I'm so sorry for the ultra-long post before this. Until now I'm still unsure if I'm an INTP or INTJ but it doesn't matter now. I had just recently came to the conclusion that everyone is living life with a huge uncertainty and we just have to deal with it.
Now I know that it's very cheeky to call yourself philosophical, because real philosophers obviously don't call themselves philosophers. They prefer big names such as profound thinker or seeker of the greater truth. But that's not important. Below is just, again, coming from a secondary four student who has not reached full maturity in thoughts, therefore don't set your expectations too high.
I have been thinking of this issue recently: what is reality? To some of you this may seem like duh, but with closer examination you will realise that what you perceive as reality in everyday life may not be real. The possibility exists, and there is no way that you can prove that something is real with concrete evidence. Now this, is a truly frightening thought. I almost couldn't sleep the other night. What if, everything around us is not real? You see colours, hear sounds, taste food, feel coldness, but all of these sensing could be a trick to our brain. In fact the whole notion of having a physical world and body can be false. What if they are just created like a stimulation to feed our conscious?
It seems now, that only the "spiritual" you is real right? The only thing you can be sure of is your own conscious. Not anymore. How do you know that your conscious is yours? When you make a decision, is it truly you who make it? When we make decisions, we take various factors into consideration, and the various factors are coming from the environment. Therefore, if the environment is false, then is our conscious false? What if we are just making decisions based on sound judgement (what we think is sound) coming from our previous experiences? Then a modification in our environment will change our conscious, so is it ours then, or is just a programme ran based on complex formulas? And though we assume that we are the master of our thoughts and actions, what we are actually doing can be just based on some laws?
Crisis, crisis indeed. Maybe this sounds rubbish to you, maybe you feel that I'm thinking too much, maybe you thought that I took drugs. Well, if you have a solution, please please write it down as comments or in the chat box, because the level of uncertainty is overwhelming now. It appears to me as though I can never be sure of anything. This uncertainty really bugs me.
After this horror I tried to regain faith by thinking of things that cannot be false. I tried and tried but to no avail. Only when I came to mathematics did the solution appear.
1 is 1, 2 is 2. 1+1=2. This seems to me that there's no way for it to be false. Maybe it can be, just that I don't know. But all these mathematical formulas, they feel very real.
Then I thought of some others. Feelings. What you feel at the present moment, it feels real. When you get angry, you really do. Is there a way for feeling to be false? I mean, false not in the sense where you purposely conceal it, but as to how YOU feel. Feeling is a irrational thing. Can it be false? Can what you feel at the present moment be false? I can't think of a possibility where a feeling can be false, at least, it appears to be more real than what you touch and eat.
Thinking along this line, lots of things popped up. Things such as harmony and love become very real. We can't materialise these ideas, but we know that they are there. Maybe there is a world which these did not exist, but those concepts, they are very very real.
As Linying has neatly summarised for me during our discussion at assembly today, what is really real are actually the abstract things.
I still can't be sure. I can never be 100% sure. To be 100% sure I need the proof that there are no alternatives. Obviously such proof do not exist. As long as the possibility of a counter-example holds, uncertainty prevails.
I know it will be very nice to just end-off at the previous paragraph, but it brings about another issue which I've been thinking of recently. Well, since you already read half-way, may as well continue.
Is there such a thing known as the "absolute truth"? Meaning, it is true in all circumstances.
Things such as mathematics and moral ethics seem to suggest that there is. For example, mathematical laws are almost unshaken, they appear to be always right. We, as humans, also seem to know that there is such a thing known as "the right thing to do". We feel that there is some virtues with the halos and all and people should all strive to achieve them because they are absolutely right.
I'm not going to offer my opinions on this because I'm really uncertain of this and there are no good insights which I can offer. All I know is that if there is an absolute truth, then humans may tend to it almost infinitely close, but they will never reach it, because humans are imperfect.
On the other hand, there can be no absolute truth, because everything is relative to each other and they may break down when things outside our sphere of knowledge appear and disprove. For example, the earth revolves around the sun, it is thought to be an absolute truth. Yet, maybe in a different dimension, I have no idea how, the earth is seen as stagnant to the sun. Then is this still an absolute truth? An absolute truth is something that is true no matter what, so it is not.
The second case is pretty scary. That means everything we have established so far can be false, and we have to start over. Just like how discovering distant galaxies and stars helps us to shape our models of the universe, imagine we suddenly discovering a totally badass galaxy that does not follow some of the laws of physics as we have formulated. Though extremely low, the possibility exists. If the second case holds true (haha note the irony), everything "true" breaks down, and we will cry.
In all cases I wish it is the first one. Although we may never get it, the assurance that the truth does exist makes me feel better.
P.s. after writing this long post I went to search on the web and some interesting arguments come out. Here's the links if you have time:
http://www.gotquestions.org/absolute-truth.html
http://pleaseconvinceme.com/2012/is-there-an-absolute-truth/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-backman/absolute-truth_b_2573546.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality
http://www.newscientist.com/special/reality
http://www.peterrussell.com/SCG/ideal.php
A lot of them are religion-related, which I'm not going to discuss here. Not only because it is an ultra big topic that I have almost no knowledge of, people's spit could drown me.
The true disaster comes when the two questions are integrated--is there absolute truth even when there is no reality? How can we tell if there is an absolutely truth when "truth" are based on our perceptions and our perceptions are not necessarily real?
I'm not sure if this is beyond the capability of the human brain, if you have answers, or any personal insights, do comment. Please.
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