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-- Epistomological discussion - What is truth?
Epistomological discussion - What is truth?
Is it universal/absolute or relative?
I absolutely believe absolutes exist.
Main reason: The logical impossibility of relatively knowing abosolutes do not exist.
I'm not sure how much room there is for discussion on this issue. Either you believe truth is absolute, or you're too far departed from the domain of rational thought to participate in a rational discussion.
I suppose we could have an irrational discussion...
| quote: |
| Originally posted by Arbiter I'm not sure how much room there is for discussion on this issue. Either you believe truth is absolute, or you're too far departed from the domain of rational thought to participate in a rational discussion. I suppose we could have an irrational discussion... |
| quote: |
| Originally posted by occrider What if one (ok me) were to argue that absolute truths existed, however, humans were incapable of distinguishing absolute truths from non-absolute truths? |
The problem is how dualist we are in our decision making process.
Maybe this dualism arises memetically because there's so much natural symettry in the universe in objects and events, which trickles into our psychology.
Maybe we do it to simplify a world that is most likely a myriad of shades of "depends".
Afterall, how can we build the foundation for a series of theories and thoughts and innovations if we can't define the parameters from which they will be based on with relative certainty?
Even if they are NOT actually certain at all, and perhaps by choosing that route we cut off another route that would have produced different results. (for example, how e=mc2 is the basis for many of our physical applications; if we had worked from another theorem and set of equations, we might be able to solve problems we can't now (such as the extreme abnormalities in the curvature of space time) while perhaps creating other problems in their stead.)
Whatever it is that you categorize truth as, it doesn't really matter, because everything is still going to be exactly what it is, even after all's said and done.
There's a line between empathy and talking about philosophical principles, most of which (modern at least) are just a load of izzum jizzum.
How many people truly understand the things they read from a given philosopher? To understand most things of that nature, it requires a practical mind that most likely already knows and understands what the philosopher is trying to say. It comes down to application; people being able to use those potential pieces of information, such as the idea of truths, in their train of thought and in their creative information gathering processes.
I suppose this means that I think that truth is NOT absolute, though I can't really say that for sure. I think of truth as an idea created by people to quantize their reality.
Just by me perceiving something, the signs point to it having some element of truth.
Re: Even if we are all just lines in a program in some virtual reality machine, we exist and are intelligent and alive, because we coherently exist as we do. We've defined what it means to be alive, and even if we're not really ALIVE at all, we are because we've made the lingual terms and the boundaries of the ideological physiology to which "living" must adhere to. To claim to be completely free is preposterous, though I don't doubt that some people are indeed free. 
When it comes down to do it, even the sky isn't really blue, and that chick I think is hot ... you might not.
Question:
Can we really be so ballsy as to even say for sure that truth exists as we see it?
It's different to say and assume, "truth exists" without knowing what those truths are. That means that you think in a rational, western way, which especially hits home in 2006 because of the mechanical way that we've come to create our new technologies. Think television sets, computer components, software applications that run everything in our electronic lives. We think in IF THEN statements, and our brains make lists and piece together things in a linear and 'logical' way.
We just discovered that the world wasn't flat less than 450 years ago... we've barely been passing along data in more than 4,000 year chunks (where's alexandria? where did fire come from?). I give credit where it's due: we're sharp, but we're also pretty damn egotistical and audacious if we think that things are subject to stay the same in the universe just because they've shown a pattern of sameness in our *short* lifespans.
I don't care if you run the same exact scientific experiment 1,000,000,000,000 times; you have a vast quantity of dating pointing to its stability as a potential truth, but no proof still that it can't or won't eventually turn out otherwise.
As for practicality, when I approach a subject, I always take into the account the possibilities that could exist in my frame of knowledge. Then I decide, case by case, how I feel about something; usually parts of it I deem "true", and parts of the system I deem fluid and open to interpretation.
Even if your boss isn't actual real at all, you'd better listen to him anyway, else you're out of a job.
It's a cute question, but tell me: what is its relevance to anything? (I'm not saying it has no relevence; I'm asking what it's relevance is to everything else that happens)
Like I said; things will be as they will, and do as they will (both expectedly and unexpectedly) regardless of us dualistically mulling over unquantizeable bits of what we perceive with our limited sensory input and output.
Cheers 
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