Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able ...

[rwatts]

Approximation is ubiquitous.

I definitely think you are probably right.

[klaus54]

I think that probably you are definitely right.

[robrecht]

Like relative right and wrong, relative truths are far more generally available. It's always easier to find an action that is relatively better or a statement that is relatively more true than to find an optimal behavior or absolute truth.

Approximation is ubiquitous.

As ever, Jesse

I absolutely agree that relative truths are much more common, ubiquitous even, but this still does not explain why you think that absolute truths are relatively useless. This one for example, but there are more interesting ones, relatively speaking that you might like to address.

[Juvenal]

I absolutely agree that relative truths are much more common, ubiquitous even, but this still does not explain why you think that absolute truths are relatively useless. This one for example, but there are more interesting ones, relatively speaking that you might like to address.

In the language of mathematics, every global extremum is a local extremum.

That which is absolutely true, like that which is absolutely right — begging the existential question — is also relatively more true, and relatively more right, than any alternative. Relative truth and relative morality do not thus require their absolute analogues, in contrast with those absolute analogues which cannot, even in principle, recognize their relative confreres except to exclude them from consideration.

As you agree, relative truths are much more common than absolute truths, and hence must exist, independent of the existence of absolute truths, with apologies to Alice and her tea party. Absolute truths are thus doomed to miss most if not all of the human experience.

They are neither necessary nor sufficient.

Making them relatively useless.

As ever, Jesse

[robrecht]

In the language of mathematics, every global extremum is a local extremum.

That which is absolutely true, like that which is absolutely right — begging the existential question — is also relatively more true, and relatively more right, than any alternative. Relative truth and relative morality do not thus require their absolute analogues, in contrast with those absolute analogues which cannot, even in principle, recognize their relative confreres except to exclude them from consideration.

As you agree, relative truths are much more common than absolute truths, and hence must exist, independent of the existence of absolute truths, with apologies to Alice and her tea party. Absolute truths are thus doomed to miss most if not all of the human experience.

They are neither necessary nor sufficient.

Making them relatively useless.

As ever, Jesse

I'm still a little confused. True or not, I'm still kind of hung up on the belief that relative truths ultimately or logically require the existence of (at least the idea of) absolute truth.

When you say relatively useless, you do not mean useless, correct?

[Juvenal]

I'm still a little confused. True or not, I'm still kind of hung up on the belief that relative truths ultimately or logically require the existence of (at least the idea of) absolute truth.

We all have hangups. You can comfortably lose this one. While relative comparisons require a rule, they do not require an actual referent, relative or absolute.

We measure size, for instance, or cardinality more formally, by simply matching members until one one set plays out in the finite cases, or by using diagonal arguments to show elements that must be missed in such a matching in the infinite and transfinite cases. There is no largest infinity, and hence there can be no absolute largest, yet we can make valid comparisons regardless.

In practice, we base most of our decisions on comparison to known examples, either accepting a previous solution or looking for one that's better. Neither the known example nor the contemplated replacement need be absolute.

When you say relatively useless, you do not mean useless, correct?

Or I would not use the qualifier.

I'm not convinced that either absolute truth or absolute morality exist. I know of no examples. Your earlier foray struck me as merely rhetorical, as I don't imagine you were sure a priori or without question.

As ever, Jesse

[robrecht]

We all have hangups. You can comfortably lose this one. While relative comparisons require a rule, they do not require an actual referent, relative or absolute.

We measure size, for instance, or cardinality more formally, by simply matching members until one one set plays out in the finite cases, or by using diagonal arguments to show elements that must be missed in such a matching in the infinite and transfinite cases. There is no largest infinity, and hence there can be no absolute largest, yet we can make valid comparisons regardless.

In practice, we base most of our decisions on comparison to known examples, either accepting a previous solution or looking for one that's better. Neither the known example nor the contemplated replacement need be absolute.

Or I would not use the qualifier.

I'm not convinced that either absolute truth or absolute morality exist. I know of no examples. Your earlier foray struck me as merely rhetorical, as I don't imagine you were sure a priori or without question.

As ever, Jesse

I think I forgot the question. It seems to me there are spiritual intuitions of greatness or goodness that are appear unfathomable. For us to say that a truly limitless goodness actually exists, with any kind of demonstrable certainty, we would need to be rather limitless ourselves I suppose. But I accept my limitations and have learned to be reasonably content with my place in the universe.

Do you have kids?

[klaus54]

Remember that mathematics cordons off an abstract universe with axiomatic statements that lead to statements that are either are true or false in the language of that system.

The application to the "real" universe is not necessarily significant.

K54

[Juvenal]

Do you have kids?

About 300 at present, but I'll be trading them in in January.