Nietzsche's Views On Truth

Now that we established Nietzsche’s views on truth, metaphor, and the nature of art, let's explore the validity of these views. Let’s start with Nietzsche’s reference to the translation of nerve impulses into the senses. We tend to think of what we see as what is there, however the data we have to work with are levels of signal from the rods and cones in our eyes which are used to construct the image we see in the visual cortex. The visual cortex performs many operations on the “sights” we see such as flipping the image we see (we believe that given the way the light enters our eyes the image should appear upside down and that the visual cortex processes the image so it appears rightside up), and filling in the blind spot.

We do not usually

Some language conventions are clearly manufactured but still influence our thought and what we consider true about the world. The concepts of race, ethnicity, and gender are notable examples of this. However, some more basic aspects of our world also rely on constructed concepts. We look at objects and make a distinction between different colors. From a scientific perspective, what we describe as color is actually different frequencies of light, and although different frequencies of light do act differently in how they are reflected and how they are absorbed by rods and cones, the general categories we give to colors create distinctions that are not present in reality. This understanding can be reflected in looking at other things, how do recognise something as a pen, a mammal, or a mountain. We distinguish mountains and islands by their position and whether they are surrounded by water or air, but are they not both just places where part of the land rises above the surrounding land? We find this distinction important due to our position in relation to these features, and because it is important to us that the area surrounding the area is filled with something we can breathe or

For instance, we would like to take quantity as an absolute, but what if it is actually a convention we invented to allow us to talk about things as having number. In a discussion on Nietzsche I had with my family, my father mentioned that he could not see how 1+1=2 is not genuinely true. However this sentiment is controversial. One interpretation is that 2 is defined as “1+1”, so the statement is true by definition and thus tautological. Another group suggests that Peano Axioms can prove that 1+1=2, but opponents of this proof have pointed out that the axioms were designed to purposely so that the already accepted statement 1+1=2 could be constructed from the axioms, and that any axiom that would allow a contradicting relation to be constructed would be rejected when the axioms were chosen. Therefore, therefore Peano Axioms do not offer a compelling proof that 1+1=2 is true other than by definition. As Nietzsche himself stated, it is not an impressive discovery if you hid something and then later found it in the place you put it. We may want to believe that math and science is true beyond definition as it is consistent, reliable, and allows us to produce unexpected results and means of manipulating the world. However, computer science is also often consistent and reliable, along with producing useful and sometimes unexpected results. Yet, for the most part computer science is built on