Perception fail!

I recently started a new job about 6 weeks ago.  I'm definitely much happier being in the role that I'm in as well as being completely out of the government sector.  One of the more interesting perks was that one of my co-workers is into philosophy - or so he said.

Last week we went into it for about 3 hours one afternoon.  I know...it was a rather waste of company time but apparently the other co-workers knew I was getting the indoctrination by this guy.  He has a history of giving unsolicited philosophy classes to his coworkers.  The three-hour "debate" involved me, this guy and another person who had has gone through with this guy's spiel.  He was rather impressed on my challenges.

One of the main challenges with people who like to dabble into philosophy is their inability to stay focused on one argument.  They go on tangents indefinitely.  One of the things this person claimed that the future is completely predictable.  So I asked him how that is.  Ultimately his argument hinged on the fact that he was a determinist.  He didn't quite explain how being a determinist makes the future completely predictable.  I explained, for example, that weather systems are deterministic systems and at the same time unpredictable.  This is due to the fact that there are always unknown agents at play which create unpredictability.  This is basic chaos theory.  It was difficult to understand how someone who claims they spend a lot of time studying philosophy take a very simplistic view on determinism.  I did concede that only with perfect knowledge can one argue that determinism leads to predictability.

The argument then segued to the topic of God since we were discussing the topic of perfect knowledge.  I said that I didn't believe in a God.  Of course we then, almost immediately, debated on the truth value of the existence of God.  I then said there is no truth value to the existence of God.  In other words, we cannot apply a value of either True nor False.  He then said he didn't understand the concept of having no truth value.  I said it was equivalent to a NULL value - its value cannot be determined.  He started arguing that everything is either true or false.  I then proceeded to explain to him that if I had a dream about rabbits, there was no way for him to know either way if the dream happened or didn't happen.  But he kept insisting that I would know and therefore I would know the value.  But he had completely missed the point about falsifiability.  Something that is true cannot be true exclusively for one person.

This again, segued into another topic of objectivity and subjectivity.  We debated on what the color green was.  I stated that green is simply a label to a specific frequency of light wave.  Then he said that another person could have a different frequency that is slightly different to which they label green.  I said that is irrelevant because the labels are different.  If they called my 'green' color assignment 'blue-green' for themselves, it's nothing different than some French person saying 'vert.'  He then tried to explain that differences in cones and rods is the reason why people have different color experiences.

The mention of rods and cones is probably the most frustrating part of the debate.  The reason being that he cheated very badly in his argument.  If we are trying to establish a framework on how to objectively view reality, you cannot use results of a framework you are trying to refute.  Specifically, one cannot argue on what "green" is while at the same time accept that "cones and rods" are already objectively established.   If your argument is "We can't objectively put labels on things" then you have given up the right to use "things with labels" to support your argument.

It's unfortunate this guy, who is in his mid-sixties, have spent a lot of time in this area and cannot establish a coherent argument.  The depth of his knowledge was impressive as he went on tangents about the universe, basic math and geometry.  However, trying to tie it all up filled with contradictions that he's unable to see was disheartening.