The Infinite Sphere
The probabilistic nature of truth
Philosophy has always been about a search for truth. Essentially, it is science, Historically, there was no separation between philosophy and the kind of empirical laboratory science we think of with the term today. Eventually, however, a distinction evolved that separated philosophy from science somewhat. Science generally followed pure physics and empirical evaluations of measurable reality. Philosophy took a different path delving into metaphysics, abstraction, and seemingly unmeasurable phenomena.
Completely separating the two, however, has proven to be problematic to say the least. The reason for this is a simple one. The faculties that we employ to consider metaphysical ideas are essentially the same ones we must rely on to consider physical ones. We only have the intrinsic tools we were born with to understand how things work in a universe of space and time, and those tools are the same whether we are contemplating physical objects and events or hypothetical ones.
In a Platonic universe, this wouldn’t be a problem. That’s not the universe we live in today, however, because we live after people like Immanuel Kant. Kant upset the entire history of philosophy with his “Copernican Revolution” in philosophy which turned the empirical model upside down. This was essentially a reference to the concept of “framing” (although he didn’t call it that) in that everything was referential. The perceiver now determines the reality rather than the reality imposing itself on the perceiver.
We create reality. Kant said we cannot know anything other than what is presented to us within the innate setting of time and space. Therefore, what is real to us is what we create as the representation of what our senses tell us is real. In this way, metaphysics transforms from something that exists only in the universe to something that exists only in our own minds.
This is where the red flags go up. How can all reality only be in my mind? I can’t prove it, but it would seem that there is some intrinsic reality - perhaps one that Kant never realized - that says this can’t be true. After all, I can find a lot of evidence to prove that the universe existed long before me and will outlast me by a lot. The answer is that it doesn’t have to be just one or the other. There is another alternative. Your experience may well be limited to your life perspective, or you could take the Kierkegaardian leap of faith and trust the evidence of an existence outside of yourself.
If you choose the latter, then the issues of morality and ethics must become a part of the discussion. With this introduction, the word truth takes on a different meaning. What is real is replaced with what is good. This takes the discussion out of the empirical realm and into the subjective space.
This is where the idea of balance comes back in. Since I was a teenager, I have been obsessed with the idea of balance. The way I use the word, it simply means a balance between extremes. If you picture a playground teeter-totter, balance would be if all the arguments on one side would sit evenly with all the arguments on the other. In sum, we have reached an even equilibrium.
Keep in mind, this might mean that some compromises would have to be made on one issue or another to balance the board. The challenge is to make sure that each of these compromises is as widely acceptable to all as possible. The danger is to compromise the interests of one weaker group for the benefit of the whole. This would be an injustice, even if the weaker group is just one person. Perfection is the goal, but subjugation is not to be tolerated. We can accept failure on the former but not the latter.
Picture, if you will, an infinite sphere. At the center is is truth in the previous context. Within that sphere there are an infinite number of lines that can be drawn. Each one of these lines represents some dichotomy of some issue relating to the experience of life. The line is a concept. Pure concepts represent a line with a zero length, which is to say a dot. These concepts are pure truth at the center.
Other lines, however, have lengths greater than zero. These are concepts which have some ambiguity as to their truth. These are the things we fight over. How we treat felons, or immigrants, or mothers-in-law might be some examples. What is the truth in those circumstances? It is certainly different today than it was a century ago, and it is likely to change a lot in the next century.
Therefore, moral truth, as it relates to time and space, is relative. It cannot be absolute. In fact, one might even say that truth was at some level probabilistic. It has, as its primary characteristic, an inability to predict where it is at any given moment until it is measured. When it is measured, it is measured according to some predefined set of criteria and only then is it revealed.
In this way, it behaves like quantum mechanics. It has, in its own way, a superposition. In that one aspect of truth can actually influence and be tied to another aspect, it can attain a certain level of entanglement. Changes in a certain idea can instantaneously change another idea. Truth is what it is when you see it, and it may not be the next time you look.
The final link in this tortured analogy is the qubit. The “quantum bit” is the basis of quantum computing and, once again, invokes the image of the sphere. With standard computers, every bit of data is either a 1 or a 0. We all know that. But expand that possibility into a sphere of zero at the center but any billion or more options as the other digit. Each sphere then computes on an exponentially faster scale. Then put a bunch of them together, and something magical happens as some enter states of entanglement. This is weird stuff!
In other words, Kant said we can’t know anything outside of our immediate experience in space and time. Quantum physics says we cannot know something other than the exact space and time when we measure it. The unifying characteristic is the probabilistic nature of each type of truth. Only by applying our judgement to it can we define it in its immediate context.