The End of Illusion

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One of my goals in my pursuits of thought, and indeed one of the goals of philosophy itself, is to pierce through all the misconceptions and arbitrary knowledge we have built up through experience and culture and find a place of raw truth, the sandbox within which all knowledge is constructed.

Now, after building up a toolbelt of knowledge and contemplating the nature of reality, the Bayesian network model of knowledge, the is-ought gap between fact and morality, the concept of narratives, and the effects of language, I believe I have finally found a place free of all illusions. It is this: what happens happens, and all else is interpretation.

It is very hard to talk about this idea using language. After all, by describing it, I am, well, describing it. That in itself adds a layer of interpretation to something which is supposed to be beneath interpretations. Yet, as we discussed last week, it is possible to use words to describe things beyond words, so I will attempt to do so.

Consider how the squirrel sees the world. The squirrel has no language, knows no words. Yet still it perceives the world. Though it has no word for “cloud,” it notices differences in patches of the sky. Though it has no word for “tree,” it knows there are cylindrical surfaces with lots of footholds to grab onto.

There was a time before language, when all things saw the world as the squirrel does. There was a time before perception, and a time before life. Yet the universe existed back then, just as much as it exists now. And it behaved according to its inherent nature, just as it does now.

This is reality beyond illusion. That which is, independent of perception or belief. It does what it does, and all concepts, narratives, and models, from philosophy to religion to science, are merely interpretations.