On Rheomodic Truth

On The Re-levance of Relevance to Truth

Rheomodes illuminate the context of the use of a word to remind us that a word or a phrase, or a statement of fact or falsehood etc each have relationship to context.

When something is relevant there is something concordant about its observed or present context.

Relevance, requiring concordance of context, is in this sense a necessary precursor for ‘truth’ (consistency):

In one sense the question of relevance comes before that of truth, because to ask whether a statement is true or false presupposes that it is relevant (so that to try to assert the truth or falsity of an irrelevant statement is a form of confusion), but in a deeper sense the seeing of relevance or irrelevance is evidently an aspect of the perception of truth in its overall meaning.

Relevance, (comparable to complexity distance in our Szabonian framework!) in this sense is something that is observed to be flowing in the present moment, it's not easy to determine by well defined rules. Bohm describes the act of catching it as an art:

Clearly, the act of apprehending relevance or irrelevance cannot be reduced to a technique or a method, determined by some set of rules. Rather, this is an art, both in the sense of requiring creative perception and in the sense that this perception has to develop further in a kind of skill (as in the work of the artisan).

Relevance, which effects and predetermines truth, is based on the context and thus the relevance (and the truth!) of something can change or can be dependant:

Thus it is not right, for example, to regard the division between relevance and irrelevance as a form of accumulated knowledge of properties belonging to statements (e.g., by saying that certain statements ‘possess’ relevance while others do not).

As the context in question changes, a statement that was initially relevant may thus cease to be so, or vice versa.

Moreover, one cannot even say that a given statement is either relevant or irrelevant, and that this covers all the possibilities.

Thus, in many cases, the total context may be such that one cannot clearly perceive whether the statement has bearing or not.

Relevance as a Flux and A Verbal Introduction to Bohm’s Inquiry

Thus there can be relevance, irrelevance, and the changing states in between:

This means that one has to learn more, and that the issue is, as it were, in a state of flux. So when relevance or irrelevance is communicated, one has to understand that this is not a hard and fast division between opposing categories but, rather, an expression of an ever-changing perception, in which it is possible, for the moment, to see a fit or non-fit between the content lifted into attention and the context to which it refers

Bohm begins with the example and explanation ‘to levate’ as root of the first Rheomode he will describe (we captured all his examples in another writing):

As a step in developing the rheomode, we then propose that the verb ‘to levate’ shall mean, ‘The spontaneous and unrestricted act of lifting into attention any content whatsoever, which includes the lifting into attention of the question of whether this content fits a broader context or not, as well as that of lifting into attention the very function of calling attention which is initiated by the verb itself.’ This implies an unrestricted breadth and depth of meaning, that is not fixed within static limits.

"Truth and Fact in Rheomode"

Bohm notes the static limited notion of truth in our conventional approach to language:

In the ordinary mode of language, truth is taken as a noun, which thus stands for something that can be grasped once and for all or which can at least be approached, step by step. Or else, the possibility of being either true or false may be taken as a property of statements. However, as indicated earlier, truth and falsity have actually, like relevance and irrelevance, to be seen from moment to moment, in an act of perception of a very high order.

Truth of a statement requires concordance with it's context:

Thus, the truth or falsity in content of a statement is apprehended by observing whether or not this content fits a broader context which is indicated either in the statement itself or by some action or gesture (such as pointing) that goes together with the statement.

Thus our world view intrinsically affects our observations and is therefore relevant in judging truth:

Moreover, when we come to statements about world views, which have to do with ‘the totality of all that is’, there is no clearly definable context to which they can refer and so we have to emphasize truth in function, i.e. the possibility of free movement and change in our general notions of reality as a whole, so as to allow for a continual fitting to new experience, going beyond the limits of fitting of older notions of this kind

Rheomodes then consider, generalize, and alleviate filtering conditions caused by our world views:

It is clear, then, that the ordinary mode of language is very unsuitable for discussing questions of truth and falsity, because it tends to treat each truth as a separate fragment that is essentially fixed and static in its nature.

Rheomodes are an experiment for discerning and propagating truth on a social and thought level:

It will thus be interesting to experiment with the use of the rheomode, to see in what way the rheomode this can allow us to discuss the question of truth more fittingly and coherently