/philosophy/ - Philosophy

>>1472

Yes, they're called tautologies, but no one cares about those.

As my boi Hegel said, the Truth is the whole.

I would say no because in order for something to be true, it would have to be proven factual by some relationship to another factually proven truth. In which case, things we have never seen before or observed cannot be proven to have a relationship to anything else; so truth cannot be proved.

>>2033

Well isn't truth true regardless of whether or not it's been proven?

>>1472

Technically the only absolute that can exist is reality/universe as a whole. Absolutes are wholly independent unto themselves, unconditioned by any conceptual relation or material relation.

>>1473

Hegel pretty much is the one to go to concerning absolute truths, which is only his entire system and no single moment in it. Hegel shows how a true absolute cannot be expressed in analytic forms like definitions.

>>2034

Correct, but then that that would make for an infinite number of truths that can never be observed.

>>2035

Some thoughts-

An absolute truth is sui generis and holistic? That seems ambiguous on face; if it is "unconditioned by any conceptual / material relation", in what meaningful sense can we detect "reality as a whole" as absolute?

The statement that "only [an] entire system and no single moment in it [is absolutely true]", as with the statements mentioned beforehand, imply a distinction between "absolute truth" and some other variety of truth; I also wonder what truth-value such statements about single statements lacking "absolute"-ness obtain.

I'm not particularly familiar with Hegel, but this seems like a coherence theory of truth kind of argument - no single concept/phrase possesses meaning outside of system, question of truth applicable only to the whole system.

Again, not familiar with Hegel, be gentle bb

>>2036

Yes, some existents have come and gone out of existence without a shred of their evidence remaining (as nothing says is impossible and it is pretty intuitive too). So what? It seems more reasonable to me to say that it is true (and always shall be that) I will be dead one day, and long after all humanity has perished - with no conceptual web or mind to grasp it. If the relationship between that fact, statement, and the world is not truth (though I'm virtually certain it is), it's a real relationship nonetheless that seems meaningful if not 'true'.

If "absolute" is taken to mean "unconditioned" then from a Kantian perspective there is some thing, called "noumenon", which corresponds to what is unconditioned in any experience.

However I'm not so sure it would constitute an "absolute truths", because "truth" only relates to propositions. If "absolute truth" is taken as that which is true in any possible situation, then I can't see how any such proposition would be possible. All the content of the Critique of Pure Reason, for example, relates only to human reason. To divine reason, all things would appear certainly and completely determined, such that the proposition "there is 'noumenon'" would be false.

I also don't think that "there is a reality" is absolutely true because, while it's true for both human and divine reason, it would be indeterminate for some empty "experience", like that of a dreamless sleep. All which is "absolute" in Kant is only so with reference to the conditions of human experience, which is non-empty. But if nothing is conceivable, then the existence of that which ought to underlie the determination of anything (the whole of reality, "omnitudo realitas", the stuff of Kant and Hegel) is in itself indeterminate.

On the other hand, the only argument ever conceived that claimed to prove things without reference to any experience is the ontological argument, and there is no agreement as to whether it "proves" anything. Everyone thinks there's something cheesy about it, but no one can really tell what. But if you do believe in it, then I guess "'being' is" would be an absolutely true proposition and that "non-being" is impossible, and I should turn my mind away from it.

So I don't think there are "absolutely true" propositions, specially not concerning things-in-general. There might be some regarding experience, such as "there is a reality", but these are only true for human reason, which nonetheless can never attain any other absolute truth beyond such vague notions as we can only perceive what is conditioned.

>>2039

The absolute is self-generating and self-completing. The Absolute Idea, for example, is the concept whose content is the conception of concepts. The Absolute Idea begins as the mere abstract concept of being, but an analysis of this basic concept of being forces a movement of ever more complicated and concrete ideas about being reaching up to Concept. The Absolute Idea is this entire set of moments of thought, this process, raised up to a concept of being itself. A form whose content is its form. This is, by and large, incomprehensible because nowhere in this entire process is there really any “being” (thing) which undergoes this process. The Universe/reality is an Absolute because it is the sum of all existence and its processes, but the concept of the Universe is conceived as a thing itself, a category not just identical with all finite things, but over and above them, transcending its content.

Truth in Hegel is an ontological being, not a formal category nor a quality. That which is True is identical, not representational or a categorical qualifier, with that which is. The Truth is the actual whole, but there are truths below that which are always relative with relation to lower and higher truths, and not absolute themselves. These are the truths which are the realm of analytical formal logics and everyday common thinking.

Hegel’s Truth is not a coherence theory, nor representational. For Hegel a Truth is identical with its being. Something is true insofar as the objects in the world embody them to lower or higher degrees. “All that is real is rational” is something Hegel literally means, but people don’t know that for Hegel all that exists is not to be considered real. Reality is reserved as a quality of the Absolute, and things are real only to the degree they embody self-determination and freedom in their concept and being.

It is a mistake to equate the Absolute to the universe or the totality of nature. The absolute, to be absolute, must be self-determining, self-conscious of its own nature, and moving itself towards its own chosen ends. Humanity, as a being in the category of spirit, is the highest degree of reality and absoluteness in the realm of nature due to its self-consciousness and capacity to set its own telos.

>>2040

About the ontological argument, Hegel talks about it somewhere and says that Kant's critique of it was off base. Hegel considers Anselm's argument to be on the right path, but executed poorly. Hegel's system is an ontological argument for God, the Absolute Spirit.

>>1472

Does anything else exist?