JONATHAN CONSIDERS THE "MANY TRUTHS" IDEA.
Ken Clark has many times raised the "many truths" issue, e.g. as far
back as
10th June 1998:-
<<< I am still somewhat bemused by Pirsig's "Many Truths" idea. To my
mind
this means that there some six or seven billion separate and distinct
sentient level MOQs out there. Can anyone clear this up for me? Ken.
>>>
More recently
Ken Clark <clark@netsites.net> wrote on Saturday, January 23, 1999 10:30
PM
> On the other hand there are as many expressions of DQ as there are
people
>in the universe as well as the universal DQ. It is the interaction of
all
>of these inputs that tend to drive our individual conceptions of DQ
>ultimately toward a common point of agreement. This is what Pirsig's
"Many
>Truths" idea is about.
> I view DQ as the function that operates to try all possible
combinations
>of possibilities that exist in the universe....
There are at least two ways to look at this.
1.There is an absolute truth which can be found by empirical
observation. Alternatively, there
2. There is *NO* absolute truth, thus many alternate "truths" can be
valid.
3. There *IS* an absolute truth, but any "known" truth is just a
reflection of it.
The first became untenable after widespread acceptance of "relativity"
in among scientists.
The second has become a common alternative, but quickly leads to an
"anything goes" philosophy.
The third resonates of mysticism, but also of a Platonic ultimate truth.
"Schroedinger's Cat" is an illustration of the problem. A cat is dead or
alive in a soundproof, light-proof box. There is no way to determine
what is "true" without opening the box. Conventional philosophy says
that the cat is absolutely dead or absolutely alive, and the "truth"
will be established by opening the box. The whole point of the construct
is to illustrate an alternative Quantum Mechanics viewpoint, which says
that the cat is DISTRIBUTED between live and dead states according to
some function. The opening of the box "collapses" this function to give
a final live/dead outcome. In QM terms, this means that a "measurement"
on a particle actually changes its nature (collapses its wave function).
It is assumed that before measurement, the true nature of the particle
is described by a statistical distribution function.
The "many truths" should not be considered as "alternative truths" but
as complimentary viewpoints.
No single "truth" can encompass all of reality. It is just one
viewpoint, DQ collapsed into a SQ description. Furthermore, the
"context" of such a truth can only be defined by adding more axioms
(Goedel's theorem), which again says that it is incomplete. A more
comprehensive description of reality must assimilate multiple
viewpoints, thus expanding the contextual boundaries. This is endlessly
recursive; no individual or compound "truth" can ever provide an
absolute description of reality. Thus the *value* of any one viewpoint
becomes exactly that - its VALUE. IMHO this is ABSOLUTELY what MoQ is
all about.
Jonathan
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