Absolutism versus Relativism

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
101

I know what reality is. For example, I know you are confusing map with reality. I did not say I do not know what reality is.

What I said is that reality is not what I know reality is.

Remember, negation is not affirmation. When I say “reality =/= knowledge” I am not saying “knowledge = nothing”.

If reality was what I know reality is there would be no distinction between the two. Knowledge would be impossible. There would either be no reality to know or no knowledge of reality.

Knowledge and truth are orthogonal. There is no one-to-one correspondence between the two.

102

I see a cat in the room. I know there is a cat in the room. I’m making truthful statements about reality - truth about the room, the cat and my observations. How is knowledge and truth and reality not related in this case?

103

There is a deaf-blind man in that room with a cat. He sees no cat in the room. His knowledge of what is in the room is zero. Therefore, the reality of the room is zero a.k.a. nothing.

104

There you are mistaking his map for reality.

You’re not making the distinction between his personal knowledge and objective knowledge. Or correct knowledge and incorrect knowledge.

The “objective reality” is that if you placed other people in the room, they would also see the cat. That’s why it’s not a subjective case of perception. And it’s also why objective knowledge of reality involves the agreement of many rational, intelligent people. But it’s not a case of taking a vote and thinking that the vote result becomes reality, it’s that vote filters out the extremes and leaves a general fact about reality as it can be understood at that time. Therefore, the perceptions of deaf-blind and crazy people do not form “knowledge about reality”.

The fact that a deaf-blind person does not see the cat, does not alter the objective reality. His evaluation of the situation is incorrect because he has not seen the cat. If he steps on it, then he will know there is a cat in the room. If it pees on the rug, then he will know.

A tree falls down even when there is nobody to see or hear it.

105

You are saying that if many intelligent people see reality in one way that reality must be that way.

Interesting.

There is no reality beyond what these intelligent people see. They are one with reality – they are God manifested.

106

Why is there a distinction between rational and irrational? Or reasonable and unreasonable? Or sane and insane?

I didn’t say anything about God. Why do you insist on sticking God into it?

107

What’s the difference between wisdom and foolishness? Knowledge and ignorance?

108

Mhm…

What do you think of this statement? - The more sophisticated the organism, the closer its re-presentation of reality is to reality.

(I don’t really want to say, sophisticated, because, a so called sophisticated organism, misses aspects of the so called, inferior organisms, due to conditions, but hopefully the idea gets through)

So, let us take a hypothetical super-sophisticated organism, that is able to perceive and integrate particular, multiple, and infinite aspects of reality…

If this super-sophisticated organism, based on this supra-understanding, were to, create an almost perfect replica of a particular, would this not betray that reality is countable, due to the very fact, that the organism replicated reality on the basis of, uh, well, countable bias?

Why? Tis’ not the bias of bias? Both are described abstractions, so why?

One could argue that universals are more fundamental to reality than particulars by imagining the utilization of universals to interact with reality, one can replicate so called reality, or an object similar in form, from our perspective.

So, one can agree that, the object, or our perception of it, is not reality itself (and thus we suppose an unknown reality), however, we can agree that the artificial object (which appears to us, almost a perfect replica to the model object), consists of a very similar, or equal unknown reality to the model object. The artificial object was constructed based on a mathematical model, or whatever, and returning to sensory confirmation (which is not reality itself) allows us to assume equal unknown reality. This is all, basically, replication of the image of reality.

To replicate, one must be in tune with the essentials. If universal leads to successful replication, than, universal is basically the latent form of reality, and is more fundamental than particular. Actually, in this case, it is 1:1 correspondence, well, almost. Basically, by replicating image of reality, we also, by proxy, replicate the unknown reality, however, it still remains unknown to us on a level (since the image is never in 1:1 correspondence), however, we can safely assume that the elements that we have assumed beforehand, under a certain organized model, which constructed the replica, is 1:1, but better said, it is latent (so not strictly 1:1).

109

This discussion appears to be going nowhere. But I don’t mind it.

God is the most popular symbol of the Absolute so if you believe in absolute truth, which you appear to do, then you’re a believer in God.

You just can’t separate knowledge from truth.

Intelligent people can possess better knowledge of what reality is but their knowledge can never be truth.

You keep insisting this is possible even though it defies logic. I don’t know what to say anymore.

To repeat:
Absolutely identical objects are one and the same object. Yikes.

110

Whether or not I personally believe in God has no bearing on the discussion. I’m not referencing God in any way.

Truth is a statement in sync with reality. Some knowledge must be truth because if it wasn’t we would not be able to interact with the world successfully.

So what?

Objects are either identical in an important sense or they are different in an important sense.

If I need to replace the batteries in my flashlight, then I need batteries which are identical in size to the ones that were in the battery. One I have the “same” size, I look at the differences. An important difference is if the available battery is charged or discharged. I don’t need a discharged battery.
If I was looking for a weight to keep my papers from blowing away and I only had batteries , then I would not care if a battery was discharged … I would use the heaviest battery. The charged/discharged difference is irrelevant in that situation.

Another example : Even though a cat sheds some hairs as it walks across a room, it’s still the same cat (before and after) in every important sense.

111

You are interacting with the world in a manner that is typical for believers.

I never said you believe in Christian God. There are many other Gods. As many as there are abstractions. Whenever an abstraction is raised to the level of reality it becomes a God.

This topic deals with the question of nature of absolutes. Absolute truth, known as the Truth, such as the one and only ultimate all-encompassing model of reality that is theory of everything, is of special interest to us.

Absolute truth refers to a map of reality that has one-to-one correspondence with reality.

Is there such a thing?

Logic does not allow it. If we can identify two objects, this means they are different. If two objects are absolutely identical, this means they are not different, which contradicts the previously established fact that they are different.

There is no doubt that there are truths in the relative sense of the word.

There are better and worse maps of reality. No doubt about it.

But ultimate truth?

This is practically important because it decides, or rather reflects, how people interact with reality.

In simple terms, people who believe in Gods have no boundaries so they instead hope the universe has boundaries.

These are people who cannot take responsibility for their actions and who thus have to hide behind some kind of proxy.

They need to be told how to act or they have to find on their own a routine which they can follow so that they no longer have to adapt to reality.

They take the pattern of behavior, the impulse, they cannot modify to fit the reality and project it onto the universe in the form of universal law.

The quest for knowledge is infinite precisely because there is no ultimate truth.

It is us who decide, and not reality, when we should stop improving our knowledge; when we should stop thinking and simply make a decision.

Absolute certainty is subjective and not objective. In theory, you can be absolutely certain regarding anything.

There is no need for absolute truth in order to be able to flourish in life. (After all, there is no such a thing.)

You don’t tell the universe what it can and cannot do. Rather it is you who should pay attention to what the universe does and adjust your understanding of it accordingly.

112

You’re the only one using this definition and making claims about it.

Again … You’re the only one using this definition and making claims about it.

Everybody is telling you that’s not the nature of truth or “absolute truth” as humans use and apply it, but you keep going on as if it is. :confusion-shrug:

113

Another example of who is confused. You know that it is not what you know it to be?

You seriously can’t see the problem in such a dissonant thought?

That is a false (“absolutely false”) absolute declaration that you keep making. The map can be a perfect map without it being reality itself. Who told you otherwise?

Depending on precisely what you mean by “orthogonal” in this case, that absolute assertion would also be false. Who told you such nonsense? Iambiguous? Even he doesn’t conflate and distort concepts as much as you have been.

No he wasn’t. He was implying that if people are capable of seeing a cat in the room, and the objective (“absolute”) truth is that there really is a cat there, then all with such capability will see the cat. When many people with such capability report that they see the cat, it is evidence that not only there is a cat, but also there is an objective/absolute truth.

On the other hand, you are saying that if someone cannot see and thus doesn’t see the cat, then there is no cat regardless of what anyone else says. You are conflating a blind man’s map (even though he didn’t claim that there was no cat, only that he couldn’t see one) with what is real. And at the same time, you are claiming that what is real is not what anyone thinks it is.

You are continually guilty of your own accusations: conflating map with reality, extreme over generalization, belief in absolutes, inconsistency,…

And that is only true IF they share the exact same location. No one has inferred anything about two objects sharing the same location.

You also keep refusing to answer pretty simple questions:

Those questions directly relate to whether there is an absolute truth or not.

114

How sensitive is the idea of similarity? One can easily place two objects on a table, that are basically exactly the same, and are thus, being identified as being one and the same thing. Can’t differentiate them, unless somebody wants to be fussy, and say - as James says - they are in different locations, or, two different atmospheres. We could say that one has a higher internal temperature than the other, or the solid structures as captured by a technological device at the same moment are not perfectly in harmony or identical, or whatever else.

Otherwise, no real reason to begin with the presupposition or principle that two objects can never be the same, or that, everything necessarily has to be different. It is true though, that map, and reality, are not the same, two different objects. Still, if map is perfect, for example, it is able to replicate filtered reality, then map is beyond filtered reality.

Well, that is a truth, under specific conditions, biological, in this case. It is a truth of a specific filtered reality, available to a specific type of organism, not of reality itself. This isn’t to say they are dis-connected. Not to say without the filtrate, there is nothing there. Not to say we cannot interact with the filtered under potential possibilities. Pretty obvious. Cat is not absolute under all conditions so it isn’t absolute. Vision of mammalia or whatever other class is not the standard of (absolute) objective truth of reality.

115

Absolutes are hypothetical, but necessary in a primarily integrative up word development from chaotic pre consciousness, of trying to identify resemblances, while after the Descartes Cigito’s subsequent failure to define-identify the self, differences became the status quo of European obsession with new plutonic ideas. Thereafter, as these ideas fell, the differences began to conflate into more diffuse ideograms.

The crisis in absurdity, followed a reaction into a de-differentiation modeled from pseudo ideas, consisting of paradigms of diffused and redundant , artificially infused with too much stretch, too much lack of identifiable primal-formal structural basis for the apprehension of the self, thus, followed the crunch, the entropy.

But with what tools? Only ones which were to be re-constructed out of material which had the most probable consistency on the way up.

Sure there are objective and subjective criteria involved here,but they are constantly re-constructed, filled in with pseudo hypotheticals.

116

Please forgive me I can not correct the errors in the above, the wife is terrible in my hotel, and promise to correct both the formal and the substantial content as soon as I can get to a decent internet access.-Jerkey

117

Our knowledge and understanding of the properties of light can explain any difference in perception there might be between organisms and which one is correct

118

I have to guess at what you mean by “filtered” and “filtrate”. But you seem to be conflating the verification and/or perception of reality with the reality itself. Truth is that which aligns with the reality itself (“true” means “perfect alignment”), not necessarily with what anyone believes the truth or reality to be regardless of whatever reason they might believe it.

Cognitive thinkers and language parse the universe into subjectively relevant portions and name those portions (e.g. “From position abc to position xyz there is light”). The fact that “light” does not entirely define every aspect and nuance of that region does not mean that the statement is false. The statement is very probably absolutely true, merely incomplete.

Absolute truth does not imply comprehensive truth.

Absolutely comprehensive truth would imply a truth that identifies every aspect of a region of space. Such would require infinite data and thus is not possible. It isn’t impossible because of the thought that the map would be identical to the region. That is a false assertion. It is impossible merely due to the amount of data required in order to be infinitely precise.

A map can be perfect because a map is there only to serve a purpose of sufficient representation (“perfect” means to exactly match a need). Infinitely precise representation is not required and would probably play against the usefulness of the map anyway. And even though the map does not represent every infinitesimal nuance, it can still be perfectly true. If the map says that there is a mountain over there and there really is a mountain over there, the map is perfectly correct. The map need not tell of every speck of dirt and rock involved. The truth is that there is a mountain over there and that is exactly what the map says. The truth of such a map would be absolute. And it wouldn’t matter if anyone knew of its exact truth or not. Truth is independent of belief in it.

119

An absolutely comprehensive truth, I like that but absolute and comprehensive seem like overkill. My definition of truth is understanding the whole story (which is absolute and comprehensive but not time dependent). Aspects that are true do not equal truth and these trues are time dependent. The mountain on the map could fall into an enormous and deep sinkhole, but that truth was time dependent, so not my version of truth.

120

That seems to be intentionally making Your “truth” a different meaning than common English and everyone else means by the term.

If I say that the dog is less than 10 feet high, I have told a truth. I did not mention the color of the dog nor the infinite variety of other aspects. Yet, even though not a comprehensive accounting of that particular dog, the statement was 100% true by normal English speaking standards.