Good Morning Jessicca

Letter to my Daughter
Sunday, 8 February

Good Morning Jessicca…

We’re suddenly having a flood of birthdays.  Three are being celebrated here today and then there is yours tomorrow, Monday.  What is it about June that makes it such a fetching month for lovers?  Maybe it has to do with spring being in full bloom and the summer heat hasn't yet arrived.  Everyone seems naturally attractive.  People get playful beneath the glow of lightening bugs and the distant sound of music.  There’s a fragrance for all of this.

It’s difficult to write anything these days.  There’s little by me that ring true.  Truth is not an approximate location.  You have to be standing directly on it to know it.  It’s a dangerous thing to break free from a life of unnoticed, small lies.

Maybe lie is too strong a word.  We have misunderstandings; basic ones about the nature of life around us.  We aren't meant to know too much.  Too much truth creates new falsehoods in our minds.  True believers in knowledge of any sort take their conclusions to the point of absurdity.  We make grand conclusions with little supportive evidence.

Feelings enter into our thinking.  Life must have its rewards.  Fear gives our thoughts immediacy but it warps ideas subtler than survival.  I quickly arrive in a briar patch if I pursue a thought very far.  There are too many variables.  There’s too much I fail to understand. 

Much of my truth is based on hope.  I hope there’s something decent managing this whole complex affair.  I’d like a soft landing at the end – not just for myself but everyone I care about.  Life has beautiful moments but we deserve heart-felt congratulations and a period for recovery once it’s over.

You've a birthday tomorrow.  Everything is still ahead for you.  You’re entering prime time here and now.  Blow out every candle with a single breath and wish upon a star.  Birth is the magical trial of entry into this curious realm.  Happy Birthday, Jessicca!

Love,

          Dad

© Tom Taylor

What is Truth?

I think, therefore I am

“I was especially delighted with the mathematics, on account of the certitude and evidence of their reasonings; but I had not as yet a precise knowledge of their true use; and thinking that they but contributed to the advancement of the mechanical arts, I was astonished that foundations, so strong and solid, should have had no loftier superstructure reared on them.”

René Descartes

A Discourse on Method

Rectangle 

Area of Rectangle

A = area

b = length of base

h = height

A triangle of the same height and base length as the rectangle containing it will always take up half the area of the rectangle.  This formula will hold true no matter the shape of the triangle.  In the countless uses of this formula by humans on a human scale there has been no instance where this has proven not to be true.  Thus it can be said that no amount of empirical data has ever contradicted these formulas.  In science that would be a very high probability of truth.

Triangle

Area of Triangle

Truth is always subjective because the only truth I know is what it is I believe.  This holds true for you, as well.  Ultimately all truth is subjective because it is an inner belief.  You can make the same claim regarding mathematics.  I might say the formula for finding the area of a triangle is one half the base times the height and that this is an objective truth because I read it in a book and it is what is taught at school to kids everywhere.  It is a fact that no one has yet found to have a fault according to what I have been told.  What can be a more objective truth?  Still, I have to believe it for it to be true to me.  Maybe the formula to find the area of a triangle doesn’t make sense to me.  I don’t believe it.  Now the formula is no longer true in my mind.  The formula may, in fact, be true to most everyone else but it is false for me.  Truth is ultimately subjective.  Maybe I am right.  There is possibly a flaw in the formula that makes it true most all the time but not always.  It is possible that if the triangle were large enough that we would have to take into account the curvature of the earth then this simple formula would no longer be true.  If I believe the formula for finding the area of a triangle then I believe something that is objectively false.  But I believe it so it is subjectively true. 

Kierkegaard says that objective truth is an abstraction.  Basically he is saying that objective truth has no meaning unless someone believes something to be true.  He says, “Truth is subjective.”  Does that mean that if I believe the Area of a Triangle formula to be true then it must be objectively true?  Obviously no.  If the object, the formula, is objectively false then my believing it to be true does not make it true.  What is true is my belief that the formula is true.  The truth of the object, the formula, is irrelevant to my truth – my relationship to the object.  So what is true is not the object itself but my relationship to it.  This is Kierkegaard’s subjective truth.  In this regard objective truth is irrelevant to what one believes is true.

Certainly we cannot rely on anyone’s subjective truth to land a man on the moon but for truth to have any meaning, for mathematics to have any meaning, it must first become subjective truth - someone must believe it for it to exist.  This statement would be true for Kierkegaard but not for Descartes because Kierkegaard sees truth in purely human terms.

Bound to the Subjective

One draws a magic circle around oneself

To keep everything out that doesn't fit

One’s secret games

Each time life breaks through the circle,

The games become puny and ridiculous

So one draws a new circle

And builds new defenses

Ingmar Bergman

Through a Glass Darkly

I parted with Kierkegaard to find Descartes:

Cogito, ergo sum – I think, therefore I am

All is in doubt outside the strictest empirical knowledge

Yet, somehow, truth remains bound to the subjective

And the troubled realm of Kierkegaard.