Ontological Truth Research Articles

Nothingness and Paraconsistent Logic

This paper explores the concept of “Nothingness” and its connection to Graham Priest’s paraconsistent logic, with a critical focus on Heidegger's ontological perspective. Heidegger argues that logic and ontology are incompatible, and truth extends beyond mere propositions, tied to the indescribable experience of “Nothing.” He contends that logical rules are not essential for ontological truth, leading to two conceptions of truth: fundamental and propositional. The study delves into this profound examination, considering the implications for understanding truth and the limitations of logic in grasping the elusive aspects of existence.

Teaching and Learning Principles in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints: A Thematic Analysis of the Doctrine and Covenants

This article presents pedagogic principles prescribed in the text of the Doctrine and Covenants, a foundational book of scripture from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Following a qualitative, thematic analysis of the text, we organized the data into seven themes: character of God as a teacher, learning as the pursuit of truth, attributes of a teacher and learner, warnings in seeking light and truth, learning methods, teaching methods, and non-compulsory teaching and learning. Most noteworthy among these themes is the text’s description of learning as the pursuit of embodied ontological truth and the fundamental questions it raises about the nature of compulsion in learning.

Metaphor, subjectivity and self-knowledge in Edward St. Aubyn’s novels

ABSTRACT Edward St. Aubyn shows a persistent metaphysical interest in consciousness, personal identity and psychoanalysis. Reading seven of his novels, this article investigates the relationship between what appears to be a style topic, that of metaphor, and an ontological truth, that of self-knowledge. This article contends that St. Aubyn uses metaphor’s ambiguity to structure his narrative explorations of subjectivity and metaphor’s power to create new meanings to offer absolution for his agonising characters. In the Patrick Melrose novels, metaphor is structured as a thought experiment to conduct a philosophical discussion of consciousness and personal identity. The ambiguous structure of metaphor provides a model for rival views on personal identity for Patrick to achieve self-knowledge through narrative identity. In Dunbar, the exploration of self-knowledge turns to the body. St. Aubyn situates Dunbar in the Lake District’s ambiguous environment, allowing him to regenerate an embodied subject to restore his sanity. Double Blind revisits one of St. Aubyn’s favourite subjects, psychoanalysis, and offers a concluding remark on the relationship between metaphor and subjectivity. St. Aubyn presents schizophrenia as a hermeneutic problem of making bad metaphors. He analogises the interpretive ability of psychoanalysis to gaining metaphoric competence, which promises recovery from schizophrenia.

Subject and Reality: Self, Plenitude, and Ultimate Truth in Advaita Vedānta, Zen Buddhism, and Sufism

This article presents two interconnected arguments. Firstly, it compares three distinct religious traditions—Advaita Vedānta, Zen Buddhism, and Sufism—in order to argue that each posits the same nondual Reality (here called Subject) as the ultimate ontological Truth and the true Self of individuals. It is erroneous to identify with the body-mind and apprehend multiplicity. Secondly, it argues that the practices of these different religions lead to the same end: realization of the true Self or Subject. The purpose of this study is to highlight the essential unity of global religions and the Oneness of Being.

IS CHRISTIANITY STILL UP-TO-DATE? AN ANTHROPOLOGICAL ARGUMENT

In a world dominated by newness, the question we start with is inevitable: is Christianity still relevant today? For believers and religious affiliates, the question is superfluous; but it falls to them to deliver valid answers, even to such rhetoric. Where will they build their argument from? From a God whom the opposing camp has long since disqualified? We believe that one of the common, valid premises for effective dialogue and constructive criticism is the human being itself. Man is the immediate reality, impossible to neglect, which is the concern of both believers (a being destined to fulfilment through deification, legitimised as a person by God) and non-believers (a being legitimised by itself). The evolution of this being becomes the control lamp of ontological truth and implicitly contains the answer to our question. We have analysed, comparatively, two vectors, two potential directions relevant to human evolution. The first is described in two landmark works of literature, The Abolition of Man and The Brave New World, and the other through a summary of the orthodox Christian anthropological paradigm. In the case study I have developed, I have come to the conclusion that in the manner in which man undergoes a rationalistic immanent reductionism, becoming merely nature, he becomes himself a piece of nature and seals his demise through dehumanization, becoming himself an idol without consciousness. At the same time, if he empowers his inner, spiritual universe and tries to establish himself in the mystery of the personal God by relating correctly to nature, i.e. to the nature within him, he will find himself in the position of the saint who has risen above nature by the spiritual discipline of instincts. Here true reason and full freedom are revealed. So, despite hostile social pressure, Christianity is not only relevant today but, along the lines of this argument, necessary.

Existential Truth in Dialectical-symbolic Understanding

The subject of research in this article is the phenomenon of existential truth. The author relies on the distinction between epistemic and existential truth proposed by D.V. Pivovarov. The latter is the correspondence of knowledge (or being in the case of ontological truth) to the subject-object unity, human being, which is the basis of cognitive activity. The ideas related to the existential understanding of truth in the works of B. Pascal, S. Kierkegaard, M. Unamuno, H. Ortega y Gasset, L. Shestov, N.A. Berdyaev, K. Jaspers, G. Marcel, A. Camus, J.-P. Sartre and M. Heidegger are presented. "Cordiality", subjectivity, vitality, perspectivism, irrationality, creative nature, communication, personality, "rebellion", freedom, "non-concealment" of existential truth are highlighted. With the help of A.F. Losev's dialectical methodology, an attempt is made to comprehend these signs as moments of symbolism of existential truth. The mainstay is the works of A.F. Losev, in which the symbol is understood as a communicative and interpretive expression of a transcendent essence ("the very self"). This expression is a "directly-intuitively" given generality, naturally decomposed into a number of separate singularities, which can be realized in reality and thereby become a "myth" in Losev's understanding. The myth, immanent to personal existence, is intensively experienced by a person, manifests itself in an irrational "miracle". The symbol and myth reveal the considered signs of existential truth and at the same time take into account the objective, functional sides of the truth. From the point of view of the dialectical-symbolic approach, existential truth is the correspondence of knowledge (or being) to a dialectically concrete symbolic reflection of reality, subject-object unity, which is a "directly intuitive" given in immanent personal being. The novelty of the work lies in the application of A.F. Losev's dialectical theory of the symbol to the study of the existential understanding of truth.

Three Interpretations of the Truth of a Work of Art – Gadamer, Heidegger, Šliogeris

This article examines interpretations of ontological truth of the work of art in the philosophies of Arvydas Šliogeris, Hans G. Gadamer and Martin Heidegger. All of them believe that artwork may reveal the ontological truth. This common feature suggests the possibility to consider these three interpretations as a Heideggerian-type understanding of art. This paper argues that, while sharing the belief about the possibility of ontological truth in the artwork, their concepts of truth are fundamentally different, precisely because of the relation with language. In the first part of the article, the ontologies of works of art, the structures of experience, the importance of language and the interpretations of truth by the three philosophers are discussed. The second part explicates the essential points of tension and similarities between their concepts of ontology and the truth of artwork. The research reveals that language, as the basic plane of the junction with the world, in the experience of a work of art is more misleading than truth-revealing.

TELAAH HISTORIS TERHADAP TEORI EVOLUSI CHARLES DARWIN DITINJAU DARI REVOLUSI SAINS THOMAS S. KUHN

<p><strong>Abstract: </strong>This article specifically describes how a scientific theory is formed and placed as an epistemic truth, even in the end it becomes a paradigm that influences scientific methodologies in various different scientific fields. This is in line with the scientific revolution proposed by Thomas S. Kuhn. The discussion in this article will focus on the development of the theory of evolution proposed by Charles Darwin in the field of biology, viewed from the perspective of the scientific revolution of Thomas S. Kuhn. This effort was made because in its development, Darwin's theory of evolution has historically been the starting point for theoretical revolutions in the field of biology, and even in other scientific fields. This historical explanation of how the development process of Darwin's theory of evolution shifted, and even undermined previous scientific theories, became a starting point for a radical theoretical transformation in the development of science which was viewed from Kuhn's analysis through his theoretical schema of the revolution of a scientific theory. This becomes very important for researchers and the general public, especially to provide an explanation that the epistemic truth in science is not a sudden speculative knowledge, as is the ontological truth in religious knowledge and cultural knowledge. The methodical approach used in this article will use a historical continuity approach, heuristics, and interpretation. The type of analysis in this article falls into the analysis of scientific theory. This article was written with the aim of providing a description, evidence, and argument that the paradigm shift of science from the pre-Darwinian evolutionary period to the Darwinian evolutionary period is a description of a radical theoretical transformation process that occurs instantly in a scientific field, which in Kuhn's thinking is passed through The main phases are normal science, anomaly, crisis, and scientific revolution.</p><p><strong>Keywords:</strong> The Theory of Evolution, Scientific Revolution, Charles Darwin, Thomas S. Kuhn, Epistemic Truth</p>

La dimensione cromatica nella riflessione di Gottfried Boehm. La differenza iconica, il colore e un confronto con la filosofia francese

Our paper aims at analyzing the relationship between the dimension of colour and the concept of iconic difference as it has been developed by the German philosopher Gottfried Boehm. In particular, we show how colours can contribute to the blossoming of iconic meaning in a way that cannot be fully expressed through language, thus giving access to a more authentic ontological truth of the object represented in the image. Moreover, we introduce a comparison between Boehm, Merleau-Ponty and Derrida. More specifically, we argue that Boehm’s understanding of the colour and of the concept of difference relies largely on the work of Merleau-Ponty and diverges for this reason with Derrida’s approach towards colours. Therefore, we conclude that any comparison between Boehm and Derrida should be undertaken prudently, if our goal is to appreciate the specific material features of images against the reduction of textual analysis.

Critical race theory, counter-accounting, and the emancipatory potential of counter-stories

PurposeIn this paper, the authors explore racialisation through human-centric counter-accounts (counter-stories) to bring together critical race theory (CRT) and counter-accounting.Design/methodology/approachThe authors utilise CRT to demonstrate the emancipatory role of counter-stories in (re)telling racialized narratives, specifically the narrative of asylum seekers who arrive by sea and are subjected to the inhumane and oppressive nature of the Australian government's policy of offshore immigration detention.FindingsCounter-stories, as tools of accountability, can make visible oppressive forces and the hidden practices of racialized social practices and norms.Research limitations/implicationsThis paper emphasises that we are not in a post-racial world, and racialisation remains a fundamental challenge. We must continue to refute race as an ontological truth and strive to provide a platform for counter-stories that can spark or drive social change. This requires allies, including academics, to give that platform, support their plight, and offer avenues for change.Originality/valueThe authors introduce CRT as a theoretical tool for examining racialisation, opening space for a more critical confluence of accounting and race with potentially wide-reaching implications for our discipline. The paper also contributes to the limited accounting literature concerning asylum seekers, particularly in the use of counter-stories that offer a way of refuting, or challenging, the majoritarian/dominant narratives around asylum-seeking.

Review of Black Aliveness, or A Poetics of Being

Review of Black Aliveness, or A Poetics of Being Erin Tatz (bio) Kevin Quashie. Black Aliveness, or A Poetics of Being. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2021. 248 pp. $25.95 (pb). ISBN: 9781478014010. Writing from the imperative to imagine a Black world, Kevin Quashie offers readers of Black Aliveness, or A Poetics of Being an ethical and philosophical framework of 'being' which invests in the richness of phenomenological experience. Quashie locates manifestations of this 'being' within Black poetics, pointing readers towards an ethic of Black being that eludes the impositions of an antiblack world. Luxuriating in the works of Lucille Clifton, Gwendolyn Brooks, Reginald Shepherd, Toi Derricotte, Audre Lorde, Toni Morrison, Amiri Baraka, and so many transcendent Black female/feminist writers, Quashie captures and theorizes upon the quality of Black being that is and is of a Black world––a world in which Blackness exists in totality. He elides the ontological jeopardy of being Black in an antiblack world by instead investing in the imaginative potentialities inherent in the inalienable fact that Black being is neither created nor encompassed by antiblackness. In other words, the paradigm of antiblackness rests on the axiomatic denial of (Black) humanity; meanwhile, as Quashie notes in his conclusion, "Black aliveness is. It is." (147).1 Thus Black being carries within itself the quiet but explosive ontological truth of Blackness as is, as if, and in totality. Quashie turns to aliveness––an ethic, a manner of being, and an orientation––as a means of accessing the rightness of the embodied knowledge of a Black 'one' within a Black world. The ethic of aliveness is of self-regard, epistemological abundance and ontological presence; in aliveness, the Black 'one' affirms her spatio-temporal and ontological immediacy and immanence––"I am here"––drawing upon this very aliveness to philosophize the terms of being, and of being human. Quashie's thinking is fluid and lyrical throughout; it extends fluently from his previous work, The Sovereignty of Quiet: Beyond Resistance in Black Culture (2017). The concepts borne in his former work flourish in Black Aliveness, along with what seems to be a luminous through-line in his thinking. Whereas his earlier work elaborated upon the idiom of 'quiet' to expand our thinking about Black subjectivity and inner life, this book does the imaginative work of expounding upon the ethical implications of what constitutes Black aliveness as it manifests in Black poems and essays. In either case, Quashie's work seeks out and cherishes the moments in which Black female/feminist thinkers have constructed what Hortense Spillers refers to as "a new semantic field/fold."2 In so doing, the texts that Quashie examines enact a praxis of becoming as surrender which defies the oversignification of Blackness.3 In this vein, Quashie expounds upon the radical potentialities of aliveness through its constitutive qualities: relationality and oneness. Quashie's first chapter opens with a note from literary theorist Barbara Christian to Audre Lorde: "Can I say again how alive your being alive makes me feel!?!" (15). [End Page 498] Christian's note exemplifies the way that the delicate complexities of aliveness belie its ordinariness; Christian's sentiment speaks to the constancy of being alive with an urgent expressiveness, relaying to its reader the peculiarity of the feeling of aliveness precisely through its universality. Aliveness is conjured, affirmed, and encountered by Christian, Lorde, and the reader in an instance of 'poiesis' for the speaker herself.4 Quashie's elegant unfurling of the relationality of aliveness offers several valuable points of intervention; foremost among them is his contribution to theories of encounter and intersubjectivity. His reading of aliveness indicates a capacity to leap past the barriers of intersubjective identification, instead operating upon an understanding of relationality as embodied totality and sociality. His aliveness is of the phenomenological current of capacious being, of surrender to the quiet volatility and potential obliteration of self. The relationality of aliveness attends to the anonymous and familiar, the personal and impersonal, through the substrate of one's material and immaterial experience of the world (as Lorde's erotic phenomenology suggests, from "within outward").5 Through this explication of relationality, Quashie centers the objectified 'other' in this formula as the...

The Garb of White Nationalism in the Nineteenth-Century United States

This article examines the development of sartorial visual itineraries for nativism and white nationalism in the United States between about 1840 and 1865. For scholars studying the history of racism in the United States, the documents of so-called “scientific racism” are of paramount importance. These privilege the biovisual body as a site of epistemological and ontological truth. But the first years of the nineteenth century witnessed the proliferation of racialist taxonomies based not on the physical body but on alleged manifestations of ancestral and racial spirit in dress. Using evidence from contemporary costume albums, maps, and theatre prints, this essay argues that US nativist movements took their bodily iconography from a ballooning transatlantic popular and ethnographic interest in what today we call “traditional” or “ethnic” dress, turning nativist figures into folk types, colorful characters who could represent the purity of the so-called Anglo-Saxon US people in their style of dress.

A Psychoanalysis of Milk: The Case of Alfred Hitchcock

A Psychoanalysis of Milk: The Case of Alfred Hitchcock

An Early Greek Epic

AbstractThe question (once again) is in what cognitively acceptable way the Alētheia and Doxa sections of the epic should be connected, that is to say in what way Parmenides himself may have envisaged the relation between ontological Truth and mistaken human Opinions. An important distinction is found to obtain between the common run of humankind, ignorant and helpless, and an enlightened human elite. The views of this elite serve as an intermediate between the cognitive condition of humanity in general and the arcane knowledge and ontology of the Alētheia section and help to attenuate the dualism by bridging the gap between ignorance and absolute Truth. There is a significant and crucial interplay between the two sections which works both ways, forward from the Alētheia to the Doxa section and backwards from the Doxa to the Alētheia section. Defining characteristics of the elements per se and of their compounds in the Doxa section are reflections of defining properties of Being in the Alētheia section. Conversely, recognition of these elemental characteristics may point the way back to properties of Being. The argument of the epic from fr. B1 to fr. B19 DK is strictly organized by means of reiterated theses and type-scenes, which lend an overarching unity to the poem. This technique itself is not new, but the contents of these reiterated motifs (such as the mention of humans, of the distinction between Being and not-Being, of name-giving, or of defining properties and characteristics) are original. The reiterated motifs which secure the proofs of the main thesis function as hidden persuaders. The story of the extraordinary journey of the anonymous author to the dwelling of his nameless goddess and the revelation he receives from her have been carefully authenticated and stage-managed to provide divine backing for the stunning doctrines put forward and are also aimed at convincing the audience.

Some Elements of Communication Theory in Theodore Metochites’ Memorable Notes (Ch. 1–26, 71)

This paper is aimed at the complex investigation of the communication and its ontological basis in Theodore Metochites’ (1270–1332) Memorable Notes (Semeioseis gnomikai). In the Memorable Notes Metochites oriented himself toward those authors who, like Plutarch, tried to discuss everything, including history, culture, and the being in general, in a philosophical manner. The speechlessness as the subject matter of Ch. 1 and 9 is compensated, according to Theodore, with a creative liberty and the possibility to discuss every topic, which is inherent to everybody, but, first and foremost, members of the intellectual elite. The conflict of these two ideas, i. e., of the speechlessness and of the liberty to think and speak, forms the antinomy of communication, being of importance for Theodore’s thought. Similar opinions of late medieval authors seemed to pave the way for Kant’s third antinomy. Moreover, the theme of the lack of something new to discuss and talk over continued the Aristotelian topics. Finally, in Metochites’ thought, the life of a human being, like those of society and cosmos as a whole, passes through the same stages as a person’s utterance: the cosmos history in its dynamics reminds speech or, more specifically, conversation or dialogue. This intertwinement of Aristotle’s ideas from De interpretatione with those from St. John’s Gospel prologue is a hallmark of that Byzantine-Christian Hellenism which was discussed in Antonio Garzya’s seminal paper of 1985. Besides, Theodore also discussed the unity of the notion of number among all the people. It means that it is the mathematical knowledge which can get a basis for a “conciliarity”, or “all-unity”, at least for the thinking part of the humankind. It is particularly important since the ultimate goal of communication is, therefore, a revealing of the ontological truth of things and events.

One One, or the Unity of Being in Plato’s Parmenides

Being can no longer be thought, for Plato, in accordance with Parmenides’ either/or; rather, it is both/and, both present in and absent from things, which is how they can come-to-presence and go-out-into-absence. But as the Parmenides demonstrates, Greek grammar hints at a fundamental ontological truth: the expression, “one one,” ἓν ἕν, shows that being can be implied, neither present nor absent—for being is an implication. But then participating must be rethought in terms of implying: being is implied in everything that is and is one, which is how it is present in beings and absent therefrom. But this understanding of participation—as Aristotle insists—is contradictory. Luckily, there is another way: implication qua belonging—being no longer participates-in, but belongs-to things, which is how it is one with them, distinct but inseparable. But this too, betrays implication, fails to grasp being’s way of being, and the meaning of being qua implied, and so cannot illuminate how being and beings are and are one—for as the suspension of presence and/or absence, implying is irreducible to participating or belonging. Rather, if being is implied, it is because implication is suspension, which is why it is so suspenseful.

More than a Person

The question whether God should be thought of as personal or a-personal is closely linked to the issue of an appropriate model of God-world relation on the one hand and the question how to conceive divine action on the other hand. Starting with a discussion of the scientific character of theology, this article critically examines the univocal-personal concept of God. Traditional Christian conceptions of God have, however, always acknowledged a radical asymmetry between the personal existence of created beings and the ground of being itself. In a second step, the ontological truth claim associated with this way of speaking about God is being related to its methodological consequences. In final step, attention is given to the relation of immanence and transcendence as it is defended in different versions of panentheism: As an alternative to divine interventionism, panentheism can be shown to explicate divine providence as formal and final causation.

Essay on the manner of understanding truth in criminal proceedings

The subject matter of the article is a short reflection on the concept of truth in criminal proceedings. The author raises the question about the manner of understanding the truth in a criminal trial, as well as about the relation of truth to proof and probability - are such concepts compatible, mutually exclusive or differentiated in terms of categories? As a result of such contemplation, the author decided that the text of Article 2 § 2 of the Code of Crimi¬nal Procedure concerning material truth - in view of the today’s criminal law scholars and commentators - is similar to the concept of ontological truth, i.e. the understanding of truth in a way that does not refer to the state of affairs only (ontic truth), but also to the statements and judgements made with respect thereto. Such an understanding of truth also allows one to acknowledge the fact that the truth and belief that a certain event (that needs to be proven or made plausible) occurred are two different epistemic categories.

PECULIARITIES OF POST-POSTOMODERN PSYCHOLOGY IN CONTEMPORARY BRITISH NOVEL

In the paper, I explore the strategies of the “resurrection of the subject” in the discourse of English post-postmodern novel. It has been emphasized the essential role of psychology in contemporary British novels. This paper reports the results of the investigation about the nature of the interaction of characters with the society, artistic revision of socio-political problems, etc. has been revealed. The peculiarities of the outlook of characters endowed with exceptional features (presence of Asperger’s syndrome, inability to hear untruth, etc.) have been discussed. It is emphasized that the worldview of post-postmodern characters is determined by genetic and physiological features, which makes it possible to perceive the reality as objectively as possible, discarded and analytically. At the same time, characters find strategies for post-postmodern humanism, which is fundamentally different from the humanistic traditions of the twentieth century. Post-postmodern narrative reacts to the idea of the Nietzsche’s philosophy of the plurality of truth. In the post-postmodern novels, the idea of plurality of truth is not denied but along with these truths there is an attempt to reach an ontological Truth, which is not currently given in senses and knowledge, since mankind has not reached a certain state of its own development. This idea is especially presented in David Mitchell’s novel “Cloud Atlas.” The main idea of the paper is that the hypothetical presence of Truth actualizes the motive of the ontological knowledge search, the need to understand the world at a qualitatively different level than humanity is experiencing here and now. Ontological forms of cognition of Truth in novels may be music (the ability to create musical masterpieces that appear as a form of the proclamation of the Truth), mathematics (as a perfect language, devoid of the disadvantages of metaphorical according to which the narrowing of the picture of the world occurs). Besides, the autistic mind of the post-postmodern protagonist of the novel “The Curious Incident…” seeks to know the surrounding reality as a system in which it is possible to establish regularities between its various fragments. All this determines the multidimensionality of the discourse of the “resurrection of the subject” in the contemporary British novels. The English post-postmodern novels represent a break with the postmodern tradition of novelistic characters. However, bringing the narrative closer to the actual broadcast of people with autism, writers currently do not have tools to depict deep psychological experiences in the inner world of characters. The autistic consciousness of post-postmodern characters resembles the phenomenon of “black box” or a computer whose internal processes remain incomprehensible to an outside user.

How to be an uncompromising revisionary ontologist

Revisionary ontologies seem to go against our common sense convictions about which material objects exist. These views face the so-called Problem of Reasonableness: they have to explain why reasonable people don’t seem to accept the true ontology. Most approaches to this problem treat the mismatch between the ontological truth and ordinary belief as superficial or not even real. By contrast, I propose what I call the “uncompromising solution”. First, I argue that our beliefs about material objects were influenced by evolutionary forces that were independent of the ontological truth. Second, I draw an analogy between the Problem of Reasonableness and the New Evil Demon Problem and argue that the revisionary ontologist can always find a positive epistemic status to characterize ordinary people’s beliefs about material objects. Finally, I address the worry that the evolutionary component of my story also threatens to undermine the best arguments for revisionary ontologies.