scruta

Ferret
I’m convinced I’ve discovered the root of depression.

Jay-BC
Yeah?

Ferret
Yeah, it seems to me it’s a failure to connect ought and is. I mean that at all levels, not just in terms of psychological meaning or even chemical meaning. For instance, I feel depressed because I have these grandiose expectations for myself. I think I’m capable of much more than I am able in so limited an amount of time, etc. Or, my body has a demand for more seratonin than it is able to release into my mind. Yet I think it goes beyond even that. This idea of depression or melancholy exists at the very core of the universe, there’s quite literally the physics of depression. Or to speak at a macro level, societies can be depressed, planets can be depressed, etc.

Jay-BC
How can physics ever be ought? It seems to me that the entire project is based on is. That’s what it is. The attempt is to try to eliminate ought from the equation entirely. How could a molecule or a ray of light or falling objects be capable of an ought?

Ferret
I am unfortunately constrained by the fact that I cannot perceive what it’s like to be a ray of light, or a molecule. In addition, I’d rather not consider myself a falling body of any magnitude.

Jay-BC
You sure? I mean I’m sure we can find a nice balcony for you to jump from.

Ferret
Perhaps, but I’m afraid that my actions would inevitably be attributed to the wrong kind of depression, and I think that it’s pretty clear that my chance of surviving would be inversely proportional to the height of the balcony. But returning to the idea of physics, I would have to argue that physics is only based partly on this question of is. We observe and make notes on what is, but then when we make formulations we rely on mathematics to describe it, to generalize it. Of course, we find deviations everywhere, and we describe them, continually refine them, ad fininitum. It seems to me that mathematics is the ought.

Jay-BC
That sounds delightfully perverse. And to put it bluntly, I’d have to say that you must be shitting me. Are you really trying to suggest that mathematics is on the same level as moral claims about right and wrong? Or human rights? I don’t think I understand. 2 is 2. That doesn’t change, and it can’t change. Pissing in public is sometimes acceptable, sometimes not.

Ferret
I think we can both agree that now isn’t one of those times for pissing.

Jay-BC
Yeah, that’s probably true.

Ferret
Although, if we keep drinking who knows. I’ve definitely seen someone I know take a slash on a curtain in some club when he was inebriated.

Jay-BC
He ought not to have done that.

Ferret
True, he ought not to. But it is the case he did. And guess what? He was a little perturbed, maybe even depressed about it the next day.

Jay-BC
Heh. That could’ve been the alcohol, but let’s get back to depressed rays of light or depressed equations.

Ferret
Well, I wanted to say how I think that mathematics is strange because it contains both ought and is. Mathematics gives us ways that things ought to be regulated, and strangely enough, it works. It is a confluence of both ought and is. It can’t be debated the way we debate social mores or moral claims. Math is based on the assumption that there is one truth. That being said, it is also the way we make prognostications about the world, how things should function. It is an ought.

Jay-BC
I’m still not clear about this. You think mathematics is both ought and is? I fail to see how it just isn’t is.

Ferret
Well, let me put it this way. If math is the most pure description of the universe, wouldn’t it necessarily have to be both ought and is? I realize that implies the assumption that ought and is are both facets of the universe. I think that’s why Plato was obsessed with mathematics as rooting knowledge, and why he attempts in the Republic to try and make mathematical claims. Those Pythagoreans had something going.

Jay-BC
The Pythagoreans were most likely a strange religious cult who took numbers as their gods and feared eating beans.

Ferret
You’re right. Well… shit. I’ll leave Plato and the Pythagoreans out of this mess. How about string theory?

Jay-BC
Go ahead, and dig your hole deeper.

Ferret
It’s a black hole, indeed. If string theory is right, and there are parallel universes of infinite magnitude as described by the mathematics alone, then it would seem that all the infinite possibilities of the world are contained in mathematics. The ought and the is together.

Jay-BC
That sounds interesting.

Ferret
And here’s physics depression. Even if this is the case, as far as we know it’s impossible for our reality to live up to this ought, unless we can find someway to cross realities.

Jay-BC
Or get good ass seratonin reuptake inhibitors?

Ferret
Now you see where I’m coming from.

Jay-BC
Well, the analogy is a good one, but can we overcome this ought-is depression?

Ferret
It remains to be seen.

Jay-BC
Man, Hume must’ve been one depressed son of a bitch. No joining of ought and is.