Objective Truth Doesn't Matter: A twist on truth based relativism
Introduction
So this is a philosophy that I hold strongly, I don't really claim it to be a brand new or original philosophy but I have noticed when I tell people it I find it is often quite controversial. Still, it is a strongly held philosophy of mine. For context my background is in Physics and Computer Science.
The Objective Truth
The first part of this philosophy is that the objective truth doesn't matter, whether it exists or not doesn't even matter. To explain how this could possibly be we need to create a theoretical model of the universal system. For instance, we can consider whether the universe is rational (that is, follows a consistent logic) and whether it is axiomatic (that is the universe has a fundamental set of unprovable rules). Now if the universe is not rational that means the concept of objective truth goes into question completely, you can very easily have a non-rational coincidental universe with no objective truth and just fully subjective experiences that, just by coincidence, happen to align. Or perhaps you have only have one, or no, perspectives on the universe and it doesn't exist, but does, etc, etc. Now if the universe is rational it is either axiomatic or not, if it is not axiomatic then that could imply you could prove everything in the universe, in which case I agree my philosophy does not hold. But until such a non-axiomatic system is shown to exist in this universe I am going to make the assumption that the universe, like all practical logical systems, is axiomatic.
Now if the universe is axiomatic and we live in this universe I believe it is shown that we cannot prove any truth within this universe. Now importantly when I say prove, I mean to say with absolute certainty, not "something is likely true" but I will get to that later. To demonstrate why we can't prove anything, in order to prove something you need a basis of logical steps, following logical rules, in order to come to that conclusion. These logical steps or logical rules must either be proven themselves in order to complete the proof, or be axioms in which case no proof exists as it is a fundamental building block of the system. The problem is because we did not create the universe and merely live within the universe, we cannot tell whether a rule is an axiom or simply assumed. If it is assumed then the proof is not a valid proof. There is no way to tell what the universal axioms are, you may always discover further and further deeper rules, even if a God came down and told us what the axioms were, they could always be a false God who lies. The only way to know the axioms of the universe is to be the one to define it and we did not define our universe. And no, before you ask, "being unable to prove an axiom" is not an absolute truth, there is always room for me to be wrong!
Now the problem is if we have no way to verify whether a truth is absolutely correct, how can we have any method to prove that a truth is even somewhat correct, or even incorrect. After all, the statement "this truth is 80% likely" is itself a candidate for a truthful statement that, given the above paragraph, itself cannot be proven! There is no way to have any certainty of any kind of statement about the true objective universe, because any statement cannot be certainly proven. Now you may have qualms about this, such as "what about mathematical statements?", I'll talk about those later in the common criticisms section, so you'll just have to be patient! But what this says to me, is that the objective truth is entirely irrelevant, because nothing can ever be proven about it. Even it's existence is irrelevant, whether an objective truth exists or not does not change anything about how the universe could operate.
Now you may say this is absurd, because clearly some things are true right? Clearly the Earth is round, clearly the sun rose yesterday, clearly I exist. I mean, you said you had a background in physics right? But yet you reject the whole notion of evidence and objectivity! How does that make sense? It makes sense only when you reframe the entire notion of what truth is.
The Relative Truth
What is a relative truth? What I mean here is something different from what people often call "subjectivity", because subjectivity implies things where the subject are aware that their statements are opinion based. Subjectivity is based on belief, with a general understanding that one could be wrong, but relative truth is a little stronger than a simple belief. A relative truth is something that is unequivocally and obviously true within a certain frame of reference. I'll give you an example, suppose you were stabbed and then you felt pain, it is a relative truth within your reference frame that you are feeling pain right now. You do not need to question the concept that you are feeling pain, it is obvious and evident that you are experiencing pain. But, to the person who stabbed you, that is no longer obvious, their value system may indicate that yes it's very likely you are feeling pain, but maybe you're on drugs, or have a medical condition that means you don't feel pain, or maybe you don't exist. There is uncertainty outside of your own frame of reference on whether you feel pain, even though it is absolutely certain WITHIN your frame of reference that you are feeling pain (or at least experiencing something that is akin to pain).
Now a belief is a weaker form of answers or truth that exists within a reference frame. A belief is sorta a hypothesis or theory that could be based on relative truths, but it's more encompassing because there could be uncertainty about validity of the belief. For example, this entire philosophy is my belief, it is not quite a relative truth because it is not self-evident, it requires thinking and consideration on my part and I admit that I could be wrong. Sometimes, beliefs can become relative truths if someone is so absolutely and unequivocally sure about the truth of a belief that there is no room for doubt, that belief becomes a relative truth. The important thing about relative truths is that they are ABSOLUTELY true within the reference frame they are relative to. From our perspective the closest we can get to a true truth of the universe is a relative truth, these relative truths are "the sun rose yesterday", they are evident and are the strongest sources of truth we have access to.
But, you may be asking, if relative truths are the strongest form of truth does that mean everything goes? You know, someone says grass is a green and another says grass is invisible, are they both equally correct? After all, you can only judge truth based on the reference frame that it is in and so if the person who said the grass was invisible truly was certain about it, doesn't that make their truth as equally valid as the person who says the grass is green? What's the point in making statements about anything under this philosophy? Well this is where I introduce the twist I was talking about.
Now a belief is a weaker form of answers or truth that exists within a reference frame. A belief is sorta a hypothesis or theory that could be based on relative truths, but it's more encompassing because there could be uncertainty about validity of the belief. For example, this entire philosophy is my belief, it is not quite a relative truth because it is not self-evident, it requires thinking and consideration on my part and I admit that I could be wrong. Sometimes, beliefs can become relative truths if someone is so absolutely and unequivocally sure about the truth of a belief that there is no room for doubt, that belief becomes a relative truth. The important thing about relative truths is that they are ABSOLUTELY true within the reference frame they are relative to. From our perspective the closest we can get to a true truth of the universe is a relative truth, these relative truths are "the sun rose yesterday", they are evident and are the strongest sources of truth we have access to.
But, you may be asking, if relative truths are the strongest form of truth does that mean everything goes? You know, someone says grass is a green and another says grass is invisible, are they both equally correct? After all, you can only judge truth based on the reference frame that it is in and so if the person who said the grass was invisible truly was certain about it, doesn't that make their truth as equally valid as the person who says the grass is green? What's the point in making statements about anything under this philosophy? Well this is where I introduce the twist I was talking about.
The Collective Truth
Reference frames are not restricted to, well, anything in particular. A reference frame does not have to be about something that is conscious or capable of experiencing the world. A reference frame doesn't even have to actually exist in the physical world, it could be entirely made up! And importantly a reference frame does not have to be a single agent, or a single thing, it can represent a collection of things. This is where we introduce the idea of the collective truth.
While you can have a relative truth for an individual, you can also have a relative truth for a collection of individuals. A collective relative truth is one that is absolutely true for all individuals within that collection. For instance the statement "the sun rose yesterday" is a relative truth to the set of all people who were able to experience, or are absolutely certain of, the sun rising yesterday. Again though, I want to stress, that collective truths are not the same as objective truths, they do not claim to be true without any reference frame or even outside of those collective reference frames, only true within.
This is where the concept of understanding an "objective" universe comes into play. Really, under my philosophy, what we are trying to establish is a universe in which the entire set (or at leas the largest possible subset) of all of humanity agree on. Observation, for instance, is simply identifying an experience that is a relative truth to everyone (or almost everyone). So something like the sun exists and shines on earth, is very clearly a strong relative truth for (almost) all of humanity, and even if someone lived in a cave all their life, if we had them exit the cave and show them the sun, they would establish (we think) the same relative truth.
Now again, belief works the same way as before, it is simply a weaker form of relative truth, but it can exist within collective reference frames as well. This is where the whole concept of moral relativism comes from, societies are simply a collection of reference frames that follow (at least mostly) the same belief.
Why this matters
While you can have a relative truth for an individual, you can also have a relative truth for a collection of individuals. A collective relative truth is one that is absolutely true for all individuals within that collection. For instance the statement "the sun rose yesterday" is a relative truth to the set of all people who were able to experience, or are absolutely certain of, the sun rising yesterday. Again though, I want to stress, that collective truths are not the same as objective truths, they do not claim to be true without any reference frame or even outside of those collective reference frames, only true within.
This is where the concept of understanding an "objective" universe comes into play. Really, under my philosophy, what we are trying to establish is a universe in which the entire set (or at leas the largest possible subset) of all of humanity agree on. Observation, for instance, is simply identifying an experience that is a relative truth to everyone (or almost everyone). So something like the sun exists and shines on earth, is very clearly a strong relative truth for (almost) all of humanity, and even if someone lived in a cave all their life, if we had them exit the cave and show them the sun, they would establish (we think) the same relative truth.
Now again, belief works the same way as before, it is simply a weaker form of relative truth, but it can exist within collective reference frames as well. This is where the whole concept of moral relativism comes from, societies are simply a collection of reference frames that follow (at least mostly) the same belief.
Why this matters
I've gotten a few comments about this philosophy, either it is crazy and totally does not align to reality or that it is self-evident and has no practical use to how people live their lives. I want to address both of these points in this section.
First I want to tackle the "it's crazy" idea. The general motivation of this comment is mostly that if nothing is objectively true and only merely relative truths, then what is the point of trying to argue anything? What's the point in having a belief if there's no real truth? And my argument is that having no "real" truth gives much MORE reason to spread a belief. Because a belief that everyone is certain of BECOMES the real truth, or at least the closest thing you can get to the real truth. The collective truth of all of humanity is likely to be the most important truth that humanity can ever get, it's not an objective truth, the truth vanishes when humanity vanishes, but on purely practical terms it is the highest form of truth humanity will ever interact with (unless, you know, aliens exist or something).
So spreading your belief and convincing other reference frames of your belief increases the size of the set of reference frames that hold that belief. If you were to increase that size to all of humanity, you would have established a powerful collective belief, and if you had made all of humanity certain of that belief, then you would have established the highest possible truth humanity can experience. There is significant motivation to spread a belief in this system, because you can define the truth.
Now for the other argument, what's the whole point of this philosophy? What does it change? To me, this philosophy changes my perspective on how I deal with the concept of truth or fact. To me, it leaves always room for doubt, and even if I have a very strong belief (for instance, this philosophy!) I am always open to the idea that I could be wrong. That is a more practical view but if I'm completely honest this philosophy holds, to me, just a consistent model of how the universe operates. Does it have to be beneficial? No, it's just the way things are, but even so I think (from the aforementioned point), it can be beneficial.
Criticisms
So this is just a random grab-bag of criticisms to this theory I've heard and my counter points to them.
What about mathematics?: So the argument here is that Mathematical truths are self evident to anyone, for instance "1+1=2" is true whether or not someone believes in it right? Now if you've been paying attention you may actually be able to answer this question for yourself based on the text above, but there are two points I mentioned.
1. The reason why we cannot prove objective truth in our universe is because we do not know the axioms that the universe were created with.
1. The reason why we cannot prove objective truth in our universe is because we do not know the axioms that the universe were created with.
2. Reference frames can be things that DON'T actually exist!
The reason Mathematical truths skirt around the whole notion is because they are actually relative truths, disguised as absolute truths, it's just that they are relative to the VIRTUAL reference frames of the mathematics itself, and are objective WITHIN those reference frames because they are defined axiomatically.
To give you an example that better illustrates my point. Suppose you said "imagine a world where a man had a red shit, is it true that this man has a red shirt?", is the answer always yes? Well, what you've done is given a reference frame and asked about the truth of something WITHIN that reference frame, this made up world that you created. You are then able to determine what the truth is within this reference frame by following the logic within that reference, that is that the mans shirt is red, and so clearly you can answer yes. But the answer is only yes within this made up world you've created, when you ask it to someone you not only hand them the question, but the entire universe that the question belongs in. I call these "virtual" reference frames. And while we can determine the truth of the statement within that virtual reference frame, we cannot determine the truth outside of that virtual reference frame. And indeed if you were to ask that question to someone and they disagreed with the premise, that there is a world where the man's shirt was red or that the man's shirt wasn't really red in this world (even though you stated it), then they could very rightly have an answer that is not yes.
Now mathematics is a tricky example because the validity of mathematics is a very large belief (or even relative truth) to a vast majority of humanity. So we have something that is at the highest echelon of possible truth to humanity, and is also a virtual reference frame that can (provided anyone agrees with the premise) always be true within the mathematical reference frame. So it makes sense that people sees this as the most powerful of truths. But it's important to remember, despite the fact it seems very truthful, it is not actually a proven objective truth that mathematics applies to our universe. There could be for instance, a very minor error that is almost entirely unnoticeable, but still exists, that causes the logic of our universe to ever-so-slightly differ from the logic of mathematics. In fact, quantum mechanics suggests that there are minima amounts of certainty that one can have about the mathematical value of any physical properties, so these errors could certainly exist within a common physical framework!
Is this philosophy an objective truth? This is the classic "If everything is relative, is relativity relative?". Again though, I think if you read the first section you'll already realize the answer, it doesn't matter. This philosophy does not attempt to try and put any assertion of the nature of the objective truth, whether it exists or not, or what it could be, rather it simply says the objective truth is entirely irrelevant. So is this philosophy objectively true? Yes, no, it doesn't make a difference, the only way we can actually experience truth is through relative truths. Now in my own reference frame this philosophy is NOT a relative truth because I am NOT absolutely certain about it, and I think if anyone truly believed in this philosophy they would also have to have some level of uncertainty about the philosophy itself. But that to me is ok, it's ok to doubt.
But everyone has shared experiences, doesn't that prove an objective truth? No, it doesn't prove an objective truth. If you provide that the universe is rational, and thus has a consistent logic, then being able to make predictions on future events and seeing things obey the same actions given certain stimuli certainly implies that you are gaining to an actual logic. But there are assumptions here, that the universe IS rational, that you ARE observing these events, and none of these are proven, so the whole concept is still not proven. Now, some people would say that it is simply absurd that the universe could be anything but rational and objective and look, I sympathise, to me it is also absurd. My own belief is that indeed the universe probably DOES have some kind of objective truth. But I also hold the belief that, well, it's possible it might not, and even if it didn't the way the universe worked would be completely unchained. Just because something is weird, does not mean it's false.
Again, with this philosophy I am not trying to say an objective truth doesn't exist, I am only trying to say it doesn't change anything whether it does or doesn't. All we can really model of the universe is our relative truths.
Conclusion
So that's my philosophy. I don't know if it's particularly novel, I have talked with a bunch of people about it and it seems like a lot of people are quite surprised by it, but it could just be the wording that ticks people off, I don't know. I formed this philosophy when studying physics. I am autistic and I had difficult understanding or accepting other people's points of view. To me, the concept of relativity was absolutely foreign and dumb, things exist, and people who disagree with that are wrong. Then I studied Einstein's theory of relativity and that changed things.
The whole concept of Einstein's theory of relativity is that, for some properties, there really isn't a solid defined truth. Sure, you can come up with concepts like proper time, but regardless different reference frames will see things differently and for all intents and purposes, will experience those things differently. Something moving fast will see something stationary as moving fast and in slow motion, the stationary thing will also see the thing that's moving fast as moving fast and in slow motion, both things move in slow motion relative to each other, so what's the real answer here? Well, there isn't really one.
I guess seeing that concept in physics, something I held very dear, opened me up to the idea of others peoples views and perspectives. Yeah, maybe I ran a little wild with it for some people's liking, but I think it is consistent and it has helped me become a much more friendly and understanding person. I've experienced a great many awesome things, from different people, by keeping an open mind, and this philosophy helps me keep my mind open.
The whole concept of Einstein's theory of relativity is that, for some properties, there really isn't a solid defined truth. Sure, you can come up with concepts like proper time, but regardless different reference frames will see things differently and for all intents and purposes, will experience those things differently. Something moving fast will see something stationary as moving fast and in slow motion, the stationary thing will also see the thing that's moving fast as moving fast and in slow motion, both things move in slow motion relative to each other, so what's the real answer here? Well, there isn't really one.
I guess seeing that concept in physics, something I held very dear, opened me up to the idea of others peoples views and perspectives. Yeah, maybe I ran a little wild with it for some people's liking, but I think it is consistent and it has helped me become a much more friendly and understanding person. I've experienced a great many awesome things, from different people, by keeping an open mind, and this philosophy helps me keep my mind open.
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