A philosophical question raised by Rajpal Abeynayake

By Simpleman
Letter to the Editor

(September 08, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) Rajpal Abeynayake in his article “Channel (4) your energies someplace else ...” raises the following question: if someone says that Kumar David is a fool, should we investigate? This is a profound philosophical question. In fairness to Kumar David, I would like to rephrase the question: If someone was to say that Kumar David or Rajpal Abeynayake is a fool, should we investigate it?

In fact, there is no easy answer to this. The answer will depend on who “we” are and what the purpose of the investigation is. Let us suppose that we are voters at an election in Sri Lanka and we are told that the two above named are candidates, and that they are both fools. Surely we don’t have to investigate this matter. The fools in Sri Lanka are qualified to be elected and even to hold leading positions in the country. Thus, as voters we could just say that the candidates being fools is not disqualification. This may also be the same if they were applying for a job in a political newspaper. There too, they would not be disqualified.

Suppose they are applying for a job as a driver and we are told that they are fools. Now, in that case we should investigate if this is true or not, if we are to select one of them for the job. To have a fool as a driver is a danger to the public. In that instance, an investigation cannot be avoided if we really care about the safety of the public and ourselves. Perhaps even for the sake of the driver themselves, even if they don’t care themselves, we should take the precaution of not allowing a fool to drive a vehicle.

Thus, depending on the circumstances, we may have to decide whether to investigate the problem of someone being alleged to be a fool.

Now if we change the question a little bit and rephrase it in the following manner: if it is said that one of these two persons has committed a murder. In that instance, whether to investigate or not is not really optional if we live in a country where murder is a crime. Of course, if the murder is a crime only in the book but some murders are not considered as crimes, then in such a country even murder may not be necessarily investigated. Thus, again, the question of whether to investigate or not depends on what kind of a country we are living in. If we are living in a country where the rule of law exists and if we ask whether an allegation of murder is investigated or not, surely we may be subjected to an investigation trying to find out whether we are really sane. That a serious crime should be investigated is a common position of all the citizens that live in such a country. Even if some, for some reason, would say a murder need not be investigated, it would still be investigated because the law is supreme and no one is allowed to be above the law.

So, to go back to Rajpal Abeynayake’s question, the way a fool would decide the issue of investigations will considerably differ from the way an intelligent person would ponder over the question of investigating an allegation. A fool by his very nature would not consider it necessary to investigate anything, and he may even think that everything is so simple, that it is only a stupid person who cannot understand that. But if we presume that the question is addressed to an intelligent person, in the same way as all philosophical questions are addressed to intelligent persons, then we also have to assume that the answer will depend on each question and the nature of the allegations.

-Sri Lanka Guardian