@Devans99

"If you have a proposition X and also propositions Y and ~Y then you can prove X is absolutely false if you can show:

X AND Y = false
X AND ~Y = false

Then by exhaustion of the probability space, we can absolutely conclude that X is false. Note that we have not used any axioms to prove that X is false so it is 'absolute knowledge'."

Makes sense to me, but i'm sure you know if you were in a control tower at an airport even though you are required to make good judgements, those judgements must be made quickly and fairly accurately in a short period of time, in other words out in public there are alot of variables.

Even more depressing is that people are still throwing around the idea of truth as being absolute.

Maybe I missed it - please correct me. Nowhere has anyone offered to define either "truth" or "absolute." Neither of these is like wild game you seek out in the forest and shoot and bring home draped over the fender of your car (people used to do this). Neither is that kind of a thing at all. Actually, neither is any kind of definite thing. You just define it for your purpose, and in the course of purposing, you find out if your definition works; and if it needs refining, how to refine it.

Lacking that, the discussion is akin to debating the actual length of unicorn horns.

yeah i agree with the exception that i believe having spiritual beliefs is important.

This whole thread appears t derive from a confusion between truth and belief. They are not the same.

Something can be true, and believed. Something can be true, and yet not believed. Something can be false, and yet not believed. And something can be false, yet believed.

Truth is independent of belief.

Suppose it's true that I posted this.
What's the difference between it being absolutely true and true?
Nutn' really. It's not like it becomes less true without "absolutely".

Suppose I uttered "There was snow at the peak of Mount Everest the other day".
What, then, would it take for my utterance to hold?
Snow up there of course, regardless of what you or I may think.

Yep. Hence the OP at the least needs a substantial re-write.

Then again, perhaps he knows everything, but his knowledge is not infinite...


Because there are only a finite number of things that can be known.


See how these arguments quickly become absurd.

More weird logic.

But I am not sure if there is a point here, or just a misunderstanding.

we can absolutely conclude that X is false. — James Statter

Did you see Un's post?

What the fuck is "absolutely" doing here? It wasn't anywhere in the argument.

Then again, perhaps he knows everything, but his knowledge is not infinite...


Because there are only a finite number of things that can be known. — Banno

God only has to know all the digits of pi, for his knowledge to be infinite....there are many other things to know as well.

But knowing all the digits of Pi is knowing only one thing - all the digits of Pi.

Absolute knowledge is knowledge which does not rely on any previous axioms. I was pointing out a type of deductive reasoning that allows acquisition of knowledge without introducing axioms.

Absolute knowledge is knowledge which does not rely on any previous axioms. — Devans99

so... it's an assumption?

No it's not an assumption - assumptions are not absolute knowledge. It's a deduction that works without assuming its premises are correct - it has no premises really.

If we want to know about X, if we can show:
X & Y = false
X & ~Y = false
Then we know absolutely that X is false irrespective of the value of Y. So no premises/assumptions/axioms are introduced to establish the falsity of X.

This is like saying "We can't ever know the truth."

If we can't ever know the truth, then how is it true that we know that? Is that not a truth that we know? Isn't that a contradiction? It seems to me that truth (and knowledge) need to be redefined.

Is knowledge the same as truth? If no, then what makes them different?

If we can't ever know the truth, then how is it true that we know that? — Harry Hindu

True, truth. Two different words meaning two different things. Start there.

1. Absolute truth is impossible.

2. If 1. is true, it is impossible that it is absolutely true.

3. 2. is absolutely true.

4. 1. is absolutely false. — unenlightened

I think it's funny how you basically solved the question right there and everyone just keeps talking like you didn't say anything.

Its clever, but the statement 'Absolute truth is impossible' is ambiguous, does it mean:

- All statements including 'Absolute truth is impossible' are unverifiable
or
- All statements apart from 'Absolute truth is impossible' are unverifiable

I think it probably is meant to mean the 2nd. In which case 2 does not follow from 1

The cleverness shows that the statement "there is no absolute truth" is self-contradictory.

I think the statement is an abbreviation for one of the following:

1. there is no absolute truth apart from this statement
2. there is no absolute truth including this statement

So 2 is as you say self-contradictory. 1 is not contradictory.

1. Is the same as saying that there IS absolute truth.

I see your point. But you could regard 1 as saying that we have split the set of statements into two parts:

- The statement 'there is no absolute truth apart from this statement' is absolutely true
- All other statements are not absolutely true

That seems the only way to make sense of it.

To be honest, I don't understand my own argument, because 'absolute' is a kind of truth the way 'orange' is a kind of intransigence.

See my complaining counter thread.

But 'truth' has to be qualified. I think it is valid to qualify it with 'absolute'. For example, all of these are (arguably) absolute knowledge:

- true!=false
- 1 + 1 = 2
- 'I think therefore I am'
- https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/271054

Contrast 'absolute truth' with other types of truth:

- Deductive truth. Depends on the truth of the underlying axioms. Is therefore not absolute truth
- Inductive truth. Depends on the reliability of the statistics. Not absolute truth.

So the qualifier 'absolute' is needed in some cases when talking of truth. I agree when it's used casually/inappropriately it can be redundant.

But 'truth' has to be qualified. — Devans99

No it doesn't. Arguments are deductive or inductive, Their conclusions are either true or false.
Our knowledge can be certain or uncertain, but propositions are true or false. There is no difference between the truth that my pockets are empty. and the absolute truth that my pockets are empty.

But for an inductive argument, its truth value is neither 100% true or 100% false but somewhere in-between. So propositions can be 'somewhat likely to be true' or 'almost certainly true' or 'absolutely true'; the last indicating 100% certainty.

There is no difference between the truth that my pockets are empty. and the absolute truth that my pockets are empty. — unenlightened

Yes there is. You may know inductively that your pockets are empty (because you checked a second ago), but what if a tiny pixie has crept into your pocket since then? So 'my pockets are empty' is inductive knowledge whereas 'its absolutely true my pockets are empty' is claiming absolute knowledge about the contents of your pockets (which is impossible).

It seems to me you may be confusing the concept of truth with other concepts here.

If I say that I would never not tell the truth, would you believe me? Just because someone says they are telling the truth does not necessarily mean what they say is truth — OpinionsMatter

The fact that someone says "I am telling the truth" does not entail that they are telling the truth.

The fact that we believe (or don't believe) that someone is telling the truth does not entail that they are (or are not) telling the truth.

People can lie, and people can utter falsehoods without lying. What is that supposed to tell me about "truth"?

How do we know the difference between lying and telling the truth, or between erroneous judgment and correct judgment? Such distinctions take a reliable concept of truth for granted. We compare the false to the true.

"I never lie." is untrue, because there will always be someone who doesn't agree with you(Not to mention that white lie you told). — OpinionsMatter

The fact that someone agrees (or disagrees) with a statement does not entail that the statement is true (or false).

The truth of the assertion "I never lie" is not determined by the agreement or disagreement of other people. It is determined by the agreement or disagreement of the assertion with the facts involved in the assertion. It is determined by the fact of the matter: Does the speaker ever lie?

When you tell the 'truth' it is more of a percentage of truth, rather than the whole truth. An example would be: Plants need soil to survive. Is that true? No, not completely. Rather it is about 90% true, because some plants grow in amongst rocks or in the sand. This discourse in its self is only a percentage of truth. — OpinionsMatter

I'll assume that your botany is correct: In that case, I should say the statement "Plants need soil to survive" is inaccurate and incomplete. If it means "All plants need soil to survive", then it is false. If it means "Some plants need soil to survive" then it is true.

If it means neither, then I suppose it is not a complete assertion. This is one sort of ambiguity that is ruled out of the act of asserting when we learn to speak in conformity with the conventions of predicate logic.

If the world could all agree (on everything) there would be what I would call 'absolute truth'. This would be the climax of truth, a world that it based upon and is nothing, but truth. However, this is merely a fantasy. Disagreement leads to everything being only partially true, and over all I think that finding someone, or something that holds an absolute value of truth is impossible, unless you believe in the Christian God, who is supposedly 'perfect'. — OpinionsMatter

It seems to me as though you are absolutely conflating the concept of truth and the concept of agreement.

Why do you say that disagreement leads to a statement being only partly true? How does disagreement about the truth of a statement reduce or impinge or otherwise offset the "truth" of that statement, on your view?

Truth, in reality, is more of a concept. It's a way of trying to simplify the age old, what's wrong and what's right? Saying that something is truth, however, does not make it right, neither does it make it actual truth. — OpinionsMatter

I don't say that anything "is truth", only that well-formed assertions are true or false.

I agree there is a concept of truth, and perhaps that truth is essentially conceptual in nature -- like quantity and modality, for instance. Much as we use the concept of number to make correct or incorrect judgments about objective states of affairs concerning the number of objects that fall under a concept, so we use the concept of truth to make correct or incorrect judgments about the truth or falsity of statements. But to all appearances, numbers and truth don't exist or emerge in the world apart from their role in minds like ours and in the work of minds like ours.

It's not your pledge, it's not your belief, it's not the belief of others, that makes your assertion true or false. It's rather the facts that correspond or fail to correspond to your assertion. If you've even made an assertion: In some cases an utterance only seems to be an assertion, when on closer inspection it turns out to be nonsense or an incomplete idea.

One of the basic problems with a statement like "there is no absolute truth" (aside from it's self-referentially contradictory nature) is that it's denying logic, in which case you can't use logic to make sense of it. Since reason/logic are our only tools to make actual sense of the world/ideas, the conversation ends right there. Everything said after that is just running around in a maze that has no solution.

Good point. In a universe with no absolute truth, how can you ever judge true from false? Truth looses its meaning so can't even talk about absolute truth.