However, I am not saying that an objective reality does not exist. Even Derrida, whom every realist loves to hate, never made that argument. I refuse to believe that every time I turn around, those two proverbial chairs cease to exist, just because they are not part of my immediate construction of reality any more. The point is that our understanding of those two chairs is always a mediated understanding- mediated by language, conceptual framework, historical experience, or even our uniquely human perceptual capacity.
If you argue that those two chairs exist for me (or for us) because they are practical, they are concrete, then it makes sense. This is the kind of argument the old man made in a refreshingly pragmatic moment in the "Second Thesis of Feurbach." But that pragmatism does not assume any notion of absolute truth. Marx's pragmatism here is relational through and through. If by "simple truth" you mean that kind of practicality, an intersubjectively produced, accessible, generalizable construct, I have no problem with that. But if by "simple truth," you mean something is TRUE, just because it is empirically accessible to us, I strongly disagree with that. If we want to critique religion, we have to do better than "God does not exist, as those two chairs exist, its a simple truth, therefore religion is insensible." I don't mean any disrespect, but that's an outright silly way of doing philosophy. Sartre is actually lot more "sensible" when he said, I don't believe in God, because I
don't need him. See, that is a immensely courageous statement because the existence of God here is a question of existential freedom and choice, not one about the essence or non-essence of God. (I am not advocating existentialism here, I am not an existentialist- all I am saying is that is a lot more practical way of conceptualizing the issue).
Manjur
Jon Johanning <zenner41 at mac.com> wrote: On Dec 28, 2004, at 8:16 PM, Manjur Karim wrote:
> "Sensible Talk" in itself does not faithfully reflect an
> ontologically valid reality out there. What is "sensible" and what is
> not depends on the premises of "sensibility" that you are operating
> upon, discourses that you are participating in.
What I mean by "sensible talk" is this: I state that there are two chairs in the room I am presently in. As it happens, this is true. If someone else walked into the room and maintained that there were three chairs in it, I would point out their mistake. If they persisted in their claim, I wouldn't know how to talk sensibly with them.
This doesn't depend on any fancy thing like "discourses." Or perhaps it depends on the assumption that we are both using the kind of discourse in which one ordinarily talks about chairs.
What happens with religion? I would maintain that it is true to say that God (in the Western monotheistic sense) does not exist, in exactly the same way that I maintain that there are two chairs in my room. Apparently folks who do talk about this God existing are using some other kind of discourse. I would call it something like poetry, but they distinguish sharply between their religious talk and what they consider poetry. But however they twist and turn, to me "truth" is the two-chairs, no-God truth; it seems pointless to try to mean anything else by the word. Yes, you can talk about "poetic truth," but that just means that a poem you call "true" has a strong effect on you. (As does religion for religious people.)
> IMHO, you can't argue with religious fanatics from an inherently
> superior vantage point of truth. With all honesty, the best we can do
> is to present our arguments from our specific will to knowledge, from
> our own hegemonic articulations. If that makes me an epistemological
> nihilist, I plead guilty.
I don't think that "truth' in the two-chairs truth is a "superior vantage point"; it's just simple, ordinary truth. The reason that I don't accept that "there is a God" is true is that there is no reason, as far as I know up to now, to believe that this proposition is true -- that's all. If someone wants to convince me, present me with a valid argument. I've studied all the arguments for the "existence of God" that I could find since I was a philosophy student, many years ago, and I have still to find a valid one. But who knows? Maybe there is one out there that I've overlooked.
Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org __________________________ When I was a little boy, I had but a little wit, 'Tis a long time ago, and I have no more yet; Nor ever ever shall, until that I die, For the longer I live the more fool am I. -- Wit and Mirth, an Antidote against Melancholy (1684)
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