Why does One plus One equal Two? The answer is not because it does, but because we're told it does.
One is merely the name we've assigned to a single unit, and two is the name we've given to a single unit and another single unit. It could have just as easily been the other way around, like so:
O is two
O O is one
O + O = O O
=> two + two = one
And it would be correct because that's the way it is. One and Two could have been assigned the other way around. One only means one because that's what we're told it means. I bet you had a hard time looking at and reading that example. I know I did, because it flies in the face of everything we believe to be true, but the only reason we believe it to be true is because we've been told, almost since birth, that it is true.
Centuries ago people believed the earth was flat. It was an indisputable fact. The earth is flat. Everyone believed it was so because everyone else said it was, so it must be true...and then it wasn't.
The sky is not blue. The sky is the color that we have been told since birth is blue. I'm guilty of this myself. My daughter holds up a blue spoon. If she says it's blue, I say yes, good job. If she says it's another color, I correct her, but all I'm doing is reinforcing what I was taught when I was younger, and what I now believe to be true.
What if apples were blue? I don't mean blue like the sky, I mean what if the name for the color of an apple was blue. And the name for the color of the sky was red. Not just when the sun is setting, but imagine looking at the sky and saying, the sky is such a beautiful shade of red today.
Somewhere along the way someone decided that the word to describe the color of an apple would be red, and the word to describe the color of the sky would be blue. That's not the names of the colors, those are just the names "someone" chose to give them and everyone else just followed along, like sheep, which are only white because that's the name we've assigned to that particular shade ;)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
6 comments:
Ahhh the age old question of appearance vs. reality. The problem will never be solved as we know nothing of reality but what it appears to be. And what appears to be true isn't always reality, but a collection of lables that we use to distinguish differences in our environment. The sky being blue has nothing to do with the sky, but everything to do with the shmuck who grunted "blue" and then everyone else followed, as you pointed out.
To me, the question is not what appears to be true, but what can be definitivily ascertained based on credible evidence. I know that without breathing, I will die. I know that the world isn't flat, and I know that I have been trained to believe certain societal mores for no reason other than the members of my family were trained before me.
Friedrich Nietzche spent a great deal of time struggling with whether or not what we have been led to believe is as important as our ability to create new maxims that promote the spirit of self preservation. He ended up going insane.
I find that the best policy is a neutral one. I accept the maxims that are used to describe, but still keep my options open when it comes to creating new personal principles.
Godspeed philosphers
John - this is called Moore's Paradox
Don't ask me why I know that - I think it was part of a math logic class I took
Jim
Just as I thought - it is on Wikipedia (everythings at a wiki now!)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_Paradox
I oftentimes wonder if the color blue looks the same to me as it does to someone else. My blue could be someone else's green...you know what I'm saying? I'd just like to see the world through someone else's eyes. I think I'd like to switch bodies with someone, preferably male, for a few days. Just to see how different things really are.
Colors dont even have any meaning outside human conciousness.
In fact, in pure physics terms, all the abstract ideas we use to make sense of the world ( humans, cars, houses, beers ) are really just temporary collections of subatomic matter.
Think of scale, look at a beer, zoom in 100x, you are no longer looking at a beer but part of a beer, zoom out 100x, you are now looking at multiple beers and maybe a few trucks. Does the particular scale of '1 beer' have any special meaning for the universe? Nah, its
us making that call, without observers their really is no beer!
weird to think that if a body could go "in" long enough, one would eventually end up "out" ~ and if you go left or right long enough you'd end up in the opposite direction...
boggling the way my brain works, isn't it?
(hugs)
Post a Comment