Absolute Truth:
I don’t buy into the idea of absolute truth, just as I don’t really buy into religion, or into anything that wears a big fat sign on its head saying “I am right because I said so, prove me wrong!” The notion itself bugs me, because it is basically the root of all false assumptions, and such an overall bullshit concept. I believe in what you may call “provisional truth”, to a certain point, for things like “I am hitting keys on my computer right now.” But that’s not what I’m talking about. Absolute truth is basically the belief that, in reality, a particular statement is absolute, undeniable fact. Here’s why I don’t believe that this can be said about anything:
Picture the world as you know it, alright? This is going to get very existential very quickly, so try to do so objectively. You see green leaves, you see blue skies, you hear birds singing, you feel yourself breathing air, etc. Something like that, yes? Now picture the cosmos, in all their infiniteness, and try to imagine other beings out there, beings that may take forms that we are completely unfamiliar with. Maybe they don’t have anything resembling DNA, maybe they aren’t made of cells, maybe they aren’t made of organic material. The point is that there are a whole ton of possibilities when you open up your mind, right? Sure, most things on this planet were made a certain way, but that doesn’t mean that there’s only one way, does it? And that doesn’t mean that any other ways there might be are even similar to ours, or resembling ours, does it? Since we don’t know about these other hypothetical life forms, we can’t really predict how they would work in any aspect, there being so many possibilities, many of which the human imagination probably can’t really fathom on its own.
So, in an infinite universe, or at least such a huge one, there are almost bound to be other forms of life, and they may very well work differently… As in, their senses may work differently… So if we have sight, hearing, scent, taste, and touch, they could have none of these, and maybe an entirely different set, hypothetically. So if we don’t have any of these other senses with which to observe the universe, how can we really say that we know anything about anything? Sure, a song may be beautiful to our hearing, but perhaps by observing it a different way, maybe by feeling the vibrations, or by means too complicated for me to speculate, the song is completely unintelligible, and even atrocious. Hell, even between two human beings, there isn’t a single song that everyone can agree is “good”, or “bad”. This yields my first point, one that I’m sure you all have already heard, that one cannot really connote anything with being positive or negative, as these things are all subject entirely to perspective and opinion, hence the term: Relative truth.
Here’s where my argument gets existential. Though the previous one could possibly be disproved by a competent physician or perhaps a sociologist if you look at the latter part, (I really don’t know if it could) here’s my real point. Again, try to picture the world as you know it, stop there, read what I just said again, and repeat as necessary. The key words are: as you know it. Now, let’s look at this objectively. So the theory here is that what we observe is absolute truth, and that what we “know” we can be positive of. Well, we can’t very well prove this, directly, since that would require for humans to know everything about the universe and then some. This is already enough to cast reasonable doubt on the notion that we have of reality, but for the sake of the argument, let’s try to prove it another way. Let’s assume the opposite.
So, if what we see, hear, feel, etc. isn’t true, then there could be any number of explanations for this. All that we are given is that things appear to us in the way that they do. So, if, in reality, we actually don’t have, say, 5 fingers, or we really don’t control our own thoughts, or something like that, then what could possibly be the cause? Really, it could hypothetically be a lot of things. Like, from my own perspective, what if I’m the only one with a consciousness? What if the world as I know it, and all my knowledge of it is simply a reflection of my subconscious, (I’m relaying this to you secondhand) or what if my consciousness is simply part of a higher being’s consciousness, which consists of millions like mine--- as if I’m a brain cell in a very advanced brain? What if, like in The Matrix, the world I see is some kind of simulation, which my consciousness is immersed in for some reason, and the real world outside of the simulation isn’t even similar to reality? The answer to all of these is that I wouldn’t know it. If any of these theories were correct, then I wouldn’t know that I wasn’t experiencing the real world, and I would have no way to prove it. Therefore, given what we know about the universe, any of these is possible. I don’t know how any of these would work, but if I’m experiencing any kind of false reality, then I suppose that the true reality (assuming there even is one) would be at a higher level than mine. Perhaps the laws of physics known to man, or even those of reasoning itself would not apply, and our limited understanding would not allow us to comprehend how the universe truly works.
Now, I know that I sound like a conspiracy theorist right now, but don’t misconstrue my meaning here: I don’t really believe, necessarily, that what I observe isn’t reality, I simply recognize that as a possibility. So as long as this is possible, then we cannot know anything for certain, really, can we? No one can claim anything to be fact, unless it is opinionated. For instance: “I think that the sky is blue.” This is most likely a true statement, but even then there is some room for speculation regarding exactly how the human brain and subconscious works. I don’t really know enough on the topic to say, but can we really be sure that we think something? Again, if we aren’t in the true reality, then the definition of “think”, or even “I” could be up in the air, but again, I don’t know about this notion. The way I see it, the greatest leap of faith one could ever make is to roll out of bed in the morning and say “I’m alive.” In fact, this is such a huge assumption that it’s possible that those who say it belong in a mental ward.
Despite my disbelief in any kind of absolute truth, I do believe in what I believe is called: Provisional truth. Provisional truth is basically science, it is “Based off of what I can observe and prove; this must be true.” Sure, it might not be that evolution is how we came about as a species, but that’s the most likely explanation, as far as we can prove, at the given moment. I think that this is the most logical way to proceed with our existence, because whether or not it’s actually real, it gets us the most benefit as far as we know. That’s all there is to it, we have to go off of what we know, in order to make sense of what we can observe. One still can’t be positive that the world is what it seems to be, but if we were to go off of only what we can know based on absolute truth, then we would go nowhere, because we don’t truly know what absolute truth is. (And if we assume that we know absolute truth, like god, without being able to prove it, we could really go astray!)It may be possible that, if we learn enough from our provisional observations, we can find absolute truth. Until then, though, we must simply go off of our senses alone, going off of what we have already established as a man would when wandering through an unfamiliar and pitch-black room and hoping to one day find a light switch.
Sincerely,
The Ellipsis
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