Conatus: REVISED EDITION by Tom Wallace - HTML preview

C O N A T U S

— is what is in doubt.

Truth, Goodness, Beauty

Knowledge is only judged valuable in the light of how it contributes to human projects — hence there is always a certain amount of pragmatism going on, even where it is not named as such.

Should we then just abandon the search for truth? Anjam Khursheed (The Universe Within) points out that even to give up the search for truth is really to imply that there is some higher truth about why the search is pointless. Likewise, with meaning. All statements and endeavours imply some kind of underlying meaning, even for those who claim that meaning does not exist.

To qualify as viable, a theory must have correspondence with the facts it is trying to explain. Let’s imagine for a moment that we had perfect empirical knowledge. This would grant us some clear choices about understanding the universe.

Either: We have perfect observation but we cannot find any theory that explains everything we observe. (This is sometimes described as the universe being ‘under-determined’ — not enough theory to fit the facts.)

Or: We have perfect observation, and only one theory that explains it all.

Or: We have perfect observation and more than one theory that fits the facts, and are unable to decide between them. (This is sometimes

279