John Page

:banghead: Yes, anyone, including you, Kant, Kantian, Kantian's daughter. Pavlov's dogs and physicists (whose measures, even so-called constants, are always in relation to other things).

Do I maintain this as an absolute? No. It remains my subjective truth/belief/opinion. BTW I have no problem with social groups coming up with collective inter-subjective truths which are objective w.r.t. any of their individual viewpoints.

Earlier in this thread Bill Snedden comes close to an undeniable truth predicating self-existence and someone else posted the generalization "something exists". However, since we are unable to share first person experiences directly, we are no closer to an absolute.

Do you agree that an absolute is necessary for there to exist a completely objective view? If so, we can return to bashing supposed absolutes over the head rather than disproving the axioms of relativists which, after all, are only axioms!!

Cheers, John

NialScorva

Oh come on, John. Surely even you acknowledge the difference between knowledge and belief?

Besides, this is the second type you've pulled the hypocritical double standard by saying something like:

Quote:

Now, you believe that having an epistemology excuses you from knowing how it is that you believe you know something. At least an ontology would help explain why things exist for you, which of course they must do for you to believe in them. IMHO its "not what you know its how you come to know it". Cheers, John

You *know* you have an ontology? You *know* it helps explain how things exist? You *know* it's accurate?

Next time you start pulling requirements that my philosophy must meet, how about you start off by explaining how *your* philosophy does meet them.

John Page

The perception of a hypocritical double standard is yours.

Explanation @ new thread

Cheers, John

Primal

:banghead: Declaring something "impossible" is pretty absolute John. :banghead:

But it could still be absolute to ourselves.......:banghead:

John Page

Impossible is merely the relation between the "absolute values" of objectivism/foundationalism and reality. BTW nothing "impossible" actually exists (by definition) other than in your subjective imagination. You obviously overlooked my very next sentence in the relevant post:-


...while remaining subjective and therefore not absolutely absolute.....

Pirmal, surely absolute to ourselves is relative to everyone else. Anything else you know that is absolutely true?

Cheers, John

Primal

Hence to declare something "impossible still seems pretty absolute, along with the fact that it seems to imply some absolute defintion as well.


But then its still absolute, even if only to the self.......

Keith Russell

Greetings:

If one accepts 'nothing is absolute' as a general rule, then the general rule also applies to itself. Thus, there might be something that is absolute, after all.

Keith.

John Page

Primal:

Let's pick this apart:
1) The notion impossible is one that resides in your mind.
2) You can intersubjectively share this notion (hopefully, with some degree of accuracy) with others.
3) No absolute definition is implied (unless, of course, one is an absolutist), the definition is local to the minds that share it.
4) It doesn;t matter whether an absolutist or a relativist makes a declaration that something is impossible, this is a proposition contained within their minds and thus subjective.
5) Even if an idea was held to be "impossible" by all men, it would remain an "intersubjective impossibility".

But that's hardly absolute, is it? Whatever was the subject would be impossible relative to the self.

Perhaps you would care to answer the question I posed to you in my previous post. "Anything else you know that is absolutely true?"

Cheers, John

John Page

Accepting an idea doesn't necessarily make it true, its just an idea that you hold relative to the world around you! The statement "everything we have discussed so far is either relative to something else or defined in terms of something else" is more testable. I can also add that nobody has proven anything to be absolutely true and argue, given the nature of truth, that nobody will.

Cheers, John

Thomas Ash

Great.
Oh well, I know you don't want to get too much into morality here, but just to state my position: I'm not sure these options necessarily meet the definition of morality. (Eek, that sounds a bit harsh... ) I think morality at the least requires that in any given specific situation, there is one choice which you can meaningfully say has more value than the others without reference to any perspectives on which is the right action. Otherwise, there's no real way to argue with someone who declares themselves an amoralist and sets about doing the sort of shocking deeds that would occur in a relativist world . (And I don't necessarily mean a way which will convince the person, just a way in which you could start making an argument as to why it's wrong.)

Well, I was partly trying to show that you can't meaningfully talk about human rights, beauty in a relativist world (I admit I was also trying to sneak in a discussion of morality there... ) This seemed like as good an approach as any to convince 'you relativists'.