There are no absolutes... or are there?

[chilli]

I don't think you are using the word "absolute" incorrectly. I have witnessed a number of people use that word the way you have been using it. But I find that these people typically fail to illustrate how the term works or how it is used. The result is that I feel I must play a little game of fishing to figure out usage.

You don't have to play any kind of games, just ask. I'm basically using 'absolute' to mean 'not relative or contingent,' I believe that in the context of the discussion, this is the generally accepted meaning, so I didn't feel the need to illustrate or explain it... what definition of 'absolute' do you have in mind?

I think maybe the next part of your post got messed up somehow, it seems you've mixed up a couple of different parts of my post, and I'm not sure which one you're answering, I'm assuming your answer pertains only to "I'm not sure what you're saying here," but I'm not sure if it is also intended as an answer to "Your arguments here are only applicable to moral relativism, not cognitive or epistemic relativism. People may not state it such a simplistic form, but intelligent people seem to believe it."

Thanks for the illustrations, that's basically what I thought you were saying, I'm just unsure of the application to what I've said... I'm sure it seems clear to you, but lateral thinking isn't my forte.

Please tell me what you think the conditions of validity are.

I mean I think it is a reasonable conclusion given the single premise "there is no absolute truth". I'm not attempting a watertight deductive argument, just outlining the reasoning behind the conclusion that many people hold about relativism. I conceded that it was imprecise to put it as an immediate inference, and it would have been better to explicitly add the unspoken assumption that "some form of truth exists," as a second premise.

Unless you make a fuss about the fact that I said 'truths' instead of 'truth,' in which case your argument "there might be one absolute truth, that there are no absolute truths" becomes possible, but this would be to ignore the way I used the plural 'truths' to rule out any kind of absolute 'truth,' instead of as actually implying that while multiple absolute 'truths' do not exist, there may be a single absolute 'truth.'

So to clarify:

A.) Some form (or forms) of truth exists

B.) There is no absolute truth (or truths)

C.) Any truth (or truths) that exist must be relative

In this case, I think C is a valid conclusion.

*edit* hehe, because if I typed B.) without the fullstop, it became

Edited April 4, 2007 by IllegalBrain

[mr toodly]

So to clarify:

A.) Some form (or forms) of truth exists

B.) There is no absolute truth (or truths)

C.) Any truth (or truths) that exist must be relative

In this case, I think C is a valid conclusion.

*edit* hehe, because if I typed B.) without the fullstop, it became

A) seems superfluous. You need something else to get from to C), i.e. that there are no non-absolute, non-relative truths.

I am just not sure these concepts are linked in the way you think they are. In order for you to make a conclusion like C) you must think that excludes everything except the conclusion in C), which again, is not really the case unless we define 'absolute truth' as the negation of the 'relative' type or vice versa.

About your "I'm not shooting for a watertight deductive argument" comment: With no ill will, I'm inclined to say that you do not know what you're talking about. Since it's very clear that we are talking about the relationship between concepts, and the last time I checked one was not able to go out in the world and survey concepts (i.e. as you would for say, the morphology of cactii) and make generalizations about their relations. Concepts don't get probable. We should know how they are related (because we should know what they mean). If we don't know how they're related, we don't know what we're talking about. That means it's time for definitions and examples.

Anyway. It has been okay exchanging with you. I'm going away (hopefully later today), so I may not respond for a number of months.

-bert

[chilli]

A) seems superfluous. You need something else to get from to C), i.e. that there are no non-absolute, non-relative truths.

I am just not sure these concepts are linked in the way you think they are. In order for you to make a conclusion like C) you must think that excludes everything except the conclusion in C), which again, is not really the case unless we define 'absolute truth' as the negation of the 'relative' type or vice versa.

Seeing as 'absolute' and 'relative' have exactly opposite meanings, and I can think of nothing in between (can you?), I would say the last definition you offered would be perfectly acceptable... ie., if truths exists, and there are no absolute truth(s), then the only other kind of truth that can exist are relative truths... do you have any other kind in mind?

About your "I'm not shooting for a watertight deductive argument" comment: With no ill will, I'm inclined to say that you do not know what you're talking about. Since it's very clear that we are talking about the relationship between concepts, and the last time I checked one was not able to go out in the world and survey concepts (i.e. as you would for say, the morphology of cactii) and make generalizations about their relations. Concepts don't get probable. We should know how they are related (because we should know what they mean). If we don't know how they're related, we don't know what we're talking about. That means it's time for definitions and examples.

It sounds like perhaps you don't know what you're talking about... Firstly, I was trying (again) to point out that the concept, however nebulous you claim it to be, was not mine, but contained within a presentation of a popular idea. Again, no matter how irrational you think this idea is, it is the one I am offering up for analysis. I don't believe it, but many people do, do you get it?

Furthermore, your idea that concepts don't get probable seems totally bizarre, or maybe you just have some ridiculously idealistic notion about abstract thought... what exactly do you mean? Are you saying an idea cannot be probable?

When we discuss the concept of truth, we are not just engaging some kind of pure ethereal abstracted concepts, or rather we are not only engaging concepts that do not manifest in action in the observable world. Indeed, many of the arguments for some form of relativism are derived from observation of beliefs as they result in practice. People believe concepts and live according to them.

I know exactly the meaning of absolute and relative when I use them, and I understand them in the generally accepted way. Furthermore, I understand the relation between them perfectly well... seeing as you apparently have some kind of innovative interpretation of these words, perhaps you would like to share it, don't tease me.

Its also been 'okay' discussing this with you, I appreciate it when people pick apart my sentences because it engenders accuracy, but I wish we could have moved beyind this nitpicking stage of defining terms to the nth degree and actually discussed the topic.

Where are you going? It must be pretty feral if there's no internet :D

 

Edited April 4, 2007 by IllegalBrain

[mr toodly]

Seeing as 'absolute' and 'relative' have exactly opposite meanings, and I can think of nothing in between (can you?),

If the two terms are normally used as exact logical opposites, then there should be no middle ground. But before we decide that this is the case, we should be sure that this is how the terms are usually used, and I'm not so sure of this.

It sounds like perhaps you don't know what you're talking about... Firstly, I was trying (again) to point out that the concept, however nebulous you claim it to be, was not mine, but contained within a presentation of a popular idea. Again, no matter how irrational you think this idea is, it is the one I am offering up for analysis. I don't believe it, but many people do, do you get it?

There has never been any misunderstanding here.

Furthermore, your idea that concepts don't get probable seems totally bizarre, or maybe you just have some ridiculously idealistic notion about abstract thought... what exactly do you mean? Are you saying an idea cannot be probable?

I was talking about conceptual relations.

Concepts don't get probable in this sense: We're doing arithmetic. If you know how the numeral '1' is used and you know how the numeral '2' is used, and you know how this notation is used: 1+1=2, it would be pretty absurd to say that 1+1 is probably 2. You will agree to this. We would never (say) create a frequency distribution for every time 1+1 resulted in 2 and calculate the probability.

Similarly, when we use words like 'dog' and 'cat', we do not go out into the world to ensure that there is no mutually inclusive case between the two words, something we could call a dog, but also a cat. What we call a dog (in this sense) is never going to be a cat.

Now, some mad scientist might create something that seems to be a perfect mixture of a dog and a cat, and we might then adopt the convention of calling this thing either a dog or a cat, but notice that this is a new sense and a new use of those words.

This is also an apt time to talk about vagueness. There could be a case in which it is unclear whether we should call something a dog or a cat. We do not know how these words, taken from practical language, should be used. This happens very often in our cacti forums when Archaea and M. Smith argue fruitlessly about whether something is T. pachanoi or T. peruvianus. This also seems to be what you have in mind. In this case, Smith might say, "Archaea, this specimen is probably T. peruvianus because of morphological features x,y,z - which are included in BotanistA's description of T. peruvianus."

But recall that I never said that our applications of concepts could never (in the aforementioned sense), be probable (see: "Since it's very clear that we are talking about the relationship between concepts.."). I said that when we know what we are talking about (i.e. when we do not encounter a case of vagueness and we are sufficiently familiar with our terms), the relations between concepts should be quite clear. We should know that the dog class will not be included in the class of cats, but that both would be classed under the concept of mammals. The relations will not change unless we alter the way we use our terms.

I think for the most part we have been talking at cross-purposes. I am sorry for that.

When we discuss the concept of truth, we are not just engaging some kind of pure ethereal abstracted concepts, or rather we are not only engaging concepts that do not manifest in action in the observable world. Indeed, many of the arguments for some form of relativism are derived from observation of beliefs as they result in practice. People believe concepts and live according to them.

That's right.

I know exactly the meaning of absolute and relative when I use them, and I understand them in the generally accepted way. Furthermore, I understand the relation between them perfectly well... seeing as you apparently have some kind of innovative interpretation of these words, perhaps you would like to share it, don't tease me.

I never accused you of any of this. "You don't know what you're talking about" pertained to conceptual relations and probability.

I wish we could have moved beyind this nitpicking stage of defining terms to the nth degree and actually discussed the topic.

I'm not especially interested in the content of this topic. However, I hope that some of the things we have discussed will lend clarity to further discussion in this thread.

Edited April 5, 2007 by r. Jackson

[mr toodly]

Though I'm not so sure it will be of any help at all. All well. I guess I'm just under a lot of stress and nothing is coming out right. I'll try to contribute something better when things settle down.

IB, I have really enjoyed exchanging with you, but I think I have done more harm than good. I have been semi-disoriented lately (might be due to a thyroid disorder - waiting for test results) and I should not have crashed your thread - not in this state.

caro

[chilli]

Concepts don't get probable in this sense: We're doing arithmetic. If you know how the numeral '1' is used and you know how the numeral '2' is used, and you know how this notation is used: 1+1=2, it would be pretty absurd to say that 1+1 is probably 2. You will agree to this. We would never (say) create a frequency distribution for every time 1+1 resulted in 2 and calculate the probability.

I thought maybe this is the kind of thing you were getting at, and its what I meant when I said I think it is overly idealistic... it would be great if abstract concepts such as truth and moralaity and their relations to one another could be defined as definitely as numbers, but this is far from being the case. Part of the probem arises when we think about how these various concepts correlate to things we can observe, for instance no one would argue about the definition of the number 1, and similarly no one except that mad scientist would disagree about the definition of a cat and a dog. Truth is another matter entirely, which is really much of the basis for this thread... its definition is contested, and not just its definition and what form it takes, but even whether or not it exists in any form at all.

*edit* I just realized that this might seem contradictory to what I said in the last post about abstract concepts and their relations to the observable world, but I think they are complementary aspects which should both be considered.

I'm not especially interested in the content of this topic. However, I hope that some of the things we have discussed will lend clarity to further discussion in this thread.

LOL at least you're honest. I wasn't being sarcastic when I said I appreciated your input, its a good thing to be challenged, especially on unstated assumptions

Though I'm not so sure it will be of any help at all. All well. I guess I'm just under a lot of stress and nothing is coming out right. I'll try to contribute something better when things settle down.

IB, I have really enjoyed exchanging with you, but I think I have done more harm than good. I have been semi-disoriented lately (might be due to a thyroid disorder - waiting for test results) and I should not have crashed your thread - not in this state.

I'm sorry to hear you're having difficulties, I hope you come through alright. And don't worry about crashing the thread, no one else is interested anyway, so there's not much more you could do to ruin it

Take care.

Edited April 5, 2007 by IllegalBrain