Author’s Note: This was written on a whim in college. I found it in my Google Docs a couple of years after it was written. I do not edit essays–let me have my reductionist moment. If I had to guess the purpose for writing this, I’d guess that I was frustrated with someone asking questions I thought were pointless.
Two competing schools of thought are rationalism and empiricism. Rationalism maintains that logic rules the universe–think mathematical and logical truths. Empiricism is different in the way that it values sensory experiences above all else. The competition then can be defined as non-sensory truths versus sensory truths. Defining reality within these two competitive theories looks different. The cautionary tale of not falling into solipsism is directly influenced by how one approaches this definition of reality.
This is a gross overgeneralization and is usually only used for colloquial conversations because it helps having a reference point. For our purposes, the specifics are negligible, but it is just as important to realize that the conversation is much more complex that what is defined above.
With that being said, I find myself somewhere in the middle, following philosophers like David Hume and Immanuel Kant. I do believe that logical truths define reality: 2+2 will always be 4. The question of “are numbers made up or discovered?” really has no bearing on logical truths because that is more of an epistemological discussion. Rene Descartes, a staunch rationalist, defined the Method of Doubt yielding the first early scientific method, arguably one of the greatest feats of human innovation. The scientific method crosses the boundaries between rationalism and empiricism, though. The constant reworking of a hypothesis, testing itself against itself and others in controlled and sporadic environments needs both non-sensory (logical) and sensory (empirical) contexts to be truly accurate.
In this sense, believing in science falls into line with what I would stand for. The scientific method is one of the most beautiful practices and it illustrates the merging of these 19th century schools of thought. To assume that one could have only one is to assume that problems are one-dimensional, which is (hopefully) evident that they are indeed not.
Reality can be defined in these terms. Whatever there is clear and concise (Descartes’ favorite phrase, in his Meditations this must have been used over 100 times) evidence for is something that should be believed in. This is making a normative claim. I am insisting that there is some kind of ethical relationship between the things we believe and the things we know. There is thus a duty to uphold truth. This is what I believe. I think this transcends the question of science versus a higher power and delves into the realm of pragmatism. The simplest solution is to believe the things that have been tested and retested. Verified by decades or even centuries of research, subject to the scientific method.
I can understand the temptation to form this question. I want to present an alternative mode of thinking about this. The school of skepticism urges people to place value in something other than truth while other schools of thought may place value on other things. For example, religious thought places Faith and God higher than truth and skepticism and in fact discourages questioning in most forms. Reframing your question may look like “how would you place your values?”
This is a much more delicate question. Something that deserves tender thinking and care. Most questions in philosophy find themselves asking what we ought to do, a normative and ethical question. So, yes, even the question you have presented, “how would you place your values?” is one of ethical concern, hence why we should be standing for something. I stand for capital-T-Truth. It is the thing that I place value on the most. From this, I have found that the rest of my lines of thought fall into place. In standing for truth, I am still able to commit to the method of doubt and the scientific method. In fact, I think it is the way that one comes to Truth there is room for skepticism and not believing everything you see or at the very least questioning it. Established knowledge is something that should be the last thing to question though. Notice that it is still subject to questioning, but the chances that established knowledge is the source of doubt is unlikely.
Whilem Quine illustrates this in a model known as the Web of Truth. It is something that I believe everyone should at least take a look at. Other models similar to this one, in fact one that I have proposed, is that of a ship (please take a look at my blog picture, the Ship of Theseus). The planks of the ship are truths, whether logical or sensory, and if the boat begins to sink, we should check the planks to see which ones are allowing leaks to seep through. There are some planks that have been tried and true but begin to rot with time and new experience so must be changed. Some are not anywhere near the sea of uncertainty so they hold their form longer than others. Point is, everything is subject to questioning; but, there are certain truths that are less likely to be the cause of doubt than others.
I stand for Truth because I think it is the foundation of the human experience. Reality is not defined by solipsism. The way that I think of this is that we may all have our own individual experiences, but the chances of these experiences being so far removed from each other is so incredibly low. This is because we are able to agree on most things, at least the foundational things. The sky is blue during the day, this is an established and foundational truth that even if your perception of blue is different than mine, we can still agree that it is still in fact blue. The light waves are hitting at such a frequency that it aligns with somewhere on the electromagnetic spectrum and that’s that. There really isn’t much more to say about it. These specific planks of wood are far from the sea of uncertainty.
Alternatives to this can be dangerous. We have talked about religion: questioning the fundamental elements of science and history leads to really unfortunate endings such as believing the Earth is 6000 years old, religious persecution, etc. Skepticism on its own as a school of thought is my least favorite mode of thinking and I am always incredibly weary of taking it too seriously when it is considered in isolation. This is where conspiracies come from. I believe that much skepticism comes from the inherent desire to be “in the know” of something that no one else has thought of or that no one else is willing to admit. Fringe opinions like these can lead people to think that they are part of a club that only the elite can be part of. Other than this, what good is it for? It is isolating and as we all know, fringe opinions tend to find the most traction in the corners of the internet where people are not exposed to anything else. Echo chambers. Again, why would it be more intuitive for some of these skeptical, fringe opinions of reality to be more true than the ones that a majority are agreeing with? If we look at raw numbers or just basic intuition, it seems much more likely that most of these are just simply not the case, but that is the result of valuing doubt and inherent disbelief above Truth.
I began reading when I was a little girl. Voraciously. I was exposed to things and opinions that really didn’t make sense to me for the longest time, but starting early means that I had a baseline. This baseline is imperative. There is a phenomena called the Dunning Kruger Effect. It says that the less a person knows, the more likely they are to believe they know more than the average bear and the more likely they are to oversimplify. Similarly, the more you know, the less likely you are to oversimplify things. This is the danger of skepticism. The oversimplification or the problem from the people without a firm baseline. This does not require anything more than just understanding that everything is much more complicated than it appears. There is no need for formal education, good parenting, high socio-economic class–it is just the ability to recognize one’s own limits. To be able to see what foundational truths are already at your disposal and which ones are established on your behalf.
I am very weary of being the person who doesn’t know all that much but thinks they know a lot. Standing for Truth means that I am on the quest to rectify this as much as I can. An endless discovery of the self and the realization that there is an entire world that I will probably never know but that just has to be okay because as long as I am here I will do my best to get other people to recognize the same thing. Not because I think it is upholding an establishment, but because I think it is beautiful. We are the universe, we are stardust, and we are a collection of experiences. Everything is One (Spinoza) and all of our collective truths make up the Truth that guides the universe. Discovering this is a beautiful yet agonizing process that should be treated with care and tenderness. Abusing this is threatening the foundation that keeps our reality something worth living.
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