Metaphorical Truth Bomb | A New Way to Understand Religion (Bret Weinstein)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdoTsOk-QQw


Very fascinating

I wouldn't say "metaphorical truth", but "useful belief". The caveat is that environments change...and if your "useful belief" is no longer functionally consistent with the environment, it is in fact a functional lie. Better to understand ‘truth in the raw’...as I put it.

Original Quill wrote:I wouldn't say "metaphorical truth", but "useful belief".  The caveat is that environments change...and if your "useful belief" is no longer functionally consistent with the environment, it is in fact a functional lie.  Better to understand ‘truth in the raw’...as I put it.

Its not based on beliefs, but how people behave

I guess you never fully watched the video

Thorin wrote:

Original Quill wrote:I wouldn't say "metaphorical truth", but "useful belief".  The caveat is that environments change...and if your "useful belief" is no longer functionally consistent with the environment, it is in fact a functional lie.  Better to understand ‘truth in the raw’...as I put it.

Its not based on beliefs, but how people behave

I guess you never fully watched the video

It comes to the same conclusion that I do, but I think my terms better describe the process. It's not a 'metaphorical truth' but a functional belief.

The discussion about porcupines is illustrative: if you believe they 'shoot' their quills, it's not true...but it helps you stay from them. That has nothing to do with truth, but it is functional, or useful in that it keeps one away.

For crying out loud

Watch the video

Its based on behaviour, not belief for the second time

Belief factors in the placebo effect and would make the claim fallacious

Behaviour does not

Now watch the damn video fully before posting

I watched it this morning...twice. Fascinating. But Jordon is trying to elevate utility by using the word 'truth' to describe it. I think it is an improper use of the term, and concept behind it.

Take another example: flat-earthers, for centuries, would not venture out into the oceans for fear of falling off. This was incorrect, but useful in that it kept people away from deep water and squalls that come up, particularly in the frigid North Atlantic.

The belief is useful, but it is patently invalid to call that truth; it is, in all events, wrong. Nor is it even metaphorical. There is no entailment that would justify calling it a metaphor. It has only one redeeming connection: it gives a wrong answer that is coincidentally the same result as truth.

That’s why I say it is only ‘useful belief’. Harris makes this point when he says truth has a reality, whether or not there are apes around to talk about it. In other words, truth is true, whether we are even around. To call a ‘useful belief’ a ‘truth’ is a virtual contradiction in terms.

Eh?

The concept is based on what Bret said

Not Sam or Jordan

Again the metaphorical truth is based on behaviour.

Thorin wrote:Eh?

The concept is based on what Bret said

Not Sam or Jordan

Again the metaphorical truth is based on behaviour.

But as he said, they are the primary exponents.