The Varieties of Ambiguous Experience

Here is a parable that will hopefully help you, dear reader of my blog, to appreciate the ambiguous nature of our experiences, by which I mean that they can be 'interpreted' in accordance with more than one explanatory scheme.

Once upon a time, in a condition called the State of Nature, there used to live human beings who were quite happy with the way that things were. Until, that is, one day when the village Idiot had this astounding question to ask his friends, 'What if things are really not the way that they seem to be like to us?' Soon enough, more and more people began to echo the Idiot's question, until practically everyone could be heard asking that question in some form or the other. It became, shall we say, very cool to have that question on your lips --- never mind what you thought the answer to it was. Things began to get out of hand when people with different answers began to quarrel with one another vociferously, and the village Mayor began to feel trouble fomenting just beneath the surface. So one morning, he summoned to him two of his most-trusted soldiers, Katala and Putala, and asked them to go out into the wider world in search of a reply to that most famous question.

Katala and Putala went out together, asking people in the neighbouring countries if they had some answer to that question. In some countries, they were greeted with utter stupefaction, 'Excuse me, what was that again?'; in others, they were given a warm welcome, 'You see, things really are not what they seem to be'; and in yet others, they were jeered at, 'What a ridiculous suggestion!' So they journeyed on for years on end, until one evening they came to a great mountain. When they approached it, they saw two caves on its massive wall, one of which had the word 'Truth' written over it, and the other had the word 'Falsity' over it. Katala and Putala were about to decide who would enter into which cave when a tremendous dust-storm rose out of the dusky heavens. At that very moment, each of the two felt themselves being propelled by the tremendous force of the wind into one of the two caves, though they could not see which one it was that they had entered, blinded by the dust.

Katala came out the next morning with a scroll on which was written, 'THERE IS', and Putala with another one with the words, 'THERE IS NOT'. With these two scrolls, they returned to their village, where a new debate started.

This is what some people said : 'We believe that Katala went into the cave called 'Truth', and therein he found the scroll with the words, 'THERE IS'. Hence, God exists.' The descendants of these people are today known as the religious believers.

There were others who said : 'No, that is where you think Katala went to. But how can you be sure when there was this massive dust-storm around? Actually, we believe that it was Putala who went into the cave called 'Truth' where he found the scroll with the words, 'THERE IS NOT'. Katala did find a scroll with the words, 'THERE IS' but this scroll was actually in the cave marked 'Falsity'; there is therefore no reason to accept this scroll. In short, God does not exist.' The descendants of these people are called the atheists.

There was a third group, too, and those who were in this group replied : 'But how can you believe either that Katala went into the cave called 'Truth' and Putala went into the cave called 'Falsity' or that Katala went into the cave called 'Falsity' and Putala went into the cave called 'Truth'? What if both of them went into the cave called 'Truth'? Or, what if both of them went into the cave called 'Falsity'? We simply cannot be sure.' These people later came to be known as the agnostics.

Joining this conversation, a new group soon emerged which declared : 'Jeez man, you seriously don't believe this stuff about 'Truth' and 'Falsity', huh? Come on, give me a break, will you? I mean, just look at you! You have been fighting so many centuries over these words, and yet, what are they? You got to be kidding me. They are just words, can't you see that? There ain't nothing called 'Truth', nothing called 'Falsity'. It's all inside your mind, you know. When Katala and Putala were standing there in front of that mountain, they were just playing the fool around with these words, and they never imagined even in their wildest dreams that you would take them at their word.' So these people we shall call the post-modernists.

Perhaps, it is time to return from the parable to the 'real world'. But to think this way would, in fact, be to misunderstand my parable, for this parable is the real world, it is a comment on how ambiguous our experiences really are. Often, the reason why we disagree with one another is not because one person experiences something which the other does not (we live under the same skies, breathe the same air, and drink the same water, or, at least, almost the same in all these cases), but because these various experiences that we have do not 'speak for themselves' and can be interpreted in more than one way. It is we who place them within certain conceptual frameworks in order to 'make sense' of these experiences. (Curiously enough, even when we claim to have got rid of all such frameworks, we still hold on to some disguised versions of them.) Precisely which framework we choose is often simply a question of which one it is that we are born into; in the process of growing up, however, we may learn to reexamine and reevaluate this framework in the light of the others around us. Sometimes we may choose to hold on to our native framework (e.g. religious belief), sometimes we may move into a foreign one wherein we make our new home (e.g. atheism), and sometimes we may just go along, being not quite sure which framework it is that best 'fits the facts' (e.g. agnosticism).