Is Truth a Big Lie?

	It is obvious to me that without a brain, without a body, without a conscious sense of self and a sense of mind and their collective and cooperative integrity, without our interaction in a world of the other and, our sense of being in a ‘world,’ there could be no real philosophically oriented conversation, no creative exercise of our imaginations, no sense of a constructive dialogue and no sense of a critical chorus commenting on our conversations shared with others…

	For me this list frames and, in some simple fashion, catalogues the extent of the life-world, and in equal measure indicates its very generous limits. Within its metaphorical embrace it would appear we have the powers to critically reflect, to some degree or other, upon the very nature of the human condition, our being in this world of life…

	Why then does this philosophical food, that philosophers banquet upon so extravagantly, seem to appear in so many exotic flavours, when the ‘stuff’ of reality should have but one form, one nature, one reality, one truth..?

	And herein lies the scandal of philosophy, that philosophers should declare that this menu has on it one or two items or so, and nothing else that is not written upon this list itemized by themselves. Usually operating in gangs these intellectual thugs then try to insist that in dining you will have, and have only, what they have listed. But, when you find the courage and perseverance to collect all these menus together the net result leaves you in a profoundly confused state of serious mental indigestion! How first year philosophy students can cope with this bewildering feast of possibilities is a profound philosophical problem itself!

	On the other a hand I am amazed how the everyday person in their passage through the world operates in a profoundly philosophical fashion even if they have no desire to read or discuss the cornucopia of menus produced by this disturbed creature - the professional philosopher. Although not normally reflective in a philosophical sense, in a dazzling display of dexterity they seem to be able to navigate naturally the ways of the world with an agility that should put to shame even the most non-clumsy academic. But the truth of the matter is that even the most unworthy academic is a fully paid up and functioning member of this everyday world of life just alluded to. Indeed, what is it about this passage through the world of the everyday person that is truly profound? Let me very briefly elaborate.

	Our everyday life in the world is a very rich existence, although, let me add, more often than not, one also that stands in need of further processes of enrichment. But, be that as it may, this richness is demonstrated in our very ability to navigate the complexities of this world without it reducing us to a state of severe confusion and the consequent state of a paralysis of indecision. This knack of navigating the world is manifested in all the spheres of our cultural existences, be they moral, pragmatic, professional, matters of taste, historical, scientific, spiritual… More often than not we are decisive in our decision-making, and those decisions, to some degree or other, have a responsive, responsible, appropriateness in the nature of the force exercised by-us-for-us in our imposition of ourselves upon the fabric of the world. This is not to say that some of us scope the range of that force too narrowly about our selves, but that within those limited terms of reference everyone normally operates without a sense of difficulty; the sense of anomaly being experienced only on the very margins of our existences, where our passage through the world is not so clearly mapped out for-us-by-us.

	Language and thought together both equally mirror and obscure the ‘surface’ of the profound, phenomenal depths of this ‘philosophical’ complexity accessed by the everyday person. When we wake up in the morning we know we have awoken. We wash, dress ourselves. We may make for ourselves a cup of coffee. We know a cup is a container that can hold a fluid, that a fluid in a cup can be drunk, that certain fluids should not be drunk, etc., etc. All this is a complex rhetoric of a metaphorical analoguing of the world. It’s not that we know that we can drink from this cup, and only this cup, from experience, but that this knowledge extends to all cups within our reach. A genre of ‘drinking from a cup’ is a rhetoric of performance that extends beyond the mere performance of drinking from a specific cup. Furthermore, we know a metal pot can contain fluid too, and that we can boil an egg within the same. But we do not normally drink from this utensil, at least not directly. We might make a pot of billy tea and when made, pour it into our mugs. We might also have a glass of water to hand, and a bowl for some cereal. Genres overlap and exercise a rhetoric of metaphor that might overwhelm a computer using artificial intelligence that is trying to make sense of these various patterns concerning the use and dispensing of fluid. On the other hand a visitor to another culture is often presented with a drink, and the understanding of what is intended seems easily to cross so called cultural boundaries. 

Now multiply this complexity across the possible range of our experience of the world and you can see how rich the palette of human existence is! Our apparently successful mapping of the world must be accepted as a philosophical tour de force. The world is apparently mapped metaphorically and we exercise that mapping with a rhetorical complexity that must make the work of a philosopher, e.g., seem rather ordinary indeed. 

About twenty years ago, almost as a footnote, I noted a concept I called the ‘picture-tool.’ In the garden of the world our labours entailed, whether in the form of a verbal activity or a non-verbal activity, certain ‘tools,’ ‘tools’ that in being exercised from their own point of view mirrored the nature and ways of the world. A spade, e.g., ‘digs the world’ and therefore the world is an object that can be spaded, dug up, etc. Somehow, the metaphor of a ‘spade’ can also be metaphorically extended to the realm of language where with no difficulty we would understand someone who said ‘they had been doing research on a certain topic and were amazed at what they had ‘dug up’ on such and such…’ This tool and its expressions in some down to earth manner mirrored the nature of the world as a realm ‘that can be dug up’ in both a literal sense and in a metaphorical sense.

This Wittgensteinian-like procedure remained in the back of my mind as something I would have liked to have followed up philosophically but this potentially fruitful ‘image’ never seemed to take me anywhere. If the tool metaphorically ‘mirrors’ the world in what manner is the nature of this relationship? How can tools, metaphors and the world be made to interact when all three parties appear to belong to different logical categories? 

	But, we might re-ask ourselves ‘are those categories so fundamentally apart so as to deny the possibility of a real relationship taking place by virtue of there being nothing held in common that would allow them to interact?’ Putting aside all metaphorical prejudice that favours an ‘external world’ differentiated from an ‘internal world’ and, instead, seeing the world too as a complex metaphorical simulation with its own rules of rhetorical performance then it would follow that the ‘world’ too could be treated in a similar fashion. That, in a similar manner, all ‘tools’ can be treated as on a par regardless of whether they are verbal or literal expressions, or, non-linguistically utilized activities. Now we have found grounds for their interaction, a fact that is obviously found in experience. ‘Tools’ ‘mirror’ ‘the world’ metaphorically (within complex rhetorically exercised genres) because they all can be seen to possess the same type of logical nature, namely, as simulations intentionally constructed in metaphorical frames of reference (with overlapping rules of rhetorical interaction). In essence, in this type of interaction what remains invariant within the transformations taking place is an invariant isomorphism on a metaphorical level of simulation.

	Does this mean the world is an intentional construction of the mind, that correctly we should become ardent idealists! To answer this rhetorical question let me note the fundamental bedrock upon which most philosophers come to grief and separate one from the other.

	To me it is obvious that the world is experienced in intentional consciousness and that all experience of the world must be so constituted. But intentional constitution also demands the ‘presence’ of intentional objects. And by similar phenomenological arguments a sense of ‘self’ and a ‘community of selves’ can also be argued for. The transcendental phenomenologist would argue for the necessary suspension of our ontological commitments in all of these regards, in a sense treating all phenomenological facets of the world as ‘provisional fictions.’ However, if our fundamental philosophical prejudices get in the way we start to make profound choices as to which schools of thought we might eventually gravitate towards (and vice versa). If we favour intentional objects we favour things and become mesmerized as realists. On the other hand, if we favour the intentional nature constituting those fields of experience we become mentally deluded as idealists. Favour some other combination of factors and you become addicted accordingly, mentally ‘set’ in a certain fashion like the anchoring of a building being built upon very solid concrete foundations. Loosely favour all of these combinations, and their competing prejudices, and you become like the everyday person exclusively ‘operating’ within the ‘natural attitude.’ - a  person profoundly ‘aware’ of the world and at the same time ‘trapped,’ ‘not aware’ of the dangers that this sense of the world has for them through a profound loss of their critical freedom, and, to that extent ‘being operated upon’ by those prejudices. But have heart, all ye everyday people, because what we say we do, and what we actually do, are often two almost entirely different things. Indeed, if we practised what we preached, or gave our assent to the same, we would most likely not be able to preach or give our assent in the first place! But how we live with this state of inconsistency is another matter.

	Let me conclude by developing some of the consequences and ramifications of the vision enfolded here for this vexed subject ‘what is truth?’

	As indicated the worldly, everyday person is both profoundly ‘aware’ of the world and ‘not aware.’ Much of what they do is successfully mapped out for them, their actions are accomplished with a rarely contested sense of conviction, and they are not troubled, except on the edges of their psychic universe, by the dizzy complexity of the world and the competitive friction of other cultures. That what we have here already in place is an ‘accomplished use of truth’ should not be denied! Indeed, all investigations of truth, or Truth with a large ‘T,’ should operate from this foundation already in place for us! These grounds of possibility are in essence already laid out before us in the life-world. Our philosophical appreciation of this life-world is therefore a phenomenological affair that investigates critically what we already know! Our critical appreciation of this foundation for lived experience must be conducted transcendentally; and whenever we exercise our critical faculties in this regard we find already in place in the very midst of an act of judgment, the necessary machinery must already be there for us to arrive safely at such an awareness. This awareness is necessary for the fact of our survival, our very survival attesting to this transcendental fact, namely, that we do operate to some extent from a transcendental perspective in the critical processing of our thoughts. Correctly, all the philosopher can do to help is to assist in a further transcendental purification of this state of our functioning in the world and not to take us further up the garden path under the auspices of one more ‘ism’ or other. 

Does this help us in our search for Truth with a large ‘T’? As indicated,  just as the worldness of the world is constantly with us already in a critical transcendental format, albeit, in an imperfect, semi-purified form already grounding our prejudices it behooves us to clarify the truth of those truths already privy to us. The goal of this task undoubtedly moves us towards this awe inspiring sense of ‘Truth’ with a large ‘T’ but equally, no doubt, a goal which through our own finiteness can never be perfectly realized. The fact that it can never be perfectly realized is, however, no excuse for our giving up this task of the transcendental clarification of our shared existence with others. In truth, it is our responsibility to respond to the call of the other with this seeing through all prejudice in order to respond authentically with a sense of care that truly constitutes us as ‘human.’ But note, although the world may be treated as a simulation, constituted as ‘the simulation of reality combined with the intuited reality of that simulation,’ there is no reason for us merely to simulate our engaged involvement. That then would be only an act of  ‘dis-simulation….’

The ‘Truth’ of this ‘World’ being constituted by-us-for-us is therefore a multi-dimensional affair, and thus cannot be expressed through mere representation, linguistic or otherwise. Rather, it calls us to reveal the ‘spirit of truth’ through our existential engagement with this world, whether that engagement be philosophical or non-philosophical in complexion!

	So, to conclude, I would argue that our search for truth should be founded on a critical, phenomenological investigation of how the everyday person arbitrates the complexities of this world-of-life, and, that, although the goal of such an undertaking can never be absolutely realized, philosophical or non-philosophical progress through this world implies that we should accept this basic, inchoate principle as a standard against which all endeavour should be measured… an ongoing process without an end…!

Indeed, to state the Truth with a large ‘T,’ we must indeed indulge in a Lie with a large ‘L.’	
								       
        Noël Tointon, Sydney, 9.12.99.