Absolute Truth

[TheTypist]

A few people seem to have gotten absolute truth mixed in with the aesthetics one. Perhaps this will help.

You know, there is such thing as an absolute truth. Just because people all have different opinions and some are too lazy to look for it, absolute truth does exist.

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[IronMonk]

heres a paradox for you.

the only absolute truth is that there is no absolute truth.

enjoy.

[Jam930]

Actually I agree that there is an absolute truth.

... + ... = ... ...

The symbols are created by us... it just basically means that ... and ... is ... ...

Which is absolute truth.

[IronMonk]

what about people who have not yet learned about those symbols. also in some pictographical languages = means something compleatly differant.

absolut truths are hard to argue with. because all you have to do is dissagree with a person to prove them wrong.

thus i posted what i did earlier. its the only one tha tcan hold up to debate.

[DracIV]

IronMonk, that's wrong. By communicating in an agreed-upon language, the other person is WRONG. = does not mean something else. We have already defined it. We all agreed upon meanings for each symbol already and if you disagree with something that is a fact when using the symbols we agreed upon because you are using different symbols, you are wrong.

[talisman]

There is no absolute truth, only consensus and majority opinion.

Everything you and I and everyone knows is only what is in our heads. It is only what we have sensed and how our genetic make-up has engineered us to react to what we have sensed. This is an issue that has been tackled many many times by many different philosophers, though you are probably most familiar with its treatment in The Matrix. Truth derives from reality, and reality is totally the experience of an individual.

Moving on, it is clear that nothing in the observable universe is absolutely one way or the other. If you know the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle and general relativity, then you can understand that.

Let's go back to the old argument that 2+2=4, because I like it so much....

Now, to clarify, we mean here the concept of 2 and the concept of 4. As in, changing the symbols isn't a valid counterargument. I don't mean to use it anyway.

Suppose you found a person that didn't believe that 2+2=4. Before any of you say there isn't such a person anywhere, I will be that person . Now, to disprove this person (or me) you show the person two rocks. That person agrees that there are two rocks. Next you show the person another two rocks, and the person again agrees that there are two. Now you show the person four rocks. The person agrees that there are four. Then you take two rocks and toss them on the ground, and, to demonstrate the concept of addition, toss another two next to it.

Now when you ask the other person how many rocks there are, the person says five, and refuses to believe otherwise, protesting adamantly that they actually do see five rocks. What are you going to do? What if the person, who earlier could identify four rocks as four rocks, suddenly starts seeing five when addition is performed? Are they faking it? Could you tell?

Obviously, you couldn't tell. You would never be able to prove it one way or the other. You would still think that you were right, that four rocks are on the ground, and this person would still think they were right. But which one is actually right? What if everytime two rocks were thrown next to two rocks five rocks actually appeared and this was the only guy that could see it?

If nothing can be accepted in exactly the same way by exactly everybody, then nothing can be absolutely true. Even this theory can't be absolutely true because not everyone believes it.

All we can do is argue about things to get more people on to our side that others, as we are doing now.

[Jam930]

People that have never met eachother or influenced eachother on opposite sides of the world have come up with the conclusion that .. and .. is .. ..

Like it or not.

That is the absolute truth. Aliens FAR from here will have the same answer. Opinions, thoughts and ideas are irrelevant to the absolute truth.

[The_Q]

It's impossible to prove that something can't be done because "anything is possible" no matter how corny it sounds. It's impossible to prove that there's no abosolute truth because it would be an absolute truth that there are none. So there are. Excuse me, I need to take some Tylenol from thinking that one through.

Q

[alvask8er]

Is everythign included in anything? I cant think right now...also, can there be differnt truths? For one who is colorblind, they may see an object as one color, and it is that color to them, but to a normal person, its a different color. Now this is differnt from the who 2x+2x= 4x yadda yadda yadda....because that is how they see the world and they cant change it. For someone to get two apples and two oranges and put them together, there would be four fruit total. No one that i konw of makes extra fruit somewhere, and if you divided the fruit into piecees, you would still have the whole fruit just in pieces.

What the hell does that have to do with the topic? (Below)

[Moogy]

KIND OF MAKES YOU THINK

[Jam930]

Oh my god.

[Moogy]

8CAT TRIUMPHS OVER ALL

[sniper_wolf]

...completely off topic. Where did that come from?

[IAMTHEEVILBEAN]

Your mom.

[talisman]

Like I said Jam, unless every observer in the Universe agrees that one thing is defined one way, and every observer agrees that every observer agrees, then is something absolute. And since I can, just to prove my point, claim to disbelieve anything that you say everyone believes in, nothing is absolute.

And while I couldn't prove myself right, neither could anyone else prove me wrong, and we'd be at a stalemate forever.