Spot on, @Stupidity. I should have been more clear in my first post. I would even say that, given all that, “reality” loses its meaning.
The worst part of being a “relativist” (I never called myself that, but I guess I more or less am one, oh well) is that, sometimes, I think it’s useless to argue with anyone about anything. Everyone has their own perceptions and nothing I can say will convince them, as I don’t see things the way they see. Nevertheless, conversing is one of my favorites, if not my favorite thing to do. Seeing how different people can arrive to different conclusions is magnificent and quite logical once you consider each person has their own “reality”.
Pretty much go on with his life and let you live yours as you please, unlike some absolutists that impose their views on others.
I’ve been waiting all day for @Trofimowen. This post seems like his kind of jam.
Or jelly. Or whatever. Maybe peanut butter.
Here’s the thing @Werbenja. The more certain you are about relativism, the less of a relativist you are. But if you do not believe absolutely in your relativistic philosophy, perhaps you should keep investigating?
It feels rather like apathy or laziness to not search for truth, whatever one’s assumptions may be. IMO, it does not follow from skepticism to simply ignore the possibility of Truth (capital T intended). That comes more from carelessness or defeat than doubt.
I don’t agree. I firmly believe that there’s no absolute truth. Can I prove it? No. Can anyone prove it? Hardly. But I don’t care if other people think there is such a thing as an absolute truth, as a relativist, I know that it can exist for them. If someone comes to me and say “I have found an absolute truth”, I will say “sure, in your perception, it’s absolute”, as contradictory that may sound.
It depends on your level of skepticism. If you’re skeptical about anything being true…
The more I think about it, the more I see Relativism and Absolutism as two exclusive postulates. You can take one or the other and try to explain everything around. Relativism is more boring (boringer?), but also more pacifist. Absolutism is more intense and can cause people to destroy themselves.
All philosophies are flawed in some way.
My evidence for this claim is that there is a criticism section for every page on a type of philosophy on Wikipedia.
Therefore philosophy is a bunch of BS made by people with punchable faces to make their faces more punchable.
Yeah, that’s more or less what I was expecting out of a philosophy debate: realizing that the definition I intuitively came up with for a given term was in fact not correct.
With the added bonus that the whole discussion isn’t in my mother tongue to begin with.
If there’s one thread on the forums where I’m bound to make a fool out of myself, it’s this one.
If one truly believe there’s no absolute truth, isn’t that the logical outcome? If one can’t formulate one’s own rules and principles to follow and believes in pure context, aren’t they bound to adopt the rules and principles of whatever environment they happen to live in at the moment?
Sounds like an awfully convenient way to justify acting like a self-centered asshole and to silence criticism.
I don’t think you realize just how superficial ideological differences are. Your beliefs (political, religious, etc…) are but a tiny fraction of who you are, and no matter how different they are from someone else’s, you and that person still have a lot in common, if only because you’re both human beings.
So, no matter how different your points of view may be, there is still a very real possibility of both of you eventually reaching an understanding and maybe even an agreement, be it total or partial, because you’re both operating from the same baseline logic.
That’s more or less how I feel.
Again, sounds mostly like an excuse for you to ignore opinions you don’t like, even when you can’t actually present any arguments against it.
Or you can do what I did: realize that both absolutism and relativism could only work if I could completely detach myself from all human life, then attempt to formulate my own rules based on observation of the world and logical reasoning.
For example, I know empathy and communication have no absolute value for reality as a whole, but I do believe in their absolute value as base for human society.
Ok, I’m back, sorry for the long wait, I took a few days off of the forums.
Yeah, it’s a human thing, it’s bound to have flaws. Actually, talking about those flaws is philosophy in itself.
Yeah, let’s all make fools out of ourselves.
What do you mean by “pure context”? You mean “context independent of one’s perception”? If so, relativists say that there is no pure context.
That is valid criticism and I have pondered about it many a time. But asserting there is a “reality” and that everyone should live by it can be used to achieve the same goals, i.e., act like an asshole and silence criticism. It’s a human problem, a lot of them like to be assholes and not be criticized.
I do realize. No matter how much I try, I’ll still be very much alike everyone around me. And that’s boring, if you ask me. That’s why trying to be different for the sake of variety is not a bad thing in my book.
Yeah, I assume we (me and the other person I’m talking with) are coming with same logic in mind, but are we really? I’ll never know. But, as I said before, I like to converse, and even knowing that it could go nowhere, I’ll still do it for the rest of my life.
Also, I don’t want to discourage anyone to show me their thoughts. More often than not, people can convince me to think differently. Heck, you yourself did this couple of times in this forum. :P``
I meant in the sense of considering reality as purely contextual, which, again, means you’re bound to live a purely passive life.
That is a recurring problem with all ideologies: anyone can eventually turn them into instruments of domination for their own personal gain.
However, I think you need to look at the dynamics of each ideology: if you base everything on your own perceptions, you’re bound to be more cut off from everything else and self-centered, whereas basing your ideas on the principle of a reality existing outside of your own perceptions forces you to try and go beyond these perceptions and meet the outside world.
I’m not against variety, I’m against closed-off communities, which is becoming an increasingly concerning issue these days.
Chances are, there are going to be similarities: both of you will have an instinct of self-preservation, both of you will divide things between causes and effects, etc…
Of course, there are going to be subtle differences between individuals (in terms of personal concerns, views on life, etc…) but those can generally be discovered through observation.
Why wouldn’t I be able to formulate principles? I do some experiments and with my perception, try to make sense out of them. The thing is, those principles only work for me, as far as I could know. Anyone else is welcome to do the experiments too and get their own conclusions.
Of course, I don’t have time and/or will to experiment everything and I end up relying on others to tell me what their experiments came to. But I would only be certain that the outcome of an experiment is what the other person told me if I did the experiment myself. This way, I can live a pretty active life.
Or I could just be aware that my perceptions can change.
In the end of the 19th century, newtonian mechanics was (capital T) Truth. Tell any physicist of the time that it wasn’t and they’d say you were talking nonsense. It didn’t take much time for some experiments to show that newtonian mechanics wasn’t describing nature as expected. A lot of those physicists couldn’t accept that their beloved theory was failing, some even said that the experiments weren’t conducted correctly. The rest of the physics community moved on, trying to find new theories. And they did find it: Quantum Field Theory (QFT) is the best we got so far. As soon as QFT starts to fail (it kinda already is failing, it doesn’t include Einstein’s gravity), we throw that out too and find a new theory.
All that my theories need to do is “to save the appearances” (don’t know if that’s the right term, it’s salvar as aparências in portuguese). As long as they describe what my perceptions tell me, they’re fine. If my perceptions, for some reason, change, I change my theories too. Are they describing reality? I dunno.
This way, I have no need to believe in (in your words) a reality existing outside of my own perceptions. Therefore, I don’t.
Agreed, you can be different, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t talk to people who are not like you.
The essay will need a participant to put their thoughts into one paragraph and go through solving situations.
The first person starts with the issues.
I mean, how is an essay to be known if we don’t know what we are creating. How much problems or something that we have in order to make more… (I declare rather than question in this one.)
