Q&A: Truth
Originally published:
This is an English translation (via GPT-5.4). Read the original Hebrew version.
Truth
Question
Arthur Conan Doyle’s saying, “Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth,” sounds to me like the saying of a pluralist, yet you brought it at the beginning of The Science of Freedom even though you are a monist?
Answer
Not at all. Quite the opposite, in fact. If there is one truth and you have two options for how to interpret it: if one is impossible (self-contradictory), then all that remains is the other, even if it is highly improbable.
Discussion on Answer
But you understood that there are only two possibilities, and therefore it comes out that only one of them is true, which is indeed basically monist.
He meant what I wrote.
Oh, I didn’t understand it that way. I understood him to mean that there are a thousand possibilities, for example, and when you eliminate those that are impossible, all the remaining possibilities (in his words, “whatever remains”) must be true, and even the least probable option is true because it is possible (not self-contradictory).
Looking at the context of the saying would clarify its meaning for me.