Absolute Truth

On of the great things that post-modernism gives us is the clear understanding that we all see subjectively, thus simple absolute statements are seldom true. For example there are exceedingly few cases where one thing is always better than another. Consider, for example, the statement “pain is bad”. This seems agreeable, however pain is useful for education, not least in teaching us to survive. So, post-modernism teaches us to be more nuanced in our approach to truth.

Some will say that because of the difficulties with absolutes there cannot be any. That is silly¹. Consider, for example, gravity. Gravity is hard to understand and makes flying difficult, however birds fly. Thus one might conclude that gravity is not absolute, it applies to us and not to birds. I suppose this is a fair approach, as far as it goes. It allows us to make sense of the world, however it can stifle our exploration. Moreover see how it has proved wrong by those who believe in a consistent universe (scientists especially).

How then do we combat the significant problems in finding an absolute truth? One approach is to be like an engineer who says “I do not understand this, but I have data from which I can make an approximation.” This approach works very well. Indeed engineers built computers and rockets before really understanding the details of the physics.

However it is foolish, and dishonest, to call the approximation truth. Moreover it is very important to put bounds on the cases when the approximation is valid, saying: “My approximation works to explain this phenomenon when this condition is met, but if it is not met, my approximation is not valid.” Thus when living by approximation (existentialism) do not claim that your approximation is complete. It may be better than another, but is not complete. Indeed it is the very knowledge of the difficulty of the absolute that drove us to approximate in the first place.

Again, living by approximation, honestly, means re-evaluating its validity when new experiences present themselves. An alternative is accepting error in the approximation. This means that we should be exceedingly careful when asserting that someone else’s claim on the nature of reality, truth, is wrong. This becomes difficult when we radically disagree with one another, it is not reasonable, though it is nice, to just say the agreement doesn’t matter and we are both correct ². If the two approximations both claim to be valid and strongly disagree there are only two possibilities: wither one of them is correct and the other not, or both are wrong. They cannot both be correct. Don’t do with morals what you would not do with physics and call yourself rational.

As far as gaining understanding purely through ourselves and observation we have seen that there are two approaches to knowing the substance of objective reality. One is to ignore it completely, the other is to build approximations of, hopefully, increasing accuracy.

There is, however, another possible way to gain knowledge. It is for something outside or above our reality (or else it would be subject to the same limitations) to show the nature of reality to us.

Indeed this is what every sensible religion claims. They claim that some revelation has been imparted to humanity from beyond humanity (not necessarily from God) as to the true nature of reality, and that this has been recorded, in word or deed, for us to understand.

But this brings us back to the problem of knowing which of these truths, if any, are correct. We are not completely without tools here: we can treat these revelations as we treated our approximations and see their limitations. Note again that it is silly to say that they are all valid in their entirety, that they are all facets of the same higher truth, While this is nice to say, in that it avoids argument, it is irrational because many claim exclusivity. Indeed by claiming to be a revelation you are, implicitly, claiming some exclusivity. Our first tool is comparing the statements of the revelation with the data available to us.

Another tool at our disposal is self consistency. If the revelation itself says conflicting things surely it cannot, accurately, capture reality, it must be merely an approximation. And if it is merely a collection of approximations we find ourselves back with the original question, but on a micro level: which parts are true and which are not?

Here I must present a warning. We must be careful when setting ourselves as arbiters of the truth in revelation. If we rely too much on ourselves and not on the revelation itself, then the revelation may as well not be a revelation at all. It is sapped of its uniqueness and we are back to approximations. Additionally it is easy to see, though inconvenient to admit, that we are not very consistent in our own rationality. Moreover we are highly susceptible to believing what we want to believe and not what is inconvenient to us. Is this not the very reason for police? To enforce behaviours in spite of personal conviction.

Thus when engaging with revelations, or statements claiming to be revelation, we need to be careful. By their very nature revelations claim to be beyond us, so we cannot expect to fully understand or agree with them. That is to say our approach must be to believe one first and then to apply reason. This does not preclude reason. Indeed a revelation about the nature of reality should help us understand more about reality, not less. Thus the revelation we accept becomes a lens through which we see the world, the basis on which we reason and act³.

When disagreeing with a revelation there are two possibilities: either it is not a true revelation or I do not understand what the revelation means. Bear in mind the complexities of absolutes and how nuanced they must be. As such calling a revelation out as false based on apparent self contradictions must be done with care.

If you find a revelation that answers all of there, chances are that it will have strong implications for how you should live. Chances are you will find this inconvenient. The temptation will be to water the revelation down and only accept (believe) the convenient consequences. However that is being dishonest with yourself and irrational.

I expect that the most common reason for not accepting an absolute truth is not one of reason, but one of personal convenience. If you consider yourself rational and honest with yourself I charge you to carefully examine what you alive for ideals based on personal convenience.

Criticising myself:

I am not saying that all who say there is no absolute are silly. Rather, I am saying that those who say that an absolute is difficult and therefore impossible are silly. Check yourself: do you deny an absolute because it is inconvenient or for some more rational reason?↩︎
We could both be correct if the bounds of validity of our approximations overlap very little, see for example the collection of approximations for the minor pressure losses due to the surface roughness in pipes for an example of this.↩︎
This is often true of our approximations too.↩︎
I do not know how important this one is.↩︎