[size=150]A creatures relativity is a result of limited perspective and limited intelligence. Absolute truth can only be achieved through intelligence and a near infinite amount of input. There are absolute truths but a finite creature cannot fully comprehend them all. That is why we create relativistic generalizations and call them truths.
Thoughts?[/size]
Denial of obvious realities cannot be honestly excused by appeal to perfectionism.
We don’t need to be God to know the truth of reality.
The tree is a tree and we know it is there.
If we tell the officer that the city tree we smashed into might not really be there and so we can’t be held liable for hitting it wrecklessly with our car, we can’t really blame the officer if he chooses to respect the obvious absolute reality of what happened and not participate in our sophisty.
Sabrina valid point., but I wonder in the case of the tree when is a tree a tree and where is the cut off point when it becomes a bush?
I find that the idea of truth is to be ever changing the more i learn and adapt the more my perspective on what i consider truth to be changes, and yes to the most part a spade is a spade but that is only because we agreed as a popuplus to call it a spade and assign certain properties to it but be aware someone else may believe it to be an entirely different item. This is their opinion and who are we to call opinions right or wrong.
In terms of ethics, it is doubtworthy that an omniscient being would see an absolute ethical system. Moral relativities might be an inherent characteristic of morals. It probably stems from what Lynda-Anne said, that sure, we know a tree when we crash into one, but there are grey areas at the edges of the definition, between tree and bush, tree and seed, tree and forest. In morals, a field that relates a number of different such terms, the uncertainty is necessarily greater.
Why do you believe that it would be another way?
Yes that is the point exactly and one of the major problems is that people are ill equipped to make the judgement of where the line is for themselves leaving themselves open to the corruption of other in the face of their good faith.
“Are you sure that’s a tree, officer? You know, officer, that might be a bush I hit and not a tree, and of course that makes all the difference in the world … .”
“Here’s your ticket, Ma’am.”
Clearly, more often than not, it really doesn’t matter. It is what it is, despite what we might biasedly abstract it to be in the moment.
Abstract words do not change concrete realities.
The important thing alluded in the matter topical to this thread is whether we are truly ignorant, merely being dishonest, or are sadly self-deluded.
Most I’ve found here who broach the subject and are adamant about relativity, so to speak, are really just setting the justification stage for their subsequent intentional sophistry of reality denial.
Beware the slippery slope of self-delusion.
Such orients from making epistemology a stand-alone experience divorced from its natural ontological foundation.
And we become lost in such egocentric denials because we’ve endured some difficult concrete and absolute realities we simply are too afraid to face straight on.
So, enter the denial mechanism of relativism mistaken for a lack of awareness and excused with specious appeal to supposed limitations … limitations that are not truly there at all, but arise from our divorce of ontology … a divorce we petitioned because our mind didn’t really want to know the truth of reality our personal ontology provides us.
Everything is opinion.
It is my opinion that the Earth is round and not flat, that the Sun rises in the east not the west, that the Earth orbits the Sun not vice versa, that a human being begins to live at conception not at some plausible denialistically convenient later stage of development of that person’s life, etc.
It is some people’s opinion that the Earth is flat and that a human being doesn’t begin to live until they’re born and that Muslim terrorists really will receive 40 virgins and favor with Allah when they blow themselves to pieces murdering countless others, etc.
Opinions, all.
Some opinions are true … and others aren’t.
So it doesn’t so much matter what are opinions.
What matters is what is true and what isn’t.
The opinons I stated are true.
Those other opinions, obviously and laughably false.
Those of us who base our epistemological knowledge on the firm foundation of our ontology, ontology that contains the truth of “I am” reality, not just our own personal truth of reality but our common human truth of reality, we are the ones to say who is right and who is wrong.
And we will continue to point out right and wrong, accurate and inaccurate, true and false … despite how greatly that irritates those who gave up on their ontology long ago merely to cope with personally difficult realities they couldn’t face and just “couldn’t understand” the why of.
Dont get me wrong i believe that with the infomaton i have seen, heard etc that there are some realities which i will call facts but i do not put all my faith in the “fact” that they will always be called so, but for us to move forward with our decision of right and wrong true and false decisions have to be made as what we will call facts. Iam merely pointing out when i think iam right i am open to the fact that i may be wrong.
Then we are wasting our time in a mass orgy of mental masturbation.
Actually, all the facts are not required to accurately discern reality even en masse.
Facts imply sensed objects in the world outside our skin, percieved, combined, stored cognitively and subsequently presented in action.
Not all the facts can be gathered thusly.
Indeed, the ubiquitous incomplete set of irrelevant facts is often the best we get.
Thankfully we have our intuitition and its most reliable source of information: our ontology which we all possess, accessed by our internal senses which we also all possess.
Our ontology tells us not only about us, not only about others like us, but the basic truths of reality about the fundamental properties of all matter and the meaning of it all to us.
These are major realities, every bit if not more so valuable in this regard than externally gathered facts.
The problem lies not in whether information is there and is discernable.
The problem lies in having 85 percent of the population so fearfully focused on their external senses … that they have no being energy left to focusedly give to their internal senses.
They thus worship the facts … that will never tell them the truth.
A tree is a tree relative only to humans. To anything else, it is not a tree.
It’s still relative.
Objective truths only exist within relative frames of reference.
Question, Sabrina:
Disagreement with you = Self-delusion?
All I knnow is that I don’t know. I feel like I am always searching and searching for the answers and for truth but something inside me is holding me back. Our minds are finite. And though we may absolutly know what the difference between a tree and a bush is, we cannot absolutly know anything about the things we cannot see. We can feel them, like people say they can “feel it in their heart”, but we cannot absolutly know.
So I think your statement is fair and I agree. Unfortunatly. I wish I could know everything.
by the way, I disagree with this concept. The WORD “tree” is only a tree to humans, yes. No other animal except maybe a chimp who can read sign language will recognize and relate the word “tree” with the physical structure. But every animal that climbs up a tree or lives in a tree is aware of its value, texture, being. If animals know of a tree, whether they know the name or not, it is still there and it is a tree. Humans just catagorize it.
Am I completely wrong? That’s how I see it.
There’s a real possibility that animals categorize things differently. For a squirrel, for example, a tree and a house might be the same concept, because they are both above-ground refuge from predators. Different trees may be different concepts, as certain trees fulfill functions that others don’t. So a ‘tree’ does not necessarily exist for animals the same as they do for humans.
I think that is a reference to the relative subjectivity that has been mentioned by sartre. and also a point which i was trying to refer to earlier that the truth which is a concept for the one is not necessarily recognised as a truth for the next person/animal/whatever is viewing the item in question.
I’m not denying the trees existence. I am pointing out the subjective nature of the tree’s existence. As Carleas mentioned, to a squirrel, it’s a house. To a termite, it’s a mansion. To a microbe, it’s an entire world. To us, it’s a tree.
Because every creature has their own limited perspective they have their own view of reality. Physical reality is not universal among every creature. It is hard to imagine seeing the world only in black and white like some creatures. Our own limited perspectives of reality are not the ‘correct’ or ‘incorrect’ way of interpreting the world.
To prove relativity wrong you would only have to prove it to yourself. What makes this post ‘true’ is your opinion about ‘truth.’
I just call that “subjectivity”. 
Although I do believe that some interpretations are more correct and some are less correct.
Sabrina writes as one who has entered and then left her existential crisis.
But if that’s the case, why are you still here?
Don’t you have things to do?
Agreed. If the word “meaning” is to have any “meaning” I think a more correct intepretation of the play Macbeth is that it is specifically about (among other things) the nature of tyrrany, and it is less correct to infer that it is specifically about the Met’s failure to win a pennant last year or about a man’s obsession with fornicating with a goat. Pretty intuitive, I’d say.
It’s pretty easy for anyone who’s ever owned a black and white tv or seen a black and white movie to imagine seeing the entire world in black or white.