>> all phenomena and logical positivism has faded into the background,
>I feel
>> as if I were beating a dead horse. Indeed, intellectual fashion has
>turned
>> to the opposite extreme: The deconstruction of reality into the
>subjective
>> views and prejudices of the participants has become all the rage.
>The very
>> basis on which differing views can be judged, namely the truth, is
>being
>> questioned. I consider this other extreme equally misguided.
>Reflexivity
>> should lead to a reassessment, not a total rejection, of our concept
>of
>> truth."
>>
>> Doug
>
>

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