A Dialogue on Truth

SKEPTIC: Existence is meaningless.

BELIVER: That’s a silly statement.

SKETPIC: Why?

BELIEVER: Because it doesn’t mean anything.

SKEPTIC: No, it has lots of implications. It is a very important statement!

BELIVER: Okay, then it’s false.

SKEPTIC: What? How did you come to that conclusion?

BELIVER: You denied that it was meaningless. That statement is certainly something that exists, and you admit that it has meaning which contradicts the original statement.

SKEPTIC: Oh that’s just a cheap shot! I’m not sure what you just did there, but you didn’t prove anything at all.

BELIEVER: I disagree, but I’ll go a different route anyway. Why do you say that statement?

SKEPTIC: Because it’s true.

BELIEVER: Alright, but you still didn’t answer the question why you said it.

SKEPTIC: Of course I did. I said it because it was true.

BELEIVER: Well, why do you say true things?

SKEPTIC: I can’t really tell you, I guess.

BELIEVER: You see, I say true things because it is means something to do so.

SKEPTIC: Oh, I see what’s going on now. Perhaps it means something to you, and perhaps it means something to me too. But it is intrinsically meaningless.

BELIEVER: What does that mean?

SKEPTIC: Outside of anyone’s perspective on it. In itself, existence is meaningless.

BELIEVER: That’s an interesting notion. I’ve never really thought about existence outside of anyone’s perspective on it. What do you think it look like?

SKEPTIC: Well, it can’t look like anything. To put that type of description on it, would to automatically put it within a perspective.

BELIVER: Oh, I see. And it can’t ever sound like anything, smell like anything, taste like anything or feel like anything either. What properties does this existence in itself have?

SKEPTIC: There are still lots of them. For example, the property that gravity on earth has a force of nine point eight meters per second per second is true outside of anyone’s perspective.

BELIEVER: That’s not a property though. That’s just a description of the behavior that occurs when something is in the field of Earth’s gravity.

SKEPTIC: So no laws of physics are properties?

BELIEVER: No, they describe what happens, not what is.

SKEPTIC: So what would you count as a property?

BELIEVER: There are lots of properties. But properties must be descriptions of what is in relation to a perspective. For example, I can say that existence is colorful. That is a property of it for me.

SKEPTIC: Why can’t I say that being colorful is an intrinsic property of existence, where meaning is not?

BELIVER: Oh don’t be silly. How can something be colorful outside of anyone’s perspective? Color is a property that exists in our perspective, but it can’t exist outside of it, because it only designates certain wavelengths of light. But we can imagine a different perspective that doesn’t describe the world as being colorful, but rather just says that the world has different wavelengths of light.

SKEPTIC: Well then can’t we say that outside of any perspective, a property of existence is that it has different wavelengths of light?

BELIEVER: Can’t we just as well imagine a perspective that doesn’t describe the world in wavelengths of light, but rather just says that there are photons in different positions at different times?

SKEPTIC: Where is all of this going?

BELIEVER: I’m trying to show you that the notion of an “intrinsic property” outside of anyone’s perspective is nonsensical. Since meaning is a property like color or any of these other properties that must exist in a certain perspective, to say that it doesn’t exist outside of anyone’s perspective doesn’t really say anything at all.

SKEPTIC: But perhaps once we realize this, then we start to lose the notion of meaning in our own perspective as well.

BELIEVER: Well it didn’t really do that to you, did it? I pointed that out at the very beginning of our conversation.

SKEPTIC: Why is that?

BELIEVER: Well, consider this statement: Words don’t exist.

SKEPTIC: I have a tendency to agree with that statement, though. You see, words are just a higher level construct of minds that don’t really exist.

BELIEVER: But you see, how could you possibly argue that? To even start the task of showing that words don’t exist you are already contradicting yourself, because you are using words. Essentially, a similar thing happened when you first made the statement of meaninglessness. In order to do anything in the world that you are consciously aware of doing, you must have some type of purpose and intention; in other words, you must have meaning. So by the very act of arguing the point, you are asserting the very thing that you are trying to deny.

SKEPTIC: That’s an interesting idea, but I still think that all our actions are meaningless.

BELIEVER: Still? Why is that?

SKEPTIC: Free will is just one big illusion. Almost everyone believes in it, but they’re all deluded. All of our actions can’t mean anything because we aren’t really the authors of them.

BELIEVER: Well, that’s quite an interesting and rather depressing position. Why do you believe free will is an illusion?

SKEPTIC: Because there is no such thing as agency, only neurons and chemicals.

BELIEVER: Wait, who are you arguing with again?

SKEPTIC: I’m arguing with YOU! Pay attention!

BELIEVER: Ah, thought so. Well there’s my argument.

SKEPTIC: That’s not an argument! You didn’t demonstrate anything!

BELIEVER: No, you did.

SKEPTIC: I didn’t demonstrate anything either!

BELIEVER: Well it wasn’t a very elaborate demonstration, but you didn’t really have to demonstrate it because you could point it out directly.

SKEPTIC: I may have referred to it, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a delusion.

BELIEIVER: Wow, that’s pretty bold of to overcome that delusion. How did you manage to do that?

SKEPTIC: Well, I started thinking about—

BELIEVER: Hey, hold on a minute. I don’t want an illusory explanation. I want to know about your neurons—not about the silly illusion called “you.”

SKEPTIC: Very funny. I admit the illusion is so strong that it is impossible to have normal conversation without falling back into it, but that doesn’t mean it’s not illusion.

BELIEVER: Oh, I see now. And John Wilkes Booth didn’t kill Lincoln because Lincoln was never alive, because there is no such thing as life, only non-living atoms, quarks, protons and neutrons. So he couldn’t possibly kill him. And it’s just an illusion that if I jump into a lake right now that I’ll get wet, because there’s really no such thing as wetness—there is only molecules which are neither wet nor dry but merely arranged in certain patterns.

SKEPTIC: As strange as it sounds, that’s true. All of those higher level causal explanations and concepts may be useful, but are ultimately illusory.

BELIEVER: Some view of reality you got there. So what really exists?

SKEPTIC: Only the lowest level—the atoms I suppose.

BELIEVER: Well that’s not the lowest level. An atom isn’t really anything but a bunch of sub atomic particles, which perhaps really aren’t anything but a bunch of quantum waves and such which don’t share any of their properties at all. And underlying quantum events is probably some sort of crazy, weird string-theory type thing that no one really knows anything about.

SKEPTIC: If that is the lowest level, then it’s the only thing that’s truly real.

BELIEVER: So, do you know very much about how this lowest level works?

SKEPTIC: Not really. As far as I know, even the leading physicists aren’t sure.

BELEIVER: So, since you don’t understand the lowest level, you don’t know the real explanations of anything in the world, only the illusory ones? And nothing you see really exists, and you never see anything cause anything. So you really don’t know anything, do you?

SKEPTIC: Well, I AM A SKEPTIC.