Right and Wrong : pirated movies and the like.

I just got back from a conversation with Fr. V.C. George during coffee break.  Fr. George is teaching Business Ethics in XLRI at the moment. Earlier he was teaching "Logic" at a college in South India. With a background in Logic AND Ethics, its not surprising our conversation turned to the question of right and wrong. I thought it would be fun to write my take on it.

Scientific thinking (read logical positivism) is based on the logic of mathematics. Haven't you heard that mathematics is the language of science? In mathematics there is usually ONE correct answer to a question, as in many questions of science. For example, the density of water, the acceleration due to gravity, the velocity of light are all questions to which there is a single correct answer. Of course  there are many things we dont have answers YET, but we will have them soon enough... until then, they remain as hypothesis. There are a small clutch of problems that are probablistic in nature, and we answers we cannot know for sure...whether light is a wave or a particle.

Yet there is another realm in which one single answer is NOT the preferred answer.  Take a symphony composed by a famous composer. How many renderings can there be of it? How many renderings of swan lake can be performed, each unique in its own way, each "correct". In this context its interesting to see the difference between a play and a movie. There is one "original" movie and other (pirated) copies of the movie. But if I put up a play of..say julius ceasar, have I pirated the "original" or have I created another "original".

In terms of learning, I have learnt something more of the composition every time I perform it. Every time I recreate it, I understand it differently, but more important, I understand it more and more. It seems that the more correct answers there are, the more I understand it. Fr. George, I suspect would have told me this is not "logical" and it is "subjective" or "aesthetic" with a dismissive wave of his hand. He would tell me that all theories have to use logic to prove their worth. Logic is not a theory, but a "key" to all theories.

I continue to believe that growth from a good combination of anlytic and synthetic knowledge. The latter involves inputs from the world around us while the former involves our ability to think about and analyze the inputs that we have received. Further I also believe that logic (at least the way aristotle thought about it) is only ONE way of acquiring knowledge or of UNDERSTANDING. Knowledge constitutes of knowing something from the outside. You may know of Mathai Fenn, but do you UNDERSTAND him? Understanding requires you to use your heart, not just your mind. A different way of knowing altogether.

Mathai