Thoughts and Inquiries About Truth
In my previous essay I somehow stated that there was a relation between the experiences and the meaning each person gives to someone or something. Through the readings of this week I realized the importance and power of interpretations. What I find really interesting is our ability to interpret reality. How is my brain able to connect or create ideas and perspectives? How do I find meaning in something? Why is it that a rose can transmit love to someone and disgust to another person? In this last question, I think that the emotion is related to previous experiences that stay on the person hardware. I dare to say that our perspectives have stories behind, which involve feelings and emotions. There’s certain danger in feelings or previous experiences because people start creating paradigms and prejudices. If every single person has different perspectives and creates different meanings, is there a universal truth in which we would all agree?
I do think there’s only one reality, and we all are part of that reality which is interpreted by ourselves and limited by our senses. I found really interesting what Ferguson says, that we have to believe in certain “laws” in order to seek for more. So, we can all agree in something after all. We all agree that each of us exists. What I wonder is, are we ever going to reach the whole truth? Are we ever going to grasp it all? Is humanity going to reach the truth and agree on it? I do understand that we are limited creatures, who exist in a tiny planet that resides on an infinite galaxy. And also, I’m not sure if everyone would interpret the whole truth equally. Maybe it’s there and we just don’t know how to connect it or how to agree on it. Maybe our different perspectives blind us in a way. Or maybe we haven’t reached it at all. The questions that keep on popping in my mind are “Can we know anything?” and “How do we know that what we know is true?”
I think that even if we ask those questions, we’ll never stop seeking more. It reminds me of Hofstadter “By seeking you’ll discover” and even if we don’t get the absolute and whole truth, we’ll always be seeking for more and more, because the more we seek the more we find. And I come to the same question I stated on my previous essay, is truth infinite? It keeps me thinking that truth is sort of a tunnel with no end, the more we cave the more we know. And it strikes me how everything we have discovered show results in technology, for instance. I’m really overwhelmed of how humanity lives the way it does nowadays. Our life quality is just impressive. And every day, more discoveries are being found. There’s just so much out there, and it reminds me of what Wilson says, that every scientist go each day to their investigation thinking “I’m almost there”. And not only scientists do that, I think we all do. We all reach for something that goes beyond, we’ll never stop dreaming and wanting more.
“There’s always room for a reasonable doubt” is a quote from Twelve Angry Men, I do think that doubting is hard. It requires courage and braveness. Why? I think that many people doesn’t doubt because it’s easier. Anyways, I think that doubting is one of the essences of human beings. Doubt is always there, waiting to be explored. And when we doubt, a thousand questions come into our minds, even our own existence. We start asking the question that seems to have no answer: What is truth? What isn’t? Why is it true? Why is it not? Am I sane? As I said before, doubting is hard. And so, I come back to what Ferguson says, we have to have a leap of faith. There must be something we believe in. It can be God or science. We just need to believe in something to keep sane. I think that those beliefs are the roots for our many discoveries in life. I can’t say if one is truer that the other, at this point of my life I just know that I’m not sure about many things. However, I’m sure that we can’t live in uncertainty.
Systems, do we live in a system? This reminds me of what I feel Hofstadter is getting at. He says that in order to understand a system, one must jump out. Is our truth a system? Is our universe a big system? Do we need to jump out, in this case to die, to understand it? Hofstadter says that a system can’t understand itself; it needs a meta-system and so on. There’s an infinite chain. So, maybe there’s a meta-system that understands our system and in this case, we’ll never understand the system itself because we are part of the system! It’s curious that we created a meta-system that holds all truth, God or religion. I mean we are implicitly aware that we can’t know everything and so we rely on something bigger or powerful than us. And that is even more curious because it seems rare that the members of the system, us, are aware that they need a meta-system. However, not everyone thinks we need something bigger or powerful to understand our nature and our system. Instead, they seek to understand the system rather than rely.
At this point I do think that we are limited creatures but there’s something that goes beyond, which is our mind. I’m not sure if we’ll find the whole truth, I really doubt it. However, I’m very sure that our drive to seek and discover will never cease. This drive it’s in our nature and it’s unexplainable. I have faith in human beings, I really do. We can achieve great things, maybe not everything but little by little we’ll realize that everything is connected. We just need this leap of faith. By seeking, we’ll discover.
I do think there’s only one reality, and we all are part of that reality which is interpreted by ourselves and limited by our senses. I found really interesting what Ferguson says, that we have to believe in certain “laws” in order to seek for more. So, we can all agree in something after all. We all agree that each of us exists. What I wonder is, are we ever going to reach the whole truth? Are we ever going to grasp it all? Is humanity going to reach the truth and agree on it? I do understand that we are limited creatures, who exist in a tiny planet that resides on an infinite galaxy. And also, I’m not sure if everyone would interpret the whole truth equally. Maybe it’s there and we just don’t know how to connect it or how to agree on it. Maybe our different perspectives blind us in a way. Or maybe we haven’t reached it at all. The questions that keep on popping in my mind are “Can we know anything?” and “How do we know that what we know is true?”
I think that even if we ask those questions, we’ll never stop seeking more. It reminds me of Hofstadter “By seeking you’ll discover” and even if we don’t get the absolute and whole truth, we’ll always be seeking for more and more, because the more we seek the more we find. And I come to the same question I stated on my previous essay, is truth infinite? It keeps me thinking that truth is sort of a tunnel with no end, the more we cave the more we know. And it strikes me how everything we have discovered show results in technology, for instance. I’m really overwhelmed of how humanity lives the way it does nowadays. Our life quality is just impressive. And every day, more discoveries are being found. There’s just so much out there, and it reminds me of what Wilson says, that every scientist go each day to their investigation thinking “I’m almost there”. And not only scientists do that, I think we all do. We all reach for something that goes beyond, we’ll never stop dreaming and wanting more.
“There’s always room for a reasonable doubt” is a quote from Twelve Angry Men, I do think that doubting is hard. It requires courage and braveness. Why? I think that many people doesn’t doubt because it’s easier. Anyways, I think that doubting is one of the essences of human beings. Doubt is always there, waiting to be explored. And when we doubt, a thousand questions come into our minds, even our own existence. We start asking the question that seems to have no answer: What is truth? What isn’t? Why is it true? Why is it not? Am I sane? As I said before, doubting is hard. And so, I come back to what Ferguson says, we have to have a leap of faith. There must be something we believe in. It can be God or science. We just need to believe in something to keep sane. I think that those beliefs are the roots for our many discoveries in life. I can’t say if one is truer that the other, at this point of my life I just know that I’m not sure about many things. However, I’m sure that we can’t live in uncertainty.
Systems, do we live in a system? This reminds me of what I feel Hofstadter is getting at. He says that in order to understand a system, one must jump out. Is our truth a system? Is our universe a big system? Do we need to jump out, in this case to die, to understand it? Hofstadter says that a system can’t understand itself; it needs a meta-system and so on. There’s an infinite chain. So, maybe there’s a meta-system that understands our system and in this case, we’ll never understand the system itself because we are part of the system! It’s curious that we created a meta-system that holds all truth, God or religion. I mean we are implicitly aware that we can’t know everything and so we rely on something bigger or powerful than us. And that is even more curious because it seems rare that the members of the system, us, are aware that they need a meta-system. However, not everyone thinks we need something bigger or powerful to understand our nature and our system. Instead, they seek to understand the system rather than rely.
At this point I do think that we are limited creatures but there’s something that goes beyond, which is our mind. I’m not sure if we’ll find the whole truth, I really doubt it. However, I’m very sure that our drive to seek and discover will never cease. This drive it’s in our nature and it’s unexplainable. I have faith in human beings, I really do. We can achieve great things, maybe not everything but little by little we’ll realize that everything is connected. We just need this leap of faith. By seeking, we’ll discover.