Determinism and the Nature of Truth

There is often some difficulty in life determining what is true. The most famous examples come from ethics, such as if the statement "living life according to your virtues is the best life to lead" is true. Or, you could even point to the vigorous debates that occurred some years ago over whether or not Pluto should be considered a planet. In that case, the debate was over whether the statement "Pluto is a planet" is true or false. In philosophical circles, these sorts of arguments can oh-so-often lead to a debate which centers around whether the property of truth is inherent or perceived. Basically, if I say "Pluto is a planet," I would be wrong by today's standards, but would I still be wrong if I said that same thing 15 years ago, when many people did in fact consider Pluto to be a planet? Does truth change with our perception of the universe, or are truthfulness and falseness already inherent in everything we say, even if we may not be aware of which property dwells in our words?

Firstly, the knee-jerk reaction would be to say that truth is an inherent property of the universe. Truth doesn't change simply because we have a different view point. However, if we follow this idea to the logical conclusion, we come up with an interesting idea. When making statements concerning the future, such as "I will have oatmeal for breakfast tomorrow," truth as an inherent property would still apply. Either it is true and I will have oatmeal, or it is false and I will not have oatmeal. We may not know what the answer is, but our perception of this statement at this point in time does not affect whether this statement is true or false. The statement already exists in a state of being true or false, and will not change. In short, my breakfast is already determined. And because inherent truth would apply to all possible statements, then all possible things are already determined. This conclusion doesn't necessarily debunk the idea of inherent truth per se, because the debate surrounding determinism is still strong; tying inherent truth to determinism doesn't necessarily prove or disprove either idea.

However, there is still the less popular idea of truth being a perceived quality of the universe. If truth is a perceived quality of the universe, then that means that truth is a construct of our consciousness. Truth doesn't exist beyond our perception of the universe (and the information contained therein). This distinction between "truth" and "information" is important for this side of the argument. Truth lives inside of consciousness as a lens through which we can then perceive information. If you have less information, you may be more inclined to consider different things to be true than if you have more information. This option doesn't affirm or deny determinism, because the conclusion says nothing about how truth can be applied to the future. (It is worth noting, though, that this conclusion can be used as a small building brick in an argument for the idea that there in only a single consciousness that can be proven to actually be a true conscious--you--and everything beyond is impossible to prove--essentially Descartes's First and Second Meditations.)

Overall, it seems to me to make far more sense to make the distinction between information and truth, and to label "information" as inherent and "truth" as an perceived property that simply arises out of how consciousness attempts to experience reality. It makes less assumptions about the possible determinism of the universe, and by Occam's Razor, therefore seems to be the more rational conclusion to take. As such, we can continue on with our scientific method of utilizing testable hypotheses and proving then to be either correct or incorrect without the philosophical conundrum of whether the hypothesis was false before we even proved it to be so.

On Feelings and Emotion

In today's modern society there seems to be an unfortunate amount of disproportionate disdain for feelings and emotions. Unless, of course, those emotions can be commodified. As with anything in an imperfect-capitalistic society, deviations from the norm will be punished unless they are exploitable. Since many emotions have the drawback of allowing people to make irrational decisions, be those financial or social, indulging in these emotive desires is shunned and dismissed as a mixture of weakness and stupidity. Hence, the larger part of society has ignored or turned away from emotions, both in individual situations and on a general level.

However, in dismissing emotion, we can also dismiss a very large part of our collective psyche. The Patriot Act wasn't necessarily passed due to pure and unadulterated reason. It was passed because people were afraid, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. The debate surrounding the politics of the Patriot Act aside, the thing to take away from this is the fact that the utilization of fear and other feelings in decision making is prevalent and to ignore such a large sociological motivator would be to cut off both of our intellectual feet. In addition, a case can be made for emotion on the grounds of mental health. The debate surrounding mental health as an issue in today's society focuses largely on how to pay for the care of these people, yet we never seem to recognize that the sociological environment that we have fostered could be an essential factor in cultivating these skyrocketing rates of depression, anxiety, and other illnesses.

The interesting thing is, there is a case to be made for more emphasis on rational thought. Science, for example, is based on reaching the highest level of objectivity that you can whilst observing the world, and one simply can't do that while viewing data through an emotional lens. Science can in turn be said to be largely responsible for the massive amounts of progress we, as a species, have seen in the past several centuries. As such, an expansion of science, and a subsequent reduction of emotion, sounds extremely desirable. But as mentioned before, this still has significant drawbacks in a world that still operates on reality rather than theory.

What we need is a new way of looking at emotion. Today, many people think of emotion as a scalar quantity. That is, it is though of on a scale. Even professional institutions, like hospitals, read emotion and pain on a scale of one to ten. This is completely ludicrous if one accounts for the fact that the very nature of emotion is subjective and how, therefore, any attempt at obtaining quantitative data from a qualitative rating would untrustworthy. And this is where the root problem lies: trying to transition qualitative experience to a quantitative report. A solution should therefore attempt to preserve the qualitative nature of emotion, even as we try to communicate with other people.

I propose an idea: instead of looking at emotion as a scalar quantity, we instead need to recognize that it is instead a vector. That is, it contains both magnitude and direction. This is due to the fact that a large part of how we view the world has to do with the fact that our consciousness exists in liner time. If you are happy, it's not like you're happy at a single point in time. It would be more accurate to say that you feel like things are going well. The general trend you see in your life is a positive one. Of course, shifting your frame of reference to include, say, a week from now when you have a large project due that you haven't finished, you will be then less happy because that assignment then lowers the average of the trend line of you life a little. The same can be said for emotional disorders like depression. It's not a feeling sad all the time, as many people point out. A better way to look at it would be to see it as feeling like things are continuously getting worse. The emotional trend line of your life always seems to be pointing down in some context or another. Understanding that emotions have direction, they have acceleration, is crucial to coming up with a better way to express emotion and incorporate it into the entirety of our lives.

Answer C: None of the Above

Descartes is famous for breaking down certainty in the reality of the world by introducing the idea of Cogito Egro Sum, that is, "I think, therefore, I am." His first and second meditations were works of philosophical art. The first mediation rejects the perceived world as merely perceived and therefore possibly false, and the second meditation establishes that there is only one thing for certain, and that is that I exists because I am doing the experiencing. However, Meditations III and beyond look like finger painting compared to his previous reasoning. Meditation III in particular looks like a child put it together with Scotch tape and Elmer's glue. Unfortunately, it is off Meditation III that he continues with the rest of his work on proving that the world is real outside you (and not an illusion). Because of the sloppy reasoning of his third meditation, I am stuck with the puzzle of the observer existing certainly, and the rest of the universe being up for grabs. I addressed this question before, and I stand by everything that I said; however, I mentioned only two possibilities. To put them succinctly, Possibility One was centered around the idea that the universe exists independently from us, the observer, and Possibility Two was mainly focused on how you and only you exist in certainty. But I never mentioned Possibility Three (mostly because it hadn't come to me at that point).

Possibility Three: It Doesn't Matter (Neither)

Now, this may sound like a no-brainer. Of course it doesn't really matter, life goes on. Yet this is a special case, just bear with me. We assume that in our universe (or our perceived universe, as you'd like to call it), there is nothing that will empirically convince me with certainty that my experience is real in that the universe exists outside of me. In other words, there is no proof that the universe that the universe itself is real or fake. Nothing that you can observe anywhere will convince you beyond a doubt of either possibility.

Hold that idea in your mind, and let us pretend that there was something that indicated the reality of the universe. Imagine there was a ball that was red if the universe was real, yellow if it was not. Only the ball changed depending on the answer, and the answer would change nothing but the ball.

Now, obviously, there is no such ball in the universe. Because there is no such ball, that means that there is nothing in the universe to indicate whether or not it is real. This also means that there is nothing in the universe affected by whether or not that answer is true. Therefore, regardless as to whether or not it is real, the universe remains the same, because there is no indication, no proof of either possibility.

I just wish to point out that this is different from saying "who cares, it doesn't matter." This is saying that "it has no measurable or empirical effect on my consciousness one way our another, other that academic curiosity; which is not proof, but rather something directly affected by empirical evidence masquerading as proof." In short, this proves that it doesn't matter, rather than dismissing it as unimportant to your life because the question ranks so low in your philosophical priorities.

So there Descartes. It has taken me months upon months of trying to climb out of the hole you dug but never appropriately bridged. Finally, I have reached the cusp of enlightenment once again, and I want you to know, you were very little help. The ladder you tried to provide with Meditation III was shoddily made. Hopefully, I was able to provide my universe with a more concrete answer.

Why is there something rather than nothing?

First: yes, there is something. I will not dispute that. How could there not be something? Even Descartes didn't dispute that when he showed with his Second Meditation that the only thing to truly and indisputably exist is something doing the experiencing. Aka, you. So even if everything you experience is false, you yourself still exist, because something is doing the experiencing. But the question is, why?

Before we can even begin to answer such an amazing question, we must discuss the reality of how the universe works. As I see it, there are two possibilities. One, you exist and the entire universe that you exists in will continue to exist even if you are not there to perceive it. Or, two, you exist, purely subjectively, and the idea that things exist outside your experience of them is a false assumption. It's the classic "if a tree falls in the middle of a forest with no one around, does it make a sound?" question.

Possibility One - The Universe Exists in Independence

The tree will still make a sound as it falls even if you are not around to hear it. This seems to be the more intuitive (and, quite frankly, less egotistical) idea. Things happen and events take place outside your realm of observation. How accurate your observations are (as they are perceived through fallible senses) is up for debate. But the main point is that things happen that are beyond you perception, and their effects slowly reach you over time, rather than random effects being generated by our senses, and interpreted by us as cause and effect. 

This way supports that things exists. Not only is there an experiencer existing, but also something being experienced.

Possibility Two - You and Only You Exist

Even proving you exist as you think you exist can be tricky at best, impossible at worst. However, it is indisputable that something exists because there is something to be doing the experiencing. Now, if we say that just you exist and nothing else exists as you experience it, then how are you experiencing anything? Well, remember how there is an epistemic horizon disallowing you from really seeing how your "consciousness" works, and creating the illusion of "free" will? There are actually two epistemic horizons. One, as previously mentioned, is the subconscious horizon. The second is the horizon of your senses, or your sensory horizon. The sensory horizon hides how and what we are actually perceiving, and the subconscious horizon hides how we are actually processing this information. This unfortunately leaves us with a quite a narrow band of "conscious" thought. So, you are still experiencing things, but they are through your senses, and your senses lay beyond your sensory horizon. This means that for all you know, sensory input is another part of you, just on a superconscious level. You are quite literally dreaming.

All of this does explain how you can exist and nothing as you experience it does, but it does not quite answer the question of why. We'll get to that, Alice. First we must continue down the rabbit hole.

Either way, things exists, so why does it matter? Well, each view changes it's reciprocal; that is, nothing. And is there a way to prove or disprove either one? Well, there are two ways to do this, and they both involve disproving Possibility Two: you either have to experience something that could not, at all, have been produced by your superconscious (and therefore go completely and utterly insane), or you could die. Seeing as how our options are limited, let us simply explore both venues. 

If Possibility One (the universe exists in independence) is true, then let us apply Superstring Theory to this idea. Superstring Theory ends in the tenth dimension (that is, Everything, capital E), and never explains an eleventh. However, if we apply Possibility One's nothing to this eleventh dimension, then the eleventh dimension becomes a curve of probability between Everything and Nothing. Obviously, we fall on the Everything side because we can do the experiencing. Nothing can't fall on Nothing, because if it did, it would be Nothing, and therefore not exist. So this true Nothing exists, but doesn't exist, because there is nothing ever to say that it does exist. That is why it has us so befuddled, because even nothing is something, and is therefore not nothing. Because this 11th dimension Nothing exists but can't, automatically, we exist. Voila.

However, if we entertain Possibility Two, there are still questions. If only we exist, then that means Nothing outside of us exists. But Nothing can't exist, so we exist as everything, everywhere. Then why are we reduced to such small visceral states? Whys do we seem bounded when we must be boundless? Ah, it is the nature of Everything. Everything seems boundless, but it is a trick of infinity. We are infinitely complex, but not infinitely big. This means that the Nothing exists only as a counterpart to how we are complex, rather that large. We exist as we do because you fell that way on the curve of probability that extends between Everything and Nothing. You can exist in differing states between Everything and Nothing because of the way you are infinitely complex, and you infinite complexity allows for such a limbo to occur. 

To sum up, while I cannot yet give an answer as to which is right, One or Two, I can tell you, in short: we exist because Nothing does exist, but can't. We are the default. Or rather, I am. There is no proof that you exist. Nothing you could present to me to prove that you are actually presenting it to me. Alas, that is the curse of existing. Because we are not Nothing, we must be Everything. 

How The Sky Could Actually Be Not Blue

People will often ask the question "What color is the sky?", or "Is the sky blue?", usually with verbal irony to point out that something is obvious or indisputable. But really, now. This conclusion that the sky is blue is really based off two assumptions, and where there are assumptions, there can be mistakes. So let us, truly, examine the question: "Is the sky blue?", beginning with two assumptions.

First: color is an inherent property in things, and is not just perceived by an observer of these objects. But honestly, who is to say that color is something that is inherent in the universe. How could you convince someone that color is real, and not simply something your brain adds to the world to try to make sense of the reality in which it exists? Or is color really a property of something, because two people can look at two things of the same color and match them together consistently? Well, the truth (as usual) probably lies somewhere in the middle. The difference between whether something is inherent or perceived depends on whether or not the property is quantifiable. For example, thermal energy is something inherent in an object, but whether is is hot or cold is subjective, and therefore, perceived. Applying this to color, color itself can be said to be inherent. You can measure the wavelength of light, and since this is what gives light "color", then it is quantifiable. But the instant we say something is "green", or "dark" or even "bright red", we switch to color being perceived. This is because there is no way to measure "greenness" or how bright a color appears. In summary: color (or rather, wavelengths of light) is technically an inherent quality; but it's experienced subjectively, and is therefore (to people) actually a perceived quality.

Second: people have no way of knowing that the color they perceive as "blue" is the same blue for other people. This is the real crux of the matter. Since color is actually perceived, and subjective, there is no way to know that your mother didn't see the sky in a color you would call "green" or "brown", while you see it in a color she would call "orange". Your mother taught you the color of the sky is "blue". However, there is no way to teach you what the actual color blue really looks like, because it is impossible to try to prove that you two are experiencing the color in exactly the same way.

So between color being a subjective property and the uncertainty of how it is perceived, the sky could (in theory) be not blue to you compared to anyone else's "blue". One could argue that because we both give the name to that perceived color "blue", it is as good as the same, because we both think  of it as blue. But the name and the color are two completely separate entities. So yes, the sky is "blue" (according to you), but in reality, it may not actually be blue (according to everyone else). It could be red. They key word here is could. So the next time you think "The sky is blue.", now you know to doubt even that axiom of your existence.