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From: dcs2e@darwin.clas.virginia.edu (David Swanson)
Subject: Re: Heidegger
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Date: Wed, 5 Jun 1996 22:06:45 GMT
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In article <4p4jdf$8kq@spool.cs.wisc.edu>
tobis@scram.ssec.wisc.edu (Michael Tobis) writes:

> David Swanson (dcs2e@darwin.clas.virginia.edu) wrote:
> 
> : Telling the truth is telling what one believes ("to be true").  What
> : one believes are a series of notions one finds useful.
> 
> For what it's worth, this makes more sense to me than what Wiener
> is saying. (I agree that repeating lies without checking is irresponsible,
> but it surely isn't "lying" in any sense I'd like to base the argument
> on.)
> 
> However, this is surely not complete. It would be *useful* to me if I
> could walk off a twentieth story windowsill (ah, the window again) without
> any unfortunate consequences. There is something besides mere utility that
> affects my belief, which is an empirical observation of what actually
> happens when heavy objects are found stationary above the earth.
> 
> To get back to my point about Galileo (which got lost in the shuffle
> abou the tower of Pisa) it was surely not a matter of convenience for
> him to observe moons of Jupiter, but he did so anyway, at enormous cost
> to himself due to his reluctance to submit to the standard social
> construction which held such a thing impossible. Why did Galileo
> believe in those things if they were inconvenient?
> 
> Could it be an inconvenient _fact_ that Jupiter has moons?
> 
> mt

You're working with a narrow notion of utility.  As I am using the
term, it is useful to know what happens when one walks off roofs or
looks through telescopes.

David

"Resistance to the proposition that the essence of truth is freedom is
based on preconceptions, the most obstinate of which is that freedom is
a property of man."  Martin Heidegger, "On the Essence of Truth," [Vom
Wesen der Wahrheit] translated by John Sallis, in "Basic Writings,"
(old version, 1977) p.126.
