Senior Expert
Joined: Sep 2002
Posts: 8,177
Netherlands
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In some ways, black is the opposite of white. Just because we assign words to these colors, doesn't mean that black and white don't exist. It just means that we, in our limited capacity, need such constructs to understand the world.
No, it's not that black and white at all. What's black? When do you say dark grey is infact black? Which dark grey-black is the opposite of white? Okey, it's a bit unfair, but colors have no opposites. What's the opposite of purple? Only light against no light or 'dark', but not black versus white. These constructs are relative as h*ll, they are what we make them to be and may not represent the truth. The color blue is blue because we say so, not because it is. Yes, a color may exist, but it's not blue because it is blue, but because we agreed to call it blue.
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Perhaps, but I think that's beyond where I'd like the focus to be. But, the way I see it, its our understanding of Truth that's relative, not truth itself.
The truth we know, is the truth we think we understand, stating there's more to it, some sort of real truth won't get us nowhere, since we don't know that. We can't determine wether or not our truth is the same anyway, so that alone means it's relative to what we know. This absolute truth you are talking about only exists in theory, not in practise and reality. There's no way you could say which is the right and therefore absolute truth of anything.
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A green light is green, whether or not the viewer observes it as green.
This sounds like a nice claim to go and prove, but you can't. Infact, what we see comes first, according to what we see, we define it's color, after that we call it a green light, not the other way around. The proof of this? Well, dig a few big holes in the ground and ask people to explain what color they see. Some may say it's dark brown yellowish dirt, others may say yellow grey brown dirt. Who's right?
You may think it's the interpretation that's relative, and it is indeed, however the interpretation that we agree upon will become the 'truth'. Colors therefore can't be absolute.
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Then that would be an absolute and you would just have proved that absolutes exist.
I'm not trying to make fun of you, but you still don't get it. If something is true, then it's still not necessarily absolute. Infact, I would say quite the contrary, since like I said before, truth is based upon what we know and that's limited and thus relative.
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However, I can prove that absolutes must exist (even if we don't know what they are) by proving that relativism is false. Therefore, I'm trying to prove relativism is false.
Which is a rather impossible task. Even if you could prove relativism is false, however you'd do that is a mystery to me, but then you still haven't proven absolutes exist. It's like infinity, in order to proof that you'd need to see the whole of infinity or be able to show it, not just explain the concept. There already have been numerous occasions on which it turned out that our 'past truths' were invalid and new discoveries have led us to believe in different truths, infact these kind of developments are going on constantly, again the biggest proof for relativism is out there, right in front of us. It's called 'reality'. lol ...
Cheers
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