Absolute Truth Exists

Subjectivity: Pro and I agreed to talk truths as statements about the factual nature of reality. Reality is reality, but reality is not truth. Truth is a human construct. Aliens aside, if humans disappeared from the Earth tomorrow, truth would disappear with them. This concept forms the basis of the debate, and Pro’s arguments haven’t addressed the distinction. What humans call true, what humans call factual, all of this is expressed in language. All these expressions are symbolic. All these symbols are subjective. These two paragraphs summarize the subjectivity argument and the following examples attempt to illustrate this. In whatever way water exists in reality, for humans to express a truth about it requires language. It is not an absolute objective truth that water is H2O, because the meaning of "H," "2," and "O" are subjective to shared meaning. Pro acknowledges this but states that whatever those meanings are, “It is still true that water is made up of those molecules. ” Given the context I assume Pro is referring to absolute truth, but he doesn’t gain any ground here, as “water,” “molecules,” and the rest of the words in his restated truth claim are subject to the same subjectivity considerations he conceded regarding "H," "2," and "O. " Just because we share a common definition of “water” doesn’t make the statement objective, merely intersubjective. Pro argues that “whether or not we can label everything the same is irrelevant,“ but it is precisely this point that he must engage and overcome. Since truths can only be born of language, and language is essentially nothing but labels, Pro can only claim objective truth if there is such a thing as objective labeling. Since Pro appears aware that labeling is subjective, it follows that truths about life, death, or anything else are also subjective as they rely on subjective labels. Pro could not have picked a better example to illustrate my point than the rotation of the Earth around the Sun. Pro says that “the Earth revolves around the sun,“ and it’s certainly an easy an intuitive way to label our perceptions of reality. However, it’s also a subjective way to look at it, relying on an Earth-Sun frame of reference. One could also say that the Earth and the Sun obit around a common center of gravity called the solar system barycenter (1). This instance of a common-sense statement turning out to be completely relative segues nicely into the discussion of fallibilism. Fallibilism: Once again, Pro and I agreed to talk about truths as statements made about the factual nature of reality. In the previous argument I said that Pro was wrong. In this argument I say that Pro cannot show he is right. Pro cannot honestly make a statement he knows with 100% certainty to be correct. There is always some outrageously unlikely far-fetched possibility I could come up with to inject a tiny margin of uncertainty. Since he cannot do this, he cannot show that absolute truth statements are possible. Pro unintentionally concedes this when he addresses my math example. Pro asserts that he can be absolutely sure that 2 + 2 will always equal four because he’s never know anyone who uses the math conventions I suggested that would provide a different result. He then says, “unless Con can find a case in which it would be different, I think the argument is pretty well moot. ” I provided that case in my R1, and I’ll restate it here. In my rounds, the second number in any equation is one greater than depicted. Therefore, in this case, 2 + 2 = 5, and pro was unable to state with anything close to 100% certainty that 2 + 2 will always equal 4. This illustrates the point of fallibilism. You can never be sure. Even when you think you have an ironclad case that every person in the world will use conventions that result in 2 + 2 equaling 4, you might walk into a debate round where your opponent intentionally uses idiosyncratic conventions to prove a point. Pro’s main defense against my fallibilism argument is to misrepresent the statements of proponents of evolution and try to use their confidence in the theory of evolution to show that most people believe in objective truth, and that this is somehow evidence in its favor. Even in Pro’s rephrasing of their statements, evolution proponents are stating, “there is nothing we know with greater certainty than that Evolution happened. ” This is not a statement that there is no possibility of them being wrong. Even if it were, it would not be generalizable to most people. Even if most people do believe in objective truth, it does not mean it is correct. And, if most people believing in objective truth did make a difference, it would prove that not ony truth, but reality is entirely subjective. Conclusion: Reality exists independently of humanity. Truth does not. Truths are created by humans with their subjective thoughts, language and symbols and must always be subjective. Further, we cannot access reality directly, as we are limited creatures and can always be wrong, and thus even if humans were capable of being objective, we could not show that we were saying objective truths rather than objective falsehoods. (1). http://books.google.com...