svensky

I would say absolute truth (in a moral sense, I presume that is what you speak of) exists in a "for all time and space" sense. Even as I said, if that truth turns out to be, that we all mean nothing and morality is just an illusion. It is still an absolute moral truth.

None of this, its right for you but wrong for me crap.

Jason

John Page

Agreed, its the "crap" that I'm trying to cut out! I was trying to be lightedhearted in asking for disproof of the negative.

I have no care to restrict the type of absolute truth, moral or otherwise you choose.

What I'm trying to understand right now is whether you 'believe' there is an absolute truth or whether you 'know' an absolute truth.

I honestly don't know any absolute truth in the "all space and time" sense. The closest I got was the Cartesian think therefore I am. Discarded it, its localized to the thinker.

Could you please clarify a statement of the absolute truth you maintain exists? Is it "Moral truths exists for all time and space."?

Regards

svensky

Ok I will attempt to clear this up a bit then.

Absolute truth in one form or another must exist. I am speaking of moral truths hear, as I presumed that was implicit in the original question.

Ok, i'm a thiest, so I do ascribe to quite a large set of moral absolutes, derived from revelation. But that aside, there must be at least 1 moral absolute in the universe.

The bear minimum moral absolute would be that

"All morality is an illusion, and right and wrong do not in fact exist".

This is an absolute statement, so we have at least one absolute moral truth. (Again I would disagree that this is in fact a true statment, but I would not disagree that it is an absolute one).

So this statment is either true or false,in a for all space and time sense of true or false, there is nothing relative about it.

The same applies to my thiestic moral absolutes. They are either right or wrong, Either God does exist, and so his moral absolutes exist, or he does not and they are by extension all false becasue of his non-exisitence, but they are either true or false, it is a binary decision.

By comparison, a relativistic approach is poorly thought out wishy washy nonsense for those that seek moral license. If it's not, why do moral relativists what sexual license as a general rule but not moral licence to murder people ?

Jason

John Page

Jason:

I'm not going to make any remarks about your theistic comments, this is because as an atheist trained by example how to behave as a decent human being (most of the time) I have enough moral fortitude not to do so.

I'm flummoxed by your claim. It fails as a statement of absolute truth - how can it be proven as such if it is not a truth for you?

John

svensky

It is either true or it is false. That is why it is an absolute claim. I might reason that it is a false claim, but I could be mistaken, the truth or falsity of the claim has no bearing on what I whether or not I think it is true or false. It is objectivly true or false not subjectivley so.

The example was used becasue your less likely to jump up and down at it, than if I used the example of an absolute objective morality handed down from a creator God.

Jason

phaedrus

Adrian

I'm not sure I'm trying to say this, with reference to this quote I want to say that I don't view the world based on my web of beliefs, the world shapes my web of beliefs, and it changes according to my understanding of the world.

How is that different from my statement that web of beliefs which in turn are formed due to historical/cultural/linguistic grounding. Your tradition, culture and the world you live obviously have an impact on your beliefs which in turn you use to view the world. Its like a pair of glasses made out of your own experiences and knowledge (which obviously are imapcted by the people around you and the society and the shared knowledge base). If an individual has a "static" set of beliefs then he/she is what we call a narrow-minded individual. But i have hardly known anyone who has such a belief system, we all learn as we go through the course of life, the amount of learning varies thats about it. Toffler comes to my mind, who said ....

While I have beliefs formed by my upbringing, my belief that it is raining outside hasn't got anything to do with them. Is this a belief that could sensibly be refuted by someone else in the same room looking out of this window, whatever words they use for rain?

Ahh, are you suggesting that we bifurcate value system and truth-claims? Can they be mutually exclusive?

I'm not sure one can't get out of the web of beliefs, because it implies that such beliefs are static structures, that can't adapt to new information.

As mentioned above, they arent static. The reason you cant get out of the web-of-beliefs is that you cant make any statement which is not based on them. You are your web-of-beliefs, claiming that you can get out of them is tantamount to the mystics' noumenal or transcendental realm

Again, while I can respect other belief systems that attempt to describe the world, I couldn't equate science as a belief system with them because of its success, or rather, its consistently intersubjectively agreeable conclusions.

But ancient philosophies also have done a pretty good job. It all depends on what you consider to be a "success" (thats an entire debate by itself)

When looking for candidates for absolute truth statements in respect of reality, science seems to do very well, I'm not sure the relativist could agree on this, because to me relativism implies that there is no standard beyond science and a competing belief structure which could verify either as describing the world more accurately.

Thats not what relativists/post-modernists would subscribe to since it will be a contradiction of their anti-foundationalist stance. First of all, we need to establish whether there are any "absolute truth statements". Are they static or they change as our knowledge changes? Maybe here the hermeneutics of gadamer will help when he says ..

wonder how one can hold any position that regards certain systems as having greater efficacy than others, when they cannot have standards beyond them to look to.

Thats relativism and the pluralistic nature of the world we live in.


John Page

OK, but you did consider it, right?

Umm some sort of miscommunication. Neither do i consider a "uniquely privileged view" and neither did i ask you to do that. What I did was merely suggest a different way of looking at relativism.

JP

Adrian Selby

"First of all, we need to establish whether there are any "absolute truth statements". "--Phaedrus

Great question! I suppose we do have to look at whether we think there could ever be an absolute truth.

I think it must be possible to say something that is absolutely true, because I think the universe is as it is and it is not as something else. If every state in the universe at a given moment is as it is, then if we can describe part of that, and not describe it other than it is, we would be stating an objective truth. Perhaps statements like 'that sunset sky is orange' couldn't be objectively true because they depend on our sense perception etc. and the experience of 'orange' which is unobservable.

But statements like 'without some kind of ingestion of water organisms classified as homo sapien will cease functioning' could be considered objectively true, because one must ignore the terms used to describe this state of affairs and simply see what happens to a human when they do not have water for a few weeks. I'm sure some wit will find flaw with the metaphor, but I hope it illustrates the difference.

If therefore what I said describes some part of the universe, and we can agree that despite our concepts for these things there is a human and there is a lack of water, and they are observed 'dying' then our belief structures and systems might have certain concepts for these things, but these concepts truly describe part of the universe, and we would be wrong to use concepts that describe a state of affairs where the human either has water, or they do not die.

I wonder whether this of course is a good enough grounding for accepting there must be objective truths out there, and whether the relativist thinks the universe is as we conceive it, not as it is. Also, I'm interested to know if relativists think that there can't be objective truths simply because we can't know them, or don't know them now, or could never know them by definition.
Adrian

John Page

Phaedrus:

Intuition tells me you must have considered the concept of a "uniquely privileged view" for you to mention it in a relevant context. I didn't mean to imply you subscribed to its actual existence.

I think we project our experience of being "objective" in proscribed cricumstances onto a generalized case, hypothesizing whether a uniquely priveleged, god-like, view can be attained. However, I conclude we cannot attain such an objective view because we are included in the universe (by definition).

Do you concur?

John Page

Adrian:

Agreed, now, it seems to me we've established points of view:

a) Relativist doubt that there isn't an absolute truth and lack of absolute proof that there isn't and

b) Absolutist confidence that there is an absolute truth and lack of absolute truth that there is.

Do you have a statement of absolute truth as a starting point to explore the question?

P.S. In response to your last point, as a relativist I'm not syaing there are no objective truths, just that it is impossible to attain an absolute objective truth.

Cheers.

svensky

Surely if any absolute truths exist it is possible to know them.

So if I know an objectivily true thing, then do I not know an abjective absolute truth ?

Jason