The Quest for Johnny's Truth

Many years back, there used to be this serial called True adventures of Johnny Quest. It was kind of paradoxical because the story was about a technology that could produce a virtual world. So actually it was more about the virtual adventures rather than true adventures of Johnny Quest. But before rejecting something as true, don't we have to understand what does true mean?

I look to philosophy for answer. I know philosophy is the wrong place to look for answers. Philosophy generally ends up leaving you with more questions. It is religion that gives you the answers. However that's not much fun, is it?  When has religion ever been fun? In fact one may even argue that the whole purpose of religion is to take the fun out of things. More like renounce fun in this world so as to have fun in the next world of whose existence you are not even sure of. Anyways, religion's approach to finding the answer would be like reaching the top of a mountain on a helicopter rather than trekking your way to the top. So philosophy it is going to be - the slow and arduous way. 

Philosophy apparently mentions three ways something can be ascertained as truth - correspondence, coherence and pragmatism. What correspondence says is to check whether what you take as statement of fact about something is actually the nature of that thing. But how do we determine the nature of something? Through the evidence of our senses. So does the virtual Quest World pass this test? I guess it does. Whatever is happening there is supported by the evidence of touch, sound, smell, taste and sight. So the first theory says Quest World is true.

Now moving on to the second one - coherence. What is that about? It says for something to be true, it has to agree with everything else that is held to be true. Now in Quest World, one can be whatever one chooses to be. Jeremiah Surd the antagonist is a handicap on wheel chair. However in the Quest World, he can be an strong athletic man with perfect use of his limbs. So the truth of his existence in the Quest World negates his existence in the real world. So it fails the test of coherence. But what if instead of rejecting the truth of the Quest World, Jeremiah chooses to reject the truth of the so called 'real world'. If two pieces of facts disagree, which to consider true and which false. Ideally the approach would be to match the two pieces of facts against the other facts of life. In this case the life history of Jeremiah which would include the incidents that lead to his being handicapped as well as the laws of the physical world, which may not all hold in the quest world. This would prove the unreality of the Quest World.

Now consider a world like that depicted in the movie Matrix. Say someone has lived all his life within the matrix. All his history would be his experiences in the matrix world. So if he becomes aware of the real world, for him the Matrix world would pass the test of coherence and the real world would fail it. 

Let us leave aside the matrix and consider a less extreme case of two pieces of information that fit with all other facts but only do not fit with each other. What do we do in that case? Which one to keep and which one to discard? Now comes the third test - pragmatism.  Keep the one that is useful and discard the one that isn't. For Jermiah Surd, here the choice is clear. The Quest World is definitely the pragmatic choice as it allows him to experience the world in its fullness as against the real world which leaves him bound to the wheel chair.  That's the three methods.

Well, when I set out to write I was not thinking of this Johnny at all. I was thinking of the other one from childhood, whose father was testing the truth of the statement that he had not eaten sugar. How does that fare by these methods? Correspondence - If Johnny were to open his mouth and his father manages to observe the contents in there, correspondence is established. But he subverts that possibility by responding with 'Ha, Ha, Ha' . Now his refusing to open his mouth and the missing sugar would not be coherent with the fact of his not having consumed the sugar. So he was definitely eating the sugar going by coherence. Now moving to pragmatism, definition of pragmatism would be different for Johnny and his father. Johnny does not want to be punished. So the truth of the statement that he has not eaten sugar is the pragmatic choice. For his father it would depend on his nature. If he wants to avoid the uncomfortable situation of having to punish a child, the truth of the statement is the pragmatic choice. If we wants to reinforce the message that it is wrong to eat sugar, then the pragmatic choice depends on the establishment of the truth by the other methods for punishing Johnny unjustly would not serve the purpose nor would let him go unpunished if he deserved it. On the other hand if Johnny's dad was just a sadist who took pleasure in pelting his kid's backside, pragmatism would suggest that statement of Johnny not having eaten sugar would be false.