In all of this back and forth about Truth this and Truth that we are missing a crucial point and that is:

Truth is not a single thing

1. Personal Truth – Humans desperately want to believe that the world is a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get). The keyboard I’m typing on is well defined and there is no question (in my mind) whatsoever that this keyboard exists just as I see it, no uncertainty, just cold metal with plastic keys and a computer hidden beneath. There is absolutely nothing wrong with believing that what you see in front of your face, the thing that you are touching to produce letters and hence words in an email is anything but what you believe it to be. NOTHING WRONG WITH THAT. All that I’ve said all along and has been misinterpreted, assumed, crunched up and spit out is that we view even highly tangible items from different perspectives. Someone who has never seen a keyboard or a laptop computer will have no idea what this is. As a child I may have had a bad experience with small squares with letters on them, so I unconsciously view the keyboard with trepidation. Regardless of how an individual sees the keyboard, others may view it differently which means that there is no universal “truth” to the keyboard. Its use, its design and how it is ultimately perceived are up to the individual. No one is telling you that you cannot believe that the keyboard represents a certain type of truth, but you can’t tell me or anyone else that your interpretation is the universally, god given, no questions asked, absolute, accepted correct interpretation.

2. Standardized Truth – As mentioned in a previous email, our local neighborhood tribe, our village, our county, our state, our nation, and our world have come to several different general consensus about meanings and the identification of objects, concepts, scientific data, terminology, etc, depending on locale. But when we say, a chicken egg comes from a hen. That is an accepted concept that pretty much works in any country around the world. We, as a species, have a tacit agreement that a chicken egg comes from a female chicken. Yet even within this standardized concept there are folks who have never touched a chicken egg in an actual chicken nest. They know through hearsay that this is most likely the case, but have never personally experienced the chicken and egg thing. They go on faith. Now, if someone substituted a porcelain egg for a real egg and showed it to someone (and the person being shown the egg can’t actually touch it for the purposes of this demonstration), that person would assume it was a real egg based on standardized truth, so even here, the truth can be manipulated leaving the viewer potentially believing an untruth.

3. Statistical Truth – Here is where definable and provable theories kick in and most of them are mathematical. Aside from characters in 1984 or those who cannot conceive of mathematical formulas, there are both simple and complex mathematical equations that are irrefutable facts. Prime numbers are prime numbers whether you are on earth or on some planet circling Alpha Centauri. Perhaps in some other iteration of the universe this was not true, but we are not venturing into the 14th dimension in this thread.

So basically when we discuss the meaning of the word, “Truth” we must define which version we are discussing, otherwise we get into a game of words where we are all playing with different rules, and that makes no sense whatsoever.

With that said, let’s keep mixing it up and make it tremendously more complicated again.

YAY Insanity!

Tobin