Imagine a bowl of rainwater. The bowl sits on a small
table in my back garden. A few raindrops fall and I see one single drop fall into
the centre of the bowl, causing a tiny splash and a brief cycle of concentric ripples which soon
die away. Then the sun comes out and the flurry of rain disappears.
Once the ripples in the bowl have died away, how do I know
they ever happened? What evidence is there?
There is no evidence - so it didn’t happen.
There is no evidence - so it didn’t happen.
Or at least it didn’t happen if we take evidence as our
criterion of truth, because I have no evidence of those ripples even though I saw them only minutes ago. No evidence means they didn’t happen as far as the outside world is concerned, because I can't prove it and surely we must be consistent in these matters?
Most of the universe makes an unimaginably vast cascade of
such tiny changes, those changes that leave no evidence, changes we can
never reconstruct because the universe doesn’t do audit trails. An atom absorbs
a stray photon, changes its energy level by a single quantum then emits another
photon and drops back to its original state. An unrecorded change leaving
behind no evidence.
So it didn’t happen.
Except it did happen, but the universe doesn’t need to prove
it, doesn’t need to prove anything. We humans sometimes need proof because we have to
convince someone else, but the universe doesn’t have to prove anything to
anyone - ever. So we have problems, paradoxes, conflicting evidence and things we can sometimes explain, but
never completely. We, the social
we, aren’t a single entity and have to gather evidence and and present it to each other which only works if the same thing happens again to other people.
So what about those personal things we experience and the personal way we experience them? Because your experiences are yours, not mine. What about the purely personal events that leave no public audit trail? Like that drop of water, but more important than that, more personally significant?
Public evidence has to be our criterion of public truth, but where does that leave our private experiences? We have to express them in a public language even to ourselves, but in so doing, do we miss something real, something important?
Public evidence has to be our criterion of public truth, but where does that leave our private experiences? We have to express them in a public language even to ourselves, but in so doing, do we miss something real, something important?
3 comments:
Yes, we do miss something real and important, but there is nothing that we can do about it. In representing the event to ourselves via the concepts and language that are involved in our memory, we change it forever. My earliest memories, for example, have been so rationalised, elaborated, and confused with other similar ones, that they exist as a token in my mind, rather than a perfect representation.
Truth is honouring what there is, whether it is the raindrop as it falls (perfect zen "plop"!) or our fumbling attempts to manipulate the fading pictures.
even though I saw them only minutes ago. No evidence means they didn’t happen as far as the outside world is concerned, because I can't prove it and surely we must be consistent in these matters
Existence of G-d as well?
SV - I try to leave early memories alone because of the fragility you allude to. Whether it works or not I can't tell though - because of that same fragility.
JH - I'd say not, because I'm trying to point out that we can't just demand evidence in all circumstances. The demand itself could trample over valid personal experiences like my drop of rain.
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