What's your take on absolute truth?

[Totenkindly]

Here- for another example I'll quote one of my favorite books- this is from Tim O'Brien's book The Things They Carried

"If Rat told you, for example, that he'd slept with four girls in one night, you could figure it was about a girl and a half. It wasn't a question of deceit. Just the opposite: he wanted to heat up the truth, make it burn so hot that you would feel exactly the way that he felt. For Rat Kiley, I think, facts were formed by sensations, not the other way around..."

Is Rat lying? Or is he telling the truth? I would say that it was HIS truth, since that's the way that he experienced it, but the author says that it's a lie since it's not "the truth."

This reminded me of some of the recent threads where we discussed adaptations of books into movies.

Some people will say the movie is a lie if events have been changed from the book.

But sometimes events in the movie are changed so that they still have the power to evoke the same intensity and type of feeling that the book did... and a literal translation would not have done that, the fires needed to be stoked hotter.

Is one a lie and one the truth? Are both lies? Are both true?

 

[The_Liquid_Laser]

This reminded me of some of the recent threads where we discussed adaptations of books into movies.

Some people will say the movie is a lie if events have been changed from the book.

But sometimes events in the movie are changed so that they still have the power to evoke the same intensity and type of feeling that the book did... and a literal translation would not have done that, the fires needed to be stoked hotter.

Is one a lie and one the truth? Are both lies? Are both true?

I don't think you can apply a person's taste in movies and books to the question of absolute truth. If there is something that is not absolutely true then it would be taste. It's more meaningful to look at ideas which many believe to be universal, e.g. "Thou shall not murder", and then determine if these are universal or not.

More importantly this post ignores the indisputable fact that the movie is almost always better than the book.

 

[Totenkindly]

I don't think you can apply a person's taste in movies and books to the question of absolute truth. If there is something that is not absolutely true then it would be taste. It's more meaningful to look at ideas which many believe to be universal, e.g. "Thou shall not murder", and then determine if these are universal or not.

Are you missing my point, or am I just misperceiving that you are?

More importantly this post ignores the indisputable fact that the movie is almost always better than the book.

Blasphemer. (You will burn for this, Angel!)

 

[EffEmDoubleyou]

More importantly this post ignores the indisputable fact that the movie is almost always better than the book.

One of my pet peeves is when people assert that the book is better than the movie for no other reason than it is a book.

I think that Whatever is using a different definition of truth than we are. To address her example of the guy sleeping with multiple women...no matter how many women he says he slept with last night, and no matter how many women his friends assume that really means, there was a correct number of women. Maybe he said it was four, and his friend thinks that means two. But in reality, the truth of the matter is that there is an actual number of women he slept with last night, and truth has nothing to do with how many he says there were or how many his friend thinks there were. I think where we differ is that you limit truth to what people can determine for themselves and I think truth is something completely apart from what people think. Just because those people disagree on how many women the guy slept with doesn't mean the truth is in doubt.

 

[miss fortune]

that's because you're an INTJ!

I guess that the way that I look at the truth IS a bit different from the way that you do- maybe this is why people sometimes think that ESTPs are chronic liars The Truth to me differs from person to person- the truth to you is a concrete thing funny that in this case you're going for the concrete and I'm going for the abstract!

 

[Punggung]

No

 

[swordpath]

Why are people confusing societal agreements on basic questions like "Is murder acceptable?" for a topic like "absolute truth?"

 

[Metamorphosis]

Why are people confusing societal agreements on basic questions like "Is murder acceptable?" for a topic like "absolute truth?"

Because the OP isn't about absolute truth it's about absolute morals.

 

[swordpath]

OP? I don't know what that is. The tread title is about absolute truth though and I'm still trying to figure out why people are arguing ethics.

 

[Metamorphosis]

OP? I don't know what that is. The tread title is about absolute truth though and I'm still trying to figure out why people are arguing ethics.

When I said it, I meant, "Original Post." Normally, "Original Poster." It's more about ethics than truth.

 

[ygolo]

I think we are horribly confusing "truth" with "what we perceive/believe is true."

I firmly believe the existence of "truth" is independent of the seeker/observer of truth. Of course "what we believe is true" is always tied to who we are. So we have human physics, and human mathematics, etc.

In short, what we perceive to be truth is not truth.

Humans need symbols, and abstractions simply to perceive/interpret the truth. These symbols and abstractions are clumsy and inaccurate. We may need to inflate, exaggerate, abstract our descriptions of truth in an attempt to convey what we believe to be true more accurately. However, those inflations, exaggerations, and abstractions are not more true.

The truth exists outside of ourselves.

The existence of the universe was true before any humans (and human descriptions) were ever available. The existence of the inverse will be true when no human beings are left. jmo.

If a bus hits you without you seeing, hearing, feeling or perceiving it in anyway (suppose you were sufficiently anesthetized), can it still kill you?

It is my belief, that morality is the same way (though my confidence in this belief is less than that for truth).

 

[swordpath]

When I said it, I meant, "Original Post." Normally, "Original Poster." It's more about ethics than truth.

So basically, the the thread debate doesn't pertain to the thread subject?

 

[Metamorphosis]

So basically, the the thread debate doesn't pertain to the thread subject?

more so that the original thread debate didn't pertain to the thread title.

 

[Recoleta]

more so that the original thread debate didn't pertain to the thread title.

Yeah, what I wanted to talk about was absolute truth...although I can see that my OP does touch on absolute morality. I do see both as related, but different concepts...which became more evident as the thread progressed. What I was really trying to say in my OP was kinda along the lines of what FMWarner and Ygolo (and a few others) have touched on -- that I believe absolute truth does exist, and that it exists outside of us and what we perceive to be truth...and I was just trying to see how others approached the topic or what they thought about it etc.

Looking back, I see now that my example in my OP doesn't fully apply to what I was trying to say...which I didn't realize until this thread matured and other ideas and thoughts were brought up and expanded upon. OK, so all cleared up? Official topic was meant to be absolute truth (although if absolute morality is brought up too, then fine)...I just wanted to start/use this thread as a sounding board.

 

[unsung truth]

truth: we are all human, we all feel pain, happiness, sadness, etc...

on the question of having an absolute truth for morality, I would say the only measure is empathy:
why shouldn't we hurt someone? because it is painful, we understand this pain and do not want pain, nor would anyone else.

now how pain is defined is depending on the person who is receiving it, hence it is relative. Yet from a scientific perspective, we all come from the same elements, the same material (big bang theory) and there was a beginning to the universe. Hence we were created by something (God, science, whatever you believe). If everything we know is created by that thing, then our truths must be in some form a derivative of that creator's truths. So all of our relative truths hold some absolute truth (even the denial of an absolute truth, holds the absolute truth in the essence of its argument).

There are already a few flaws which I know all you knit-picky critical thinkers will tear apart and I want you to challenge me because I love to play connect the dots and make irrelevant theories relevant

 

[EffEmDoubleyou]

I think we are horribly confusing "truth" with "what we perceive/believe is true."

I firmly believe the existence of "truth" is independent of the seeker/observer of truth. Of course "what we believe is true" is always tied to who we are. So we have human physics, and human mathematics, etc.

In short, what we perceive to be truth is not truth.

Humans need symbols, and abstractions simply to perceive/interpret the truth. These symbols and abstractions are clumsy and inaccurate. We may need to inflate, exaggerate, abstract our descriptions of truth in an attempt to convey what we believe to be true more accurately. However, those inflations, exaggerations, and abstractions are not more true.

The truth exists outside of ourselves.

The existence of the universe was true before any humans (and human descriptions) were ever available. The existence of the inverse will be true when no human beings are left. jmo.

If a bus hits you without you seeing, hearing, feeling or perceiving it in anyway (suppose you were sufficiently anesthetized), can it still kill you?

It is my belief, that morality is the same way (though my confidence in this belief is less than that for truth).

This is what I was trying to say, but ygolo said it in about 3 jillion less words

 

[unsung truth]

okay thank you for re-stating the human condition, that everything we know has some form of subjectivity. You can even argue that nothing is real outside of your mind, that we are all creations of your mind. But is it possible to use subjective truths and build them up into an absolute truth as I argued in the previous post? If not, then is it even useful to discuss this topic if we are inevitably tied to living in subjective truths?

(sry for the hint of criticism , I respect your opinions and am simply trying to further the discussion)

 

[Xander]

Ah certainty. The out streched hand of humnaity searching for that universal straw to hang onto, the nail in the wall from which we can hang our concept of reality.

From here all I can see is probabilities and influences. Certainty would be so nice but I'm afraid it seems to elude us all.

I guess that goes double for morals.

It's all relative baby

 

[The_Liquid_Laser]

Are you missing my point, or am I just misperceiving that you are?

You had a point? Ahem:

Is one a lie and one the truth? Are both lies? Are both true?

I thought your post was more of an observation + question without a real point.

Blasphemer. (You will burn for this, Angel!)

I don't get the reference, but I expected the "Blasphemer" reaction. But I will continue to educate! I have a dream of a better world! One day all the people of the world will come together in perfect harmony and realize that books, movies, nay...ALL MEDIA have their respective strengths and weaknesses and cannot be directly compared to each other in such black and white terms as "better" or "worse". Then I will buy the world a coke and we will all hold hands and sing together.

 

[Athenian200]

Ah certainty. The out streched hand of humnaity searching for that universal straw to hang onto, the nail in the wall from which we can hang our concept of reality.

From here all I can see is probabilities and influences. Certainty would be so nice but I'm afraid it seems to elude us all.

It's so elusive, isn't it? Although if we had it, what would we have left to seek? Perhaps that's why we can't be certain... because if we were, what would we have left to influence?