Adrian Selby

Is 'murder is wrong' that obvious to most people? I can kind of see where you're coming from, but once we start looking at different kinds of murder, state sponsored via wars or executions etc. it all gets a bit hazy. I think its dangerous to say simply its wrong, perhaps by it you mean, 'people shouldn't be allowed to just go and kill someone for no good reason' and with the problems this statement poses, discussion and conclusions become quite tricky. Also, some people define abortion and euthanasia as murder, so the word itself does not have universally agreed parameters.

I'm always reminded, in relation to the relativism question, of a sentence from Roger Trigg's Reason and Commitment: "We could all be wrong"

An obvious little phrase, but once you allow that the statement "There are no absolutes" could be wrong, it doesn't matter whether you define it as a description or an observation. The sentence is a truth candidate as it purports to describe some aspect of other statements and say that none of them have the property of being absolute (objectively true). But if truth is relative to the person stating what they think is true, there is still no good reason to accept the statement.

He goes onto argue that the difficulties of relativism aren't just in the easy shot of the supposed paradox in making statements about relativism and objectivity, but they certainly form the basis of a more solid refutation.

Most of his concern was with epistemological relativity. It seems that there is more room for relativism in ethics than in epistemology.

John, your statement there is no such thing as absolute truth, what is the foundation for it? Why aren't you suspending belief with regard to the possibility of absolute truth. Is something only absolutely true when we recognise it to be so? Because it does seem possible that I could make a statement about the universe and just happen to get it absolutely right. Because I don't know whether its right or not doesn't mean, short of being able to observe the facts of what I state, that what I say doesn't truly describe in full what I set out to describe. And does a statement lack absolute truth simply because we can't test it?

Adrian

John Page

Adrian:

Interesting. I see the Absolute Truth dialog like this:

Relativist: "Absolute Truth does not exist"
Absolutist: "Yes it does because you just made a statement of Absolute Truth"
Relativist: "But you just agreed that Absolute Truth does not exist by agreeing with my first statement."
Absolutist: "No I didn't"
Relativist: "Yes you did"
.....ad nauseum

So I see that this (Trigg?) line of inquiry results in a stalemate, if anything it supports the Relativist standpoint because it is inconclusive. Your truth is not necessarily my truth and cannot, therefore, be absolute.

You ask what is the foundation for my statement that there is no such thing as Absolute Truth. My response: Truth (values) exist in the mind. They are a phenomena created by the detection of persistent patterns being compared for validity against axiomatic concepts (This is a car, this is a baby etc.) Like moral values, also a product of the mind, truth values are relative to the observer (thinker, if you will).

As an example of the relativity of truth to the observer, I created the following thought experiment in response to the question "How can you have truth at all if there is no objectivity?"

Answer: Truths can contain an element of subjectivity yet still provide practical benefit. Consider three men standing in front of a window made of reflective glass. One man says the glass is green, the second says yellow and the third says it definitely has some kind of color but he cannot determine what. The first man moves to where the second is standing and vice versa and they acknowledge each others’ views. The third man declares that there is an inexplicable difference in the colors. The first two men continue to investigate their differences and discover that the refractive properties of glass give rise to different perceptions depending on one’s standpoint, explaining the contradiction. The third man is unreconciled and cannot understand how yellow can be green.

Do you consider this an adequate response to the assertion that "Relativism is easily refuted", or do I need to do more homework?

Cheers

John Page

Phaedrus:

No. Couldn't engage. Probably thinks I'm a whacko. We're all entitled to our oown truth, aren't we?

Thanks for the references to old threads. Together with Adrian's comments, they did get me thinking that there may be some (absolute) epistomological truths but I decided against it as follows. We (e.g. participants in this discussion) are able to communicate because we share common epistomological values, these values stemming from experience of a shared reality. We would share fewer epistomological values with cats, dolphins etc. than with each other because they have different sense organs and (probably) mind processes. I think this goes in the direction of casting doubt on the existence of absolute truths about knowledge, although I have agree that reality exists. May your truth go with you!

Adrian Selby

I'm not sure it is an adequate response, they could both be wrong. What they have gained is a less subjective truth, or, an intersubjective truth, that if widespread enough, pragmatically speaking, would be as universal as it gets. In other words, with that experiment, relativism hasn't been 'easily' refuted. I do agree with you though, I'm a pragmatist really, for reasons outlined below.

I think Trigg aimed to show that relativism slid into solipsism, i.e. in allowing that truth was relative he pushed it to absurd conclusions, rather than flat out deny it, he followed its logical strands if you like.

Anyway, I find it hard to dispute Humean skepticism with regard to patterns in reality forming the basis for things we take to be true.

What interests me is the last point I made and hoped for a response on, that if we do all intersubjectively agree that a statement is true in relation to some thing in the world, while we couldn't know whether we were all wrong in what we stated, we couldn't equally know we weren't actually stating an absolute truth about the thing. Skepticism regarding truth statements that leads to relativism strikes me as pessimistic, I'd rather go with the pragmatic view that what we say of something obvious in the world is 'very probably true' and await confirmation by some unforeseen method that can indisputably show our statement to be absolutely true, or not. This sounds a bit vague and odd I know, but I think I'm basing my position around the pragmatic view, and suggesting that it is only our lack of sufficient sensory or mental apparatus that stops us from absolutely confirming the truth of any 'truth candidate' statements we make. Which, if true, means that we can't rule out the possibility of absolute truth being expressed even if we aren't able to conceive of a test that could verify it absolutely.

Adrian

John Page

Adrian:

I see, or at least I think I do. The issue you highlight is "How do you know (or how can you know) if you have discovered an absolute truth?"

Arguably, to be able to determine 100% whether you have identified an absolute truth, you would need to have complete knowledge and understanding of all locations in the universe and all its objects, inhabitants and phenomena etcetera all during the past, present and future.

If this requirement is accepted, would you agree the conclusion that absolute truths cannot be known (at least) by us? Thus, the truths that we know are localized - subject to significant scope limitations - we just can't test them universally.

I agree, we should seek strong truths, i.e. those that have been widely and repeatedly tested and shown to be congruent with our body of knowledge. Access to strong truths will give us advantages over our fellow beings - ergo our Darwinian disposition to seek truth in the first place.

Does this work?

Laurentius

AVE Kent Stevens,

I was saying:
It is like one is refuting the idea that the Universe is expanding by looking in the mirror and saying: "Hey, wait a minute. I'm not expanding, and still I'm part of this Universe. If there is at least one entity in this Universe that is not expanding then the Universe is not expanding either."

To which you said:
If I was doing what was in the first quote I would be committing a logical fallacy. It is wrong to say that a part necessarily has the characteristics that the whole has. Instead, I was using the law of non-contradiction which is basic to logic.

I never meant that you were making such a fallacy, far from it. I was only attempting to emphasize the fruitlessness of a dialogue of the following kind between John Page's characters:
Relativist: "There is no absolute truth."
Absolutist: "You've just stated one."
Doesn't it look like a debate cheat? The absolutist's argument is (to me) as fruitless as it is cheap (and so is the logical fallacy in my little joke). The proposition "There is no absolute truth" cannot be applied to itself because language tends to result in absurd and paradoxical conclusions when applied to themselves (only the poetical language can be self-reflexive and meaningful at the same time). It is like stating "There is no true sentence" and then wondering whether this statement is true or false in the light of what it states.
AVE

phaedrus

Adrian

Allow me to comment on your discussion with John

What interests me is the last point I made and hoped for a response on, that if we do all intersubjectively agree that a statement is true in relation to some thing in the world, while we couldn't know whether we were all wrong in what we stated, we couldn't equally know we weren't actually stating an absolute truth about the thing. (emphasis mine)

The key word is "all", can we all ever agree completely on one thing/issue ? ("Sun rises in the east" is a statement that comes to my mind )

Skepticism regarding truth statements that leads to relativism strikes me as pessimistic, I'd rather go with the pragmatic view that what we say of something obvious in the world is 'very probably true' and await confirmation by some unforeseen method that can indisputably show our statement to be absolutely true, or not.

Are you sure this is what relativism proposes? As indicated in those old threads (links which i had provided), relativism is not about justification but is about acknowledging that there is no "unique privileged" thought process which results in truths. Truth is a result of the process individual goes through in pursuit of answers to certain questions, some processes are subscribed by the majority and some are not. For this statement, there is a typical objection that this will result in people looking towards quack practices rather than science in terms of medicines resulting in the death of innocent people. And the answer is, human beings as a species have been able to survive and propogate coz of their ability to adapt and so let the natural process continue Pluralistic world......

Instead of waiting for an unforeseen method or validation, why not just state "As far as i know and under these circumstances...i hold this to be the truth?"..

This sounds a bit vague and odd I know, but I think I'm basing my position around the pragmatic view, and suggesting that it is only our lack of sufficient sensory or mental apparatus that stops us from absolutely confirming the truth of any 'truth candidate' statements we make. Which, if true, means that we can't rule out the possibility of absolute truth being expressed even if we aren't able to conceive of a test that could verify it absolutely.

So you are a believer in some sort of "universal laws" which control and shape our lives and the universe and it is only our inadequacies that have stopped us from discovering and validating such laws?

Adrian Selby

Cheers Phaedrus,

I agree the key word is 'all', I would not see the point in disputing facts such as 'the sun rises in the east' if everyone on earth, and everyone that comes on the earth agrees that this happens. I would only dispute someone who says this truth cannot be absolute. Not because the truth is absolute, but because of our inadequacies, we can't prove or disprove its absolute truth. To do so would be premature. Pragmatically speaking, I can't think of a single reason why I would dispute such a statement, but in agreeing with the rest of humanity on it, I believe we have an intersubjective truth.

Personally, this is as close to absolute as makes no odds, but that isn't very philosophically rigorous, not when we're dealing in absolutes.

I wouldn't go so far as to think there were natural laws, but our inadequacies do stop us from determining this one way or the other. As such, I go pragmatic, and behave as though the world is objectively real and we all share the same spatial co-ordinates (earth) etc. etc.

But as there can be no absolute foundation for this belief, because I could be wrong, I'm saying only that if I were to adapt my thinking to argue that the truth of my statements about reality depends on my conception of it, I would see greater absurdities in conclusions drawn from that than I would from supposing the world to exist objectively. I'm not a fan of the view that I impose truth on reality, rather than attempt to describe reality truly. While truth is a human concept etc. I'm trying to say that I'm not defining reality with it, rather, reality is defining what I can hold to be true, as far as I observe it accurately.

I can't say I thought relativism was related to the nature of thought processes, I thought it was more to do with the nature of truth and truth statements, namely, that truth is relative, and one cannot say that something is objectively true.

If you could link to a thread where you did outline this I'd be grateful. I may have a narrow definition of relativism.

Adrian

phaedrus

Adrian

Will respond in detail later. Just wanted to mention that by thought process i meant any "system" which gives its version of the truth and how this could be relative without a "unique priveleged" system which claims access to god's eye view (sic!)

Regarding links, you can take a look at the threads which i had included above for john. Maybe they could help you.

Catch up with u later

JP

John Page

Et al:

Was searching for more background on this and came up with this link to an argument for absolutes:

<a href="http://www.carm.org/dialogues/atheist_absolutes.htm" target="_blank">http://www.carm.org/dialogues/atheist_absolutes.htm</a>

It states that "There are logical absolutes" and ends up saying "Without absolutes, no truth can be really known"

My gut reaction is to say that so-called logical absolutes are, in fact localized. This is demanded by the rules of entailment, (when applied to the system of logic itself), is it not? From the other end it could be attacked by arguing that there were no logical absolutes before logic had been devised, thereby disproving the main premise of the argument.

As to Phaedrus' suggestion we should consider a uniquely privileged view: I think you could claim it but not prove it (see above!), what is going on is hypothesizing about what a superview might look like.

Cheers!