1.6% of the North American population maintains that Truth does not exist.
1.6% of the North American population maintains that any Truth that does exist is relative to the situation.
1.6% of the North American population says these statements are universally and absolutely true.
That’s what these people are like. It’s how they think.
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Truth does exist:
ReplyDelete- 'A' is 'A'
- 'A' is not 'not A'
- 'X' cannot be neither 'A' nor 'not A'
- 'X' cannot be both 'A' and 'not A'
Yes, these statements are universally and absolutely true.
Looks like I am not part of that 1.6% again... :-)
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ReplyDeleteI know not one person who accepts there to be no truth.
ReplyDeleteI think what your doing, is referring to moral truth. The reason morality is so subjective is because we cannot, with any success, calibrate our perceptions of suffering and ethical behavior. The human exchange of information is faulty. It has certainly sufficed in getting us this far, however that's only impressive because we're unable to contrast our progress against something better.
It's a shame that we haven't invented a means of telepathy.
This is of course why I took the stance in our argument about morality. I went on about the most reliable form of ethical code was collective, but we've had that argument. The reality is on the individual level, human morality is amazingly multi-variably non-linear and hyper complex.
Identifying moral truth might be like guessing which gladiator might arise victorious from battle. Before the match you would look at each competitor and determine which you think would win, based on how much of a predator they appear to be. And in cases where the opponent of such predators was obviously weak, the moral outcome would be pretty consistent. We know alpha predator wins and analogously, killing is wrong. During rare events where where David beats Goliath, killing is justified to protect against and to prevent more violence, etc... But some matches involve two opponents seemingly equally matched.
These are difficulties in morality. Should an elderly woman with terminal cancer be permitted to smoke marijuana, even though she has no prescription? Some may not be able to distinguish which fighter may prevail. Actually, I don't think that battle is too close to call, I think her actions are acceptable. The collective disagrees. So what kind of competitors would we see under the issue of rape? Well, I imagine a paralyzed man in a wheelchair fighting a martial artist. that one is easy to call. Rape is harmful.
But what happens when the situation calls for multiple fighters, all with somewhat equal abilities? The moral victory becomes to tough to call. We have to compromise accuracy with taking a stance.
But here's the worst part. There are no matches. The gladiators don't even fight. We're only betting on which we THINK would be victorious. In some cases we don't have to see the match. We know a paralyzed individual will not beat a trained fighter. But everything else? We do the best we can. Not because this is the most efficient way, but rather the only way.
To twist the analogy a bit,
let's pretend that each fighter is an immoral agent...
Ultimately, each fighter is only doing what comes natural to them. However, if we do not let them fight in the ring, they may turn on the crowd. This is the judicial system, the law, the collective morality set in place to protect the crowd. If you compromise your place in the crowd by fighting, you must prove you have the ability to safely assimilate back into the crowd.
On the individual level, morality is very subjective. In the group we build rules for combat. This helps with consistency. Otherwise, we'd have fighters sneaking in to each other's rooms at night and slitting each other's throats. This would grant no predictability. It would be anarchy and chaos.
While our system may still be primitive, repackaged to look advanced, it does no good to say, "god setup the matches."
Hey Hugo, did you see that I'd commented on your above post over at SMRT?
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