Open-mindedness

[MDLarson]

Hmm, I am thinking my point was missed, that's all. I mean, the idea of being able to seize on at least one concrete thing that is true, and sticking to it. It just seems to me that it is impossible to make a discussion simple.

I do believe there are plenty of absolute truths in the world that we can pick up on. If we don't we are just floating around and not really embracing anything. I realize that some here don't have a problem with that, but I guess I do. I don't want to step on toes again, but I just don't think relativism is helpful at all.

Anyway…

 

[RacerX]

said by Matt
I don't want to step on toes again, but I just don't think relativism is helpful at all.

Actually, I think relativism (the concepts and ideas that define it) are exceptionally important. Relativism on an emotional level is the basis for empathy, which plays a paramount role in ethics. Much of Kant's ideals of duty and reason require an empathy for others before making choices. Even the teachings of Jesus place empathy (and therefore relativism) in an important light.

Remember that if you only care about the world as it is seen from your point of view, and discard the points of view of all others, that would be quite selfish and self-centered. You can have core beliefs and core ideals and still act is a selfless, empathetic manner... as long as you accept relativism.

Lets look at a good real life example: Marriage. In a marriage, you are often ask to make choices that effect both you and your spouse. There are times when the effect may not be positive for both of you. If you make all your choices based on what would be positive for you in every situation, then I would consider that a failing marriage. Empathy for your spouse would have you look at three possible effects of any choice. There is how that choice effects you personally, how it effects you spouse personally, and how it effects the family unit collectively. The last one is the centering factor. It keeps you from moving to far from being either selfless or self-centered.

Strangely enough, the idea of relativism also have a large role in nature. Because we want to have some fixed frame of reference, we spent hundreds of years looking for one. We finally decided that the ether in which all things exist must be the fixed frame of reference. So near the end of the 19th century, two scientist (Michelson and Morley) came up with an experiment to measure the speed of the Earth moving through the ether, and what they found changed everything. They discovered that they're experiment was the fixed point in the ether (which was not possible). The bizarre result left people wondering about the make-up of the universe until a mathematician (Lorentz) produced a transformation that explained the results of the Michelson-Morley experiment. A number of years after that a young patent clerk (with a degree in physics equivalent to that of a secondary school physics teacher) took the next step that no one else was willing to take, and married the ideas of Lorentz's transformation with Galileo's postulate of relativity. From that we now know that the only constant is the speed of light (which appears the same from every reference frame). In order for this to work (as discovered in Lorentz's transformation) all aspects of our personal reference frame (space, mass and time) change in order to make the speed of light appear constant relative to that frame.

 

[nkuvu]

Technical quibble. The speed of light is constant in a constant medium. So when it changes media, say from air to glass, it gets diffracted which is what causes rainbows through prisms.

Oh, look over there! Another nit! Let's go get it!

 

[RacerX]

Originally posted by nkuvu
Technical quibble. The speed of light is constant in a constant medium. So when it changes media...

Actually the speed of light constant that I speak of is c=300,000,000 meters per second (the speed of light in a vacuum), the fact that the perpetuation of light waves in media chances does not effect the constant value of c in any given reference frame.

Any other quibbles I can help you with?

 

[nkuvu]

Right. That's what I said. "The speed of light is constant in a constant medium". It's not constant when the medium changes. So it doesn't matter if you're speaking of the speed of light in a vacuum (3x10^8 m/s) or the speed of light in mud (ah, prob'ly about 0x10^8 m/s).

The diffraction part is only used to illustrate that it is not constant for all media.

Any other quibbles I can help you with?

Nope, that's the quibble o' the day.

This post brought to you by the letters C8H10N4O2. (a.k.a. Caffeine!)

 

[RacerX]

I tend to post more desktop shots than anyone, so here is one of mine.

Originally posted by nkuvu
Right. That's what I said. "The speed of light is constant in a constant medium". It's not constant when the medium changes.

The constant c is the same no matter what your reference frame or medium, because c doesn't refer to perpetuation in a medium... it refers to the constant for all reference frames.

This post brought to you by the letters C8H10N4O2. (a.k.a. Caffeine!)

I couldn't tell.

 

[RacerX]

Originally posted by nkuvu
The diffraction part is only used to illustrate that it is not constant for all media.

Hey, would you like to talk about diffraction from a quantum mechanical point of view... it is really quite interesting.

 

[edX]

it seems that this thread is accelerating despite its defraction. apparently none of it is being absorbed.

but to go back to relativism -

Matt, what do you find so frightening about relativism? what is threatening about having no absolutes? or maybe i should say 'what is so frightening about floating around'?

would you rather fix yourself upon a single point of reference for the security of knowing something and then find yourself lost when everything around you has changed, or accept that any point you occupy is capable of flux and then be able to make the necessary calculations and adjustments to act in relationship to the changed relative positions of things? false security or the security (confusion?) of knowing that you will need to constantly gather new info to be safe?

there is an old saying - the more things change, the more things stay the same. once this is accepted then relativism becomes a stable point of focus which provides the ability to deal with the fluctuations.

at any one point in time i am able to ascertain a certain number of truths. In the next moment i may find that many of these have changed. Is it helpful to me to continue to operate under the denial of those changes? once again i would call upon my experiences as a therapist and say that helping people let go of those useless truths is a big part of what therapists do. Also being near the silicon Valley, i can tell you that there is lots of work for therapists working with techies who want the world to work as you describe - full of constants and social equations. If there is such a pattern, it is more likely a fractal type than a linear type.

and when you once again complain that a thread isn't going the way you wanted, is it because we are missing your point or because you are missing others' points? and if it is others who miss yur point, then perhaps all you need to do is present your point a little more clearly. i realize this is a tall order and easier said than done.

 

[RacerX]

I liked the direction the thread was going... what were we talking about again?

 

[Erchems Joyous]

For those who know MDLarson, I am his wife. First of all, I would like to say that Empirical truth and absolute truth are entirely different things. Empirical truth can be proven: i.e. scientific proof, the law of gravity. Absolute truth is "capital T truth" and has to do with things that cannot be scientifically proven, such as whether or not God exists, or if there is intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. I think that these two different kinds of truth need to be kept in mind as we discuss this issue, because they are so different.

We also have different terministic screens through which we see truth. For example, if a friend of mine tells me that she likes my hair, I would take it as a compliment and keep it styled that way. If. on the other hand, someone I don't like or trust says that she likes my hair, I might style it differently. I have different reactions to the same words. Terministic screens also include our personal history and what emotions and perceptions we bring to a situation. All of that said, I believe that there is absolute truth, and as much as we debate it, opinions on this probably will not be changed because of our terministic screens. Perceptions create realities, true or not. The thing we cannot argue about is the fact that there is empirical truth because it can be proven. If I say that gravity exists and show you scientific fact, you cannot reasonably say that it doesn't exist. It is fact.

Thanks for enduring my long-windedness. I just think it's important to understand the kinds of truth we are talking about in order to comprehend a huge and abstract subject like truth.

P.S. In case you're wondering, Matt didn't tell me to post this--I wanted to post it on my own!

 

[RacerX]

First let me say welcome to this forum!

A word about empirical truth if I may. You brought up the law of gravity as an example, which we should look at more closely because it is not that different from your definition of absolute truth. Granted, the effects of gravity appear constant throughout our lives, but the question about the nature of gravity has taken many forms... all within the scientific proof of any given period since Newton. The very terminology for describing gravity is misleading (the phrase force of gravity makes little sense when you understand that gravitation is not a force at all). Our current understanding has changed little in the last 85 years, but there are people who are working on a (hopefully) more complete version that can bring the ideas of gauge theories (which describe the other forces, which are also not forces, of nature) and general relativity together under the same framework.

Another good example would be the nature of our universe. Up to about the 1920's physics had been pushing what was called the Steady State theory. With the data collected by Hubble and a closer inspection of general relativity, the 1930's gave rise to the Big Bang theory. With data collected in the 1970's, Big Bang theory lost favor to the alternative Inflation Cosmology (which I personally have some problems with, because the same information from the 70's data could point to a less messy theory, that cleans up some problems with topological exceptions in the large scale structure of space time... but I digress). Someone who believes in scientific proof would most likely believe the news reports like one I remember from the early 90's that said something like Scientist say Universe is only 9 billion years old. That report was supposed to be based on an article in the journal Nature, but the actual article stated that with only a handful of readings (of a process that takes thousands) researcher say that a ball park figure for the age of the universe can be seen at about 9 billion years (+/- 5 billion), but it is going to take more than ten years to finish the study before any results can be put forward.

The point is that empirical truth requires either active participation or faith in the source. Even then, most science is a work in progress, sorta like guessing what a puzzle is going to look like when it is only half finished. You may get a good overall picture in most places, but many of the details are still missing. And if your source for scientific information doesn't take the time to know what it is they are reporting, then you could just be getting allot of misinformation.

On the topic of your terministic screens, your definition would make it so that only someone without terministic screens would even have a chance at knowing an absolute truth. And seeing as we all seem to have them, yourself included, we really can't possible know of an absolute truth. We all live in a world clouded by emotions, insecurities, misconception, misinformation and/or lack of information. Personally, realizing that, I would say that relativism would be the best course for dealing with life.

 

[nkuvu]

My truth is not your truth, nor is yours mine.



I get lost in all this philosophical talk about truth. Get me going on the nature of intelligence, and I can keep up. But at certain points in the discussion of truth I think to myself "Self, why are you participating in this discussion? These are just opinions about truth."

Ack. Sense make no I. Bed am going I to.

 

[edX]

i also welcome you Joyous. i find this a new wrinkle - a husband and wife tag team. I like it. and your post fit completely on my screen so it doesn't qualify as long in these kinds of discussion.

but 1st let me point out that empirical has nothing to do with proof or disproof. Empirical simply means that something is observable. Look it up in a dictionary. by virtue of being observable a phenomenon may be subjectable to experimentation. experimetation may lead to some sort of proof. RacerX gave a pretty good explanation of that and the fallacies of believing that experimental data delivers anything but temporary relative truths. It helps to be prepared that the next experiment might yield different data.

I also think that RacerX did a wonderful job of associating your escape clause (personal filters) with the very reason we cannot know absolute truths if they do exist. I think this is a variation of what i was arguing earlier.

and it is this 'faith' in the unknowable that is so perplexing. Without stepping all the way to spirituallity yet, let's look at some other things that are not subject to experimentation. When i say there are no ducks in this room, we can observe that and either prove or disprove it. when i say there are no ducks in the world, you can find a duck and disprove me. If I say there are no ducks on Pluto, then you might believe me but in truth neither of us knows for certain. We have not searched every square inch of Pluto to find out. Likewise if i say there are unicorns, you can not disprove i am wrong. not finding a unicorn does not disprove that one might exist somewhere.

now take that understanding with you into the realm of spirituality. No one can disprove the existence of anyone else's 'God'. There are no observable Gods. There are observable actions of 'nature' that we often attribute as the actions of God(s), but in fact we cannot prove or disprove this association. And so we lend our peraonal filters to the task of understanding what we do not know in some way that makes sense with the rest of the world as we know it. and we create our own Truths in the process. We often do this in groups yet somehow those personal filters still keep everyone from agreeing on the absolute Truths. And since no one can prove you are right or wrong in any but relative manner, relative truths are all we ever work with despite the inherent tendencies we have to declare them absolutes and unchangable.

one last side note and i will be done for now - as a social scientist i have been taught the importance of hypothesis testing. Which is to say that it is necessary to hypothesize first and then collect data to see if it is supported. one can support a lot of hypotheses with randomly collected data that contains multiple variables. It is becoming more important to offer more than one hypothesis for any given situation and then test them all individually. this way an experimenter is not already committed to some preconceived notion of the truth. Whichever truth is uncovered will be the one with the most evidence. Even then, more than one hypothisis may be supported by the findings in which case neither is abslutely true. both may contain elements of the truth, but both likely contain fallacies as well. and any 'proven' hypothesis is likely to give way to a new hypothesis and a new truth in the future as we refine our methods. but what do we find most of the time - that nothing is always true and that proven truths are only guides that we must be ready to abandon in the face of individual evidence to the contrary.