These are not universal truths...

Iam - the problem you have is that you don’t give a shit about the quality of your arguments. You’re getting plenty of context here. “Universal truth”, however, is nonsense in any context - it’s universally nonsensical. But you’re the one who brought it up. Despite that you cannot tell us what it means.

Ok you got me, you paid attention.

I mean “can experience relate to itself without there being a self” is a tautology - as you intended.

Such a phrase assumes a self in order to demand a self.

No.
Abandon all this shit.

Stop trying to formulate and prove your VO or whatever otherwise - who cares?
What is left?
Experience.
I rest my case.
Just let go.
What is left?
Yeah, exactly.
Just. Let. Go.

If there were some type of universal truth then it would go something like this:

Is there life? Yes.
Is there non-life? Yes.

Therefore throughout all the universe, there is life and non-life.

Something which pretty much all people believe, cannot lie about and innately know without needing a brain.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_and_taxes_(idiom

Probably not taxes.

Agreed but you leave me questioning whether you have actually “mastered the language” in use.

Except for certain political proponents, those would be called “lies”.

It seems to me that is no more true than to say that “average value” catapults us into “metaphysics”. Science uses averages all the time, doesn’t it? How is that metaphysics?

Many proclamations seem to require modifiers or adjectives. The modifier restricts the range of the named category, the “noun”.

There are fruits called “small apples”, “red apples”, “juicy apples”, and many other limits to category. But among all of those modifiers is the qualifier of “all apples”. There is some quality that establishes the general category called “apples” that encompasses every other subcategory. That category qualifier or modifier is also called “universal”.

It is merely a part of the language. I don’t see the issue.

Nah, obsrvr, I’m not talking about lies. I’m talking about utterances that have the form of a statement but are not statements. “Unicorns love rainbows,” is not a claim to truth, but it looks like one. I’m not sure you could rightly call it a lie. It’s certainly a different sort of lie than “There was no quid pro quo.”

I can’t answer your question. You are the one making the claim that “average value” is metaphysics. You’d have to tell me how the use of average in science is metaphysics.

As to the apples, you have given us an example of what used to be called a problem - the problem of universals. Well, you have in a way. But “all” is not the same as “red”. There are apples that are red. There are no apples that are “all.” “All” does not restrict the range of “apple.” Of course, mathematics and logic use “all.” We all use “all” all the time.

Apples are universally… what? Good to eat? What is a “universal truth” about apples? “All apples are x and not so by definition, but empirically so, synthetically so.” Please solve for x.

It is in the same way that “universal” is, such as “universal constant”.

The word “all” reveals what the restriction is - that of the union of all subcategories.

A universal truth claim - “all, all the time”. And used to distinguish from “most, most of the time” and other subcategories.

A fruit. All apples, no matter where throughout the universe are fruit (assuming the use of the word was not intended as metaphor or euphemism). Or you could also simply say that it is universally true that all apples have mass. Or that they are universally organic.

The specific type of fruit is:

Whether it seems a good idea to use the word “universal” or not, there seems nothing “incoherent” about its use. And I think it helps communication by ensuring the intent of the noun being mentioned (as a universal rather then an unspoken, possibly intended subgroup).

A universal constant such as the speed of light in a vacuum. “In a vacuum” is the context. So sure, a universal, meaning universal within a context. I still don’t see how that is metaphysics. It is physics.

Every set is the union of all of its subsets. This is axiomatic and definitional. It’s not metaphysics.

“We use ‘all’ all the time” does not mean literally “all the time.” I was just trying to be droll. Still, it’s a claim to truth. As I have said, adding “universal” changes nothing. It’s either true or false.

To say that an apple is a fruit, or that all apples are fruit, is taxonomy. Taxonomy is very useful. Compare this to “All bachelors are unmarried men”. This is just definitional also. It says nothing. It’s a tautology.

It is undoubtedly true (in my view) that all apples have mass. But it’s still just true.

Your last point, I agree with, if I understand it. To add “it is true that” to a claim to truth is okay for emphasis, or to indicate agreement with the statement it modifies is perfectly okay. But it doesn’t add meaning to the statement. Likewise with “universal” I guess. That’s not what I’m arguing with. It’s that this is somehow metaphysics. It’s language.

There are people who think that mathematics is metaphysics. That’s okay if by metaphysics you mean “not of the empirical world.” It’s not okay if you think it produces a synthetic “truth”.

Analytic statements do produce “universal” truths in that 2+2 always equals 4. But this is a closed system, a definitional one. 2, the plus sign, the equal sign, and 4 are all defined by each other. the number 2 is defined by that equation and by all other mathematical equations, at least indirectly. 2=2=4 does not provide any inormation not already provided by the definition of the terms that are used.

Every apple is a fruit only because of the way inwhich we define these terms. That’s not metaphysics. It’s language.

“It’s certainly a different sort of lie than “There was no quid pro quo.””

okaaAAAY Faust, you’ve signaled your virtue, we know you’re one of the enlightened.

We know the enlightened masters don’t like to condescend to us red neck evil porr people, but would master please qualify, what is the true meaning of social justice?

We await master’s infinite wisdom with obedient pacience.

Okay, but out in the real world of actual flesh and blood human interactions revolving around the manufacture, sale and use of guns, it’s still the language of choice. After all, for all practical purposes, it has to be right?

Come on, if you were to take an argument like yours into a discussion and debate regarding mass shootings in America, you’d be laughed out of the room. Or met with dumbfounded stares. Only in the hallowed halls could an actual serious debate unfold about the existence of second amendment to the U.S. Constitution – the truth of it – being “literal nonsense”.

As though when language first evolved long ago among cave dwellers, the crucial focus revolved not around the act of clubbing those deemed to be enemies, but around discussing the act “philosophically”!!

And I don’t bemoan arguments not being settled. Instead, I react to those who insist that only their own arguments settle it.

And then probing for strawmen and category errors?

Sure, in particular contexts, these factors are not unimportant at all. But my aim is always to take what any particular serious philosopher deems to be important about them out into the world and situating them in contexts that are of interest to me: the existential juncture of identity, value judgments, political power.

I agree. It is instead what I deem to be a “political prejudice” embodied in dasein. As encompassed in my assessment of that in my signature threads.

Which is why I always make the distinction here between those who grasp “I” as an existential contraption and those who insist that, on the contrary, I am in sync with the real me in sync – through God, reason, ideology, enlightenment, nature etc. – with the “right thing to do”.

Then [for me] it only becomes a question of how those who think like you and I do feel “fractured and fragmented” when confronting conflicting goods in our own lives.

Fair enough. From your end. From my end however the problem you have is a failure to give a shit about taking arguments that you deem to encompass quality out into the world where others can react to them relating to your own reaction to any particular context. It’s all mental masturbation from my point of view. Indeed, sometimes I’m even convinced that you are more intent in projecting as the pedant here. See how smart and sophisticated I am as a serious philosopher. The Satyr Syndrome let’s call it.

We’ll just have to agree to disagree regarding what constitutes a context then.

From my perspective, you are noting this as though anyone who does not accept your own understanding of “Universal Truth” is – by definition? – wrong.

And to the extent you view them as necessarily wrong is the extent to which you seem to be arguing that your own argument here is as close as we are ever likely to get to a universal truth.

It just comes off [to me] as more “language games”.

I don’t understand the question. I used that term somewhere but only to distinguish between “personal morality” and society-wide ethical norms. I am not particularly liberal in politics. I am a registered Republican.

Does that help?

Your protestations would be more poignant if you had tried to refute not my position, but my argument for it. Methinks you haven’t been able to discern my argument at all.

Look - philosophers are quite aware that they take contentious positions. What makes a philosopher is his arguments.

What is my argument? How do you refute it?

A little.

But not a lot.

I think maybe perhaps you may be doing that republican thing where you take a lefty tenet as a given in order to try to infuse some sanity. It is one of the most discredited strategies out there I think. It only makes them feel stronger.

See, deep down they are aware that there is no philosophical content to their tenets. It won’t calm them down in the sense of “but my ideas are being respected,” it will rile them up in the sense of “holy shit my stupid made up thing is being accorded status of substance! Level Up!”

Why Boris Johnson is a staunch Global Warmist.

Anyway, it upset me how naturally it seemed to roll off your pen.

I’m cool now. Sort of.

We’ll talk about Trump some other time.

Well, logical truths are necessarily true and logical falsehoods are necessarily false. So fucking what? You’re problem is not so much logic - you really haven’t gotten there yet. It’s that you’re using terms that are undefined, and worse, that you cannot define.

With a lack of proofs, we use subjective truths.

For example, should we kill osama bin laden or not.

Nobody has a proof for this. So… it’s not a universal truth which way is correct.

Universal truths refer to proven truths. They actually have proof structure, like the proof for fermats last theorem in mathematics.

I hear lots of people discount tautologies as non signifiers. Definitions are self evident, they are grounded in experience:

When I say for example that it is morally true for all possible beings that nobody wants their consent violated, the smarmy logitician will come in and say, “people don’t want what they don’t want” is a meaningless LOGICAL tautology. But, it’s more than what logical operators encompass, because, everyone knows what it actually means, and everyone knows that it’s the most self evident aspect of existence for beings that exist (have a yes/no operator)

So yes, in the absence of proofs, it is useful to state that some truths are universal and some are not

From my frame of mind, your argument is about lining up the right words in the right order. Words that merely define and then defend other words. And, here, as often as not, in pedantic intellectual contraptions.

That way the only time these precious words have to make any contact at all with actual extant things like the second amendment to the U.S. Constitution is technically.

And then when men and women struggle, say, for all practical purposes to encompass the closest thing we’ve got to objective truth in interacting with others, you thump them upside the head with “arguments” like “‘Universal truth’, however, is nonsense in any context - it’s universally nonsensical.”

As though they were the fools here when the discussions do revolve around the manufacture, sale and use of firearms.

Well, if “getting there” means sounding anything at all like you do in discussing human truths and falsehoods, I’ll take my chances down here on the ground.

Definitional logic has it’s place, sure. Just not in the discussions that are of most interest to me.

With respect to human relationships that revolve around the manufacture, sale and use of firearms, you can define words like “universal”, “objective”, “moral”, “freedom”, “justice” etc., until you are blue in the face. Then you can take the conclusions you derive from those definitions out into the world and defend them by way of the behaviors you choose.

See how far that gets you.

iam - I think you feel the way you do because you just don’t argue. You don’t try to make a case. You repeaet the same points for years and years and never advance your case, because you don’t try to advance your case.

Abortion is legal because people made arguments for it (as well as against it). SCOTUS presented its own argument for the legalization of abortion. Same with gun rights - people made cases. That’s what actually does happen in the real world. People make a case and sometimes it gets to SCOTUS or somewhere else where it actually counts. The justices present their own cases, majority and dissent. Those cases, those arguments, are presented in their decisions.

And sometimes, philosophy is involved. In fact, in these kinds of cases, it always is, at least indirectly.

People who actually make decisions and get things done that affect real lives (and real deaths) use logic, moral reasoning, choose words carefully. That is the real world. If you joined that world, you would already know that.

Negotiation and compromise requires engagement. It requires an attempt at finding common ground and not robotic repitition of self-styled dogma. That dogma precludes negotiation and compromise.

I get it. You’re a working class beast-belly guy and you don’t like philosophers. You’re a message-board tough guy. BFD.

People struggle.

So what?