This blog is a response to the video Relativity Isn't Relative
The human situation
We have no defense against perspective. For better or for
worse, it’s ours. We are undeniably human, and limited. There is no view or
idea that is not tainted by our individuality and finiteness. The sophists
come, countering that these introductory statements themselves seem to indicate
the contrary, namely, that we can approach absolutes which are not subject to
human perspective, such as this view itself that our ideas are limited and
biased. They say, “If there are no absolutes, then how can we absolutely know
there are no absolutes?” However, my initial reasoning seems consistent still,
as I believe all ideas and expressions, including my own beliefs and ideas, are
human, and are therefore subject to human limits. Anything that is spoken by
human lips, or thought by human brain, can only be spoken and thought with what
we call confidence, and not absolute certainty. This is the human
condition. Like Margaret Fuller once said, we must “accept the universe” with
its delimitations and inconveniences and work with what we have.
No faculty to process absolutes
Now, let’s have some fun and pretend that we could be 100%
sure there were absolutes in the universe that were obstinately resistant to
the virus of our human perspective. How would we ever come to know about these
absolutes? By what faculty could we perceive the perfect? By our imperfect
senses and cognition which are so outrageously delimited and skewed to
individual angles and desires that whole religions were created to account for
the deficiency of the human mind—what is often called humanity’s ‘fallen-ness’?
It was Soren Kierkegaard, the German theologian and philosopher, who began to
awaken to presence of this arbitrary trust in human intellect by saying that one’s
mode of apprehending the truth is the
truth, or, at least, is the highest truth
available to us even with all of its objective
uncertainty. If our faculty for perceiving absolutes is not impeccable and
absolutely reliable, then we haven’t quite succeeded in confirming there are
absolutes. Hypothesizing about absolutes doesn’t establish those absolutes, but
only establishes the possibility of absolutes. Sing with me, “Just because you
said it, don’t make it so!”
Absolutes aren’t a bad idea
Now, that’s not to say that ideas about hypothetical
absolutes aren’t helpful. I believe they are. Getting as close as you can to
what we call accuracy, consistency, and reliability as we categorize the
information we assimilate daily offers us something we can commit to, and
therefore act upon. But confidence and certainty are too quickly confused by
many, and certainty begins to sound too much like an alien, unhuman form of localized
omniscience. A very high confidence in something—what people normally round up to
mean ‘knowledge’—can be a stable ‘I’ll-bet-my-life-on-it’ sort of conviction, but
it still solely reflects the nature of my internal
decision and state of mind about external
reality. The idea that one can have absolute certainty about anything is a way
of alleging that something can be ‘true whether you or I believe it or not,’
but even this view remains moored in a human, subjective confidence regarding
the nature of objective reality that
attempts to dress up confidence as incontrovertible certainty. As computer scientist and philosopher Douglas R. Hofstadter put it, "We can come close to seeing and understanding ourselves objectively, but each of us is trapped inside a powerful system with a unique point of view--and that power is also a guarantor of limitedness. And this vulnerability--this self-hook--may also be the source of the ineradicable sense of 'I'."
Ideas as mock-ups
Every idea about the world is a mock-up of reality which is
shattered and reconstituted in our minds, without our consent and often without
our awareness, minute by minute. These mock-ups are by definition post-real,
which means that our conception of the world is always only a hazy memory of
what once was detected by our senses, and form an outdated picture of a world
that has already changed. Each delayed image is inherently bound to be
destroyed for the new picture to come and take its place. The succession of
world-pictures, these drafts of reality, are what he have to work with, and a denial
of our situation—or what Nietzsche called a ‘weariness, which seeks to get to
the ultimate with one leap, with a death-leap; a poor ignorant weariness,
unwilling even to will any longer’—doesn’t help matters much.
The leap from absolutes to absolute certainty
So, how does one make the leap from a very human confidence that
something is true, to a mutant strain of localized omniscience regarding
special absolutes? Supposing there are absolutes—which I personally believe
most people accept the possibility of—how could the mere presence of absolutes imply
that one can be absolutely certain of them? It would seem that some prefer to
think that the existence of absolutes necessitates my absolute certainty in
those absolutes, but the one doesn’t necessitate the other in any way. Statements
of confidence or felt certainty do not confirm the ‘is-ness’ or ‘isn’t-ness’ of
an absolute.
What is absolute certainty, and is it viable?
Most everyone will affirm the ultimate limitation of their
reason. How could we know anything perfectly in all ways? That would require a
knowledge of all things in the universe, because to know any one thing, you
must know how that one thing interacts with all things in the universe (not
making mere generalizations based on other people’s knowledge or limited
experiments). This is what 20th century philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein
meant when he said “objects contain the possibilities of all situations.” It is
impossible to completely know anything without knowing how it acts in all
places, in all interactions, at all times, for the rest of time. That pretty
much puts it beyond human reach. Even if the human brain were immortal and
capable of assimilating much more information than it does now, it would still
be unable to contain a complete model of the universe because a complete and
explicit model of the universe IS the
universe! And a complete model of the universe would have to include the mind
reflecting on the model, and the mind reflecting on that mind, and the mind
reflect on that mind, ad infinitum. Generally
speaking, people consider the ability of a human being to understand the world to
be severely under-resourced; but oddly enough, when it comes to the idea of
absolutes, especially in religion or science, suddenly human comprehension of
the universe with its constraint of perspective
is completely disregarded in an attempt to speed-track what is called truth. I can hear the echo of
philosopher-theologians in their mental workshops hammering away at the problem
of absolutes, yelling, “If it don’t fit, you make it fit!”
The abuse of relativism
The attack against relativism and the human perspective is systematically
utilized by evangelical Christian apologists in particular to inveigle others into
conceding that we are all dependent on irreducible data to base our changing
opinions. This is a very specific gambit for the next part of the conversation,
and not at all a concern for scientific/philosophic discipline. By denigrating
the beauty of human perspective, they are setting up an ally-oop for an
‘our-way-is-the-right-way-and-everyone-else-is-dead-wrong’ type of
authoritative system in which absolutes are rationed to others by the religious
elite. It is the very nature of narrow minds to attempt to rarify their ideas
so that others come begging to them for alms.
Take the video mentioned at the beginning as an instance of relativism ill-used,
though I have found no indication that the creator himself/herself is religious. So many things are confused and bait-and-switched in this
video it makes my head swim, but a few preliminaries might be in order before I
address the problems in the three examples cited in an attempt to establish
absolutes.
First, and this is imperative to understand, Einstein didn’t
develop a special or general theory of absolutivity as the video would like to
make you think. That is the brain-child of someone else who is trying to make a
point. It is trick language specifically designed to hamstring relativism. The
video shamefully smuggles in Einstein-esque language close to Einstein’s ideas,
probably to borrow his clout to support the video’s premise. This is simple sleight
of hand, and it’s shameful.
Second, let’s not lose sight of what people mean when they
say ‘absolutes’. One of the definitions for ‘absolute’ at Dictionary.com is “something
that is free from any restriction or condition”, especially, in the religious
use, something free from the restriction and condition of human perspective. ‘Absolutes’,
as some use the word, refers to rigid, unchangeable truths.
Third, relativity—very closely related to relativism—is the
idea that all of our ideas (yes, including this one)—being in nature
changeable, imperfect, and incomplete—cannot grasp an absolute, and so we will
have to be satisfied with doing ‘the best we can’ to reach truth. This idea of
relativity is very uncomfortable for some because it sounds as if a person
can’t be certain of anything, not even of their own existence, or of those
things they value most in life. But many of those who embrace relativity as the
nature of human existence believe that we can have a measure of confidence
regarding the nature of external reality that utilizes honestly and fairly what
are normally called knowing and certitude. For people like myself, knowing does not have to equate knowing everything or knowing perfectly, rather, knowing
refers to being highly confident about something enough to live based on one’s
best understanding of the world, while acknowledging that “nothing we know is
final” (Karl Jaspers). Knowing does not preclude the possibility of error,
rather it wagers against error, and course corrects when it discovers a better
way. Certitude can also be used to refer to this high degree of confidence, but
certitude too often becomes confused in some people’s mind as the possibility
of being absolutely certain of something in the sense of impeccable,
supra-human perception, and therefore, I usually will have to qualify my use of
knowledge and certainty in certain instances, or refrain from using them with the
fundamentalist types altogether.
Responding to examples of absolutes
Back to the video. So, are the so-called absolutes mentioned
as examples in the video subject to personal perspective? Yes.
1.
First example of an “absolute”: George Washington
was the first president of the United States.
Are you 100% positive there was a George
Washington that was ever a president, or are you just believing what someone
else told you? How do you know you can trust what others say about history? How
do you know at this moment that you are remember correctly? How do you know you
have the right label connected to the right thought connected to the right
words connected to the right event? What about little George Washington born in
2008 that goes to school in Lincoln, Nebraska? How do you know you didn’t just
imagine this fact? Was Washington the president of the current U.S., or just an
earlier version of it? Was he the president that we understand today when we
say president, or was he more like a regent? Was the presidency a role or a
title? If it was a role, then might someone else have been in that role before
the title? Was he more a president, or more a general? Was the role better
fulfilled by someone else after Washington received the mere title? Was George
Washington a puppet president while someone else was the real decision maker, running the show? Was George Washington the
name of the real guy calling the shots, and the puppet president another name,
and the two were switched around for the public image? Was George Washington
really even a person, or a persona invented for the public by administration?
2.
Second example of an “absolute”: WWI happened
before the movie Star Wars.
Isn’t ‘before’ a word that specifically
implies my perspective? Before is a statement of position relative to my
purposes and relative to what specifically I set as the index. If my purpose is
tracing cause and effect throughout history, then WWI would come before Star
Wars. But if my purpose is measuring distance from me, and the index is
relative to where I’m standing now, then Star Wars comes first as I look
backward through time. Or, if my purpose is determining which came first in
order of historical importance, or which came first when reading Slaughterhouse Five, I may come up with
different answers. Also, the so-called absolute truth of WWI coming first depends
on how you want to define and assign the labels of WWI and Star Wars. If I made
a home movie as a creative project in Middle School and named it Star Wars, and
someone asked if this project came before a certain family conflict everyone
dubbed ‘WWI’, then how would one answer? Even if we had our labels, purposes, and
indexes clearly defined, are we again leaning on limited senses, errant logic,
trust of histories, and incomplete and inconsistent memory to determine which event
came ‘before’?
3.
Third example of an “absolute”: This is a
picture of 3 apples.
If I change my human perspective and turn the
picture flat, is it still a picture of three apples, or a picture of 3 red lines?
If I turn the picture around, is it a white square instead of apples? If I’m
standing close is it pixilated dots that I can see different pictures in? If I am standing
at a distance, is it still a picture of three apples, or is it a tiny white square?
Is it a picture of apples, or is it a white image with three blanks open to red
canvas that look round like apples? What if I am someone unfamiliar with what
an apple is—can the image ONLY be interpreted as three apples? What if I am
blind—does the absolute of ‘a picture of 3 apples’ still exist? How do I
know those were real apples, and not a drawing of three apples making the
picture a photo of a mere representation of 3 apples, and therefore not apples
at all? If the apples were made of wax, is the picture of 3 pieces of round wax?
How do you know you really are seeing a picture of 3 apples, and not
experiencing something that appears to be a picture of three apples? How do you
know you really saw a picture of three apples, and didn’t remember it wrong?
How do you know there wasn’t a fourth apple in the picture that you didn’t see
because it was hidden, or you didn’t count right? How do you know one isn’t a
peach that looks like an apple? Define very precisely what you mean by ‘apple’—are
the 3 apples equal in all ways so that they constitute precisely three apples
as you defined ‘apple’, or is the back eaten out of one, or are they hollowed
out leaving the skin, or is one dwarfed, or is one a hybrid of part apple and
part peach?
As you can see, the examples of absolutes, which pretty much
makes up the central argument, make a lot of assumptions about the reliability
of the senses, memory, logic, labels, language, history, and tradition. This is
how illusionists become millionaires: they toy with our certainties. We have to
ask ourselves: Am I seeing right? Am I hearing right? Am I tasting and touching
right? Am I saying it right? Am I thinking it right? Am I remembering it right?
Am I thinking of it as it is without
any personal interpretation or categorization, or am I thinking of it as only I
as a unique individual would uniquely think of it? Am I confusing, adding,
taking away, coloring, or changing any detail to make it fit my model of the
world? Am I comparing it to my limited experience? Am I using my imperfect
mental, emotional, and bodily processes to constitute it, reframe it, process
it, and communicate it?
Let us honestly pose the question to ourselves: How has data
not changed drastically after having gone through me?
Now, if my challenges of the supposed ‘absolutes’ in the
video sound ridiculous, it is because most people probably have some measure of
confidence that the three facts posited as absolutes are fairly agreed upon and
accepted by most people as true (which is why the video creator selected them);
but if there is a chance in a billion that any of these differences in perspectives
distort in any small way a so-called ‘absolute’, then the very premise of
absolutes is shaken. At some point we have to accept that even simple
mathematical equations like 1+1 = 2 are completely theoretical, learned, and
involve assumptions, just like every other idea. For instance, 1 apple, plus 1
picture frame, equals 2…what? Simple equations are generalizations and learned
formulas that assume all things are equal, which they are not. Anything that is
completely identical and resides in the same place, at the same time, with the
same constitution in all ways, is the
same thing as far as we can tell. Anything that is truly different cannot be
plugged into an equation because it is a distinct object with distinct
properties and positions in the universe and cannot be assigned a quantitative
value identical to anything else in space-time. Then why does math work pretty
consistently? Because we apply it in ways designed to produce specific results.
We learn to ask utterly contrived and ‘treated’ questions like: 1 unique apple,
plus 1 identical yet unique apple, equals how many identical apples? Even then,
the answer of ‘2’ is simply a sign which represents what we expect the final
picture to look like, neatly squaring all rough corners and contrarieties in
the process. What do you think early thinkers did with new thoughts like 1
apple, minus 2 apples? In this instance, new math was created with theoretical negatives
so that the answer was somehow satisfactory. We make it fit! As Ludwig
Wittgenstein put it, always the mathematician before philosopher, “Mathematicians
are not discoverers, they are inventors.”
The point is, any logic and fact can be played with and
manipulated at will to accomplish what we want it to accomplish. Logic itself
is a tool designed to give us specific results, not something transcendent that
can’t be changed, bent, or understood in different ways. Everything from
Aristotle’s First Principles, to Descartes’ Cogito,
to Einstein’s physics…everything is subject to human perspective.
Conclusion
As mentioned before, there may be absolutes, but we have no
faculty to process absolutes. How would anyone come to know that there are
absolutes, and that those absolutes are beyond the handling of human perspective?
If the answer involves the human mind at any point in the process in
establishing absolutes, as I maintain it does, then our absolutes are all, each
and every one, subject to human perspective, and therefore have not ultimately been
confirmed as absolutes. As much as we’d like to try, I believe with the
psychologist Carl Jung, “No one can escape the prejudice of being human.”
Going back to watch the video, you now have enough to challenge
its ponderous statements like, “Science is about finding the truths that will
still be true if you remove the scientist [the human].” Good luck with that.
You’d make a great deity.
