----------------------------------------------------
If I could just speak up, I think I would say
that there is no truth. There is only you
and what you make the truth.
----------------------------------------------------
From Bright Eyes' "don't know when but a day is gonna come" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpBUs7U5FUc)
-------------------------------------------
I am sitting with a philosopher in the garden; he says again and again "I know that's a tree", pointing to a tree that is near us. Someone else arrives and hears this, and I tell him. "This fellow isn't insane. We are only doing philosophy."
-------------------------------------------
Wittgenstein, from "On Certainty" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Certainty)
Two quotes today! The topic of today is on truth, and what it means.
Recently I have been reading about Wittgenstein (I say "reading about" as either a) I'm not smart enough to read and understand his work itself, or b) he wasn't as gifted at communicating as he was at philosophy), and his stance on certainty. Among many things, he questions how we can say things are 'true' or 'untrue', and how this feeds back into language itself.
Then, a couple of days ago I watched an excellent animated version of Tim Minchin's "Storm (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhGuXCuDb1U) a comic autobiographical piece about a dinner party featuring Tim, an atheist, sceptic and comic, and "Storm", a new age girl in favour of 'natural remedies' and the like. Being the person I am, I will always side the scientific sceptic. However, at one point in the skit, "Storm" comes out with the following - "You can't know anything, knowledge is only opinion". Of course, Tim smacks it down by wondering why, if she doesn't know anything, she leaves her house from the ground floor instead of the second floor window - implying, apparently, that we must have knowledge for us to interact with the world around us. However, for once, I didn't completely disagree with what she says - what can we know?
Indeed, as in the quote from Wittgenstein above - what does "That is a tree" really mean? To call something a tree, we need knowledge of what a 'tree' is, and to get knowledge of what a tree is, we need a tree (or a description of a tree)! Indeed, what happens when we look at a tree? We point our eyes at the tree - light from the sun bounces off the tree and into our eyes, are focused by our eye lens onto the back of our eye, creating electrical signals that travel into our brain. These electric signals, apparently, are somehow analysed by our brain which uses some sort of pattern finding to identify the object as a "tree", from our experiences of other objects in the past that have been observed and to which we have given the linguistic label "tree". Then I can report my brain's analysis, and say "oh, that's a tree!". One thing that should be very clear here is that this analysis is internal to my brain, as is everything we interact with in the world. Does the tree have a 'true' existence outside of my human brain? Well, as the whole idea for a 'tree' comes from my brain, I can't be so sure about that. Language helps mankind unite it's linguistic truth concepts, so we can all agree it's a tree, but somehow it doesn't lend the tree any more credibility than one mind on it's own. Does the tree object have an existence outside of our label?
In mathematics, truth is often qualified with the axioms from which the truth is derived. Famously, the geometry we learn at school is based on the axioms laid out in Euclid's "Elements" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euclidean_geometry#Axioms). Indeed, we can say that if 1+1 = 2, and 2 + 1 = 3, then 1 + 1 + 1 = 3. That is, if we make an initial assumption, we can therefore derive truth, but truth which is conditional upon the axioms.
I wonder, then, if for each of us, our respective truths may lie upon some basic axioms which we create ourselves, possibly as we are growing children. To survive in the world, we must interact with it - to interact with it, we must manipulate the information sent to us from our senses and react. I see an animal - it has big teeth - I must run away! I see a tree, I know that trees can be climbed - I use it to escape from the animal with big teeth! If I was unable to use pattern recognition to understand a tree and have the knowledge that the tree could be climbed, I might be eaten by the animal with big teeth. Good for him, bad for me! So, to explain our environment, we must naturally try to understand it logically, in order to be able to react to it in a beneficial way. As I'm climbing the tree, I see a thick branch and a thin, weak branch - if I can't make the judgement to stand on the thick one, I fall off the tree and get eaten.
To be effective, our brains *must* use logic, and this logic *must* be able to make predictions about the world. And if it's logic, it must have axioms, or some core ideas, on which it's based, even if we are unaware of them, or if they are hidden deep down in our subconcious! Most are probably an innate part of being human - when we see one apple being added to a basked with another apple in, we know there's two apples! What happens when we see something and we don't have a clue what is happening? Well, know we try to explain it with science! But think of what a shooting star seemed like to a prehistoric man - it is completely beyond his ability to comprehend with the logical system of his brain! He doesn't know enough, he can't know enough to understand it. But our brain thirsts for an answer - if it didn't it wouldn't be doing it's job of understanding circumstances to keep us alive. Presumably, this is where spiritual belief may come into play - by attributing things to a 'higher power', our brains can accept things that appear to lie outside the logical systems of our brains. And if there's a 'higher power' which you've already been told about by a nearby adult then all the better!
Anyway, maybe next time you have an argument with the man on the street who is insistent that Jesus died for your sins, maybe it is true, to him. By disagreeing, you're saying that your logic processing unit has come to a different conclusion than his - the way your mind works makes something else appear as the truth, that there is no such thing as sin. Changing his mind requires you to change the core beliefs, the axioms upon which his logical system is based - just think of the amount of suicidal mathematicians there'd be if someone proved a basic axiom that their entire life's work was based on to be false!
In conclusion, I suspect that I've written too little about too much, and that I'll look back at this tomorrow and think the opposite. I wish life wasn't so damned difficult to understand! I mean - why am I even sitting here thinking about this? What the fuck!?
If I could just speak up, I think I would say
that there is no truth. There is only you
and what you make the truth.
----------------------------------------------------
From Bright Eyes' "don't know when but a day is gonna come" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpBUs7U5FUc)
-------------------------------------------
I am sitting with a philosopher in the garden; he says again and again "I know that's a tree", pointing to a tree that is near us. Someone else arrives and hears this, and I tell him. "This fellow isn't insane. We are only doing philosophy."
-------------------------------------------
Wittgenstein, from "On Certainty" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Certainty)
Two quotes today! The topic of today is on truth, and what it means.
Recently I have been reading about Wittgenstein (I say "reading about" as either a) I'm not smart enough to read and understand his work itself, or b) he wasn't as gifted at communicating as he was at philosophy), and his stance on certainty. Among many things, he questions how we can say things are 'true' or 'untrue', and how this feeds back into language itself.
Then, a couple of days ago I watched an excellent animated version of Tim Minchin's "Storm (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhGuXCuDb1U) a comic autobiographical piece about a dinner party featuring Tim, an atheist, sceptic and comic, and "Storm", a new age girl in favour of 'natural remedies' and the like. Being the person I am, I will always side the scientific sceptic. However, at one point in the skit, "Storm" comes out with the following - "You can't know anything, knowledge is only opinion". Of course, Tim smacks it down by wondering why, if she doesn't know anything, she leaves her house from the ground floor instead of the second floor window - implying, apparently, that we must have knowledge for us to interact with the world around us. However, for once, I didn't completely disagree with what she says - what can we know?
Indeed, as in the quote from Wittgenstein above - what does "That is a tree" really mean? To call something a tree, we need knowledge of what a 'tree' is, and to get knowledge of what a tree is, we need a tree (or a description of a tree)! Indeed, what happens when we look at a tree? We point our eyes at the tree - light from the sun bounces off the tree and into our eyes, are focused by our eye lens onto the back of our eye, creating electrical signals that travel into our brain. These electric signals, apparently, are somehow analysed by our brain which uses some sort of pattern finding to identify the object as a "tree", from our experiences of other objects in the past that have been observed and to which we have given the linguistic label "tree". Then I can report my brain's analysis, and say "oh, that's a tree!". One thing that should be very clear here is that this analysis is internal to my brain, as is everything we interact with in the world. Does the tree have a 'true' existence outside of my human brain? Well, as the whole idea for a 'tree' comes from my brain, I can't be so sure about that. Language helps mankind unite it's linguistic truth concepts, so we can all agree it's a tree, but somehow it doesn't lend the tree any more credibility than one mind on it's own. Does the tree object have an existence outside of our label?
In mathematics, truth is often qualified with the axioms from which the truth is derived. Famously, the geometry we learn at school is based on the axioms laid out in Euclid's "Elements" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euclidean_geometry#Axioms). Indeed, we can say that if 1+1 = 2, and 2 + 1 = 3, then 1 + 1 + 1 = 3. That is, if we make an initial assumption, we can therefore derive truth, but truth which is conditional upon the axioms.
I wonder, then, if for each of us, our respective truths may lie upon some basic axioms which we create ourselves, possibly as we are growing children. To survive in the world, we must interact with it - to interact with it, we must manipulate the information sent to us from our senses and react. I see an animal - it has big teeth - I must run away! I see a tree, I know that trees can be climbed - I use it to escape from the animal with big teeth! If I was unable to use pattern recognition to understand a tree and have the knowledge that the tree could be climbed, I might be eaten by the animal with big teeth. Good for him, bad for me! So, to explain our environment, we must naturally try to understand it logically, in order to be able to react to it in a beneficial way. As I'm climbing the tree, I see a thick branch and a thin, weak branch - if I can't make the judgement to stand on the thick one, I fall off the tree and get eaten.
To be effective, our brains *must* use logic, and this logic *must* be able to make predictions about the world. And if it's logic, it must have axioms, or some core ideas, on which it's based, even if we are unaware of them, or if they are hidden deep down in our subconcious! Most are probably an innate part of being human - when we see one apple being added to a basked with another apple in, we know there's two apples! What happens when we see something and we don't have a clue what is happening? Well, know we try to explain it with science! But think of what a shooting star seemed like to a prehistoric man - it is completely beyond his ability to comprehend with the logical system of his brain! He doesn't know enough, he can't know enough to understand it. But our brain thirsts for an answer - if it didn't it wouldn't be doing it's job of understanding circumstances to keep us alive. Presumably, this is where spiritual belief may come into play - by attributing things to a 'higher power', our brains can accept things that appear to lie outside the logical systems of our brains. And if there's a 'higher power' which you've already been told about by a nearby adult then all the better!
Anyway, maybe next time you have an argument with the man on the street who is insistent that Jesus died for your sins, maybe it is true, to him. By disagreeing, you're saying that your logic processing unit has come to a different conclusion than his - the way your mind works makes something else appear as the truth, that there is no such thing as sin. Changing his mind requires you to change the core beliefs, the axioms upon which his logical system is based - just think of the amount of suicidal mathematicians there'd be if someone proved a basic axiom that their entire life's work was based on to be false!
In conclusion, I suspect that I've written too little about too much, and that I'll look back at this tomorrow and think the opposite. I wish life wasn't so damned difficult to understand! I mean - why am I even sitting here thinking about this? What the fuck!?
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