Truth

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"Ars Poetica" Archibald MacLeish

"Man Carrying Thing" Wallace Stevens

Republic: The Similes of the Sun and the Line

A graphic of the simile of the sun: http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~loxias/plato/thesun.htm

Plato's Divided Line

"In The Penal Colony" by Franz Kafka

Art of the Penal Colony

"The Myth of Sisyphus" by Albert Camus

The story of Sisyphus

Excerpt from the essay

THE HANGING JUDGE

Now Judge Dread had had many disagreeable people before him, but this one, who styled himself 'the Philosopher', despite never having studied the subject, had really annoyed him. Dread says:

'I intend to teach you the value of honesty, prisoner.You have been found guilty of being a crook and a swindler and of repeatedly and systematically lying to the court to try to save your wretched skin. Well, justice has caught up with you now, my friend. The sentence of this court is . . .' (here the Judge pauses for effect and dons a pair of black gloves and a little black hat) ' . . that you be taken from here to a place of execution and hanged by the neck until you are dead.

. . . BUT, as I am a magnanimous Judge, I shall give you one more opportunity to learn the value of truth. If, on the day of your execution, you sign a statement making one true declaration, the sentence will be commuted to ten years imprisonment. If, on the other hand, your statement is, in the view of the Chief Executioner, false, the sentence will be carried out immediately. And I warn you,' Dread adds, seeing his words having no effect on the crook, 'the Chief is a member of the Logical Positivist Executioners' Club and will dismiss any metaphysical nonsense as false, so don't try any of your tricks on her! There, now you have one day in which to make your choice!'

At this the jury applaud at the severity of the sentence and everyone in the courtroom looks at the defendant, pleased to see such a villain get a heavy sentence, coupled with the humiliating public true declaration. But, strangely, the Philosopher just smirks back as he is led away to Death Row.

The day of the execution arrives and the crook, beaming, signs a declaration which is handed to the Chief Executioner who reads it with growing bewilderment. Then, snarling, she crumples it up and orders the Philosopher be released, with no penalty whatsoever to be ~imposed.

What could the prisoner have said in the statement to have saved himself? 

The raven

An Imperial Court Philosopher is often asked to prove things, such as a Baron’s wager in an argument to the effect that: All ravens are black.

To do this, he realized he would have to find all the ravens in the world, past, present and, ideally, future, and check that they were black. This, it looked likely, would take a long time. Alternatively, he thought (cunning way) of finding all the non-black things, and checking that there were no ravens amongst them.

‘Find all the non-ravens and check that they are not black,’ instructed the Philosopher to his assistant, speaking loosely (and getting confused), as a non-raven could be black anyway.

The problem still was that, even if they did find at the time of checking that every raven was indeed black, it was possible that the next raven along might be, say, green.

But the Philosopher decided to try and brazen it out anyway, and returned to the Imperial Court with what he hoped was proof that all ravens were, indeed, black. He announced to the assembled group:

‘My Lords and Ladies, the answer is, simply, we define ravens as being black. In which case even, say, a green raven is not a raven at all, merely a green bird with all the characteristics commonly associated with ravens, except that of its colour. Nonetheless, it most certainly cannot (by definition) be a raven! All ravens really are black!’ There was a ripple of applause at this. But then the Keeper of the Imperial Ravens stepped forward holding a ghastly, sick-looking bird.

‘But what,’ the Keeper asked, ‘is a raven with a disease which makes its feathers temporarily go green?’

Lost in Space

We all know about the Earth being a planet in Space. In fact, we know a bit more about where it is in Space: it is in the Solar System, which in turn is on one of the outer arms of the swirl of the Milky Way Galaxy (the band of light that we can see across the night sky, if we don’t live in cities, anyway). And the Milky Way is one of a huge number of galaxies in the Universe.

But what is the Universe itself ‘in’?

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