Absolute Truth or Relative truths?

[Shaman_Raman]

What's your take on it? Are there objective standards to argue between what's good or bad, whether that be religion, art, beauty, etc? Or is it all relative to anyone's opinion through their cultural background, specific knowledge, or places of interest?

Personally, I think both extremes do no good. One silences, the other gives so much noise it's all pointless.

[Delta40]

Shall I answer this absolutely or relatively?

[JuniperWoolf]

I'm all about grey areas. My familiy is primarily prison guards, and usually convicts have strange stories, and at least some likable qualities. My grandmother was the laundry lady for a few decades and she was good friends with an Asian gangmember who sold drugs to kids, once he kicked a guy in the face for talking bad about her. The thing is, he grew up around horrible people the likes of which most of us can't even imagine, he had to sell drugs to kids even while he was a kid, and in spite of that, even though it was warped, he had a sort of code of ethics. I've learned that "bad" people are usually not entirely "bad," that's not their only characteristic. Situations get complicated.

[Delta40]

It's strange but some people prefer and feel safer about functioning in pure black and white terms. In my experience this minimises their capacity to empathise or understand situations out of their realm. Aside from the fact that they may apply their own relative bias - they live by the sword, they should die by the sword, I don't see how this perspective enhances one's outlook on life, only that it protects a person from having to confront the emotionality of life.

[hypatia_]

It's strange but some people prefer and feel safer about functioning in pure black and white terms. In my experience this minimises their capacity to empathise or understand situations out of their realm. Aside from the fact that they may apply their own relative bias - they live by the sword, they should die by the sword, I don't see how this perspective enhances one's outlook on life, only that it protects a person from having to confront the emotionality of life.

I think it makes them feel better knowing they only have two choices in any situation.

(I am not saying I don't live in black and white terms at times)

[Delta40]

You're probably right hypatia. In my job, I can be very black and white according to who I'm talking with - sometimes it's necessary. Certain family members get the same treatment too! (because they deserve it :p)

[Darcy88]

I'm all about grey areas. My familiy is primarily prison guards, and usually convicts have strange stories, and at least some likable qualities. My grandmother was the laundry lady for a few decades and she was good friends with an Asian gangmember who sold drugs to kids, once he kicked a guy in the face for talking bad about her. The thing is, he grew up around horrible people the likes of which most of us can't even imagine, he had to sell drugs to kids even while he was a kid, and in spite of that, even though it was warped, he had a sort of code of ethics. I've learned that "bad" people are usually not entirely "bad," that's not their only characteristic. Situations get complicated.

I spent a fair bit of time with a gangster locally renowned for his wanton violence, but he remains one of the nicest guys I've ever known.

As far as moral relativity goes, I'm really not entirely sure. I believe that the overwhelming majority of psychologically healthy individuals will share certain moral judgements, such as indiscriminate violence being morally reprehensible, while those suffering particular brain abnormalities and sharing similarly troubled upbringings and environments are going to have a much looser definition of what is good or okay. We are certainly a violent species, but under ideal circumstances random acts of violence are going to be socially and personally frowned upon. So for extreme acts I believe there is a kind of universality to their being deemed good, but it you branch out to less extreme acts their moral status becomes a little grey.

I don't believe aesthetic value judgements are relative either. I always encounter people who say "that's just an opinion," doesn't matter how obvious the claim is, even one as simple as "Shakespeare is a better writer than Stephenie Meyer." In my experience more intelligent and experienced persons are going to have superior opinions on what constitutes great art and less intelligent people with less varied exposure are going to have weaker opinions.

[Gladys]

There will always be situations where absolute truths fail lamentably. Is there a better discussion of this than in Henrik Ibsen's first successful play, now rarely performed, Brand?

[Delta40]

truth as we experience it can differ also. How do we deal with that?

[JuniperWoolf]

In my experience more intelligent and experienced persons are going to have superior opinions on what constitutes great art and less intelligent people with less varied exposure are going to have weaker opinions.

You've got to be careful with that sometimes, it's happened before that experts in various fields have ****ed up royally. My favorite example is recovered-memory therapy from back in the 70s and 80s. The idea behind it was that people who display psychological disorders must have some kind of traumatic memory buried deep in their subconscious which is causing them to be messed up, and that those memories could be exposed by putting the client in a hypnotic state and "regressing" them to childhood. So like:

Therapist: Think back to when you were a little boy. What are you doing?
Client: Playing with my ball in the yard.
Therapist: Is it sunny?
Client: No, there are lots of clouds.

It's a fake memory, but at the time professionals thought it was all real.

So, what many high-ranking psychologists did (and this is only a couple of decades ago) was instruct therapists and clinicians to put these people in a hypnotic state, bring them back to their childhood, and then ask the client to "describe the bad thing that happened." Of course, power of suggestion under hypnosis, the client would come up with a "bad thing" that didn't actually happen, and once they were out of their hypnotic state both client and therapist completely believed it to be true. Most often they came up with stories in which that they were raped, usually by their father, sometimes they thought that they had been used in Satanic rituals, all sorts of crazy stuff. Years later when it was finally exposed as bull**** hundreds of families had long since been destroyed.

So yeah, that story is what convinced me to at least be skeptical of the widely-held opinions of experts if I'm ever too stupid to understand what they're talking about, a nice little modern-day Aesop's fable. I guess it's really just important with science though. Maybe economics too, I guess.

[hypatia_]

You've got to be careful with that sometimes, it's happened before that experts in various fields have ****ed up royally. My favorite example is recovered-memory therapy from back in the 70s and 80s. The idea behind it was that people who display psychological disorders must have some kind of traumatic memory buried deep in their subconscious which is causing them to be messed up, and that those memories could be exposed by putting the client in a hypnotic state and "regressing" them to childhood. So like:

Therapist: Think back to when you were a little boy. What are you doing?
Client: Playing with my ball in the yard.
Therapist: Is it sunny?
Client: No, there are lots of clouds.

It's a fake memory, but at the time professionals thought it was all real.

So, what many high-ranking psychologists did (and this is only a couple of decades ago) was instruct therapists and clinicians to put these people in a hypnotic state, bring them back to their childhood, and then ask the client to "describe the bad thing that happened." Of course, power of suggestion under hypnosis, the client would come up with a "bad thing" that didn't actually happen, and once they were out of their hypnotic state both client and therapist completely believed it to be true. Most often they came up with stories in which that they were raped, usually by their father, sometimes they thought that they had been used in Satanic rituals, all sorts of crazy stuff. Years later when it was finally exposed as bull**** hundreds of families had long since been destroyed.

So yeah, that story is what convinced me to at least be skeptical of the widely-held opinions of experts if I'm ever too stupid to understand what they're talking about, a nice little modern-day Aesop's fable. I guess it's really just important with science though. Maybe economics too, I guess.

That is such a great example. And honestly, I feel it can be importantly applied to any field, not just science or econ. But you're right, the real world repercussions are greatest when involving technology and money, since they affect so many people.

[Adolescent09]

In the most literal sense of the term, I see absolute truths as being statistically/empirically based; i.e. "There are 12 inches in a foot" and "the integral of x is (x^2)/2". On the other hand, relative truths, as the name implies, can be subjectively interpreted based on perspective, prior knowledge, and prejudice. Absolute truths can support relative truths, such as in the classic example to introductory evolution where statistical data of derived Mendelian ratios roughly confirms the numbers and physical traits of various pea plants.

Here is a basic application of absolute and relative truths in an academic context:

For the sake of making a point, let's say studies concerning population dynamics in the U.S. unanimously show (based on statistical models/data) that blacks and Hispanics, on average, have higher felony rates, higher illiteracy rates and higher poverty rates relative to non-Hispanic whites. This would be an absolute truth.

One widely held interpretation of this truth suggests that blacks and hispanics are more prone to have the three negative aspects according to said statistics. The deviation of this statement from absolute truth is entirely based on the word, "prone".

Some people might view the word, "prone" as something that characterizes the likelihood or apt of an individual, in which case societal statistics are redundant. Others validate the claim by placing "prone" in a societal context.

Thus initiates an endless debate of relative truths from different points of view and all walks of life.

[cafolini]

Sorry but you are con-fused as to the meaning of relative. All absolute truths are relative to the situation and circumstance to which they apply. The other relativity you are talking about is retarded Einstein's relativity. Every actual progress in relativity has been done in tune with the absolute truths of Newton and Galileo.

[hypatia_]

I consider relative truth to depend on context, not absolute truth.

[astrum]

While there are some indisputable absolute truths, I think that most truths are relative.

[Gladys]

I consider relative truth to depend on context, not absolute truth.

There is absolute truth but interpretation and implementation are wholly dependent on context. For instance, Thou shalt love...

[Adolescent09]

I don't understand the point of a 'Serious Discussions' sub-forum when people post one to two sentence responses that they come up with in less time it takes to itch a mosquito bite. No offense to anyone in particular..

[kev67]

I suppose a natural scientist would say there are absolute truths, and work hard to prove them with experiments that can be repeated. Definitions are very precisely defined so that everyone understands the same thing. Even so, I read a New Scientist article that said the average lifetime of a scientific fact was about forty years. Then even the most prized scientific theories are often discovered to be incomplete, although still useful. Social scientists have the problem of trying to work out what is going on in people's minds. A social scientist may say that there is no objective truth, just perception. For example, the thermometer may say it is 17°C in the office, an absolute truth more or less. I may perceive the room as warm enough, but a colleague may think it is too cold; so the office is cold would be a relative truth. Natural scientists and social scientists seem not to get on eye-to-eye very often. Social scientists think natural scientists are naive. Natural scientists think social science isn't science. Natural scientists are baffled when they hear of social scientists discussing their ontological stance, the lens they use to view the world, for example positivist, interpretivist, critical realist, post-modernist or some mix. I do think natural scientists (and engineers) have to be careful though, especially where their field touches on human behaviour. For example, some researchers of human evolution have tended to emphasize the man-the-mighty-hunter and the violent struggle aspects of human evolution. I once read a newspaper account of another paleo-anthropologist who cried with happiness when he discovered evidence that suggested early humans were scavengers not necessarily killers, and of a female researcher who became annoyed with the male-centric view of human evolution and so developed her own feminist theory. Psychology seems to be another field in which the supposed neutrality of science can be contaminated by the perceptions of the researcher.

[cacian]

truth is an idea and everything else is just a possibility.
if one to prove anything to anybody else he or she is not trying to tell the truth but merely trying to prove a point.
the rest can either believe or disbelieve then interject accordingly.
to tell the truth is just saying that we have lied when we have just simply either forgotten or misunderstood something.

[hypatia_]

There is absolute truth but interpretation and implementation are wholly dependent on context. For instance, Thou shalt love...

i think absolute truth can only be considered absolute if the context doesn't matter. therefore there are very few absolute truths.

[Gladys]

i think absolute truth can only be considered absolute if the context doesn't matter.

I can't imagine anything that is context independent. Can you? Even the language of thought involves manifold contexts.


Even so, I read a New Scientist article that said the average lifetime of a scientific fact was about forty years.

Maybe context changes, although the underlying absolute truth is forever unchangeable.


Psychology seems to be another field in which the supposed neutrality of science can be contaminated by the perceptions of the researcher.

Surely the natural sciences suffer the same defect. Newton's laws of motion did not encompass Einstein's because the perceptions of Isaac Newton were limited by his experience and perceptions of the world.

[hypatia_]

I can't imagine anything that is context independent. Can you? Even the language of thought involves manifold contexts.



Maybe context changes, although the underlying absolute truth is forever unchangeable.



Surely the natural sciences suffer the same defect. Newton's laws of motion did not encompass Einstein's because the perceptions of Isaac Newton were limited by his experience and perceptions of the world.

If context changes but the absolute truth is unchangeable regardless, that means it is independent of context.

[Ecurb]

A = A.

Mathematical truths are independent of context, because they are independent of facts. They are true or false based strictly on the logic of the system.

[Gladys]

If context changes but the absolute truth is unchangeable regardless, that means it is independent of context.

Although absolute truth is independent of context, our understanding of it is not.



Mathematical truths are independent of context, because they are independent of facts. They are true or false based strictly on the logic of the system.

Surely mathematical truths depend on the fundamental assumptions underlying mathematics and, hence, on context.

[Ecurb]

Surely mathematical truths depend on the fundamental assumptions underlying mathematics and, hence, on context.

Of course there are fundamental assumptions, but the truths are "absolute" given those assumptions, and since mathematics is purely abstract (it need have no connection to the physical world) the truths it expresses can be "absolute" (I think, I don't actually know anything about math, except from trying to read Goedel's Incompleteness Theorems, which I couldn't understand.) How can A not equal A? It's inconceivable!

It seems to me that there can be absolute truths in artificially constructed systems (as opposed to the physical world) and math is one of those.