Ex Supra -- "from above."

All this talk of Truth versus truth makes me a little wary.  Doesn’t it you? 

It is no happy thought to imagine life, my life, as a never-ending set of Rorschach’s Inkblot tests, where everything that “is” is actually only splotches of ambiguous black and white, and our interpretations, our making of truth and fact, are all subjective.  Frightening, right? 

I see angst...so much angst....and cats kissing.

The idea that offers comfort is the concept of the a priori, a preexisting set of screening and sorting functions that enable us greater comprehension than pure subjectivism.  If knowledge is an enormous pyramid, with new discoveries and observations built upon those preceding, the a priori is what directed us to make it triangular.  It’s the syntax behind a language—the filter that changes pure sensory input into usable and relatable knowledge.   With me so far?

Time for some synthesis.  Megan noted that “Each Truth that we talk about…is made up of many smaller, partial truths.”  And later, discussing paradigms, “…People can find truths in each, in order to formulate the Truths upon which they base their lives.”  Of course, now I think: great, so we return to the notion that truth is entirely experientially-based.  But!  Then I remember that there are around 7,000,000,000 different people in the world (don’t check that link unless you enjoy being unnerved), each with precisely differently-tuned senses, which means seven billion different experiences of all we recognize to be true.  If, even with the multiplicity and variance of perceptions, we can still arrive at similar conclusions (i.e., the sun will rise each morning), there must be some similar way by which we understand and reason, no?

Tell me, after clicking the population link...do you see the globe in this?

Which brings me to this: Pirsig wrote: “Though all knowledge begins with experience, it doesn’t follow that all knowledge arises out of experience” (p. 132.)

The point Pirsig makes, is although our primary “data collection” method is experience, our “data processing” is driven by other functions—such as value, justice, and group agreement.  Great, you might think, so all knowledge is driven by values.  Isn’t that better than everything we claim as truth to be subjective-experience-based?  The next question is from where do these values arise, and why do people groups with no outside influence accumulate similar values, such as the universal condemnation of incest across cultures?  Something greater than before, it seems.  An "ex supra" perhaps, meaning from above?  That is a great question for Anthropologists; as Rhetoricians, we can find solace in the fact that we are not creatures driven purely by sense or experience.  It offers hope, for those who have experienced certain things in horrible situations (such as sexual relations) that we are made of more than our experiences.  In building truth, we certainly support our ideas with experiences and that which we perceive, but it’s not all that. 

Tee hee...#comicrelief

I am conveniently skirt tailing what that (or those?) a priori actually is.  Socrates called it “forms,” linguistics calls it “prototype theory,” much of modern science says it is evolutionary-survival based, we all have terms to process the world and keep us sane.  Perhaps that is why I find hope in religion.  If we differentiate between truths and Truths, religion is the A Priori to other a priori.  It presents a manner of understanding the world, truth, and purpose.  It makes sense of these questions of truth-making and epistemology that have baffled the greatest minds in history.  I think this is what Pirsig intended when he wrote that rationality is not to be abandoned because it fails to explain certain phenomena, just that its capabilities need to be expanded (pg. 109.)  Perhaps everyone doesn’t need a sense of spirituality to make sense of the world, but we do need to widen our understandings of rationality and logic.  Otherwise, we will continue to see the world as we always have—and where’s the adventure in that? 

Anjeli C.