> There may be many perspectives to a truth, but there is always a singular absolute truth. Something that can be objectively stated, without judgement.
I can't imagine how one could find these truths without using judgment. That's like trying to figure out how long something is without a ruler.
edit: And there's no way of being sure which of the things you found were true, or which which were just artifacts of the measuring device one used to find them. One would have to pay a visit to the ruler factory and start the process all over again.
The things one can say about reality don't actually describe reality, they are a subjective human narrative created as a tool to meet human needs that any singular absolute truth ignores without comment.
Interesting. But I'm skeptical about the existence of an absolute truth. Because, ultimately, what would be the essence of what it is, truth? And why would it exist? What source would be the source of this truth, ultimately? And how would we know, especially as truth implies untruth and therefore the possibly of cognitive error?
Thermodynamics and the quantum most certainly would not exist if you did not bring them up. You are now the master of existence. I dub thee Molecule Man.
> there is always a singular absolute truth. Something that can be objectively stated...
In incredibly simple scenarios perhaps, but for most things it seems to me that there are simply too many interrelated variables and perspectives involved for a "single truth" (that is perceivable by a human mind) to exist, let alone be communicated with high fidelity. And this is even if one assumes that we are aware of and able to accurately measure all the relevant variables, which is not even close to true.
> What you are talking about variables seems to be about partially revealed truth. Even in that case, a partially revealed truth can be stated as such, showing what variables are fully known and what are unknown.
For simple scenarios, perhaps.
> Curious about your idea of supposed complex examples where its not objectively possible to state the truth.
The United States is systemically racist.
We should (or should not) extend the coronavirus lockdown in the US.
Donald Trump is a white supremacist.
Joe Biden is attracted to young girls.
Decoupling from the Chinese economy is good for India in the long run.
Global warming is real and primarily man-made.
We should get our news from respectable media outlets.
Democratic capitalism is the best system for managing a society.
We should trust scientists and ignore theologians.
>Something that can be objectively stated, without judgement.
You can't always find the objective truth. Was Trump _really_ joking when he suggested people drink bleach? You can conclude with reasonable certainty that he was or wasn't based on his previous patterns of action or whatever, but the only way to truly know what he meant is to be him. And your interpretation of his previous actions will necessarily be incomplete: there's always going to be something that you don't know about that could potentially change your interpretation, and each event in his history that you base your interpretation on will have to be analyzed with the same amount of rigor. It's possibly for a person to perform this analysis, that's a biographer's entire job, but to do it for every person in current events, for every situation, for every conflict and incident is impossible.
So yes, there is an objective truth, but you can't always be certain that you know it. If you're not dedicating your entire career to analyzing one thing then you'll have to rely on heuristics, and those heuristics will be built on top of your knowledge and analysis of past things which are also based on heuristics, which are based on more heuristics, etc. Those heuristics, the way you analyze and interpret events, are only as important as the information available to you for you to build upon. If your primary source of information is Fox News then your heuristics will be that of course the President was joking, but if your heuristics are based on information from HuffPo then you'll come to the opposite conclusion. If you want to reject your heuristics and find the truth based on first principles, or at least come as close to the truth as possible, you'll need to do quite a bit of research into the issue, and by the time you've finished there'll be another five things the President has said for you to find the truth of.
It's simply impossible to determine the truth of current events without using heuristics and avoid falling behind, but those heuristics are based on known truth only indirectly. Does there exist an objective truth? Yes, but it can't be found in a reasonable amount of time. It's much more important to focus on the heuristics people use to determine truth for themselves.
Postscript: algorithmic newsfeeds that optimize for engagement are optimizing for inevitable unconcious biases, confirmation bias in particular, and are great for biasing your heuristics unfairly. I'm not saying the truth is always somewhere in the middle, but I am saying that if your heuristics are always skewed to one side you won't be able to recognize when your heuristics are leading you astray and when the truth is in fact in the middle or even the other side. If you get anything out of this, at least try to figure out what echo chambers you're in and look outside of them.
I disagree with you.
There may be many perspectives to a truth, but there is always a singular absolute truth. Something that can be objectively stated, without judgement.