Truth HQ by Tom Wallace - HTML preview

T R U T H H Q

somehow exist out there somewhere. Creatures like the local swans are unaware of the rules. But generally, the more intelligence that has evolved, the more awareness of the rules has developed.

This idea follows a kind of pattern that is typical of our human ways of trying to understand the world.

One rather strange example of this is the way we treat existence as a property that something can either ‘own’ or not own. In fact, we favour existence over non-existence – ‘somethings’ over ‘nothings’ – as if we had a choice in the matter. But actually, things either exist or they don’t – existing things don’t have a property called ‘existence’.

We do the same with truth. Truth is not a

property that true things own. There is no

separate realm where truth resides – there is no TRUTH HQ. Things are either true or they’re not – they do not somehow ‘own’ a property called ‘truth’.

So, likewise, I suggest the same is the case for moral rules. There is no separate realm of

moral rules – no GOODNESS HQ. Things are either good or bad.

But of course, that still leaves the problem of deciding what is good or bad. One way is to make up rules rather than seeking them somewhere in the universe. But the strange result of trying to make up rules is that we seem forced to assume that there are already values out there somewhere, to which our rules are either agreeing or not. This is another meaning for these matters to be innate – the universe has value as its primary means of expression, even although if does not somehow contain a set of specific rules. We are back to GOODNESS

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