Relatively Real

Man, is philosophy awesome.

I wish philosophy was my second of two classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, instead of Psych. While I will say that the alliterative reminder of my schedule (Philosophy first, Psych second) is awesome, my mind is always running a hundred miles an hour after philosophy. In class today we talked about the concepts of moral realism vs. moral relativism, in terms of objective truth. Moral realism (which will be considered just as realism for the purposes of this blog post) is the idea that statements are true or false, regardless of anyone believes, and relativism is the contradiction that there is no objective truth, and everything is rather a matter of everyone's differing opinion. Before class today, I had the preconceived notion that matters of fact were simply fact - 1 plus 1 is always 2, regardless of what you tell me. This is an objective truth, but I didn't consider it to be part of my argument, since it wasn't a matter of morality. Turns out that didn't matter.

One point that was brought up was that there are disagreements even about realism and relativism. This created a perfect opportunity for me to create some paradoxical answer that would make me feel like House after he comes up with a cool diagnosis that fits all of the patient's symptoms. I offered that the idea that people disagreed about things, in our case realism vs. relativism, was in and of itself relativism, because the answer to the question "Is realism or relativism right?," in my view, is "It's up to what you want to believe." That would point towards relativism, non? The fact that some people couldn't agree about it makes it relativism. Ah, but there's something new - facts. Facts threw everything off, as our class discussed what would happen if 1 plus 1 were 10, if the Earth were flat, and if slavery still existed. I wish I had a photographic memory of today's class, but my chicken-scratch notes will have to suffice for now:

"fact. people disagree." I wrote this in the "realism" column, because this is a fact of life. People will disagree about things. Alright, so that's in the realism column. But the fact itself is that people disagree. Implying that there are differing opinions - well that would bring it over to the relativism column. Paradoxes rule.

"I'm trying to prove this. Couldn't that contradict all this?" This has an arrow to essentially everything above it I wrote, which is basically the entire class debate up to that point. But let's consider this. Let's say I successfully prove to everyone in class that relativism is the way to go. All 25 of us agree on this - wouldn't that make it a fact? An objective truth? Wouldn't the fact that my end result would be proof bring this back over to the realism column?

"is 1+1=2? If enough people say that 1+1=10, is 1+1=10? What are the implications?" That last question was in my mind for the last 15 or so minutes of class. Sure, everyone thought slavery was wonderful while they had it, but someone realized that slavery is immoral and shouldn't happen. Everyone eventually accepted this as what was right, and went along with it. If enough people agree on something, does it make it true? What if it's not true? What are the implications of what we assume to be true?

"is my major a lie? :(" Very briefly did I ponder the reality and/or relativity of mathematics on its own. How would things be different if people did accept the sum of two ones to be 10?

"the truth is that there's no truth" There's my paradoxical contradictory conclusion. The truth is that there's no truth. That isn't to say that moral relativism is the right way to go.  The "no truth" at the end is a play on Candide, where Candide finally realizes that philosophizing may be fun, but it's not practical and we should just go cultivate our garden. "No truth" means that there's no definitive answer. There are supporting arguments for each side, but it's still nagging at me that the evidence of arguments, debates, and opinions would point to relativism. I believe that everything is what you believe, unless it's fact. There it is again. You can think that one and one is three, but you're wrong, because it's been proven to be two. So maybe everything isn't as relative as I may think it to be. In the end, what has this distillation of my convoluted notes created? Maybe you will read this and undergo your own internal debate and distill your own convoluted notes. Because while it is important to cultivate our garden...this is too fun to pass up. Leave a comment if you have something to say, as I'm always open to discuss ideas.