A question of absolutes

[Hero in a half shell]

The only absolute statement that I believe in, is that there are absolutely no absolute statements or opinions. There are absolutes in mathematics and science, but that is more or less irrelevant for this topic. I just want to talk about what people think or say.

You can't believe absolutely that absoluteness does not exist, especially since you actually state the exceptions straight after: the established absolute Scientific principles that have been proven beyond reasonable doubt.

The statement "there are no absolutes" is inherently flawed because
a) It is in itself an absolute, therefore by it's definition it cannot exist,
b) There are undeniable exceptions that disprove the statement, already mentioned in this thread.

 

[The_Great_Galendo]

If we can get away from killing babies (for the record, I'm on the 'killing babies is universally bad, but sometimes preferable to the alternative' side -- being bad doesn't mean that there aren't worse things out there), I'd just like to point out that sometimes people go for absolutes because one or the other of them has to be correct, while the 'grey' option is certainly wrong.

For instance, the original post cited "god exists" and "god does not exist" (sic) as two absolute opinions, presenting the idea that maybe God exists and maybe He doesn't as a preferable option. And maybe it is. But the fact remains that, for any given definition of 'God', either
a) God exists, or
b) God does not exist.
One of those two statements is true. I don't claim to know which one, but I can say without a shadow of doubt that one of them is true. On the other hand, the statement
c) God maybe exists and maybe doesn't exist
is certainly wrong. He either does or He doesn't. No maybe about it.

Plus, it's a lot easier to say "God exists" than to say, "By my experiences and reasoning, I have been convinced to a very large degree of certainty that it is rather more likely that God exists than that He does not." The former sort of implies the latter to most reasoning individuals, and it's a lot less of a mouthful.

 

[RJ 17]

I similarly think most things are grey areas. Most. But here are a few exceptions.

All rape is bad.
All slavery is bad.
Human genocide is bad.

Now here's a disclaimer: the following is me purely playing devil's advocate here. What follows does not represent my actual way of thinking.

1: "What if the rapee is a submissive masochist and actually enjoys what the rapist is doing? Perhaps to the point of wanting it to happen again?"

2: "What if, as in the case of Mass Effect 2, someone willingly sells themself into slavery to pay off a debt and avoid a harsher punishment of some kind?"

3: "What if there were a warmongering culture that could not be bargained with and had a massive army that threatened other peaceful nations with absolute destruction, presenting a scenario of "wipe them out or they'll wipe you out"?" An example bein the Nazis.

Edit: The problem with discussing absolutes is that they are paradoxical in nature. Indeed in the realms of math and science there are absolutes. According to basic math: 2+2=4. Always has, always will. But taken out of the realms of math and science, absolutes become a paradox. "There are no absolutes in life", as the OP says, is an absolute statement. Therefore the statement negates itself. Yet in proving that not even the statement itself can be correct, the statement proves itself to be correct. That's the paradox at the core of the situation here.

 

[Torrasque]

The only absolute statement that I believe in, is that there are absolutely no absolute statements or opinions. There are absolutes in mathematics and science, but that is more or less irrelevant for this topic. I just want to talk about what people think or say.

You can't believe absolutely that absoluteness does not exist, especially since you actually state the exceptions straight after: the established absolute Scientific principles that have been proven beyond reasonable doubt.

The statement "there are no absolutes" is inherently flawed because
a) It is in itself an absolute, therefore by it's definition it cannot exist,
b) There are undeniable exceptions that disprove the statement, already mentioned in this thread.

My absolute statement that there are no absolute statements or opinions is kind of a joke, I'm sorry you took it so seriously.
I made sure to say right away that I am not counting scientific and mathematical absolutes because those obviously exist. Ignoring these absolutes, we can adress the absolute opinions that I wanted this thread to be about.

 

[Something Amyss]

Killing a baby is not always wrong.

Lets say the aliens in Alien actually exist, and we somehow manage to kill all of them except one. A baby.
Would killing that baby be wrong?

I meant baby to mean an infant human. I've noticed science fiction gets invoked pretty quickly in these sorts of conversations though.

Ok, so a guy says he'll torch an orphanage unless you kill a single baby. You don't know how many babies are in the orphanage, but there are a lot, many more than that single baby. There is no "save them both" option and he won't laugh then torch the orphanage anyways.

That doesn't make it "not wrong" so much as the lesser of two evils.

 

[Something Amyss]

Personally, I believe in things to the best of my knowledge and capacity more than "absolutely."

However, I will still defend things like child pornography being bad actively because they are bad to the best of my knowledge and capacity.

 

[Torrasque]

If we can get away from killing babies (for the record, I'm on the 'killing babies is universally bad, but sometimes preferable to the alternative' side -- being bad doesn't mean that there aren't worse things out there), I'd just like to point out that sometimes people go for absolutes because one or the other of them has to be correct, while the 'grey' option is certainly wrong.

For instance, the original post cited "god exists" and "god does not exist" (sic) as two absolute opinions, presenting the idea that maybe God exists and maybe He doesn't as a preferable option. And maybe it is. But the fact remains that, for any given definition of 'God', either
a) God exists, or
b) God does not exist.
One of those two statements is true. I don't claim to know which one, but I can say without a shadow of doubt that one of them is true. On the other hand, the statement
c) God maybe exists and maybe doesn't exist
is certainly wrong. He either does or He doesn't. No maybe about it.

Plus, it's a lot easier to say "God exists" than to say, "By my experiences and reasoning, I have been convinced to a very large degree of certainty that it is rather more likely that God exists than that He does not." The former sort of implies the latter to most reasoning individuals, and it's a lot less of a mouthful.

I was really careful to avoid your (c) statement, if I included it above, I blame tiredness. It is not supposed to be in my original post because like you said, it is certainly wrong. A better statement would be "God exists or god doesn't exist" because it is finite and doesn't have that "maybe".

And yes, the first "god exists" is much easier to say than the second but if questioned, someone that believes in god should be able to support their belief. If they cannot, then there are other problems inherent.

 

[Torrasque]

I similarly think most things are grey areas. Most. But here are a few exceptions.

All rape is bad.
All slavery is bad.
Human genocide is bad.

Now here's a disclaimer: the following is me purely playing devil's advocate here. What follows does not represent my actual way of thinking.

1: "What if the rapee is a submissive masochist and actually enjoys what the rapist is doing? Perhaps to the point of wanting it to happen again?"

2: "What if, as in the case of Mass Effect 2, someone willingly sells themself into slavery to pay off a debt and avoid a harsher punishment of some kind?"

3: "What if there were a warmongering culture that could not be bargained with and had a massive army that threatened other peaceful nations with absolute destruction, presenting a scenario of "wipe them out or they'll wipe you out"?" An example bein the Nazis.

Edit: The problem with discussing absolutes is that they are paradoxical in nature. Indeed in the realms of math and science there are absolutes. According to basic math: 2+2=4. Always has, always will. But taken out of the realms of math and science, absolutes become a paradox. "There are no absolutes in life", as the OP says, is an absolute statement. Therefore the statement negates itself. Yet in proving that not even the statement itself can be correct, the statement proves itself to be correct. That's the paradox at the core of the situation here.

I love you, no homo.

I couldn't have said better myself
I have tried several times (as you can see) but you just did it better.

 

[Froggy Slayer]

Only a Sith deals in absolutes....

What? Someone had to say it.

 

[WoW Killer]

The difference between your "killing a baby is bad" and my "killing a single baby is still bad, but the byproduct of that action creates good that out-weighs the bad" is that I would kill the baby because in this circumstance, it can be seen as a good action.

I should say for the record I am mostly in agreement with Utilitarianism (particularly in an Epicurean sense of happiness and suffering). But I contend that even by that there are still certain absolutes. Even with the consequence being the measure, there is simply no discernable consequence of a baby living that would outweigh the bad in killing that baby (is that still technically moral absolutism? I'm not entirely sure). In the example, the orphanage burning is not actually a consequence of the baby living, it is a consequence of the bad guy's actions. The baby itself does no harm.

Edit: The problem with discussing absolutes is that they are paradoxical in nature. Indeed in the realms of math and science there are absolutes. According to basic math: 2+2=4. Always has, always will. But taken out of the realms of math and science, absolutes become a paradox. "There are no absolutes in life", as the OP says, is an absolute statement. Therefore the statement negates itself. Yet in proving that not even the statement itself can be correct, the statement proves itself to be correct. That's the paradox at the core of the situation here.

What you've done here is demonstrated that the statement "There are no absolutes in life" is paradoxical. Can you demonstrate similarly that the statement "There exist absolutes in life" is paradoxical? If not, that does tend to support one side rather than the other

 

[RJ 17]

Edit: The problem with discussing absolutes is that they are paradoxical in nature. Indeed in the realms of math and science there are absolutes. According to basic math: 2+2=4. Always has, always will. But taken out of the realms of math and science, absolutes become a paradox. "There are no absolutes in life", as the OP says, is an absolute statement. Therefore the statement negates itself. Yet in proving that not even the statement itself can be correct, the statement proves itself to be correct. That's the paradox at the core of the situation here.

What you've done here is demonstrated that the statement "There are no absolutes in life" is paradoxical. Can you demonstrate similarly that the statement "There exist absolutes in life" is paradoxical? If not, that does tend to support one side rather than the other

Ahhhh but by changing the wording you've completely changed the meaning. Your statement is no longer an absolute. "There exist absolutes in life." is not, itself, an absolute statement. It's simply mentioning the fact that there are some absolutes that exist in life. For your statement to become an absolute (and therefore relevant to the context here) it would have to be worded as "All things that exist are absolutes" which is not a paradox, it's just a statement that can easily be proven wrong.

Edit: Beyond that, even if it were worded as an absolute, it still wouldn't be a paradox because it doesn't negate itself with it's own meaning. Saying "Everything is an absolute" is making an absolute statement, therefor showing the correctness of the statement. What proves the statement wrong is someone simply coming up with something that isn't absolute.

Don't really know what you're getting at here, but there's a response for you.

 

[dwharmon]

Right and Wrong are absolutes. Just because a situation has a negative outcome doesn't necessarily mean it was the WRONG outcome. Using, the example of the single child or the orphanage, obviously the survival of the orphanage (with all its children) has priority over the one child. It isn't easy to pick the lesser of two evils but nobody ever said that doing the right thing was easy.

Of course, hindsight plays a big role in all of this as well. It is incredibly difficult to validate one's actions without having some idea of what the long-term consequences will be.

 

[WoW Killer]

Ahhhh but by changing the wording you've completely changed the meaning. Your statement is no longer an absolute. "There exist absolutes in life." is not, itself, an absolute statement. It's simply mentioning the fact that there are some absolutes that exist in life. For your statement to become an absolute (and therefore relevant to the context here) it would have to be worded as "All things that exist are absolutes" which is not a paradox, it's just a statement that can easily be proven wrong.

"There exists" is a formal quantifier in predicate logic [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predicate_logic] (the other being "For all"). "There exists x such that R(x)" is equivalent to "¬For all x, ¬R(x)" ("¬" meaning "not").

Let A(x) be "x is absolute". Your statement ("There are no absolutes in life") is

"For all x, ¬A(x)".

The converse is

"¬For all x, ¬A(x)",

which is the same as

"There exists x such that A(x)".

 

[BehattedWanderer]

If, as you say, we're not talking about empirical constants of the universe, things that are pretty much inarguably definite, with hundreds of years of study and observation by many different perspectives finding congruent results, then there are very few things which I've found to be absolute. Mostly, because anything not a constant, or a direct product of applied mathematics isn't, or can't, be objective, and almost by definition can't be absolute. The only one I've got, really, is that there is no justification, whatsoever, for rape. None. No man, no god can change my mind on that one. Pretty much anything else can be justified.

 

[RJ 17]

Ahhhh but by changing the wording you've completely changed the meaning. Your statement is no longer an absolute. "There exist absolutes in life." is not, itself, an absolute statement. It's simply mentioning the fact that there are some absolutes that exist in life. For your statement to become an absolute (and therefore relevant to the context here) it would have to be worded as "All things that exist are absolutes" which is not a paradox, it's just a statement that can easily be proven wrong.

"There exists" is a formal quantifier in predicate logic [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predicate_logic] (the other being "For all"). "There exists x such that R(x)" is equivalent to "¬For all x, ¬R(x)" ("¬" meaning "not").

Let A(x) be "x is absolute". Your statement ("There are no absolutes in life") is

"For all x, ¬A(x)".

The converse is

"¬For all x, ¬A(x)",

which is the same as

"There exists x such that A(x)".

Alright my friend, I'm more than willing to have this debate/conversation with you (not now as I've got to get back to work), but please try rephrasing that last post of yours using words rather than math. I'm an English major and I made it to College Algerbra and that's about it. Because all I can tell you as an English major is that your quote of "There exist absolutes in life" is not the inverse of "There are no absolutes in life." One is a vague statement which is open to the possibility of contrary evidence, the other is an absolute statement which implies that there can be absolutely no contrary evidence. As I said, the absolute inverse of "There are no absolutes in life" is "Everything in life is an absolute." Both statements are absolutes that contest one another with opposing meanings, an apples-to-apples comparison. Comparing your statement to mine is an apples-to-oranges comparison.

 

[DoPo]

2+2=4. Always has, always will.

Prepare to get you mind blown:
2+2=11
If you're wandering, it's in Base-3
And this is a true, I'm not just typing randomly: 11 is a correct answer to 2 + 2. And it's an absolute truth, too - Maths says so. Furthermore, "4" is not only an invalid answer, it has no meaning at all.

This illustrates (a bit tangentially and somewhat unwieldy) a problem with something that is "undeniably true" - using new information what we knew may be subject to change. That's the deal with absolute truths - you have to have really extensive knowledge to claim one, accepting one "just because" is not something that should be done lightly.

 

[Shadowstar38]

I similarly think most things are grey areas. Most. But here are a few exceptions.

All rape is bad.
All slavery is bad.
Human genocide is bad.

Now here's a disclaimer: the following is me purely playing devil's advocate here. What follows does not represent my actual way of thinking.

1: "What if the rapee is a submissive masochist and actually enjoys what the rapist is doing? Perhaps to the point of wanting it to happen again?"

2: "What if, as in the case of Mass Effect 2, someone willingly sells themself into slavery to pay off a debt and avoid a harsher punishment of some kind?"

3: "What if there were a warmongering culture that could not be bargained with and had a massive army that threatened other peaceful nations with absolute destruction, presenting a scenario of "wipe them out or they'll wipe you out"?" An example bein the Nazis.

Edit: The problem with discussing absolutes is that they are paradoxical in nature. Indeed in the realms of math and science there are absolutes. According to basic math: 2+2=4. Always has, always will. But taken out of the realms of math and science, absolutes become a paradox. "There are no absolutes in life", as the OP says, is an absolute statement. Therefore the statement negates itself. Yet in proving that not even the statement itself can be correct, the statement proves itself to be correct. That's the paradox at the core of the situation here.

With 1 and 2, once the victim is letting this happen of their own free will, it is not a crime.

3) Seriously, you don't have to wipe out an entire nation to stop a war. That would be needless overkill.

I get the point of the thought experiment we have going on here, but there are some delimmas in life that are arguably absolute.

 

[WoW Killer]

Alright my friend, I'm more than willing to have this debate/conversation with you (not now as I've got to get back to work), but please try rephrasing that last post of yours using words rather than math. I'm an English major and I made it to College Algerbra and that's about it. Because all I can tell you as an English major is that your quote of "There exist absolutes in life" is not the inverse of "There are no absolutes in life." One is a vague statement which is open to the possibility of contrary evidence, the other is an absolute statement which implies that there can be absolutely no contrary evidence. As I said, the absolute inverse of "There are no absolutes in life" is "Everything in life is an absolute." Both statements are absolutes that contest one another with opposing meanings, an apples-to-apples comparison. Comparing your statement to mine is an apples-to-oranges comparison.

You're confusing negating the statement with negating the predicate. You'll probably have to ask a tutor as I'm not so good at explaining without symbols.

 

[Torrasque]

Alright my friend, I'm more than willing to have this debate/conversation with you (not now as I've got to get back to work), but please try rephrasing that last post of yours using words rather than math. I'm an English major and I made it to College Algerbra and that's about it. Because all I can tell you as an English major is that your quote of "There exist absolutes in life" is not the inverse of "There are no absolutes in life." One is a vague statement which is open to the possibility of contrary evidence, the other is an absolute statement which implies that there can be absolutely no contrary evidence. As I said, the absolute inverse of "There are no absolutes in life" is "Everything in life is an absolute." Both statements are absolutes that contest one another with opposing meanings, an apples-to-apples comparison. Comparing your statement to mine is an apples-to-oranges comparison.

You're confusing negating the statement with negating the predicate. You'll probably have to ask a tutor as I'm not so good at explaining without symbols.

A logician arguing with an english major about philosophy?
Oh man, I would pay to watch that debate.