continued…

The professor claimed that the results of his experiments proved that the abstractions created in the mind had not only mass, but a measurable mass. Furthermore, the calculated mass of the abstractions observed in the experiment was larger than would apparently fit inside the subject’s skull. How could this be explained? The solution proposed by the professor was that the excess mass of the abstractions that could not possibly fit into the subject’s head was ‘connected to something’ outside of it. This ‘something’ was quickly deduced to be empirical data that validated Quakelo’s Theory of Ultimate Objects.

This Theory said that there are at least two realities. The superior reality contains the Ultimate Objects of Existence and we live in an inferior reality in which we only perceive shadowy glimpses of the Ultimate Objects. For example, in the superior reality there exists an Ultimate Triangle. In our inferior reality, the only one we can perceive, all triangles we observe are merely sub-standard reflections of the Ultimate Triangle. The excess mass of the brain, the professor claimed, therefore must somehow belong to Quakelo’s superior reality. Perhaps, he said, part of it was The Ultimate Triangle.

Philosophy professors from the other side of the campus were informed of this situation and quickly took quite an interest in Professor Lasdyknasd’s experiment. They refined some of the many variations on Quakelo’s Theory and presented a more or less unified front behind a published formal paper to the effect that The Theory had been proved once and for all to be The Truth. The central theme of the paper was based on Professor Lasdyknasd’s findings that the total energy and thus the mass of the measured abstractions was indeed greater than could fit in a brain. Therefore, that concepts existed as literal objects in the universe and outside of, apart from the mind. Evidence of The Ultimate Objects had been found at long last. This seemed to solve the ancient debate between Quakelo and Bericoles that had been, until this point, seemingly irresolvable.

Even if this were true, I found it unsettling that philosophy professors (and even the few living, published philosophers) almost all came to such quick, uncontested agreement. They had spent most of history making a living by bickering amongst themselves over the smallest deviation in theories, and engaged in full scale verbal and published word wars over large scale differences. Why the sudden camaraderie?