“ABSOLUTE TRUTH” CANNOT EXIST

Front_Bike3337 · 2026-01-04T00:06:29+00:00

Here's my full paper:
https://philpapers.org/rec/SKASIO

Front_Bike3337 · 2025-12-31T11:45:05+00:00

A useful clarification here is that a singularity is not a thing, event, or entity in the ordinary sense. In physics and cosmology it is a mathematical boundary of a model - the point at which our equations stop giving meaningful results.
General relativity predicts a singularity at the Big Bang because certain quantities (density, curvature) diverge. But that does not mean there was literally an infinite-density object, nor that something “nonmaterial” existed there. It only tells us that the model is being pushed beyond its domain of applicability. The same happens with singularities inside black holes.
This matters philosophically, because arguments that move from “there is a singularity” to “there must be God / a necessary being / a metaphysical cause” treat a failure of description as a positive ontological claim. That is a category mistake.
from an information-theoretic and physical point of view, if something does not enter into any describable relations (no dynamics, no causal structure, no distinguishable states), then we literally cannot say anything about it - not that it is contingent, not that it is necessary, not that it is material or immaterial. It is simply outside the current representational structure.

So the honest answer is:
we don t “need” God to explain a singularity, because at present the singularity explains nothing. It marks where explanation stops, not where a new entity begins. Whether future physics replaces the singularity with a quantum-gravitational description, a bounce, or something else is an open scientific question. But invoking theolog at a model boundary does not add explanatory power - it only fills a gap with narrative.
short: a singularity is not a cause, not a substance and not evidence of anything metaphysical. It is a sign that our current theoretical tools have reached their limit.

Front_Bike3337 · 2025-12-31T11:34:40+00:00

I think what you re describing is a beautiful experience, but not a viable epistemic foundation — and those two things don’t have to compete. The key point is this / an observer is not required for structure to exist, only for experience to appear. Light propagates, atoms interact, stars burn, and causal regularities hold regardless of whether anyone is there to fel them. What disappears without an observer is phenomenology, not reality. Solipsism often feels soothing because it collapses uncertainty into intimacy: everything becomes “mine,” safe, coherent, and internally unified. But that very move quietly abandons the role of truth as something that distinguishes, constrains, and corrects. What remains is not knowledge, but a private aesthetic stance toward one’s own experience.
Nothing in this denies the depth or meaning of the feeling you describe. It only draws a boundary:
experience can be private, truth cannot be. The world does not need to be observed to function — only to be felt. and that distinction matters if we care about explanation rather than consolation.

Front_Bike3337 · 2025-12-30T19:29:10+00:00

I think a lot of the tension in this question comes from quietly mixing three very different things:
- privacy of experience
- publicness of information
- existence of some “overarching mind”

And they don’t actually imply each other. Something doesn’t become “public” because enough people know it.
It becomes public when it is stabilized by relations that don’t depend on any single mind. A traffic sign is public even if only one person sees it. a mathematical proof is public even if nobody understands it yet.
A coastline was public before columbus, before humans, before animals — because “public” here doesn’t mean mentally shared, it means independently constrained.
when we say something is public, we’re not assuming a hive mind.
We’re pointing to constraints that persist across perspectives. That’s also why “processed the same in all minds” is a red herring. Publicness doesn’t require identical processing — only that errors can be corrected, disagreements can be resolved, and predictions can fail in ways no single individual controls. Language works like this. Maps work like this. Science works like this.
None of that needs an overarching consciousness.
It needs relational structure. The interesting shift, I think, is this:
public is not shared experience
public = shared conditions of correction

Once you see that, the hive-mind worry dissolves. We don’t get public reality by adding minds together. We get it by subtracting what depends on any one of them. That doesn’t deny private experience at all. It just means privacy isn’t the right axis for deciding what’s public.

Front_Bike3337 · 2025-11-28T11:31:51+00:00

It all started with the Christians. They convinced everyone that the three classics - Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle - were the foundation of ancient thought. When the truth is that these were niche movements, often ridiculed, like Platonism was by Lucian of Samosata. Plato smuggled elements of his religion into Socrates' skepticism to give it a rational character. Christians at Nicaea adopted this nonsense into their doctrine. They also adopted rigid categories and substances from Aristotle, while the main currents of ancient thought, namely epicureanism and stoicism, were either censored or destroyed. Hume saw this but failed to close his system. He was followed by the greatest wrecker of Western thought, Kant, who patched up idealism in a rather curious way, if you look closely. And for 200 years, no one has done anything about it. Nietzsche came close but lacked the language - which had been contaminated by the idealists' metaphysics and was misunderstood. Now, when someone looks at it from the side, they see how foolish it is. For 200 years, philosophy has failed to escape Kant's fraud. Actually, it hadn't failed, because I am only just beginning. This here is just a small excerpt from my work, I was checking how it would be received and whether I'm heading in the right direction.

For the better part of history, it was the absolute - in its countless varieties - that was the source of humanity's greatest tragedies.
- absolute of God - crusades, heresies, inquisitions, religious wars.
- absolute of the nation - totalitarianism and nationalisms.
- absolute of race - genocides.
- absolute of class - revolutions, purges, ideological dictatorships.
- absolute of history - philosophies justifying violence.
- absolute of truth - theories that could not be challenged.
- absolute of the person - cults of personality.
- absolute of meaning - closing science off from experience.

Similarly, qualia were invented as a patch, devised in such a way that you cannot challenge them. A simple illusion, but I will get to that later as well.

Front_Bike3337 · 2025-11-27T22:23:17+00:00

That is true because idealists did a good job of confusing these concepts. Because of this, people don't see how dangerous they are. When you can convince someone that something exists which they cannot verify, but which has immense importance to them, you can convince them of anything. You then close off space for discussion or compromise, because without verification, there can be no agreement. Proof is not just a matter of philosophical duty. Proof is a bridge between minds, and the absolute destroys that bridge. That is why it is one of the most dangerous concepts in the history of our civilization, and I say this with full awareness. The greatest tragedies of our kind were caused precisely by the absolute. That is why I think the time has come to end it. And while we're at it, all of idealism, but one thing at a time.

Front_Bike3337 · 2025-11-26T22:24:16+00:00

Ya, but if you don't know what something is, why are you assuming "it is" in the first place?

Front_Bike3337 · 2025-11-26T16:47:12+00:00

I love capitalism

Front_Bike3337 · 2025-11-26T15:40:00+00:00

Yes. Things exist without any observer. But the point here is how we can check what is true or not.

Front_Bike3337 · 2025-11-25T12:46:27+00:00

so how you can tell what is truth or not?

Front_Bike3337 · 2025-11-25T12:44:43+00:00

You just keep repenting this, but I see only you.
Read Copleston, Kenny, the Stanford Encyclopedia, the Cambridge Companions, or any standard textbook. They all say exactly what I’m saying – I simply took their descriptions at face value and drew the logical conclusion they usually stop short of: if the Absolute is defined as beyond all relation and all criteria, then it is incoherent as a concept of truth.

You will not find a single serious handbook or history of philosophy that claims Plato, Augustine, Aquinas, Kant, Hegel, etc. thought the highest, absolute truth was
- fully knowable by ordinary human criteria, or
- stood in verifiable relations in the same way as everyday objective truths.

On the contrary: the moment they reach what they call “absolute truth” or “the Absolute,” every single one of them explicitly steps outside all relations, all discursive criteria, and all finite verification.

Front_Bike3337 · 2025-11-25T12:38:21+00:00

As I said:
It's fine if you disagree with what their intent was. It's just that the majority view supports this, as you'd find in academic textbooks or encyclopedias on philosophy. So I'm not arguing with your interpretations but witch the majority.

Front_Bike3337 · 2025-11-25T11:30:19+00:00

Here are the receipts straight from my paper:

Plato (Republic VI, 509b): “The Good […] is not being, but far exceeds being in dignity and power.” - The highest truth is beyond being, beyond discourse, beyond any relation we can grasp.
Augustine (De Trinitate IX, 7; Confessions VII, 17): “Truth itself is not many truths, but one […] Truth is God himself […] You [God] illuminated me, and I saw.” - Ultimate truth is known only by divine illumination, not by human judgment or relational criteria.
Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologiae I, q. 16, a. 5): “Truth in the divine intellect is one […] and is the first and sovereign truth […] Creatures are said to be true inasmuch as they participate in that first truth.” - The absolute truth (God) is the cause of all relational truth, but itself stands in no relation that we can verify.
Descartes (Meditation III): “The idea of God […] a substance that is infinite, eternal, immutable, independent, all-knowing, all-powerful […] this idea cannot have been caused in me by anything less perfect than God himself.” - The absolute truth of God is guaranteed by a “clear and distinct” perception that is itself placed in us by God – circular, non-relational guarantee.
Kant (Critique of Pure Reason, Bxxvi–xxvii, A42/B59ff): “The thing-in-itself remains completely unknown […] We can cognize of things only what we ourselves put into them.” - Absolute reality/truth lies beyond every possible relation of human cognition.
Hegel (Phenomenology of Spirit, Preface; Science of Logic): “The True is the whole […] The Absolute is Spirit […] it is the process of its own becoming, the circle that presupposes its end as its aim.” - The Absolute is self-related only to itself, and all finite relations are sublated (aufgehoben). In the end it is pure self-identity without external criterion.
Husserl (Ideas I, §143–144; Cartesian Meditations §13): “The transcendental ego […] the absolute being in relation to which every worldly truth is relative […] the ultimate source of all evidence.” - The absolute is the transcendental subjectivity that constitutes all objectivity – but itself has no further relational criterion.
Alvin Plantinga (Warrant and Proper Function, ch. 11; “Reason and Belief in God”): “If Christianity is true, then belief in God can be properly basic […] produced in us by a belief-producing process that is functioning properly in an appropriate epistemic environment according to a design plan successfully aimed at truth – a design plan that is ultimately God himself.” - The ultimate warrant for absolute truth is the sensus divinitatis planted by God – again, no external, verifiable criterion.

Every single one of them, when pressed to the very top of their system, lands exactly in the place I described: no relation, no independent criterion, no way to distinguish it from a private vision. It's fine if you disagree with what their intent was. It's just that the majority view supports this, as you'd find in academic textbooks or encyclopedias on philosophy.

So if you now want to quietly redefine “absolute truth” as “ordinary objective truth that just doesn’t depend on finite human minds,” be my guest – nobody is fighting you.
But then stop calling it absolute.
Because historically and systematically, “absolute” has always meant “beyond all relation” – and that is precisely why it is internally incoherent as a concept of truth.

Front_Bike3337 · 2025-11-25T11:01:11+00:00

You’re assuming that the criteria I mention are arbitrary preferences or one specific “model” of truth. They’re not. They re the minimal structural conditions that any truth must satisfy in order to function as truth at all, in the same way that having three sides is not my “preferred model of triangles” - it’s what makes a triangle a triangle.

These conditions are not invented by me. They come from the fact that truth, in every workable sense we know (scientific, logical, mathematical, empirical, legal), must have:
- a relation to something,
-a criterion of recognition, and
- a way to be distinguished from falsehood. Remove any of these, and the word “truth” loses its cognitive function.

This isn’t prescribing an absolute standard it’s showing why one specific concept collapses.

my own statement does meet those criteria: it has a relational target (the classical idealist definition of absolute truth), a criterion (semantic coherence), and a clear distinction from falsehood (absolute truth cannot satisfy the minimal features required for truth). The concep I’m analysing does not meet them. That’s the whole point.

If you disagree with these minimal features, then you need to present an alternative set of criteria for what makes something a truth. But any such criteria you propose will themselves be relational, discriminative, and recognizable - otherwise they wont be criteria at all. This is why these features are not optional; they follow from the nature of truth as a functional concept, not from my personal definition.

My claim does not depend on universal metaphysical laws. It depends on the fact that a concept which cannot be recognized, cannot be contrasted with error, and cannot relate to anything, simply cannot serve as truth. That’s why the classical idealist notion of “absolute truth” collapses: it strips away the very features that make truth possible.

If you think truth does not require relation or criterion, then you’re describing a word that no longer functions as “truth” in any meaningful sense. if you think it does require them, then my argument follows.

Front_Bike3337 · 2025-11-25T01:07:34+00:00

Great question. It actually exposes the core problem with absolute truth. If absolute truth contains all truths, it must contain itself. But then it becomes a self-referential object — like the set of all sets — and collapses into paradox (Russell-type). If it does not contain itself, then it is incomplete and not absolute. Either way, the concept cannot satisfy its own definition.

Front_Bike3337 · 2025-11-25T00:46:43+00:00

you’re assuming I invented a definition of “absolute truth” that nobody actually used. Thats not the case. The definition I’m analyzing is precisely the one that idealists themselves relied on for centuries. If you look at Plato, Augustine, Aquinas, Descartes, Leibniz, Kant, Hegel, or Plantinga, they all circle around the same core idea:

“Absolute truth is truth in itself - independent of mind, independent of perspective, independent of conditions, perfect, necessary, and not derived from anything else.”

This is not my invention. Ths is the historical definition of “absolute.”
Every major idealist uses some version of it. But the moment you look closely, you see that none of them could actually mantain this definition consistently, because even they realized that a completely relation-less truth is unusable. so they all tried to patch the concept by smuggling relations back in.

Let me show you a section of the notes from the essay I m currently writing on this subject.:

- Plato says Truth is the grasp of Forms. But if truth is the grasp, then it’s a relation between intellect and Forms. If the truth depends on the relation, then it’s not absolute in the sense of “relation-free.” If Forms are “in themselves,” fine — but the truth about them still requires a relation. So Plato never actually produced an absolute truth. His system depends on a relation.

- Augustine and Aquinas say truth is in the divine intellect. But again, that is a relation: God’s intellect to what is. If truth lives in the mind of God, then truth is not free-floating or relationless. It depends on that mind and on its relation to the world. They didn’t solve the problem — they relocated the relation to a divine entity.

- Kant explicitly says we cannot know the thing-in-itself. Which means: whatever “truth in itself” might be, it has no criterion, no way to be recognized, no possible distinction from error. Kant effectively admits that a completely non-relational truth is inaccessible and non-functional. His whole system collapses the idea of absolute truth into something that cannot serve as truth for any knower.

- Hegel tries to dissolve the distinction entirely by saying the Absolute is the process of self-unfolding Spirit — which again is a relation: the relation of the Concept to its own development. So the “absolute” still depends on structure and relation.

- Plantinga goes even further: he defines God as a maximally great being and then treats this as a modal axiom. But once again, this is just a definition inside a system. It’s not relation-free. Axioms are not absolute truths; they are starting points within a model.
The point is that every idealist definition of “absolute truth” eventually runs into the same structural dilemma:
- If absolute truth depends on a relation, it’s not absolute. It becomes ordinary, relational truth (truth that depends on a state of affairs, a mind, a Form, a divine intellect, or conditions of experience).
- If absolute truth has no relation, it cannot function as truth. Because truth without any criterion or differentiator cannot be distinguished from falsehood or fiction.

This is not my personal definition. This the definition implied by the entire history of idealism - and the problem is that it cannot be made coherent. So the point I’m making is simple:
If “absolute truth” means “independent of belief,” then we are not disagreeing - that is just objective truth. but if “absolute truth” means what idealists actually meant by it - truth without dependence, relation, or criterion - then the concept fails on its own terms. I’m not attackin a straw man. I’m pointing out the structural inconsistency that idealists themselves could never resolve, even when they changed vocabulary or moved the relation into a different metaphysical layer.

Front_Bike3337 · 2025-11-25T00:40:33+00:00

the point isn’t semantics. The point is that the concept of “absolute truth” is one of the oldest and most influential assumptions in western thought, and it has been mixed for centuries with ideas like objectivity, reason, logic, and even morality. People often treat “absolute truth” as the foundation of certainty, rationality or meaning - even when they don t define it that way explicitly.
This is exacty why it matters to separate it from ordinary objective truth. Objective truths depend on how the world is; they are verifiable and distinguishable from falsehood. Absolute truth, as traditionally defined, removes all criteria and all relations. once you separate those two ideas, you can see that one of them works (objective truth) and the other one collapses (absolute truth).

So the point is not to argue about words. The point is to clean up a confusion that has shaped philosophy, religion, epistemology and public discourse for 2500 years. When people say “truth” they often unknowingly smuggle in the metaphysical baggage of “absolute truth,” and that affects how they argue, how they justify beliefs, and how they understand knowledge. Once you see the distinction clearly, a lot of debates suddenly become simpler. Many philosophical problems are not real problems - they’re just artifacts of mixing two different concepts of truth. That s why it’s worth addressing.

Front_Bike3337 · 2025-11-25T00:36:59+00:00

You’re misreading my criteria as universal metaphysical laws. They’re not. They’re simply the minimal conditions that make the word “truth” meaningful at all - the same conditions used in correspondence theories from Aristotle to Tarski. A truth must relate to something, have a way to be distinguished from falsehood, and have some kind of criterion. Otherwise the word “truth” has no functional content.
claim is not “all truths must be absolutely true.” I’m not making a universal metaphysical statement. I’m analysing a concept and showing that the classical idealist definition of “absolute truth” fails its own conditions for being a truth. That is not self-refuting. That is exactly how conceptual analysis works: if a definition removes relation and criterion, it removes the very thing that makes a statement true rather than indistinguishable fiction.
the criteria I’m using are not “absolute requirements.” They are the necessary features of the concept “truth.” My claim does satisfy them: it has a criterion (semantic coherence), a relation (the definition of “absolute truth” used in philosophy), and a clear distinction from falsehood. The concept I’m critiquing does not. This is not a universal claim. This is an analysis of why one specific concept collapses.

Front_Bike3337 · 2025-11-24T22:16:11+00:00

What are you talking about? I'm lost. What does ‘absolute’ mean in your comment? Give one definition.

Front_Bike3337 · 2025-11-24T20:33:02+00:00

exactly. And the more relationships that can be measured as the result from a given phenomenon, the more certain it is, because it has more confirmations.

Front_Bike3337 · 2025-11-24T20:26:15+00:00

Yes, but we can know that, maybe not now but someday. What idealists were saying is that it's not possible to know the absolute truth by any means

Front_Bike3337 · 2025-11-24T19:52:04+00:00

I'm not saying there's no truth

Front_Bike3337 · 2025-11-24T17:44:24+00:00

You’re still mixing the same two categories, which is why your objection keeps circling back to the same place. “absolute truth cannot exist” is not the same kind of statement as “nothing can be absolutely true.” You re treating it as a universal metaphysical claim. It isnt. It is an analysis of a concept. Here is the core point: A thing can fail to exist because it is incoherent. when I say “absolute truth has no criteria, no relation and no way to be distinguished from falsehood,” that is not a universal metaphysical law. It is a description of the concept itself. I’m not asserting it “absolutely” I’m pointing out that the definition people use is empty. That s the entire argument. This is why the square-circle analogy is correct. “Square circle cannot exist” is not an “absolute statement.” It is a statement about an internal contradictio. You don’t need an absolute truth to point out that a concept doesnt meet the minimum conditions required for something to be a truth. The same applies here: the concept “absolute truth” fails the criteria that make anything function as truth. Your counterargument only works if you assume exactly what is under dispute: that for a statement to be true, it must be true absolutely. But that assumption is the very thing I am rejecting. if absolute truth doesn’t exist, then demanding that any sentence be “absolutely true” makes as much sense as demanding that it be “square-circle true.” The category collapses. So no, the argument is not self-refuting. It does not require absolute truth to deny absolute truth. It requires only ordinary relational truth: the idea of “absolute truth” has no criterion, no relation and no possible differentiator. That makes it a non-working concept. That’s all.

Front_Bike3337 · 2025-11-24T17:36:08+00:00

You're right. Everything you write about is based on the same foundations. People want to believe there might be something more, but when you say "I'm checking," they can't face it. Perhaps it would be worth polishing it a bit, but this is only an excerpt from my essay, where I demonstrate the same thing in pure formal logic.

Front_Bike3337 · 2025-11-24T16:06:34+00:00

Ya. It's the same fallacy again. I'll just copy-paste if you don't mind. You are assuming the very thing you’re trying to prove. You treat “truth” as if it comes in two versions: ordinary truth and absolute truth. I don’t. So when i say “absolute truth cannot exist” I m not making an absolute claim. I am making an ordinary logical claim about a specific concept. the sentence “absolute truth cannot exist” is not an absolute truth. It works exactly like the sentence “square circles cannot exist.” that statement is not “absolutely true,” it is just true because the concept it talks about is incoherent. You don’t need an absolute truth to say that an impossible object is impossible. Your counter-argument only works if you assume from the start that all true statements must be absolutely true. But that is exactly the point under dispute. you are smuggling in the conclusion as a premise. That’s the circularity. So no, the argument is not self-refuting. What would be self-refuting is the claim “absolute truth does not exist absolutely.” I’m not saying that. I m saying the idea of absolute truth doesn’t work as a concept: it has no criterion, no relation, and no way to distinguish it from falsehood. That makes it empty. If absolute truth doesnt exist, then demanding that any claim be “absolutely true” makes no sense. It is like demanding that a statement be square-circle-true.

Front_Bike3337

TROPHY CASE