Most people are both right and wrong in their assumptions about truth being relative. They’re right in the essence of their questioning whether the statement “Truth is Subjective” includes itself. They’re wrong because they fail to comprehend the true nature of a relative universe. The idea of a relative universe is based on a relative understanding of truth.
Without this understanding, we cannot truly view a relative universe at its barest form, that is, as relative. We must subscribe to the true knowledge (note, knowledge, not belief, for in a relative universe, one must know, not believe) that the universe is inherently relative. Once one does this, it is feasible that the statement “All truth is relative” is simply obsolete. Because, with a relative understanding of truth, one sees that whatever one knows to be true is true. Therefore, if one knows there is an objective reality that our reality is modeled after and subscribes to completely, then that person’s reality becomes an objective reality. You see that, if one knows that the statement “All truth is relative” is absolute, then it becomes absolute.
However, one does not need to know that the universe is relative. In fact, they can honestly know that the universe is objective, and it will be. That is the essence of relative truth. You see, their logic is flawed on the most basic presumption that a relative truth denies absolutes. In fact, it does just the opposite. It confirms absolutes. However, these absolutes are not absolutes in the objective sense of the term, but subjective absolutes, meaning that whatever one truly and completely knows becomes their absolute. So, indeed, all truth could be relative, and we would not even have to believe that it is.
Cam Colella
May 4th, 2009 at 7:13 pm
who is this "your?" i never asked a question…. whats going on here, bud? i'm just confuseddd :O
May 4th, 2009 at 7:54 pm
I disagree. Just because someone thinks that they know something is true, doesn't mean that it is true. Two thousand years ago, people knew that the sky was a dome with an oceam above it, and when it rained God was opening up holes in the dome. By your philosophy, this would be true simply because they believed it was true.
May 5th, 2009 at 9:30 am
Ah, yes, but Kevin that is concerned with ‘universal truths.’ I could believe that the tower at St. Ignatius High School is not there; however, that does not necessarily make me right, it is a universal truth that the tower physically exists, it is not something up to interpretation. Relative and subjective truths are not so much concerned with this.
Objective truths such as the truth that an allied amphibious assault on Normandy, France, occurred on June 6, 1944, is something all men can be in agreement on: it objectively occurred. However, if we actually discovered that the allied assault taking place on June 6, 1944, was actually an invasion of South Korea it would have no effect on mankind’s perception of itself: it would be accepted as fact or truth, and history would continue developing as before.
The intangible part of a person’s being (i.e. feeling, emotion, ethics, morality) is not as easily set in stone. An action found as immoral–hurting babies, slashing tires, etc.–can be called immoral, but it is hard to objectively state ‘why’. You can say hurting babies causes babies pain, and pain is bad, although one can still beg the question ‘why?’ An answer to that question is very difficult to find, for there are differing opinions abound, and who is to truly say whose opinion is ‘right’ or ‘truth’.
Subjective thought is a looking into one’s self and deciding for yourself those truths that are not universal. It is a developing of one’s own belief system in relation to what one truly finds best for themselves. This does not necessarily lead to the heinous, selfish person ’subjectivists’ are often pinned to be, by contrast it can lead to one’s own discovery and development of beliefs unaffected by accepted ‘fact’ and precondition.
May 5th, 2009 at 9:35 pm
Clever idea, Kevin, but you could say that it didn't really matter if it was true or not. Everyone was so concretely sure on a particular idea that if you had suggested otherwise, you'd be labeled a crazy man.
Because everyone thought it was fact, it may as well have been true, regardless of objectivity.
May 6th, 2009 at 3:41 pm
To respond to Dan’s comment, all truths are universal. Dan, you said that that there is no objective explanation for why hurting babies is bad. This is not true. There are objectively true and objectively false explanations. For example, one could say that it is bad because people say it is bad. This is a poor explanation, since people can be wrong. Someone else could say that it is bad because Zeus will punish you by making lightning strike you. This is objectively false. The objectively true explanation is that babies are created by God, who loves His creations and wants us to respect them, and because the best path to happiness is to submit to the will of God. You say that matters of morality are subjective. However, multiple religeons and philosophies cannot be true at the same time if they conflict on a subject, since there can be only one objective truth. And since all religeons and philosophies have different moral codes, only one moral code can be correct. Also, even if one thinks that his ideas are completely seminal, they are not. Growing up among different philosophies, we cannot help but be influenced by them. For example, every philosophy revolves around either the idea of wanting what feels good or wanting what is best for us. Let’s go back to the baby example. The one who does not hurt babies because people say it is bad wants to be accepted by society by sharing the beliefs of the majority of people. He wants to be accepted because it feels good. The worshiper of Zeus wants to avoid being struck by lightning. Not being struck by lightning both feels good and is good for him. And finally the Christian wants to pursue what is best for himself by obeying God. So you see, morality is objective and as such it is either objectively true or objectively false.
May 6th, 2009 at 3:48 pm
Sorry for double posting, but I forgot to respond to Zak. Zak, it does indeed matter that people’s beliefs about rain were false. Because people believed that the rain was controlled by some entity, they did not know how to prepare for floods or how to survive droughts. People would pray to their rain god, whoever he might have been, to send more or less rain, when in fact they should have been storing food to prepare for the dry season and moving to higher ground during flood season. It took centuries before people finally started to realize that the weather did not respond to their prayers, and meanwhile they wasted their time and effort and reduced their ability to survive. Having a false perception of reality caused them to make a costly mistake, and this applies to people’s perceptions of reality today as well.
May 6th, 2009 at 9:55 pm
Kevin, as you said yourself ‘people can be wrong’. Assuming that you include yourself in the set of humans, as I include myself, then you have discovered the very core of subjective thought. Do not simply accept all that which has been built-up as society’s ‘true morals’, do not blindly subscribe to the commands of ‘thou shalt’, for people can be wrong; decide for yourself.
I do not disagree that hurting babies is wrong, the example is an attempt to express the ideology of subjective thought: not concerned with the ‘what’ but rather the ‘why’. It is not the belief that your opinion is ‘truth’; it is the belief that ‘truth’–in the intangible–must be decided by the individual. One’s own convictions are not necessarily true for all others.
Perception is key. Convictions are derived from one’s perception; perceptions differ from individual to individual: who is to say someone is ‘objectively’ wrong, when they might as well be just as wrong? Keep in mind this deals with matters of opinion, ethics, morality, etc.
Belief in Zeus is not an opinion: a divine, tangible, immortal being atop Mount Olympus able to manipulate matter and nature is objectively false: it breaks objective laws of nature (creation of matter, etc.). This does not necessarily discredit the existence of God, but neither does it prove a divinity’s existence: it is against God’s nature to prove His or Her existence, thus shall forever be open to debate.
However, this is not a debate about God’s existence. One must recognize that justifications, too, are subjective. One’s opinion is rationalized and justified by the individual for themselves; realize that there can, in fact, be more than one ‘right’ answer: in common-place algebra, answers can be equally right even when they are opposites. There can even be infinite amounts of solutions to one problem, each as true as every other: subscribe to which one you will, you are not objectively wrong.
In relation to the topic of the subjectivity of perception, I would like to direct you to Kolbert & Tsal’s famous ambiguous duck-rabbit image. It is an excellent visual, tangible example of conflicting opinions being neither more correct than the other in regards to one’s perception.
http://vis.berkeley.edu/courses/cs294-10-fa07/wiki/index.php/Perception_II
You should be able to find said image there.
Furthermore, you raise the opinion that it is human nature to subscribe to philosophies allowing us to ‘feel good’ or giving ‘the best for us’. But is doing ‘what feels good’ right? Lust, gluttony, and sloth may be physically pleasing–they feel good–but this does not make them objectively right, nor does it make them objectively wrong.
Justify or despise each lifestyle, preach your convictions.
In conclusion, the belief–a subjective kind of catch-all–”Call me a fool, but not a sinner,” is born.
May 8th, 2009 at 12:11 am
Kevin, I concur with Zak. Who's to say now that the sky truly isn't a dome of water? Maybe it really is, and our minds simply create an illusion of what we believe to be true… However, I am more inclined to agree with Zak's last point, that we are not ones to know whether it was fact because it was known to be fact back then.
May 7th, 2009 at 9:25 pm
Again, sorry to double post, but a thought just struck me. In addition to Dan’s point about perception, I’d also like to point out one of Rene Magritte’s (a surrealist painter) painting, “This is not a pipe”, which displays this concept of perception (admittedly, not perception in the way Dan speaks, but a different form). The image can be found here…
http://mvjournal.files.wordpress.com/2008/12/magritte-pipe2.jpg
I think that what Rene Magritte tries to display here is the concept of a subjective truth by showing that a name does not define the essence of the named. Magritte’s illustration displays what one would call a “pipe”, yet with the subtitle “This is not a pipe.” By denying the name of the object, Magritte does not deny the essence of the object, as one could very well call what we think of as this “pipe” a “window” and still know the true essence of the being. If one knows that this object that you put tobacco in is in fact a “window,” then it truly is a window. It may be difficult to grasp, but, one sees that perception does rule one’s reality. As I stated in the article, Subjectivity is not the denial of absolutes, but the confirmation. However, these absolutes are not what one would normally perceive as absolute, as they are absolute for this person alone. Because, how, truly, does one know that there are others in this reality of theirs, and that he is not indeed surrounded by his mind alone.
May 11th, 2009 at 7:58 am
This all depends on whether your a subjectivist or an objectivist. I can think that i’m the only person who’s real and that everyone else is created by my imagination. like a video game that loads as you go around a corner, i could be creating my own world. my own life, as i like it.
or i could believe that no matter what i think, life will always be how it is with truths and falsities. i can’t affect anything.
What are you? obj or sub??
May 12th, 2009 at 4:41 pm
First, you have to define what can you be “subjective” or “objective” about. Dan mentioned universal truths, which are widely accepted to be true, and then said that these could not be counted. In Theology class, Mr. Baron taught us that subjective meant that anything, including these “universal truths” could be interpreted the way you wanted to be. According to some of the posts, it appears as though that is not true.
But is we can’t be subjective about these truths, than what can we be subjective about? If something can’t be categorized as true or false or as a fact, than it must be an opinion (someone probably can strike this point down, but I want to see them do that before I retract it). And if it is an opinion, than it is obviously open to interpretaion. So, pretty much, it becomes that everything that isn’t objective is subjective, and everything that isn’t subjective is objective, which gets us nowhere and doesn’t settle anything.
May 16th, 2009 at 12:04 pm
Dan, if we are to understand reality, we must try to look at it from every angle, not just our own perception. This is the only way we can understand something’s true essense. Let’s say for example that someone wanted to completely understand the essense of planet Earth. He could not do this by simply looking at Earth from his own perspective, or the conclusions he would draw would be false. He would have to completely understand Earth’s position in the cosmos and how it interacts with the surrounding stars and planets, know everything about every single person and organism that has ever existed, know the exact topography of the entire planet, and completely understand Earth’s geology, among other things. Compared to this impossible amount of research, his own perception is wildly insufficient. That is why we have geologists and anthropologists and astronomers and virtually infinite other research-based occupations; these people each choose an area to research so that we can pool our knowledge and draw conclusions about Earth based on the whole picture, not just one perception. Let’s take your duck and rabbit picture. Maybe I see a duck and you see a rabbit, but in order to completely understand the essense of the image, we have to see it from both perspectives. Even more than that, we have to see it as ink on paper, and then we have to see it as a chemical solution on processed wood pulp, and then we have to see it as a composition of molecules built from atoms, and so on. At a certain point it just becomes unnessecary. But my point is, while your own perception is not always objectively “false”, it can never show you the whole truth of the matter. Seeing something from every possible perception is the only way to discover its true essense, but as you can see, even with a simple drawing this is impossible. Therefore, to get the best possible idea of the truth, we must decide which perceptions are worth seeing. We can get a pretty good understanding of the duck and rabbit image without knowing its atomic structure. Likewise we must do our best to root out false perceptions. Like you said, people can be wrong. But with complex issues such as morality, we just can’t see enough perceptions on our own to get a reasonable understanding of the truth. Our minds simply don’t have the capacity. Therefore, we must rely on others to provide us with insights that we could not have come up with on our own. We usually do this instinctively. We absorb ideas from things we see, hear, read, etc. and piece them together like a jigsaw puzzle into our understanding of the truth. The key is rooting out fallacies. Let’s say a chemist made a mistake while recording the results of an experiment. His fellow scientists would have to recognize his mistake, otherwise their understanding of the properties of the chemical being tested would be incorrect. So,how are we to understand the truth? In any issue, if we want to have the fullest possible understanding, we must be open to other ideas besides our own, yet on guard against fallacies. We may one day discover that we are completely wrong. I may discover, as was mentioned above, that the entire world is created by my imagination. The key is to gather as much evidence as possible, weigh it objectively and without bias, and to follow whichever path seems to be the truth until we can gather even more evidence. I do not claim to have perfected this technique, nor do I believe that anyone has, but I do believe that it is the best way that we can come to know the truth.
May 19th, 2009 at 1:33 am
"I think, therefore I am." I can only prove my own existence and the fact that I think. I cannot prove your existence; I cannot prove that I am typing on a keyboard; only that I think I am.
May 19th, 2009 at 5:15 pm
I think that I sort of like what you have written, but your language is so muddled that it is hard to follow. Rather than starting with the vague "most people," be more concrete: your piece is entitled "Absolutely Relative" after all. To whom are you referring with "most people?" Furthermore, saying "they" and "their" is also very confusing. Again, I like your ideas, but you must be far more clear and concise. Read a little of the Ancients: those dudes know what they are talking about.
May 29th, 2009 at 6:34 pm
gosh i wish i could understand what Cameron is saying so I could leave a brilliant comment.