Pilate saith unto him, What is truth? And when he had said this, he went out again unto the Jews, and saith unto them, I find in him no fault [at all]. – John 18:38
In the extensive commentary following my column of April 18th there was a discussion of the relativity of truth. For those who may have missed it, one poster argued that truth is relative and therefore it is impossible to be certain about anything. He was sharply taken to task on that position by a number of other posters, and though I disagree with him I understand what he was trying to say, and made a reply to that effect. Since this issue has arisen on my blog before and undoubtedly will again, I think it would be a good idea for me to repeat my post here in somewhat expanded form.
In traditional philosophy the distinction is made between a factual judgment and a value judgment; the former is a judgment about the nature of objective reality, e.g. “I think this scaffold is strong enough to support my weight,” while the latter is a judgment about a subjective matter, e.g. “I think the way they treated him was wrong.” I tend to use the word truth in a philosophical sense, which can be relative; in the thread I stated that reincarnation is “true” for me, that is I have faith in it and live assuming it’s true. But for an atheist, snuffed out like a candle at death is “true” in that same sense and to a Christian, heaven and hell are “true”. Morality, eschatology and the like cannot be determined by scientific tests, and since they strike at the heart of what it means to be human they must be answered individually and are therefore relative. Facts, on the other hand, cannot be relative; they exist independent of the observer and can be reproduced by other experimenters who are unaware of the original experimenter’s results. The speed of light can be measured, is the same everywhere and is not subject to interpretation; it is a fact. And while Platonists may argue that nothing is objective and ultimate reality is unknowable, even the most dedicated philosopher expects ordinary objects to behave as they have always behaved and recognizes that for all ordinary intents and purposes physical reality is knowable; he expects that his clothes will not spontaneously combust, his bread will not poison him and the distance from his bedroom to his study will remain relatively constant unless some physical agency intervenes to alter one of those factors. And up until the end of the 19th century, nobody but philosophers or priests ever argued any differently; for most people the mundane was knowable and the spiritual could only be grasped through faith.
Unfortunately, the turn of the 20th century set events in motion which changed that; the first of these was the rise of what I call “secular religions”, of which the first was Marxism. Though these religions concern themselves with physical reality and avoid talk of the soul, the Divine or other such esoteric concepts, they are yet religions because they insist on rigid adherence to a morality and interpretation of reality (i.e. an approved set of both “truth” and facts) derived entirely from knowledge revealed in sacred scriptures by the founders of the religion. The dogma of Marxism and the various “-isms” derived from it (such as neofeminism, Afrocentrism, etc) must be accepted unquestioningly by adherents; dissidence is suppressed and any scientifically-sound facts which contradict the teachings are denied. But because these “-isms” do not at first seem like religions to the unwary, they gained a foothold in academic departments and have infiltrated many governments; the Scandinavian countries infected with institutionalized neofeminism are every bit as irrational and ideologically-driven as the staunchest theocracy.
Still, the secular religions alone cannot be blamed entirely for the confusion of factual judgments with value judgments among the modern intelligentsia; Marxism and its spawn might have remained the province of extremists and tyrants had not the very foundations of reality itself been shaken by the work of three of Marx’s countrymen named Planck, Einstein and Schrödinger. 19th-century scientists were so certain of reality that the physicist Philipp von Jolly advised Max Planck (1858-1947) against going into physics with the statement, “in this field, almost everything is already discovered, and all that remains is to fill a few holes.” His brilliant student ignored the advice, went into physics anyway and turned the field entirely upside-down by developing the quantum theory, which demonstrated that subatomic particles tend to behave in ways absolutely at odds with Victorian notions of decorum, vacillating wildly back and forth between different states depending upon the means used by human observers to examine them. Albert Einstein (1879-1955) built upon Planck’s theory and went on to propound his own, special relativity, which demonstrated that size, mass and even the flow of time itself are dependent upon the speed at which an object moves. And Einstein’s friend Erwin Schrödinger (1887-1961) expanded quantum mechanics still further and recognized that it appeared to be the act of observation itself which caused particles to “collapse” into one state or another, and that prior to observation such particles existed in not one state or another but both states simultaneously! He proposed a now-famous thought experiment in which a cat is placed in a sealed box with a radioactive substance and a device which will release poison gas upon detecting a particle of radioactive decay. Until the box is opened there is no way to know whether any of the particles from the radioactive material has yet struck the detector and killed the cat; if the hapless feline were the same as a subatomic particle, it could be considered to be not merely dead or alive, but simultaneously dead and alive!
Educated non-scientists encountering Dr. Einstein’s adjustable mass and time or Dr. Schrödinger’s undead kitty can perhaps be forgiven for throwing up their hands in despair and deciding that all facts are relative; if even hard-headed scientists say that the truth varies with the observer, the claims of the “-isms” that doctrine supersedes science seem to make perfect sense. But that’s because they don’t read deeply enough to understand that not only do these theories apply to very special cases (the incredibly small for quantum mechanics and the incredibly fast for special relativity), but also that the probabilities involved cancel each other out under normal conditions. Though we often hear it said that “Einstein’s theory of gravity superseded Newton’s”, in fact Newton’s is still 100% accurate for all normal applications. And though Planck’s subatomic zoo is capable of all sorts of bizarre, counterintuitive and even absurd transformations, translations and transfers, I can depend on the fact that never in my lifetime, or indeed within the lifetime of the entire universe, will my Mercedes suddenly transmogrify into a large blob of cottage cheese. Though I know my desk is actually nothing more than an electronic fog composed mostly of empty space, it will function as though solid under all normal circumstances and its properties can be determined independently by any number of observers one cares to name with exactly the same results. Were that not true science would be difficult, technology would be impossible and organic life itself – which is, after all, based on the dependability of chemical processes – would never have arisen.
A little learning, as the saying goes, is a dangerous thing; many reasonably-educated people know just enough about the weirdness of modern physics to cause them to come to totally erroneous conclusions about the nature of objective reality. This uncertainty, coupled with a widespread distrust of science engendered by the man-made problems of the modern world (such as pollution and the specter of nuclear war), has rendered many otherwise-intelligent people in academia susceptible to the asinine notion that “facts are relative”. Since that myth is extremely useful to those who wish to promote agendas whose tenets fly in the face of objective reality, such individuals have worked tirelessly to insinuate it into nearly every institution of higher learning in the United States and many in other Western countries…which is of course why we now get most of our scientists from Asia, where people still understand that philosophy is not science and objective facts absolutely can be counted on in the mundane world inhabited by homo sapiens. Unfortunately, the misguided doctrine of “relativity of facts” has been taught in American schools for two generations now, and it would take quite a while to excise the cancer even if we were assiduously working at it…which we aren’t.
….I would’ve thought it obvious and quite frankly beyond debate; ‘truth’ is a mixture.
Water isn’t wet because people believe it is; fire isn’t hot because people believe it is. And as you’ve said, sound waves are generated when trees fall in the forest, whether people are there to hear them or not.
Then there’s the whole elephant thing; if you have six people standing around an elephant, they can truly give you their perspective on it…but that doesn’t change what the elephant is, because the elephant was THAT before they walked into the room.
No one can figure out the time thing; when you’re in a class or a job you hate, time is dragging. When you’re doing something you love, it flies. When you’re young, you can’t age fast enough. I’m told that when you get old, looks like your birthday is just whipping around every year. Go figure.
People shouldn’t take simple things and make them hard.
This many: |
and this many: |
is ALWAYS this many: ||
You’re right, Scorch; we shouldn’t make easy stuff hard. There’s enough genuinely difficult stuff out there.
I’m a huge fan of relativity; get your hands on a hot pan, a second can seem like an hour; get your hands on a hot Lady-of-the-night, an hour can seem like a second; time is relative” ❤
If only a 40 hour work week felt like 4 hours. TGIF
Maggie, this post and the related ones before should be REQUIRED reading in schools … and possibly ENFORCED reading for those who are – how do we say in England? – a bit too clever by half. So there.
Another equalling compelling way of looking at the concept of “truth” is to consider whether it is useful. If truth is, indeed, relative, then we are all, always, just blindly groping in the dark. That may in fact be true, but it doesn’t FEEL true, so it’s not a particulary useful way of looking at the world.
When we agree that there IS INDEED such a thing as truth, and agree that things that are TRUE are more valuable than things that are FALSE, then we have suddenly given our lives some meaning and direction.
Is prostitution a crime? Let’s assume all truth is relative and we can’t really answer that question. Instead you get a hodge podge of reactions and laws based on whatever any group seems to think at the time.
But if we agree that there is such a thing as truth, and that truth is valuable, then we need to find some way to answer the question. How are we measuring harm? What is the criteria for deciding something is a crime? Who get to decide?
Beliving in truth at least puts us in a position to grapple with difficult subjects, instead of just throwing up our hands and saying, “ah to hell with it.”
It’s like free will. Mathetmatically, the universe (and therefore our lives) probably exists in perpetuity. All time has already happened. Our lives are pre-ordained. We must fulfull our destiny.
But it doesn’t FEEL like everything is predestined. It feels like we have a million choices to make, everyday, and that we have the freedom to choose. When you look down two roads and decide which one to take, the universe knows already which one you took. But you don’t.
Destiny is a concept that isn’t especially useful. Free will is much more useful and gives us some power over our lives. Same with truth. We must believe in truth, because otherwise we have no basis for judgement. And we won’t be able to see when we have judged poorly.
That’s the real appeal of relativism. It lets people off the hook for being fucking assholes. Because hey, asshole is relative, right?
Not really. Nope. Some people are assholes. And that’s the truth.
★★★★★
Thank you, Kristin! 🙂
This lady has been exposing ###*** in US education for years. I’ve heard her interviewed a few times. It’s wonderful she’s working to change things for the better and has for years:
http://www.deliberatedumbingdown.com/index.html
Note her book is free to download. I’ve heard another author interviewed who like her is exposing these things, but I forgot his name unfortunately.
Laura, there HAS been a dumbing-down of the American populace, but I’m pretty sure that Rousseau and Dewey are not to blame for that. It has more to do with corporate control of educational and media systems in this country. Meaning, corporations will only inform people of what the corporations want them to hear.
When I posted the link I knew that not all would agree with her on everything. I don’t agree with her on all of it either. But, I knew it would show that people ARE working on/exposing this problem and Iserbyt isn’t the only 1 doing so. It’s important to show that people ARE working on the problem. The “no one is doing anything about ____” stuff gets tiring because it doesn’t apply in at least some cases (like this 1).
I’d point out that even in the realms of relativity and quantum mechanics, facts are not unknowable. It may seem odd, and it’s certainly unintuitive, but if you know the theory and do the math, it’s all understandable.
If Maggie and I were travelling away from each other at almost the speed of light, I might see two events happen at the same time, while she sees them one after another. But this doesn’t mean time is out of control and unknowable, it simply means that it’s different from what we’re used to. I can predict what Maggie will see, and Maggie can predict what I will see.
Even outside the “the mundane world inhabited by homo sapiens”, there are still laws of physics, and there are still objectively true facts about the universe.
Absolutely so, Fnord; I was addressing the popular misconception (which we see in so many popular articles on the subject) that quantum mechanics describes a “crazy universe”.
Given the screen name you chose and the post you first replied on, I can guess how you found my blog. 😉
A RAW fanclub?
Great post! Maggie, you’re reminding me of a quote from an Indiana Jones movie, which I’ll paraphrase: archeology is the search for fact, not truth. If you want truth, the philosophy class is right down the hall.
As a scientist myself, I should point out that relativity and quantum mechanics only really rear their heads in extreme situations and the physical world we deal with on a macro level if fairly deterministic. For example, relativistic corrections only happen at very high speeds and accelerations. And I think the term “relativity” is abused a bit, since it really doesn’t embrace relativism of truth, but relativism of perspective. In quantum mechanics, because we are operating on a subatomic level, information can move faster than light (quantum entanglement), objects can be in many places at once, and particles can literally jump through walls (quantum tunneling), moving faster than light. But these do not apply to the macro world. if I drop a paint can on the floor, it’s not going to tunnel through, unfortunately. Anyway, the upshot of this nerdy diatribe is that people invoking these disciplines to argue that fact is relative need to understand that the don’t say that at all — they say that facts get weird at different scales.
I would just like to point out one final thing: is there any other blog out there where you can have one post on Schrodinger’s cat and another giving oral sex tips? 🙂
Probably not many. 😉
I try to write erotic fiction which has educational value (teenage lesbian sex AND the unlikelyhood of a reactionless drive). But I’m not as good at getting my edumacation stuff out there as Maggie is. She actually writes stuff, I mean finishes stuff. It almost seems that I can’t write anything both short and meaningful.
Or maybe I can, just not yet. Yeah, I like that better.
Well,it took me until I was 43 to finally get started with it, so there’s time for you yet. 😉
You’ve written some wonderful short pieces (please don’t sell yourself short in this area…wink).
Thanks, both of you. I’ll keep going.
Even in quantum mechanics, nothing really moves faster than light. The closest you get is in quantum field theory, where it’s possible that a vacuum bubble appeared off to the side of where you are, then you cancel with the antiparticle in the bubble, leaving the further-off particle further afield than you could have gotten. It’s not the same thing, really.
Entanglement and extra-especially tunneling are not superluminal.
Entanglement is just when you have global independence between multiple multi-particle states. There’s no faster-than-light transfer there, though it will appear that way to any one observer.
Tunneling doesn’t even have that. The reports of faster-than-light tunneling are due to mistakenly dividing the distance traversed by ‘the tunneling time’, which is most certainly not simply the amount of time it took to tunnel.
Greetings from Berlin,
I can’t think of a better city to be in to answer claims leveled at said agitate.
You guys are cracking me up. I rather enjoy being taken to task for that which I state (I actually tend to be rather flexible and readily admit when I’m wrong/off base). However, there seems to be a gross misunderstanding as to what it was I stated on this extremely complex subject with . . . oh, I don’t know . . . a whole 3 or 4 short posts — not exactly a dissertation on Truth and/or Facts. If anyone had really taken the time to parse out my comments, it might be clear that as a staunch supporter of Women & Minority rights and the right for all to make a living sans judgment/stigma (short of harming others), I was actually talking about language and certainty of tone, in that we should travel a higher road than bigoted bullies who speak in certain, disparaging, certainties of Women & Minorities. I was also being sincerely reverent to that which is divine to you, but maybe not necessarily for me.
However, just as I predicted in my first or second comment — characteristics of Nature/Human-Nature/Human-Sexuality is not what is being discussed herein. What’s being discussed and practiced is In-Group/Out-Group dynamics — there is no consistency like the consistency of human behavior.
I still think that this blog is terrific.
Although I will always be an out-group entity, I will continue to support and fight for YOUR rights.
Na Klar! Ihren seid eine Ausländerfeindlichkeit nicht. Vielleicht in einem anderen Leben . . . meine fremd aber lieben Freunden.
Bis nächstes Mal . . .
Tschüss!
DE
David, I fully admit I just used the conversation of that day as a jumping-off point; if you look back to my original input in that thread you’ll see it wasn’t nearly this complex! It just reminded me of many things others have said, and that dovetailed with the whole neofeminist agenda over facts thing. 🙂
you have great instincts, and I admire your focus and succinct writing style. And I join you–and I think at least Andrea above–in challenging the almost knee jerk relativism that invades most any discussion. So bravo.
But your epistemology, well, it needs work. The subject-object thing, as you note, is in many respects THE problem for modern philosophy, and so you do not presume to resolve it in a post.
But I do want to suggest you try not to engage the issue with strategies that have you talking about “subjective reality” or “true for me,” or distinctions between judgments of value and judgments of fact. That simply cedes too much territory to the opposition, and the latter in particular leads to what Leo Strauss called retail sanity and wholesale madness.
Alternative? Well, you could try out Jesuit philosopher Bernard Lonergan–his 750 page Insight is a challenge, but if you want to win this battle for the possibility of truth, you should investigate it. Just a hint of his position: “objectivity the the fruit of authentic subjectivity.”
Thanks, Paul! It’s definitely outside my usual territory, but I figured it was worth tackling just this once. 🙂
Great post, Maggie. The connection between primitive Marxist dogma and modern political correctness is profound.
Propaganda isn’t really interested in facts or truth. Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle was mistranslated into English as the “Indeterminacy” Principle, and not by accident.
When we talk about any subject we’re using words, and there is no authority that dictates how we must use words. As Peter Strawson pointed out, words don’t mean anything, because “to mean” is a human action. People use words to express what they want, but the words themselves don’t have any preferences.
The difference between honest discussion and propaganda is that the latter pretends the way they choose to use words is the only true, correct, right way.
If we agree on all the premises, then certain conclusions follow. But we don’t have to agree on all the premises, especially if we want to avoid certain conclusions. There are several valid theories of truth. I like the correspondence theory, but it’s not the only one.
The recent savage beating of a transgender woman in Maryland seems to be a consequence of the belief that there is only one truth. A virtue of “relative” thinking in moral values is that it fosters humility and tolerance.
I’ve had the idea for a post based upon the discussion of the 18th since then too….it’s just a matter of gaining enough understanding of the specifics of the topic to be able to back up my viewpoint. Have a thick book by Leonard Peikoff in my purse LOL. Especially at the epistemological level it’s quite difficult to grasp. Great post – I didn’t think it at all outside your territory. Thinking is the territory of anyone who chooses to do so.
Some people are intellectual Mongols: their territory is what they can see from the back of a horse.
Now you’ve got me thinking about Yertle the Turtle… 😉
I liked that so much I’m about to go post it at my house!
I especially love the last two lines. 🙂
I had a science education. I always grimace when I hear the pseudo-mystics and maybe-magicals tell me about energies and emanations.
It’s frustrating.
Wow Maggie,
A great article and one I definitely was not expecting to find here. If you like that type of stuff, have a peak at this:
http://www.blazelabs.com/f-g-intro.asp
As a philosophical person working in a scientific environment, I am very sensitive to the natures of truth and reality, objectivity vs. subjectivity. While I strongly believe that there are objective moral truths, I do not think we will be able to find them until we are able to uncouple ourselves from our own experiences(intellectual, emotional, cultural, etc) Most of these objective truths come down as plain common sense. i.e.
“It is not morally wrong to steal, because the idea of ownership is a logical fallacy. However, people are very protective of their fallacies and are quite likely to do you physical harm if they catch you, so therefore, stealing is a poor choice.”
(I am certain there will be some disagreement, which is fine. All I ask is that prior to you complaining you show me a bill of sale from the universe granting you ownership of the minerals and elements taken from the universe to create the object that you supposedly own. When such a receipt is produced, I will concede defeat. If you can not produce such a receipt, the universe has every right to bring you up on charges of theft.)
As for science being the bearers of fact….. nah.. a) Scientist do not prove anything. Ask a real scientist to prove something is a fact, or a law, and they will tell you that is not the province of science, b) Science is just as susceptible to dogma as any other man made proposition.
Ultimately, a large percentage of our reality is a matter of perspective. I am not disagreeing that there are physical laws, merely that each individuals experience of those physical laws is different, and there for subjective. Perhaps we could agree by saying that the Universe at large is filled with objective reality, but the human experience will never amount to more than subjective reality, and we will never be able to prove otherwise as doing so defies the nature of being human.
Oh.. and Gorbachev….
You should read this.. maybe the crackpots have known more then you give them credit for all along…
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1104/1104.3113v1.pdf
Thanks, Tony! I like to throw my readers a curve ball every now and again; it keeps them on their toes. 😉
Schrödinger and his pussycat,
Alive or dead? Both this and that,
A secret box you have to look at,
Einstein, Planck, Heisenberg,
Uncertainty folks that’s the word,
Come on along now!
Looking at a particle, try to see,
Its exact position or velocity,
No way to know both at the same time,
But cruelty to animals is still defined as a crime,
Let the cat out!
Schrödinger and his pussycat,
Schrödinger and his pussycaaa-aaat, yeah.
Like many other commentators, I did not expect a well formulated mixture of philosophy, physics and pseudo-science debunking when I came over here (well, actually, I expected that whatever I found would be well formulated, it always is, here) but it was a pleasant surprise. The connection to Marxism was new to me and I will keep it in the back of my head for future reference.
Thank you for this blog, it never ceases to make me think about and question the established worldview, it is a rare treat.
Oh, and the “Faerie Tale” was wonderful!
/Paul
“The speed of light can be measured, is the same everywhere and is not subject to interpretation”
Minor nit-pick, the speed of light /in vacuum/ is the same, regardless of the reference frame, however, the speed of light in any other medium is slower, sometimes much slower (depending on the medium), after all, this is what makes refraction work.
I need to find a “kiss” icon. Thank you, Paul!
And yeah, I knew about the speed of light being slower in media (and in a gravitational field), but I went for the shortcut. Sorry ’bout that. 😉
Hi Maggie
I didn’t have time to thoroughly read all of the posts, so someone might have mentioned this before, but it was Heisenberg, not Schrodinger, who postulated that the act of observation changes the system being observed so you cannot determine the precise speed and direction of a particle simultaneously. In other words, the actual act of measuring the system changes the system. This is the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. The reason for this is light (photons) used as the probe particle has mass and when it “strikes” the particle being measured, it transfers momentum to the particle. Also, the photon returns to the observer with an altered path due to interacting with the particle. I demonstrate this in my class by having a student walk slowly across the front of the room and then toss something heavy, like a bowling ball, at them and have the the other students observe that student’s change in direction. The Uncertainty Principle leads to several other Non-Newtonian (i.e., Non-Classical Mechanic) events. The reason we don’t experience these events is because our world is the world of the macro. Quantum mechanical events are only “observed” on the atomic level. If we lived in the QM world, it would truly be an Alice in Wonderland experience with Chesire cats suddenly appearing an disappearing.
Best
David
Hi David! At first, I included Heisenberg in the column as well, but it was getting much too long so he was lost in the editing. I know I really shouldn’t oversimplify, but I figure readers like you will keep me honest. 😉
Hi Maggie – it’s David again
BTW Einstein never accepted the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle and dismissed it with the comment “G_d does not play dice with the universe”
Best
David
Who was it who eventually told Einstein, “Stop telling God what to do!”?
Albert was a cool guy, though. Somebody just needed to introduce him to Dungeons & Dragons, where the dice are important, but the DM is still God.
It has been attributed to both Niels Bohr and Enrico Fermi, and is probably apocryphal.
And yes, the DM does play dice with his universe…
I hardly play anymore. My fellow gamers moved off to BFE, and well. Even at A-KON I don’t play, because then I’d miss everything else. On Saturday night (or rather early Sunday morning) I could go for a bit of 4 AM to 8 AM dungeon crawling. But then they’d have to spend most of that time teaching me 4th Ed. I’ve got my Sacred Prostitute class all worked out for 3rd. 🙂
Hmm, I’m even more old-style, I have about one and a half shelf-meter of AD&D 2ed. Can’t say that I am familiar with the Sacred Prostitute but it sounds like a Prestige Class (in both senses of the word).
By the way, excuse a non-native speaker and expand the acronym BFE, I could not find anything that fitted the rest of the sentence.
I’m the real old lady here; my AD&D stuff consists of the original (first-edition) books printed in the late ’70s and early ’80s. 🙂
I started playing the Basic Set, and when I moved to AD&D it was the 2nd Ed. I have some 1st Ed. stuff, and some 3rd. 4th… I’m not sure I’ve got a thing.
Yeah, the Sacred Prostitute I worked out is a 3rd Ed. prestige class. The Book of Erotic Fantasy has a Sacred Prostitute class in it, but I wasn’t quite satisfied, so I tweaked it.
BFE is something that, apparently, we only in the American Southwest. I’ve encountered (and seen on TV) people from the East Coast who have no idea what it means. Just as well. It basically means that somebody lives away from a big city, and far away from whoever is making the observation. Maggie lives in the country, so her friends in the nearest city probably feel that they’d see her more often if she didn’t “live out in BFE.”
Sailor is being demure; the full expression is actually “Bum-fuck Egypt”. I have no idea what either anal sex or one of the oldest nations in the world have to do with the boondocks, but there you are.
It’s an expression I probably shouldn’t use, since I have nothing against Egypt. But yeah, it means that my fellow gamers moved so far off that they might as well be in Egypt as far as my getting to game with them is concerned. And, they didn’t even move to another city, but a small college town. So when I go there I’m far away not only from home, but from the sorts of services and diversions I’ve grown accustomed to. No bus service, no sushi places, and so on. Then again: less traffic.
Most excellent! I had an interesting thread on that ‘undead kitty’ at the Philosophy Forum some months ago… I am all burnt out on that now but it will always return in some different form.
‘It is dead, yet it lives…’ 🙂
I’m new to the blog, discovered it only a couple of days ago, and have read it quite voraciously since – it’s a wonderful mix of refreshing insight, great style, charm, and intellectual rigour.
I agree with the ultimate point expressed in this post (that truth isn’t relative), but I also think the post contains a number of not insubstantial philosophical confusions and simplifications. In the spirit of constructive contribution (and, admittedly, in the spirit of a philosopher’s obsession with exactitude), I offer the following clarificatory points.
Consider this passage:
‘In traditional philosophy, the distinction is made between a factual judgment and a value judgment; the former is a judgment about the nature of objective reality, e.g. “I think this scaffold is strong enough to support my weight,” while the latter is a judgment about a subjective matter, e.g. “I think the way they treated him was wrong.” I tend to use the word truth in a philosophical sense, which can be relative; in the thread I stated that reincarnation is “true” for me, that is I have faith in it and live assuming it’s true. But for an atheist, snuffed out like a candle at death is “true” in that same sense and to a Christian, heaven and hell are “true”.’
There’s a lot going on here. First, I’m not entirely sure what is meant by ‘traditional philosophy’, but in contemporary analytic philosophy of the sort which overwhelmingly dominates the Anglophone and Germanophone worlds (and is making increasing inroads elsewhere too), it’s certainly true that the fact/value distinction as described above would be viewed as exceptionally simplistic, at best. In the passage, an attempt is made to analyse the fact/value distinction as an instance of the objective/subjective distinction. However, this seems implausible because there appear to be objective values, and subjective facts (as well as objective facts and subjective values) – thus the two distinctions come apart in significant ways. Examples:
Objective fact: atoms have mass. Subjective fact: I am experiencing some black colour in my visual field right now.
Objective value: torturing babies simply for fun is wrong. Subjective value: Dr Pepper is delicious.
Standardly, objectivity is understood as mind *independence* and subjectivity as mind *dependence*. It is a major philosophical task to give a clear account of what mind (in)dependence is: but here’s the rough idea:
All the objective things in the universe are all those things that would be left if you subtracted all the minds.
All the subjective things in the universe are all those things that would be removed if you subtracted all the minds
(Now, this is very rough and ready, and imperfect. We normally think, for instance, that there are objective facts about minds – e.g. “there are minds”, “I have a mind” etc. – and this is not captured in the above criterion for objectivity/subjectivity. But hopefully you get basic the idea.)
Thus, it is far from obvious that there is a useful distinction between facts and values that can be analysed in terms of the objective/subjective distinction. In contrast, there is a useful distinction between facts and not-facts, and between values and not-values. Facts are true propositions, not-facts are false propositions. Values are evaluative, not-values are not evaluative. In this way we can see how we can have facts about values: i.e. we can have true propositions about values, e.g. “there are values”. Given this, the employment of the fact/value distinction in the passage appears confused.
Some might take issue with the example of an objective value: it is wrong to torture babies simply for fun. One might *argue*, of course, that morality is subjective. I think this is deeply implausible, but we need not settle that issue here, but simply note that it doesn’t immediately follow from the claim “morality is subjective” that there are no moral facts – any more than it follows from the claim that experience is subjective that there are no facts about experience. To claim otherwise is to employ “subjective” and “fact” in a manner which can best be described as fast and loose.
This brings us to a related passage:
“I tend to use the word truth in a philosophical sense, which can be relative; in the thread I stated that reincarnation is “true” for me, that is I have faith in it and live assuming it’s true. But for an atheist, snuffed out like a candle at death is “true” in that same sense and to a Christian, heaven and hell are “true”. Morality, eschatology and the like cannot be determined by scientific tests, and since they strike at the heart of what it means to be human they must be answered individually and are therefore relative. Facts, on the other hand, cannot be relative; they exist independent of the observer and can be reproduced by other experimenters who are unaware of the original experimenter’s results. The speed of light can be measured, is the same everywhere and is not subject to interpretation; it is a fact.”
Again, there is a lot going on here. But if “there is reincarnation” is a proposition (which it seems to be), then we can ask of it: is it true? Propositions just are those things which can be true or false. Similarly: “there is no Abrahamic monotheistic God” is a proposition whose truth we can enquire about. Of course, it might hard to *settle* whether or not these propositions are true (depending on what “settle” is taken to mean), but that does not entail that there is no fact of the matter. There is no inference from “we cannot know whether or not x is true” to “there is no fact of the matter about x”.
(As it happens, I think there is a fact of the matter about claims like “there is reincarnation”, “there is god” etc., but that’s an argument for a different day).
Also, the passage includes the claim that propositions about reincarnation and God’s existence are relative. The relative/absolute distinction is often conflated with the objective/subjective distinction, and the article seems to do this at a number of points. The distinctions should not be conflated, because they come apart; not all objective facts are absolute, and not all subjective facts are relative. Consider, for example, the proposition:
“My body now weighs eleven stone” – this is a relative, objective fact (I assure you). It’s objective, (“subtract” all the minds by killing everyone in the universe, and my body will still weigh eleven stone), but only relative to where my body is located – place it on the Moon, or Jupiter, and its weight will change; hence the relativity.
“Atoms have mass” – this is an absolute, objective fact.
“Grass does not taste nice” – this is a relative, subjective fact – it will be true, most likely, for humans, but not, presumably, for cows.
“Experiencing red is like experiencing red” – this is an absolute, subjective fact.
Thus, to say that *a* truth is relative, is to say that it is true in certain contexts but not others (where “contexts” is understood as broadly as possible). “It is polite to shake hands” (or any other claim about manners) is a good uncontroversial example of a relative truth. Given the above clarifications, it should be quite clear that *all* truths cannot be relative in any robust sense.
Finally – what is truth? In my view, people worry far too much about this. If you’re a logician, or interested in theories of truth specifically, then it’s a pressing question. For nearly everyone else, the standard account should do:
Truth is a property of propositions. A proposition is true if and only if the world is as the proposition says it is; e.g.
(1) “atoms have mass” is true if and only if atoms have mass.
(2) “God exists” is true if and only if God exists.
(3) “Torturing babies simply for fun is wrong” is true if and only if torturing babies simply for fun is wrong.
Some propositions might be harder to determine the truth of than others, but that shouldn’t make us worry about whether or not we can speak safely about *truth* – quite the opposite.
Otherwise, keep up the great work!