Browsing through a social media feed today, I came across a pathetic attempt to argue for a kind of metaphysical relativism (why do I subject myself to this shit by staying in groups full of morons?). The argument was that since the physical world is constantly changing, nothing about reality is fixed, and thus the concept of absolute truth cannot be valid. The impossibilities, contradictions, and fallacies in this post were impressively thorough, so I want to anonymously make an example of the poster. All forms of relativism are self-defeating and cannot be true by nature of what they posit. This form is no different.
Even if everything--which would include things other than the physical world, like logic--was always changing, this would necessitate that the fact that everything is changing does not change and remains universal. This would inescapably mean, of course, that not everything changes because not everything can change! The very claim that everything changes is false and self-refuting because it cannot be true. Some things cannot be anything other than immutable and ceaseless.
The physical world is not the core of reality. Logic, immaterial, omnipresent, and inviolable, lies at the core of everything, not depending on either matter or consciousness for its existence and veracity. Logic, the existence of truth, and mathematics (which is just numeric logic) do not hinge on phenomena in the external world. They cannot be any other way; nothing can alter or erase them. There is always a way reality is. A thing is always what it is. Some things always follow from other things. From these things other absolute certainties can be proven. One such thing is the fact that space must exist even in the absence of matter, just as logic and truth do. Another is that two plus two must always equal four: even if the words assigned to the numbers are arbitrary, the concept itself cannot be false.
As one can easily discover, there are other things besides logical truths that are not in a constant state of change. My consciousness exists from one moment to the next, so yet another thing remains constant. It does not phase in and out of existence or lucidity with each passing moment, with the elapsing of time being another thing that remains static in my experiences. Matter still exists from one moment to the next. Truly, one can see from facts other than logical axioms that not everything changes all the time. With the examples in this paragraph, though, I am dealing with things that could relentlessly change, though they do not.
I also want to point out that in an ultimate sense, no one can prove that absolutely everything about the natural world is in perpetual flux. Of course, even if this claim was both true and fully verifiable, it would still not be the case that truth itself is not fixed or that logical and mathematical truths are contingent and subject to change. Only a highly unintelligent person would ever actually believe these things, for they are intrinsically impossible and cannot be true regardless of what else is. There is always, necessarily and inescapably, uniformity that persists in all change, as logic cannot change and even many things that could change do not.
People who argue any kind of metaphysical relativism are actually expressing their own interpretation of the world by way of an emotional experience that has no foundation, no real grounding that crashes like a wave at sea like an unstable double minded man. So in a way, they're right...from their own point of view. And you can't logically argue to someone that their nervous system is unhinged, can you? Because essentially you don't share the same standard - which is logic. And isn't it interesting that in the beginning was the word (logos) and the logos was with God and the logos was God?
ReplyDeleteNote that logos would be better translated as logic than word, because our word logic comes from the Greek logos. That said, notice that, just as the ancient Greeks realized, everything IS in flux EXCEPT...logic and the laws governed by it.
Logic has nothing to do with anyone’s nervous system, and its universality and veracity do not depend upon consensus. Relativism is always false because relativism is impossible. But subjective perceptions about many things can and do still exist—but the perceptions objectively exist, a perceiver exists, the perceptions either do or don’t exactly correspond to how reality is, and so on. Logic governs everything about reality (perceptions and reality beyond the perceptions). Many people don’t understand that subjective perceptions cannot mean that reality is subjective.
DeleteOh but our collective and individual experience of reality is inescapably subjective. We can only approximate logic and objectivity due to our flesh.
ReplyDeleteWe experience nothing outside of the lens of our own nervous system...we see through a glass darkly.
And presumably as believers who know and are progressively knowing God as we are fully known, we have access to the mind of the logos itself.
Do you really not understand that for subjective perceptions to exist logic, a conscious subject, and objective reality must necessarily exist too? Of course, logic and truth exist even if there is no such thing as a mind that perceives. There cannot not be a way reality is.
DeleteIf you want to talk about what actually can and can’t be known (and the existence of logic, my consciousness, and miscellaneous other things can’t be illusions), then let’s talk about how you can’t even prove any nervous system exists. Besides, you’re literally arguing that the way reality is is that nothing about reality is known. This is self-refuting, impossible bullshit I only expect to see from presuppositionalists and the occasional secular irrationalist.
Logic has nothing to do with the metaphysical existence of God. It exists necessarily on its own.