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Originally Posted by Daffy Duck  If everything is perception, then there is no Objective/Absolute truth. But if we are claiming that everything is a perception, then that is an absolute truth, and now we have a paradox. |
Well said. And on a related note...
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I've had talks like this many times before, with people who quote even more sources and go into more detail than ALG (who seems to do it more than anyone else on this particular forum).
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One side of the paradox alone is allowed to prevail when 'sources' are quoted to support the view that there is no absolute truth. It's like we have a black box, and the master is saying "It does not matter what I bring out of the box - it will be purely relative, purely imaginary; it is just in my mind: look - here is a document by someone very clever indeed saying that everything is relative and only in my head!". Strangely, when you suggest that their whole 'imaginary worldview' might just be their overactive imagination and wishful thinking, they don't like it. They demand that everyone else be as inconstant as them.
The objective world - although in the final analysis perhaps out of our human ken - is investigable when we work together and use the rigorous methods of empiricism to get rid of those personal biases. At least, we discover enough that is right for us to make predictions that come true again and again, developing laws of physics from them. Our discovery of these is almost entirely what has allowed us to evolve from stick-wielding scavengers on an African plain to global citizens engaging in electronic discussion and pouring over the latest photographs of galaxies forming billions of light-years away, taken by orbiting telescopes.
Of course, we can deny evolution, Hubble, Africa, the laws of physics, distant galaxies, etc., etc., or demand that they have only imaginary existence in their heads, but to appeal to 'sources' that supposedly prove the matter is just another level of delusion. If it's all in your head, then so are your sources, and they are worthless outside of your head. Just stay there inside it. No problem.