Aletheia

Aletheia (ἀλήθει&#945😉 is the Greek word for "truth", and like the English word implies sincerity as well as factuality or reality. The literal meaning of the word ἀ–λήθεια is, "the state of not being hidden; the state of being evident".

Heidegger and aletheia
A Painting that reveals (alethe) a whole world. Heidegger mentions this particular work of Van Gogh's in "The Origin of the Work of Art."

It is a significant concept in the study of philosophy and epistemology because defining truth as aletheia, instead of as correspondence or coherence, represents a clear departure from nearly every philosophical tradition since the Ancient period.

In the early to mid 20th-century, Martin Heidegger resurrected a-letheia and developed the notion into the form recognized today; a renewed attempt to understand Truth. Heidegger gave an etymological analysis of the term, and drew out an understanding of aletheia as 'disclosedness'; cf. lethe as forgetfulness.

Thus, aletheia is distinct from the more well-known conceptions of truth as statements which accurately describe a state of affairs (correspondence), or statements which fit properly into a system taken as a whole (coherence). Instead, Heidegger focused on the elucidation of a meaning of truth that is pre-Socratic.

Chiefly, then, aletheia is the truth that first appears when something is seen or revealed. It is to take out of hiddenness to uncover. It is not something that is connected with that which appears. Allowing something to appear is then the first act of truth; for example, one must give attention to something before it can be a candidate for any further understanding, for any understanding of space it must first somehow appear. Untruth, then, is something concealed or disguised.

I must admit that this archaic notion of truth is as seductive to me as it is new.

Any comments?

Originally posted by Bosse de Nage
[quote]Aletheia (ἀλήθει&#945😉 is the Greek word for "truth", and like the English word implies sincerity as well as factuality or reality. The literal meaning of the word ἀ–λήθεια is, "the state of not being hidden; the state of being evident".

[b]Heidegger and aletheia
A Paint ...[text shortened]... that this archaic notion of truth is as seductive to me as it is new.

Any comments?[/b]

I like it. Thanks for the educating...more later

Originally posted by Bosse de Nage
[quote]Aletheia (ἀλήθει&#945😉 is the Greek word for "truth", and like the English word implies sincerity as well as factuality or reality. The literal meaning of the word ἀ–λήθεια is, "the state of not being hidden; the state of being evident".

[b]Heidegger and aletheia
A Paint ...[text shortened]... that this archaic notion of truth is as seductive to me as it is new.

Any comments?[/b]

It sounds profound, but is there any substance to all that flowery talk?

Originally posted by Bosse de Nage
[quote]Aletheia (ἀλήθει&#945😉 is the Greek word for "truth", and like the English word implies sincerity as well as factuality or reality. The literal meaning of the word ἀ–λήθεια is, "the state of not being hidden; the state of being evident".

[b]Heidegger and aletheia
A Paint ...[text shortened]... that this archaic notion of truth is as seductive to me as it is new.

Any comments?[/b]

How do you know then, when Truth appears, that you will recognize it as Truth?

Originally posted by AThousandYoung
It sounds profound, but is there any substance to all that flowery talk?

That's a question, not a comment, ATY.

Originally posted by josephw
How do you know then, when Truth appears, that you will recognize it as Truth?

Another question. I'm sure you have an answer to it, so don't feel shy.

What I'm after here is comments, preferably from people who've looked into the subject and formed conclusions. I'm a mere babe in these matters, so I really don't have any answers at this stage.

Originally posted by josephw
How do you know then, when Truth appears, that you will recognize it as Truth?

In fact, the Prosocratic philosophers dismissed anthropomorphism and replaced the names of the gods with given terms, turning the empiricism and the personal impressions into specific theories of reality according to the evaluation of the mind. This kind of philosophy is focused on aletheia and the Prosocratic philosopher tries to decipher the physical worlds by means of the evaluation of the mind. So you run and you crash on a tree -Pain, Primal Cause-Effect during your interaction with the environment. And you cannot forget/ overcome this aletheia, and of course you have to be able to communicate this specific aletheia to the others that they crashed not yet on a tree.

The Prosocratic philosophers were conducting elenchus. Empedocles and the Pythagoreans were dogmatic and their theology is different than the other Prosocratic philosophers. Parmenides is not a shaman although he offered his philosophy as a result of a religious apocalypse, because his goddess does not urge the people to believe but to evaluate by means of their own logic/ mind. Therefore the Prosocratic philosophers are not against empiricism but they accept it as a tool, and even Empedocles said that “you must monitor which way everything is manifested, and you have neither to trust your eyes more than your ears or your ears more than your taste, nor to refuse to trust some other sense of yours since all your senses are agents that they feed your mind with pieces of information; but you have to understand how everything appears into being” (my translation). And Heraclitus said that “the eyes and the ears are false witnesses to the ones that they have barbarian soul”, pointing out that ones’ senses unveil aletheia analogous to ones’ mind. Therefore the Prosocratic philosophers were using science in order to back up their opinions, and the most well known scientist philosophers were the Pythagoreans. But attachment of any kind is a killer, and the Pythagoreans ended up hooked on their language -the Math-, beaten badly from the aletheia that the Map is not the Territory. The lesson we took from the Pythagoreans is that we must not walk carrying our boat on our back even when we are expecting a t-storm.

The Prosocratic philosophers conceived the whole universe/ Kosmos as a huge hypermachine, therefore they had the feeling that Kosmos, the Nature, the Society and the Human unleash their reality based on the same cosmological, biological and physical laws. This is the reason why their philosophy was deductive instead of inductive, and furthermore this technique of theirs is the reason why their aletheia was under attack by Bacon, who was not a scientist and was using the inductive method alone in order to bring up his theories of reality, his aletheia, at his “Novum Organum”.

Of course Bacon today is down the drain because his method excludes the scientific finds and evidence -just like theology does, and maybe this is the reason why once upon a time Bosse de Nage said that “Bacon is a fraud”. For, it is not anymore enough to put together the given data. The hardest philosophical task is to bring up solid hypotheses, and this is also the hardest task of the science, therefore the hardest task is to bring up solid theories of reality -otherwise you end up with no aletheia at all. So, when Bacon asks in …agony how one can find the objective aletheia, he ignores that one cannot find even her/ his own nose by means of mere observation, and so he failed. The way to find aletheia and to build up a solid theory of reality is to imply a holistic quantum approach and to proceed by means of elenchus at every level. So it is not false to make hypotheses -it is false not to make them. And it ‘s fine when we are balancing on uncertainty. And we have to extrapolate the consequences of a given hypothesis/ theory at every level according to Karma/ cause-effect. So Meth Inks we ‘ld better (for the time being and regarding this matter) join hands with Einstein and accept that it is false to try to establish aletheia based solely on observations -bye bye Bacon; it is our theory that decides what exactly we will observe.

Aristotle said it all (Metaphysics 1011b): “to say of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not, is true.” Now methinks this point of attention is personal, but it is also universal although it ‘s only Me. This point of attention is aletheia, therefore I am the Truth -no absolute truth. Whenever there is a consensus a specific aletheia is shared, but in order to become shared there must be a link between You and Me. Of course aletheia is empty because it lacks of inherent being: no knowledge no aletheia, no perception no knowledge -it’s only Me. Meditation, intuition and evaluation of the mind is the mind-only stuff from which aletheia is emerged. Once it is emerged, one cannot forget it
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Originally posted by black beetle
In fact, the Prosocratic philosophers dismissed anthropomorphism and replaced the names of the gods with given terms, turning the empiricism and the personal impressions into specific theories of reality according to the evaluation of the mind. This kind of philosophy is focused on aletheia and the Prosocratic philosopher tries to decipher the physical ...[text shortened]... the mind-only stuff from which aletheia is emerged. Once it is emerged, one cannot forget it
😵

OK, there's a lot here and this is one of your posts where English takes strain; let's break it down.

What's the connection between aletheia and hurting yourself on a tree? Specifically, what is seen or revealed, and what is the truth (aletheia) that appears?

Originally posted by Bosse de Nage
OK, there's a lot here and this is one of your posts where English takes strain; let's break it down.

What's the connection between aletheia and hurting yourself on a tree? Specifically, what is seen or revealed, and what is the truth (aletheia) that appears?

Aletheia is a synthesis of "a" (non) and "lethe" (forgetfulness), therefore for the Prosocratic philosophers aletheia was everything that cannot be forgotten.

The tree is a part of the World 1 and the pain is a product of my World 2 during my interaction with the World 1. Aletheia is a product of the World 3: "every time I crach on a tree I feel pain". Then the philosopher has to start thinking😵

Originally posted by black beetle
In fact, the Prosocratic philosophers dismissed anthropomorphism and replaced the names of the gods with given terms, turning the empiricism and the personal impressions into specific theories of reality according to the evaluation of the mind. This kind of philosophy is focused on aletheia and the Prosocratic philosopher tries to decipher the physical ...[text shortened]... the mind-only stuff from which aletheia is emerged. Once it is emerged, one cannot forget it
😵

"...it is our theory that decides what exactly we will observe."

Or is it?

"...one cannot find even her/ his own nose by means of mere observation,.."

The only way to dismiss that Truth can be known objectively is to assert that that which is observable can not be objectively known.

To be honest, I'm not sure that makes sense, but I'm not sure that what you said makes any sense either.

If Truth doesn't come on its own, that is, exists independent of subjective observation, then a life time of objective analysis will not reveal it.

Originally posted by josephw
[b]"...it is our theory that decides what exactly we will observe."

Or is it?

"...one cannot find even her/ his own nose by means of mere observation,.."

The only way to dismiss that Truth can be known objectively is to assert that that which is observable can not be objectively known.

To be honest, I'm not sure that makes sense, but ...[text shortened]... ent of subjective observation, then a life time of objective analysis will not reveal it.[/b]

Aletheia lacks of inherent being and therefore objectivity is a delusion -even Kant knew it😵

Originally posted by black beetle
Aletheia is a synthesis of "a" (non) and "lethe" (forgetfulness), therefore for the Prosocratic philosophers aletheia was everything that cannot be forgotten.

The tree is a part of the World 1 and the pain is a product of my World 2 during my interaction with the World 1. Aletheia is a product of the World 3: "every time I crach on a tree I feel pain". Then the philosopher has to start thinking😵

'Aforgetfulness' seems awfully similar to 'mindfulness', purely verbal level.

Parmenides was a iatromancer, which was -- what?

Can you say more about the Pythagoreans, the problem they ran into?

Originally posted by black beetle
Aletheia lacks of inherent being and therefore objectivity is a delusion -even Kant knew it😵

So what you're saying is that a philosophical mental gymnastic has been developed to dismiss the existence objectivity, so that even though I can see the nose on my face there is no real way of knowing that I have a nose.

It's no wonder that the human race is steeped in mind numbing ignorance. The so called intellectual elite has effectively convinced everyone that they don't really know they exist.

Thanks, but no thanks.

Originally posted by josephw
So what you're saying is that a philosophical mental gymnastic has been developed to dismiss the existence objectivity, so that even though I can see the nose on my face there is no real way of knowing that I have a nose.

It's no wonder that the human race is steeped in mind numbing ignorance. The so called intellectual elite has effectively convinced everyone that they don't really know they exist.

Thanks, but no thanks.

It doesn't mean you don't have a nose, just that your nose is not the same to every observer. The noseness of your nose can't be objectively determined. And of course your nose is part of your face, which complicates things a little.

For there to be objectivity you'd have to postulate a universal observer capable of observing everything in its thingness and all possible relations to other things as well as capable of observing itself. So maybe this observer-observer you call God exists but for you, sir, there is no objectivity.

Originally posted by Bosse de Nage
'Aforgetfulness' seems awfully similar to 'mindfulness', purely verbal level.

Parmenides was a iatromancer, which was -- what?

Can you say more about the Pythagoreans, the problem they ran into?

You also asked: "Specifically, what is seen or revealed, and what is the truth (aletheia) that appears?"
Well, methinks whatever it is seen or revealed is whatever You see when You collapse the wavefunction.

Awareness, yes! At the other hemisphere the Japanese bow to “tsune-ni ite kyu-ni awasu”. Aletheia!

Parmenides’ Einai stands above Karma. He believed that the physical world/ World 1 is ever changing and illusionary although real, and that it cannot become object of knowledge. So he brought up his theory regarding “ennoies” (concepts), which are stable and are necessary for everybody who wants to dig into reality -of course his ennoies are swift descriptions of the basic characteristics of each form. Parmenides came to the conclusion that Thought is Reality. Now, if you become more specific I could probably go further.

The Pythagoreans believed that they could prove that Kosmos can be understood by means of using the numbers as a tool/ interface, and they were thinking this way due to the fact that the human beings we are able to rephrase our understanding about Music, Astronomy and Math into sequences of numbers alone. But this simply does not work.
In my opinion the main point with Pythagoras, which it was transferred to him by his teacher Ferekides, is the concept of immortality -he believed in the immortality of the soul and in reincarnation, maybe as another manifestation of the preservation of energy. This is the reason why he told to a friend of his “Shut up now and don’t hit the puppy, for it ’s the soul of a friend of mine that I recognized it when I heard the puppy barking” (my translation). Of course this belief is not a product of philosophy but of Orphism. And it was Filolaus, the most powerful Pythagorean of the 5th century BC, the one who influenced Plato with his concepts regarding immortality. So as I see it, the failure of the Pythagoreans to bring up an accurate theory of reality based on their obsession with the numbers and the Orphism, set in motion the creation of their metaphysics which in turn set in motion Platonism
😵