DangerousTalk

If a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it, does it still make a sound? Well, that all depends on what we mean by “sound.” Sound as a physical vibration? Yes a fallen tree would make vibration. But if no one is around to feel those vibration, than it is irrelevant. But if we mean sound as in an auditable phenomenon picked up by the human ear, than without a human ear, there is nothing to receive the auditable phenomenon, so no.

We humans sometimes forget that everything we experience is experienced through our senses. Take colors for example. The spectrum of visible light that the human eye can see is very limited. We can’t see most of the light spectrum. However, we now have technology which can enable us to detect non-visible light and sounds which the human ear can’t normally hear. Through human reason, we can experience other aspects of reality which our five senses can’t detect. This certainly seems to indicate that an objective reality does exist and that the world was not created with us in mind (if it were, our would-be creator would have given us the senses to experience more than just a tiny sliver of the Universe). We need our reasoning skills in order to make the conclusion of an objective reality. We reason that we grow old and so therefore others like us must grow old as well. And since others are older than we, we conclude that they must have been in existence before we were born and therefore objective reality exists.

But what if our brains are wrong? What if there is something wrong with our hardware as it were? Can we really be sure of anything? No, but we don’t have to be sure or certain. We have a reasonable certainty based on our limited reasoning (limited to our hardware). It is entirely possible that I am the only one who is real and that I am strapped into some sort of machine somewhere in some other very different reality and that this objective reality is a computer simulation. There is no way to disprove that position.

So here is where things get interesting. Let’s assume that there is an objective reality (since the evidence seems to point in that direction anyway). How can we know anything about this objective reality? We don’t have an objective view of this objective reality and in fact, everything about this objective reality must first be filtered through our subjective and very limited senses and brains. Do we simply give up and say that we can’t know anything and curl up into a ball in the corner? I don’t think so. I think we can still use our five senses as well as our sense of reason and learn about this world we live in. While it is true that we are limited and therefore we can’t “know” with absolute certainty, we can be reasonably certain about things based on the amount and strength of evidence. Some things we are more certain about that others, but again, we could wake up tomorrow and discover that this was all some sort of dream or computer game in some other reality. We just don’t know and we can’t know.

Our knowledge of reality is based off of reasoned assumptions based on evidence and reason. We are more certain of something than other things. Will the sun rise above the horizon tomorrow? I am reasonably certain that it will. Does milk do a body good? I’m not as certain about that because new studies are constantly showing new things based on new data and new evidence. But for the moment, I think milk does do a body good. Both conclusions are open to change give new evidence, but it would take much stronger evidence to convince me that the sun will not rise tomorrow than would be needed to convince me that milk is bad for me.

I bring this up because some Christians believe that without God, there is no grounding for an objective world and that they have some sort of special absolute certain knowledge that no one else seems to have. But all our knowledge and experiences must first be filtered through our senses and our brain. We cannot have objective knowledge nor can we have absolute certainty.

Socrates dealt with this question in the Apology. The Oracle of Delphi told him that he was the wisest of all men. But Socrates didn’t believe it because he didn’t know everything. In fact, Socrates didn’t know anything with any certainty. What he learned was that he was the only one to know that he did not know. His uncertainty was what made him the wisest of all men.

While we don’t have absolute certainty, we will just have to get by without those it. We are just going to have to be honest with ourselves and realize that we cannot be certain of anything. We can’t even be certain that we can’t be certain. But I digress. Personally, I think we have done a pretty good job so far with our uncertainty and our continual questioning and reasoned certainty. As long as we don’t delude ourselves by claiming something that we cannot claim… like absolute certainty we could learn a lot about the universe we live in.

Filed under: Religion