The claims of a positivist: The reality of a painting on the wall

The revelation that I am a positivist, inadvertently made by me, is indeed profound. I was always of the ‘impression’ that what ever I wrote, whatever I discovered for myself, sprouted from the metaphysical speculation I often sink deep into. Metaphysics, with all its abstractions and interpretative variety, has been alluring me; every so often, when I sit down to think before a session of good and wholesome writing, it dangles a carrot in front of my eyes, and it promises me a wonderland. I am smitten, although it seems at first. To me, positivism is not a belief but an approach towards an idea that I would like to assume in order to understand it better. However, the idea I am approaching comes to light only through the magic of metaphysics. It is like my world is, in essence, defined by the fundamental conceptualizations of objecthood, reality, possibility, causality, etc.; but once I have understood the purpose behind their respective existences and the utilitarian impact they have in the physical world, I need quantification to be able to repeatedly recognize them. Let me take up an elucidatory scenario.

You are in a closed room, and on one of the walls, there hangs a painting. You are in the room, at the center, and looking at it. After some time, you turn around and look at the opposite wall. Now, can you tell me whether the painting behind you exists?

The painting on the wall

Of course, you will, at first, tell me that the painting indeed does for you just happened to see it hanging there. Yes or no? If yes, then the reality of the painting (an inanimate object devoid of senses) has been designated as true by your sight. Therefore, the painting existed because you saw it (thereby also verifying its objecthood). If you hadn’t seen the painting at all, would it have existed?

Again, your answer to this question can be yes or a no, but a more probable answer would be that “it is possible”. So there, we have another one of the metaphysical concepts: that of a possibility. Now, possibility can be understood easily: it is the chance a particular event has of occurring (or not occurring). We say it is a chance because we are not, in our conscious knowledge, endowed with the information necessary to arrive at a certain conclusion. Although whether this information will become known at all is subject to contention, the situation necessitating the understanding of the relationship between ourselves and the event occurring in the future exists nevertheless. And thus, it is a possibility.

Here, I have established for myself that there does exist objecthood, the kind recognizable only through the meaningful interpretation of the object. However, it is that employment of a codified and unified method (for ex. science) that helps me in objectively identifying the nature of their manifestation.

Blessed Death Psychedelium

Most of my posts concern themselves with how perception varies from person to person, and how understanding (of anything and everything around us) is innately tied up as a Gordian knot with it. It takes an Alexander to cut through it, and that is what constitutes self realisation. Anyway, today, I was pondering on death. All my previous contentions were as to how the experience of living seems to be the same even though its perception is varied. On stumbling upon the concept of death, I understood the meaning of the inevitability it carried around dignifiedly. Even though what we make of everything that comes between birth and death is different, the beginning and the end remain the same for everyone. They cannot be changed nor altered, and remain perpetually unasked for; a part of the package, if you will.

Suppose that there is a table. On that table are two objects, for example two wooden cubes – one painted blue and one painted red. If the table were to represent reality, and the cubes represent birth and death, you are now witness to the way I take to these phenomena. In one of my previous posts, I had described about the concept of Maya and Brahman in Hinduism. Maya is the universal illusion, whereas Brahman is the Universal Truth. Truth and realism are one and the same – although their perception is not. Truth is an absolute concept. If person A says person B is not speaking the truth, then it may or may not be an assumption on A’s part that B is not speaking what constitutes A’s realism. In other words, A sees something in one way, and the bone of contention happens to be that B does not see things in the same way. If the ability to conceive varied perception was unavailable, then realism will cease to exist. Only the Universal Truth will be present and understandable. 

However, the untruth and illusion are not the same. The untruth is the negation of the truth. On the other hand, illusion is the perceived truth – or realism as we see it. Therefore, under our perusal, we have:

1. Truth
2. Illusion
3. Untruth

Birth is truth. Death is truth. Realism is illusion. The children of Maya are not necessarily illusions. The can of deodorant in front of my eyes is illusion. The fragrance it emits is true. The lava lamp above the shelf is illusion. The light it emits is true.

That being established, I now come to the concept of the soul. The soul, as it were, is true if one wants it to be. I want it to be. Why? Going by my argument:

• Core argument 1: There is only One Absolute Truth.
• Core argument 2: There can only be one True perception of it.
• Parallel argument 1: we are all part of the same Universe.
• Parallel argument 2: we all concur to the same Truth because of CA2 and PA1.
• Parallel argument 3: Sight (or visual perception) of the body that contains the soul is varied.
• Core argument 3: One perception of the Truth recapitulates that the body outside the soul is illusory.
• Parallel argument 4: I think therefore I am; the illusion I perceive as being around me is so because I think that it exists. In other words, the illusion exists only because I do. If I were not here to be able to perceive it, then the illusion itself does not exist anymore.
• Core argument 4: An element other than the body constitutes the Truth.

The soul is a hypotheses drawn from these conclusions – like in a physics laboratory, a graviton is hypothesised and simultaneously believed to be existent just so particle physics agrees with its Newtonian counterpart. So, getting back to the topic at hand, I believe the soul to be existent. As a side note, I would like to stress the independency of the soul as such from religion and religious beliefs. Pondering on one’s existential truths need not have anything to do with God or any of His minions. Yes, I am a religious and God-fearing man, but that only means my Absolute Truth takes the form of a Supreme Being. To some, it may be moral values. To some others, it may be power. It can be anything. But everything that has nothing to do with the form of the Truth doesn’t have to be religious.

To be sitting on the floor of a 80 sq. ft. bedroom and contentedly typing away on a Razer (Arctosa!) keyboard is my realism. And thus is born life: as each one of us takes to Maya and Brahman in a unique way, we come across perceptions and experiences. Just as my senses bring to life the illusions of Maya, my experiences tell me that I am walking on the road that is life. Just as my experiences tell me that changes are happening and that I am finally blessed with the ability to track them, my death will tell me that my soul will break free from the container that is the body. Some people take to these things warily, and I don’t blame them. If we had been born such animals with the inability to look downwards at our paws, then mathematics would have been a distorted and bizarre dream. We are because we think. What we think of is up to ourselves. I believe in there being a Universal Truth. To a person to whom such a thing is absurd, his realism and his truths and untruths will lie elsewhere. The beauty of it all is that such things as the Truth and the Untruth will always exist in one form or the other. Our realism, as a last word, exists because of perception but, more so, in the self-assertion that whatever is perceived is real.