Zero Point of Truth
I mean zero point as in zero crossing, but temperature is also a good visualization of this. It is my understanding of the mind that it is a zero seeking engine and that when it finds what it believes to be a zero crossing like the one we find at the freezing point of water it “believes” that it has found truth. But this analogy may miss lead you entirely, because I do not mean to refer to any external reality, but to an internal process of the mind. It is when the mind perceives an internal phase-transition of its constructs as it goes back and forth between sides of some idea that the mind believes that it has something significant - that is, it has some truth.
This concept is very mathematical. In this sense by “zero,” I mean “the” truth in question. A concrete example would be useful. Any time we take a direct measurement of something, say our weight this is exactly a zeroing process. This is very clear on the old fashion scale that you might get on in the doctors office. One moves the weights until a balance, a zero, is reached. The observation of that zeroing process tells us that we have a truth. In this case, we find a truth that, within some measurement error, can be translated form one place to another.
The scale example makes me afraid for the new generation. The world is getting so abstracted by machines that do thinking for us, as does the bathroom scale in our home, that they will have few internalized concrete measures of truth, and thus a lessened ability to judge other truths.
I contend that the same zeroing strategy is used for all truth discernment. Consider how we discern the difference between the awake and dream state. (Note, I am picking this very hard case in the hope of breaking through in my own thinking about this. In the waking state we note that sensory input is very tangible, and that we can ask questions about sensory input. This is a test that I believe we are applying that has to do with the continuum of awareness. Dreaming and awakeness are manifestation of the same mind in differing states. In the wake-state we know what it feels like to move closer to a state where external input is cut off. We experience this, more or less, as a continuum. Therefore, from the wake-state we are testing to see if we are in the other phase-state. We are able to a lesser or greater to determine that we are not in the other phase and that we are therefore awake. In other words, we are testing an indirect indicator of a zero crossing, in much the same way as a physicist might infer the existence of quarks. (Interesting, probably this indirection makes us say we cannot be truly certain about the wakefulness. I’m not sure that this argument is convincing but it is in the right direction.)
It is worth nothing that when I wrote I mean “the” truth in question that our definitions are in a recursion of meaning in the strongest way possible. This is why this subject is so hard to grasp. When we try to analyze our own truth process, we are off into meta-thought as soon as we start, and therefore it is difficult to land.
I need to keep on coming back to this. There is a whole book here.
r.slime
This concept is very mathematical. In this sense by “zero,” I mean “the” truth in question. A concrete example would be useful. Any time we take a direct measurement of something, say our weight this is exactly a zeroing process. This is very clear on the old fashion scale that you might get on in the doctors office. One moves the weights until a balance, a zero, is reached. The observation of that zeroing process tells us that we have a truth. In this case, we find a truth that, within some measurement error, can be translated form one place to another.
The scale example makes me afraid for the new generation. The world is getting so abstracted by machines that do thinking for us, as does the bathroom scale in our home, that they will have few internalized concrete measures of truth, and thus a lessened ability to judge other truths.
I contend that the same zeroing strategy is used for all truth discernment. Consider how we discern the difference between the awake and dream state. (Note, I am picking this very hard case in the hope of breaking through in my own thinking about this. In the waking state we note that sensory input is very tangible, and that we can ask questions about sensory input. This is a test that I believe we are applying that has to do with the continuum of awareness. Dreaming and awakeness are manifestation of the same mind in differing states. In the wake-state we know what it feels like to move closer to a state where external input is cut off. We experience this, more or less, as a continuum. Therefore, from the wake-state we are testing to see if we are in the other phase-state. We are able to a lesser or greater to determine that we are not in the other phase and that we are therefore awake. In other words, we are testing an indirect indicator of a zero crossing, in much the same way as a physicist might infer the existence of quarks. (Interesting, probably this indirection makes us say we cannot be truly certain about the wakefulness. I’m not sure that this argument is convincing but it is in the right direction.)
It is worth nothing that when I wrote I mean “the” truth in question that our definitions are in a recursion of meaning in the strongest way possible. This is why this subject is so hard to grasp. When we try to analyze our own truth process, we are off into meta-thought as soon as we start, and therefore it is difficult to land.
I need to keep on coming back to this. There is a whole book here.
r.slime