Around the beginning of the twentieth century, there was a psychologist named William James. While he was one of the founding fathers of modern psychology, he also did some philosophy on the side. James, as a pragmatist, was more concerned with ideas that affected actual human experience as opposed to Descartes who primarily focused the question of existence. Basically, if some philosophical concept wouldn't change the way you lived your life, it wasn't important for James.
One concept James focused on in his writings is the idea of truth; not Truth, but truth. For James, there was no capital-T Truth; he defined truth as how we experience something and as something always in flux. For example, if I saw a tree that I thought was blue and my friend saw the same tree and thought it was red, we would have different truths about the tree, even though we experienced the same tree. But our truths could change very easily if me and my friend switched locations and saw the tree in a novel, changing our truth about the tree.
So, how does this relate to some vague story I have about thanksgiving? At one point during the meal, we began talking about that old proverb about a tree falling in the woods (does it make a sound?) So, I responded to this saying that God heard it (we just discussed this particular question in Modern Philosophy, and that was the answer. Weird right?). My mother asked if it was a taxable event. My sister asked if it developed Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. My aunt asked if it affected gender stratification. And my brother, being the business major that he will be some day, asked how can make big bucks cause that tree fell down. It was fascinating to see so many different ways to examine the same event. Everyone in my family has different ideas of truth, reality, and experience that manifested themselves through a hypothetical tree. It's pretty amazing that we can still be an awesome family will all these different truths at work in our lives.
Happy Thanksgiving Everybody :D
