Absolute truth....

Is there Objective Truth, or is it rather a collection of agreed upon “truths” that a group of people assume to be objective? This question can be answered many ways, and insomuch as there are thinkers that have thoughts on this idea, there are nearly as many different answers.  The question that has yet to be answered in class is, is there actual outside Objective Truth to be found? If one looks at the history of western science, one will find that within the origins there was an idea that science was attempting to answer or understand God; within that concept there is an idea that there is a truth outside of the human domain. This is where the philosophers are finding the initial problem, however, while finding the faults in the system have yet to provide answers to fix this problem. The issue is not with the system itself, but how we are posing the questions, and what questions we are asking. The idea that there is an objective truth that one can obtain, maintain, and then demonstrate without having to comply to the confines of a previously set up paradigms is not possible. The issue has become that the paradigms are set up in such away as to presume that there is an objective truth that can explain everything. Nothing can be explained without acknowledging that all concepts come from within ourselves, and that we can only build from the concepts that humans have constructed, or tear the constructions down. The issue is not using inductive reasoning, but using inductive reasoning to arrive at an objective deductive conclusion without the acknowledgment of self-reference. This makes any truth subjective to the paradigms one is taught, one’s religious affiliation, one’s idea of truth, and how one presumes that we collectively as humans can arrive at this truth. Truth is subjective, but through collective observations, however, humans can arrive at a subjectively human truth that is only good for that particular paradigm, for that particular set of humans, and what they can agree upon.

What is a tomato?  Assuming that everyone knows what a tomato is, this is at first a simple question that can seemingly answered with certainty. However, in this country many people consider it to be a vegetable, while by definition it is a fruit, for it is not a seed or root, but it is a swollen ovary of a plant that contains seeds.  What is the truth of a tomato? Is it a fruit or a vegetable? In order for us to look closely at the task at hand we must ask what is the essence of a tomato, or what is tomatoness. In search for tomatoness one might first cut a tomato in half. In cutting in half was the tomato destroyed, or did it become two tomatoes? As stated prior we are looking for tomatoness, and with further investigation it appears that both halves exhibit what could be described as tomatoness.  Assuming that everyone knows what a tomato is, it can be agreed that cutting it in half, or any number of reasonable times, the tomatoness will not go away, nor, will anyone be able to find tomatoness by cutting it into pieces, thus, not isolating the tomatoness. The tomatoness must lie in the descriptive properties of the tomato, such as: sometimes red, sometimes squishy, sometimes green, it’s always acidic, and it has seeds. However, many other things in the world share these very qualities, yet, none of them in totality express tomatoness. What I’m trying to express is the fact that one cannot take apart the whole to explain the whole objectively. While at the grocery store produce section one can plainly see that while sharing qualities of a tomato, nothing but a tomato is a tomato. This means that only tomatoes contain tomatoness, and further more, one cannot extract tomatoness from the tomato, essentially the tomato in confined by the concept of what a tomato is. So incidentally is truth.

            Before it is demonstrate why truth cannot be founded in pieces, the idea that pieces put together do lead to an essence of things needs to be addressed.  It can be easily seen that each piece of any one whole does help to construct a concept about an object or concept, but the argument is that within those pieces, the essence of any one thing cannot be found in it’s own pieces. Just like the tomato the skin doesn’t make it a tomato, only by combining each part does anything become what it is, and there is no extraction of the essence of anyone thing. Yes, the combination of pieces does equal the whole and then gives rise to an essence, but there is not one piece that is the essence of the whole. Let’s say for instance that someone is attempting to put a tomato together, doesn’t know about tomatoes, but has all the parts of a tomato but the seeds. With great care one could construct a fairly accurate tomato, however, it wouldn’t be a true tomato, for, it lacks the seeds. 

            Science is attempting to explain the whole in pieces without knowing all the pieces, albeit that physics is attempting to find the equation to everything; this does not take into account the human condition, or the fact that we are using the human condition to come to conclusions about the universe, but before we examine the closed condition in which we must find truth, the current approach to finding truth itself needs to be looked at. As eluded to before science is breaking everything into pieces, and as in the tomato even though you are discovering what something is made of, it doesn’t mean you are coming any closer to finding the essence of things, or the truth about it. Let’s use paleontology as an example. A skull is found that appears to be in the lines of humans. The paleontologist must rest on the shoulders of a scientist whose job it is to carbon, or potassium-argon date the find. Furthermore, he may rely on genetics to illuminate the origins of the skull.  Each person is bringing their piece of the puzzle to the table to elaborate from whom this skull came from. This is an example of pulling pieces together to somehow get to the truth, but the total of the whole may never be found. Furthermore if at any time the geneticist or the person who dates the skull discovers that within their field that there is a change amongst the way they compile data, the paleontologist must in turn change his ideas of the skull. This is the Fault line in the inductive to deductive, and why the deductive part of a claim changes. It can also be stated that the observations weren’t wrong for the paradigm that the scientists were in at the time. Even though the planets are in an elliptical orbit, the explanations to why have changed over the years. This does not mean that the planets are no longer in an elliptical orbit, and because the dating or genetic work doesn’t suggest it is an ancestor, doesn’t mean the skull has no story or significance, and because the truth changes about an observation, does not make the observations any less true. It’s the paradigms that are constructed around the scientific inquiries that either makes an observation true or false. This then lends to the acknowledgement that paradigms lean on one another to compile the whole truth, but that doesn’t make it the whole truth. One can arrive at a fairly close objective assumption about any particular situation. It is finding new pieces to the situation that change it. Henceforth, when one builds a paradigm without knowing all the pieces it is impossible to arrive at what one would consider objective truth.

            It could be argued that gathering pieces does lead to the whole story, or the proverbial tomato mentioned above. The seedless tomato above could be used as a perfectly good example of tomato, and could even be used as an example of tomatoness. I would like to call this the tomato paradigm, (remember in this paradigm the tomato does not contain seeds) or T.P. for short. In a summation, paradigms are a group of ideas that build one’s worldview. There are two ways in which to approach the ideas that build up the paradigms. The first way is to box the paradigms so that they are distinct in their respects of each other. As an example the Newtonian physics paradigm is a much different paradigm from that of Einsteinian physics. It must be noted that each paradigm lends concepts to other paradigms. If a paradigm is dismantled, it doesn’t mean that the whole of the paradigm is thrown out. Newtonian physics is still used and very applicable to our everyday lives, but doesn’t give the whole picture of the world. It is much like the T.P. and can be used as a functional representation of the mechanical world. Not only that, but it can also lead to further discoveries.  One can imagine that Einstein wouldn’t have been able to arrive at his conclusions without Newton. As mentioned before paradigms lend to other paradigms. As in the paleontologist example he has to lean on other constructs to build his own worldview. What is happening currently in science is there is a division in the search for truth. Each discipline is narrowing itself, and creating smaller and smaller paradigms in order to find the truth. However, this narrowing causes the disciplines to lean on each other, and build their worldviews from additional sources. Again we find scientists building truth from abstract pieces. Again the issue is not with the pieces in and of themselves, but that the whole of the puzzle is not complete, and there is no way of knowing that there is a hole in the picture until someone sees it. Since a new piece can shift an entire paradigm, no matter how small, with all the paradigms leaning on each other this can shift everyone’s paradigm.  At this point it is easy to see the scientific worldviews as a collection of growing systems that build and grow with respect to each other. It is nice, however, to gaze at them as separate boxes, but isn’t practical do to the fact that they lend so much information outside of their own boxes, and like wise borrow from other’s boxes.

            One could say that this collection of outside sources would lead one to a position that would be closer to an objective or absolute truth. If, that is, all the information that is building a paradigm is objectively obtained. However, if the information is not complete the bias filling the holes still influences the inquiring parties.  Thus, tainting the entire collection of paradigms. In terms of searching for an absolute truth, this cannot lead to and absolute truth. It can, however, lead to workable truths that do function in broadening what one perceives as the truth, but nonetheless is not absolute truth. While the building of paradigms is not absolute truth, it is arguable that it could lead to absolute truth, but this leads to the question: what is this absolute truth?

            The concept of this absolute truth is in philosophical terms needs to be examined. Is absolute truth necessary? This question is introduced in order to put forth the idea that there is no absolute to be discovered or proven. Thus far the questions of this paper have been can we reach absolute truth through the current structures we have, and it seems very unlikely that one can ever reach an absolute truth through piecing together data. This isn’t suggesting that the piecing together of data is not useful, or unprogressive. However, the question of the necessity of absolute truth must be posed. It appears as if science does view the world as if there is some absolute truth, or even that discoveries are leading to a paradigm that will deliver the human race very close to the absolute truth. This is provided that there is an absolute truth separate from one’s subjective understanding of absolute truth. Moreover, can humans even arrive at an absolute truth with out it becoming subjective? If the objective truth is arrived at objectively would that make the objective truth pervasive in all aspects of the human condition. One could conclude that indeed it would.  That whatever absolute truth was finally arrived at would be absolutely objective. However, this is still a lens that is being looked through. Any time one uses a paradigm to view the world they are subjectively using the lens that they are holding to inform themselves at what they are looking at. I.E. it can be inferred that even if the lens they are using is absolute truth it may not be the whole truth, or one can imagine that there is still something missing. Using the T.P. example it is an absolute truth that the constructed tomato does contain tomatoness, but it is not a true tomato. We are coming very close to an absolute tomato, but our incomplete knowledge of our constructed tomato is something that will never be discovered. Our tomato is not an absolute, and furthermore if the absolute tomato is not known it cannot be considered an absolute, because it is unknown, and cannot be known within the system. Then it could be said there is no absolute truth. However, saying that there is no absolute truth does lend to a philosophical quandary. If one states there is no absolute truth, the statement becomes self referential, and creates an absolute truth. This is why one can get close to absolute truth, or gather enough information in a way that can be agreed upon to become useful, but never reach absolute truth. In order to fix the statement that there is no absolute truth, and the statement to remain true, one would have to go outside of the system. This is done in math with irrational numbers. Like wise to fully understand any system or paradigm one would have to remove themselves from it to look at it objectively, this cannot be done, thus making everything subjective.

            The omission of the fact that there is an absolute tomato was done on purpose to illustrate that one, even if they had absolute truth, wouldn’t know they had it. Moreover, the omission was used to demonstrate that there is a flaw in the overall system, for one cannot remove themselves from the system. This doesn’t mean that one cannot obtain truthiness, for the lack of a better term. In fact truthiness would be better stated as useful. Regardless if science is still finding information with subjectivity, it still lends itself useful. It cannot be denied that That Newtonian physics got us to the moon successfully. It is pointless to argue how much truth science holds, but one must recognize that science is useful, and the paradigms are useful for the time and place they are engaged in use.

            While piecing together through paradigms, or individual data, while useful, isn’t a way to obtain absolute truth. In fact it seems doubtful that absolute truth is even necessary in the philosophical sense. By employing the tomato analogy it seems as if absolute truth is unobtainable. Once again this doesn’t mean science whether obtained subjectively or objectively is not a useful product of the human endeavor.