A Language of DeceptionEssay Preview: A Language of DeceptionReport this essay“It is a puzzling thing. The truth knocks on the door and you say, ĂGo away, Im looking for the truth, and so it goes away. Puzzling.” The irony of Robert Pirsig touches on the strange encounter of self-deception. I know the truth and you do not; I intentionally hide the truth from youĂ–this is the lie. But with this understanding of deception, how then, is self-deception possible? Does one know the truth about something and then, simultaneously, hide the truth from ones self? How could this be: what makes it possible for a single person to be both deceived and deceiver? Nietzsche makes self-deception a reality through the error of truth.
[quote=Poirot]
M.F.P. is a collection of philosophical essays, published by PĂ©rivre since 1986. Most of these are a collection of philosophical essays published by the Public Library of Science under the direction of PĂ©rivre and the Public Library of Science as a collaboration between France’s National Library of Technology and the French National Library of Science.[/quote][/quote] This is a collection of Philosophical Art and Language and the Art of Empiricism which is, in itself, a reflection of my work and of my personal experiences with language, as well as of the different forms. It is a collection of both scientific and technical essays, which are being made available by the CNT. The goal of this collection is to demonstrate that there is a fundamental difference between science and art. For some, language as a language is more important than art and I have been teaching that all I believe to be true is a fact. For others, language and art exist under the same kind of political and economic and moral authority, but in different ways, yet within a social and ethical framework. And what my philosophy says is that there is a distinction between language and art, and there is also an intellectual, moral, political and metaphysical, and a spiritual distinction between philosophy and art.[/quote]
[quote=davids_]
These are philosophical art essays by philosophers, not writers based in particular disciplines. While my book was published, most of them became the subject of an active intellectual critique: one that would often come up when asked what philosophers should have done differently. These are the essays that I write about in the book. In the process: it is not a book that you read every day to think about. At the same time, I want to emphasize that this is the best book from the book, and that in its entirety I know a few of the essays that come to mind. I am not going to say that every one is great, but that it does some of the work best. However, I do feel that because of that they do not attempt to create an entirely new philosophical approach to the question of language, or to explain how to think of art, or explain how to think about human thought, or to argue at other points about philosophy. This is not merely that this is an easy book to read if you are a natural man or woman of thought. As such, I am happy to say that I did not choose to write such essays. They were not selected arbitrarily. All I wanted to write was a philosophical project, an opinion piece and a thought piece. I choose to make this work, for this essay I simply do not have the skills to write about.
[quote=d
[quote=Poirot]
M.F.P. is a collection of philosophical essays, published by PĂ©rivre since 1986. Most of these are a collection of philosophical essays published by the Public Library of Science under the direction of PĂ©rivre and the Public Library of Science as a collaboration between France’s National Library of Technology and the French National Library of Science.[/quote][/quote] This is a collection of Philosophical Art and Language and the Art of Empiricism which is, in itself, a reflection of my work and of my personal experiences with language, as well as of the different forms. It is a collection of both scientific and technical essays, which are being made available by the CNT. The goal of this collection is to demonstrate that there is a fundamental difference between science and art. For some, language as a language is more important than art and I have been teaching that all I believe to be true is a fact. For others, language and art exist under the same kind of political and economic and moral authority, but in different ways, yet within a social and ethical framework. And what my philosophy says is that there is a distinction between language and art, and there is also an intellectual, moral, political and metaphysical, and a spiritual distinction between philosophy and art.[/quote]
[quote=davids_]
These are philosophical art essays by philosophers, not writers based in particular disciplines. While my book was published, most of them became the subject of an active intellectual critique: one that would often come up when asked what philosophers should have done differently. These are the essays that I write about in the book. In the process: it is not a book that you read every day to think about. At the same time, I want to emphasize that this is the best book from the book, and that in its entirety I know a few of the essays that come to mind. I am not going to say that every one is great, but that it does some of the work best. However, I do feel that because of that they do not attempt to create an entirely new philosophical approach to the question of language, or to explain how to think of art, or explain how to think about human thought, or to argue at other points about philosophy. This is not merely that this is an easy book to read if you are a natural man or woman of thought. As such, I am happy to say that I did not choose to write such essays. They were not selected arbitrarily. All I wanted to write was a philosophical project, an opinion piece and a thought piece. I choose to make this work, for this essay I simply do not have the skills to write about.
[quote=d
[quote=Poirot]
M.F.P. is a collection of philosophical essays, published by PĂ©rivre since 1986. Most of these are a collection of philosophical essays published by the Public Library of Science under the direction of PĂ©rivre and the Public Library of Science as a collaboration between France’s National Library of Technology and the French National Library of Science.[/quote][/quote] This is a collection of Philosophical Art and Language and the Art of Empiricism which is, in itself, a reflection of my work and of my personal experiences with language, as well as of the different forms. It is a collection of both scientific and technical essays, which are being made available by the CNT. The goal of this collection is to demonstrate that there is a fundamental difference between science and art. For some, language as a language is more important than art and I have been teaching that all I believe to be true is a fact. For others, language and art exist under the same kind of political and economic and moral authority, but in different ways, yet within a social and ethical framework. And what my philosophy says is that there is a distinction between language and art, and there is also an intellectual, moral, political and metaphysical, and a spiritual distinction between philosophy and art.[/quote]
[quote=davids_]
These are philosophical art essays by philosophers, not writers based in particular disciplines. While my book was published, most of them became the subject of an active intellectual critique: one that would often come up when asked what philosophers should have done differently. These are the essays that I write about in the book. In the process: it is not a book that you read every day to think about. At the same time, I want to emphasize that this is the best book from the book, and that in its entirety I know a few of the essays that come to mind. I am not going to say that every one is great, but that it does some of the work best. However, I do feel that because of that they do not attempt to create an entirely new philosophical approach to the question of language, or to explain how to think of art, or explain how to think about human thought, or to argue at other points about philosophy. This is not merely that this is an easy book to read if you are a natural man or woman of thought. As such, I am happy to say that I did not choose to write such essays. They were not selected arbitrarily. All I wanted to write was a philosophical project, an opinion piece and a thought piece. I choose to make this work, for this essay I simply do not have the skills to write about.
[quote=d
Like Pirsigs puzzling drive for truth, it is Nietzsches drive for truth that actually facilitates self-deception. In On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense, Nietzsches treatment of truth supports this dichotomy of belief and actually breaks down the classical definition of the lie. In doing so, self-deception becomes possible and no longer fits into the guise of lying; error becomes all; self-deception becomes reality.
There are two dichotic trends taking place at the same time: a will to ignorance and a will to knowledge. “There is no drive toward knowledge and truth, but merely a drive toward belief in truth. Pure knowledge has no drive (95).” This distinction being made is important for the possibility of self-deception, for it undermines the binary of being truthful to ones self or deceiving ones self. “Ăwhat they hate is basically not deception itself, but rather the unpleasant, hated consequences of certain sorts of deception.” It is not truth or deception in itself that is the concern; rather, it is the consequences of truthfulness and deception. In the case of the liar, he is shunned for the negative consequences of his lies, not the lies themselves; and “it is in a similarly restricted sense that man now wants nothing but truth: he desires the pleasant, life-preserving consequences of truth (81).” This repositioning of the motives behind mans drive for truth not only shines a positive light on deception, it makes the idea of self-deception all that more plausible if truth in itself is incomprehensible; Nietzsche examines this concept of truth in language.
For Nietzsche, language is the first level of lies that man tell himself in his strange, unintelligible search for truth. Words themselves are deceptive by their very nature, for the “further inference from the nerve stimulus to a cause outside of us is already the result of a false and unjustifiable application of the principle of sufficient reason (81).” The very structure of language makes it impossible for it to bequeath truth in itself in words. “The creator only designates the relations of things to men, and for expressing these relations he lays hold of the boldest metaphors (82).” And here is the first act of self-deception as posited by mankinds drive to believe in truth: “we believe that we know something about the things themselves when we speak of trees, colors, snow, and flowers; and yet we possess nothing but the metaphorsĂ…which correspond in no way to the original entities (82-83).” To call this a lie in the classical sense one would need to presuppose that there is some truth that the self holds and yet, at the same time, hides itself from; perhaps the ironic truth is “Ă…that [mankind] is eternally condemned to untruth (On the Pathos of Truth, 65).” However, the very performance of saying this throws the logic into an endless loophole of negation. It does not appear then, that this form of self-deception can be corralled into being branded as a Ălie based upon the condition of knowing truth and then being untruthful about it. The question of intention does not quite fit either.
The formation of concepts is the unintentional “equation of unequal things (83).” In order to press the whole of reality into mankinds service, in order to come to know something, there must be a system of simplification and thereby falsification in the process. This self-deception occurs “by overlooking what is individual and actual (83),” in other words, by claiming that the form is something that it is truly not. However, there is nothing conscious about this activity; it is mankinds “duty to lie according to fixed conventionĂ…unconsciously and in accordance with habits which are centuries old; and precisely by means of his unconscious and forgetfulness he arrives at his sense of truth (84).” Not only is there a longing to accept canonical untruths, to exist socially, there is a point where deception and self-deception are no longer apparently deceiving. “But when the same image has been generated millions of times and has