Absolute relativism

Absolute relativism is basically a belief that truth is only what you choose it to be. It is relative to your own choice and nothing more. If you choose a statement to be true it is true and if you choose it to be false it is false. The only thing that can possibly determine the falsehood or truthness of a statement is your choice of either.

This allows for such statements as the following to be true, if you decide and convince yourself it’s true:

“This marble is both red and blue to me at the same time”

I added “to me” purposely in order to account for the claim that what one perceives as red may be what another perceives as blue. I tried to make the statement into one which is according to my own current paradigm stating an impossibility.

But according to the belief that every statement can be true or false depending ONLY on whether I choose to believe it is or isn’t, that statement can be true.

As you can imagine I have trouble accepting this. It effectively means that a cause is equal to relativity. I can say an object is moving relative to another object from which you observe. But according to absolute relativism whether the observing object exists or not is completely irrelevant. The object is moving because I have chosen that it does. Thus absolute relativism denies all other relativism replacing all cause and effect with a single thing: your choice, regardless of whether it’s conscious or unconscious. The only thing that can matter is your choice. (And even that statement can be chosen to be false.)

Absolute relativism thus implies that I am a god and you and other humans exist only because I think you do. I am omniscient because everything I see is everything that I choose I can see and I am omnipotent because everything I can do is everything I choose I can do. This goes beyond “The Secret” which suggests that one can alter reality, since absolute relativism puts you in the position of reality’s creator, effectively. Limits of your reality are limits you yourself have chosen to exist.

I think this is different from saying that I believe something exists only because I have perceived and chosen to believe it does. This is not about choosing beliefs, it is about choosing reality itself. If reality outside of that which you think is real does not exist, then the only reality that does exist is your own.

This kind of belief requires no evidence supporting it whatsoever because its validity or invalidity can be chosen at a whim. A true absolute relativist thus has no “standing ground” from which to judge because the standing ground itself is something he brought into existence by nothing more than a choice. Thus there are no paradigms according to which evaluate true or false. There’s no need for evidence or a scientific process.

I’m not sure there even is anyone who is truly an absolute relativist. I think instead that everyone who would ever claim to be one is just trying to escape the need to provide a more solid argument or evidence for his belief. It’s like saying “you’re wrong because I say so”.

And if there’s in any case ever a need for solid evidence to support a particular belief that evidence must be based on something that exists outside of your own mind, something that your own mind did not fabricate. In other words, reality external to that which is consisted only of what we believe (subjective reality or “belief reality”) must exist. This does not necessarily mean that there couldn’t be other realities existing outside of the one external to my subjective reality, but that ceases to matter.

Also it doesn’t matter if a statement is true or false if its truthness or falsehood does not matter to me or you individually. Also, it doesn’t matter to the universe itself (external reality) whether you are right or wrong about something.

In any case, I as a voluntaryist have to say that if absolute relativism means anything at all then it is that an individual matters since it is individual choice which makes up individual’s reality. Forcing one reality on another results in destruction. On the other hand, since believing in absolute relativism can also mean believing that such force is perfectly justified and perhaps even good, the whole idea of absolute relativism is one of perpetual contradiction, a constant collision of realities and paradigms.

Currently, I remain a relativist only in the sense of knowing I can be wrong, enough to make me believe that I shouldn’t force my beliefs on another. But I also believe that reality outside of my beliefs exists as well and it is where the data stream I perceive comes from. I tend to call that one the “absolute reality” and my own subjective belief as my “subjective reality” or “relative reality”.

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9 Responses to “Absolute relativism”

  1. [...] on the other hand, assumes reality to be formed by ideas, where an idea might be rock, flame, libervisco or death. We are presented with a projection of part of what one might call an “idea pool”. [...]

  2. Since you called me an absolute relativist in your previous post, and this is your explanation of the term, I should probably tell you all of the above has very little to do with the way in which I think.

    The example of colours isn’t very good, because there are in fact colors that some will call “green” while others call them “blue”, and the same goes for “blue” and “purple”. However it is possible to measure the spectrum of the reflected light from an object using some instruments, and to agree what the readings are. In that sense color is objective and verifiable, just like weight for example.

    Morality is different. You cannot point some device at someone doing something, and read from the display whether it is wrong or right. Morality is subjective and unverifiable. Do you know why? It’s because it is based in feelings. You have your voluntaryist paradigm, which is based on the notion that everyone should have the freedoms necessary to ‘be what they are’, as long as being that doesn’t limit the same freedoms of others. (I think it’s too vague and self-contradictory, but never mind that.) Why do you hold this idea as true? Because you FEEL it is right, as you are well aware, you cannot prove or measure its rightness.

    From that point, you can begin to see my “relativist” choice: whatever system of morality/ethics/ideology I try, if I follow it to its logical conclusions I always end up with stuff that just doesn’t feel right.

    Should I let a “feeling of correctness” about some abstract concept like voluntaryism or democracy or whatever overrule my feelings about actual reality? Of course not! That’s a one-way ticket into la-la-land (unfortunately you appear to have taken that train). So instead I decided to just give up on rules and systems and evaluate how I feel about everything on a case by case basis. When I consider myself well informed enough about a situation and the consequences of an action and I feel it is right or wrong, then it is that (but only from my perspective of course, others will have different feelings). When I don’t consider myself informed, then I am unsure and if it matters will try to get more information.

    In short, I consider the consequences of my actions and then do what feels right.

    And when you accuse me of believing things to be true and false at the same time, I’ll just laugh because “moral truths” are nonsense.

  3. Morality is different. You cannot point some device at someone doing something, and read from the display whether it is wrong or right.

    Of course, you can’t. But you can ask that someone what is he trying to accomplish and then from your experience suggest that what he is doing may be a wrong way to do it. Who would be right? Well, if you went and tried to accomplish the same thing but by doing something different, the one who is right would be the one who did it sooner, better, whatever the criteria for measuring that you two set.

    I agree that value judgments are relative to the one judging and morals are basically value judgments, but maybe it’s good to make a separation between the concept of a value judgment (or a moral value) and an action. While a moral judgment in itself is completely arbitrary and relative, an action is something that exists as part of the absolute reality, within the causality chains.

    What I as a voluntaryist find to be common to most if not all humans is that they are in pursuit of happiness or anything which to them represents maximum value. I pose that initiating force on people limits their ability to pursue this and causes all the negative things instead. You can’t feel as good about doing something if you’re doing it just because someone forced you to or because “it’s the law” instead of because you really want to.

    If you’re doing or not doing something because you’re forced to my educated guess would be that you wont feel good, but are more likely to feel angry, sad, meaningless or in any other way bad.

    So based on those observations I make a suggestion. Let’s stop initiating acts of force on each other. I’m not basing this suggestion on purely on some internal feeling or on some out of this world message (like “god said so”) or anything like that. I base it on my observation of reality, of cause and effect. Whenever I see force initiated by one human I see another feeling disatisfied. This is why I sometimes talk about the non-initiation of force as natural. As far as I can see, all evidence points to the simple fact:

    People are most satisfied about the results of their actions when those actions are voluntary rather than coerced.

    I can’t say with absolute certainty whether someone is “satisfied” or “feels good” or not, but I can by observing make a pretty darn good guess based on their facial expressions, their words, their state of body (being physically hurt by a coercer) and mind (complaining, crying, looking sad or angry, talking cynical and pessimistic etc. etc.).

    I’m not trying to force anyone to accept my conclusions, but I’m nevertheless trying to point them towards these observations and encourage them to make their own conclusion, their own answer to the question: do we really need coercion? Any form of it? Do we need government?

    A person can tell a child not to play in the middle of the street where cars drive fast. He could say “you should not do that”, even “it would be wrong for you to do that because you will hurt yourself”. This is effectively a moral statement, but it is clearly based on the observation of something that isn’t as relative as moral statements, but is in fact realist, based on a known objective fact from reality – that if she plays in the middle of a busy street she CAN and likely will be hurt by a speeding car.

    I don’t have a problem with moral relativism as such because I acknowledge that different people may value different ways of doing things differently. But it would be foolish to extend moral relativism to things to which it doesn’t apply, such as real acts. Believe what you will, reality doesn’t care. But this changes completely when you begin acting on your belief. This time, reality responds.

    The question is, do you like its response? Is it what you expected? THIS is what changes morals, at least if you’re sensible enough to it. If you acted on your belief and got slapped by reality, if there’s anything other than yourself that would tell you that your moral values were wrong, it’s that.

  4. The question is, do you like its response? Is it what you expected? THIS is what changes morals, at least if you’re sensible enough to it. If you acted on your belief and got slapped by reality, if there’s anything other than yourself that would tell you that your moral values were wrong, it’s that.

    I think there is a difference between doing something that is stupid (like playing in the middle of the street).

    Anyway, my observation of reality tells me that when humans are put in a situation where nobody has power over another, they’ll try to find a way to determine who can boss who around. If there’s no peaceful(-ish) way to do that, they’ll even resort to violence (instead of just threats of violence). Apparently your observations are different, which makes you a voluntaryist. I think you could easily understand why I think that very same ideology is an awful idea.

  5. Oops, my mind got ahead of my hands. That should have been:

    “I think there is a difference between doing something that is stupid (like playing in the middle of the street), and doing something that is immoral.”

  6. “I think there is a difference between doing something that is stupid (like playing in the middle of the street), and doing something that is immoral.”

    Well, both are consequence dependent. Stupid is stupid because there’s a mismatch between a consequence you expect and one that actually happens. It could also be called ignorant. But the same is true for morals; you do something moral, expecting a consequence you believe is positive, but get a negative one. Either you were doing something immoral (you were wrong) or the whole universe is wrong (which is something that you can claim as well, but good luck acting with that).

    I’m reading an interesting book regarding morality though called Universally Preferrable Behavior by Stefan Molyneux, which is an attempt to actually develop a scientific theory of morality. It’s very interesting. I wont say just yet that it’s moral absolutism of any kind because it is more focused on observing what actually happens than imposing some absolute moral code on everyone. Current universal morals applicable to humans are observed like biological traits that distinguish a human from other species, for example. I’m gonna talk more about it in the next entry…

    Anyway, my observation of reality tells me that when humans are put in a situation where nobody has power over another, they’ll try to find a way to determine who can boss who around. If there’s no peaceful(-ish) way to do that, they’ll even resort to violence (instead of just threats of violence). Apparently your observations are different, which makes you a voluntaryist.

    Yes, they’re different. Unfortunately the most corrupt people get most of the limelight in the system we have today so it’s not hard to make the kind of conclusions you do about humans. But when I look around at ordinary people, my family, friends, workers and shop owners in the city I don’t see people who are hell bent on coercing others (except where the government encourages them to do so via elections). They largely operate on a voluntary basis: be it trading, social relationships and just about everything in life. You don’t see a man forcing a women to be together. Instead such instances when they happen are called rape and people willfully ostracise rapers, law or no law.

    When you start paying attention to most of the people you interact with, you may discover that a voluntary society to an extent already exists, but because of government those same voluntaryist acting people turn into coercionists on some other issues without even realizing that they’re contradicting their own ways. Like, why would they at the same time condemn stealing and then consider it almost a noble thing when people calling themselves the government do it? Why are they so outraged over a single murder in town yet ordain the soldiers who go to kill multitude of people in some arbitrary war (no doubt branded as “defense”). Most people don’t think about these contradictions and so they don’t recognize them, largely because they’re taught to treat government’s theft as “taxes” (in order to make it seem it’s something different than stealing) or soldiers killing a number of foreigners as “line of duty” or something as ridiculous as “defending freedom”.

    I am telling you man. Once people begin realizing their contradictions they start doubting the whole paradigm evolving government. I’ve seen it happen. This makes me think that at heart, people are naturally voluntaryists.

    That said, let’s assume for a moment that you were right in your observations, that people seek to have coercive power over other people. What do you do about that?

    1. You just say “oh well, such is life” and simply accept this as a norm.

    2. You, even while recognizing others as coercers, decide not to be one yourself and instead try to convince other people to stop believing in coercion too.

    So far you seem to be taking the first approach, but I keep suggesting the second one. What do you have to lose? Government certainly wont end because you stop believing in coercion and convince, say, 10 other people to the same. But you would have made 10 people who are no longer part of the “people are coercionists” problem. You have made a better world already.

    I have to emphasize again that “voluntaryism” is not the idea that says “government must be removed”. It is MERELY the idea that “coercion should stop”. Government eventually being outgrown is simply an evolutionary sideffect. If we convince 1 million people in a given country to accept the non-coercionist mental attitude the voluntary society is at hand. Government at some would be induced to, not just disappear, but merely transform into a voluntary rather than a coercive monopoly. It could start by passing a new law that says “all government customers are hereby granted the freedom to NOT do business with us should they so choose” and proceed to act to provide incentives to do business with them instead of force.

    I can’t see how you can possibly support anything good if you simply accept that people are bad and take that as some sort of an unchanging eternal truth which makes us forever doomed to have coercive governments ruling our lives.

  7. I meant “voluntary rather than a coercive organization” above, not a monopoly, albeit obviously the government would still have lots of monopolies at the point of transition between from coercive to voluntary, but that’s when competition could finally spring up as alternatives to some of the gov’s businesses.

  8. I’ll happily encourage people to be nice to each other, but refuse to put the flag “voluntaryism” above me.

    Well, both are consequence dependent. Stupid is stupid because there’s a mismatch between a consequence you expect and one that actually happens. It could also be called ignorant. But the same is true for morals; you do something moral, expecting a consequence you believe is positive, but get a negative one. Either you were doing something immoral (you were wrong) or the whole universe is wrong (which is something that you can claim as well, but good luck acting with that).

    The universe does not reward the righteous (or the evil, for that matter). It does reward the ones who play the “game” of life well. It is very possible to do something that is right but also “stupid” (like stepping in front of a crazy person with a gun instead of allowing him to shoot multiple of your friends – if you don’t believe in an afterlife there clearly is no reward in that cause there won’t be a you to receive that reward), and it is also very possible to do something that is wrong but “smart” (committing a crime when you’re sure you can get away with it).

    So no, I wouldn’t say morality is necessarily consequence dependent.

  9. I’ll happily encourage people to be nice to each other, but refuse to put the flag “voluntaryism” above me.

    Nobody is asking you to adopt a flag. And I am not just suggesting that you encourage people to be “nice” to each other. That’s so vague that you might have as well said nothing at all. Unless you believe initiating force can be a part of being nice to the one you’re initiating it against this you can’t at the same time encourage being nice and accept any act of coercion.

    But you avoid to say that here and considering your stubbornes I still take it you still see coercion as acceptable.

    In which case don’t even dare put a label “voluntaryist” on yourself. :P

    It is very possible to do something that is right but also “stupid” (like stepping in front of a crazy person with a gun instead of allowing him to shoot multiple of your friends – if you don’t believe in an afterlife there clearly is no reward in that cause there won’t be a you to receive that reward), and it is also very possible to do something that is wrong but “smart” (committing a crime when you’re sure you can get away with it).

    You wouldn’t step in front of a crazy person if you didn’t want to cause a desired consequence, which may have very well involved the possibility of getting killed. You simply judged saving another life over your own. Thus the act was right if your friends continue to live and you were successful.

    Also, “not believe in an afterlife” is an arbitrary condition you added. A person may very well believe it and consider a good afterlife to be a part of the consequences of this action.

    Someone who commits a crime apparently doesn’t have enough moral qualms about that. He values the stolen property more than the consequence of being a thief and a potential of getting caught.

    Nothing we do is without consequences and we seldom do something without expecting some sort of a result/consequence. We can choose an act, but we can’t choose a consequence though, so consequences is where we are proven right or wrong about something.

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