If God Ever Stopped Intervening In Nature....

Dear Ringo,Always a pleasure hearing from you. "There is no absolute truth" and "There is absolutely no absolute truth" are saying the exact same thing. ‘There is no’ is an unequivocal statement; it does not leave room for anything less; so, by using it you are not ‘leaving the door open for anything’.I.e. you did not have to add ‘absolute’ to your statement because your statement was already giving ‘no room’ for the possibility of there being anything less.If I say There are no Apples in the basket and you look in the basket and you see an apple I am not telling you the truth. There either ‘are’ or ‘are not’ apples in the basket.So, which statement are you going to stand behind? "There is no absolute truthOrThere is an open door for the possibility of absolute truth.It has to be ‘one’ or ‘the other’ because these are two ‘mutually exclusive’ statements. That means they cannot both be true (factual).One of these statements is true :-} and one is not :-{Thanks for the stimulating exchange,
JRTjr

Obviously not. The word "absolutely" makes a difference. If I say, "There is no absolute truth," maybe you can be forgiven for assuming that I mean absolutely none - but if I say explicitly that I don't mean absolutely, you have no excuse. If and only if unicorns are detected, I am willing to acknowledge that they exist. Until then, I will say, "There are no unicorns."The same applies to absolute truth.

Merry Christmas to all; for those whom celebrate it, I hope it was a good one.Dear Ringo,Always a pleasure hearing from you; I hope you’re holidays are filled with joy.Now that we have gone back and forth on this several times I hope you see that we have not come to an agreement on what is generally understood when using the phrase ‘There are no’.You say it means one thing I say it means something else —so— how would you suggest we work toward a resolution of this question?I clearly see what you ‘meant’ to say, however, what evidence can you provide to bolster your contention that what you said actually means what you meant it to indicate?God bless us, everyone,
JRTjr.

Since you know what I meant to say, I suggest you stop worrying about what the words really, really really mean and just get on with it.

Dear Ringo,Again, a pleasure hearing from you. I’d love nothing more than to ‘get on with it’; however, you seem to have trouble saying what you mean and meaning what you say.Since I can’t read your mind, especially from so far away ;-}, I can only go by what you post. To do that, however, we have to agree on the meanings of the words we use. (That’s where a Dictionary comes into play).If you’re willing to stick with what you say (as appose to changing it when someone backs you into a corner); I’m more than happy to move on.It’s really up to you.Are you going to stick with "There is no absolute truth?In which case you’re denying any (pardon the pun) ‘real’ possibility of ‘Absolute Truth’. OrAre you going to go with the possibility that absolute truth may exist; however, you doubt it?I’ll take on either one.Hope to hear from you again soon,
JRTjrP.s. Let me start you off with a few Definitions:

Yup. No. I'm denying the possibility that you can know it absolutely. Yup. If it does exist, you can't know what it is, so it might as well not exist. You'll take both. There's no contradiction. Everything should be doubted.

Is this solipsism? Are you saying that we can not know for certain that today is the day after yesterday or other simple facts that are absolutely true? Is it not absolutely true that I have written these words? Are you not absolutely certain that you are alive?

You couldn't have picked a worse example. I often don't know what day it is. I'm fairly certain that I'm reading them. Who wrote them is less certain. No.

I chose it because it doesn't matter which day it is specifically. Isn't today always the day after yesterday? Isn't this absolutely true?Is there no way to form a statement in such a way that it is absolutely true? So it is solipsism.abe; What does belief have to do with truth?Edited by ProtoTypical, : No reason given.

It's defined as true. It's trivially true. Perception has everything to do with what we think is true. What we do - i.e. "reality" - is based on what we perceive as true, not on what "is" true.

Dear Ringo,Thanks for your reply; hearing from you is always great fun. Well, I doubt that. ;-} If they are not contradictory statements then, would you please, give me a definition of ‘Contradiction’ that does not apply to these two statements? Because, unless you can convince me that they are not contradictory, I will continue to state that they are (in fact) contradictory statements. Hope to hear from you again soon,
JRTjr

So is everything a tautology? When we say that any atom with one electron is a hydrogen atom is that a tautology? Is it not an absolute truth that any atom with one electron is a hydrogen atom? Well its a start at least and shows that something can be absolutely true. From small cornerstones we can realize more profound truths. It seems to me that you are saying that we can not really know anything.What about mathematical truths? Is F=MA not always true? Or the speed of light in a vacuum? Are you saying that there is no connection between what we perceive is real and reality?

Good for you. That's a start. I'm not here to convince you of anything.I have explained why there is no contradiction: until evidence of Bigfoot is shown I will say there is no Bigfoot; until evidence of absolute truth is shown I will say there is no absolute truth. There remains a possibility that Bigfoot exists and a possibility that absolute truth exists.

An atom with one proton is called "hydrogen". That's its name. It's no more an absolute truth than your screen name is. Always? Until forever is over, how can we know about always? Sure there's a connection but not an absolute one-to-one relationship.

Some things are true by definition. I'm not sure that counts as 'absolutely true', but I suppose one could define it that way without too much difficulty For what its worth - there can exist atoms with only one electron that are not hydrogen atoms. Further reading into this off-topic point. These are contingent on the truth of the assumptions we use to derive them. There's a lot of debate about this one. Again, a minor point but only where you measure F in Newtons, m in kilograms and a in ms^-2. If you use other units it is not likely to be true. What might be always true is that F ∝ ma. But we don't know if this is always true. First quantum or relativistic effects may muck about with this finding, I don't know.More importantly, we can not know it is always true in all circumstances without observing it in all circumstances, which we cannot do. All empirical laws are general laws based on specific observations. These are the epitome of things for which there should be some doubt. Maybe more precise measurements will show the relationship doesn't always work or there is a small constant that has little impact except in certain circumstances. Maybe this doesn't work outside of a solar system. Maybe it only works in the observable universe, but in some regions outside of this it doesn't. This is, I believe, the kind of doubt we should have over these ideas.We may doubt them, but we put our lives in the hands of the notion they are true enough, and we can fly to the moon using them. Again - we might have been measuring it wrong, it might vary over large time scales or over large distances or under unusual gravitational or interference. We're pretty confident that whatever it is, it is a constant and that is in some sense 'absolute'. But we can't say that there is no doubt whatsoever in this notion. Are you saying that human perception is 100% reliable? If not, then any conclusion based on human perception has some room for doubt. Even if we can mathematically reduce this to negligible amounts and linguistically choose to ignore it in discussion.Think about an assumption you have to make - that you can know the truth through perception. Are you saying there is no doubt here? That you are not in a Matrix, or just a brain in a jar or what have you?