Moral and Epistemic Relativism

[Kobi]

This is something I must think about as the mention of the second law of thermodynamics made my eyes glaze over. Brain fatigue perhaps. Fresh eyes and brain may help. Will revisit tomorrow.

Originally Posted by dreadgeek

That's an interesting question. I think there are SOME ultimate truths but I think that there are probably only a handful of them and almost all of them are going to fall into one of the physical sciences. The Second Law of Thermodynamics is one such Ultimate Truth. As one eminent physicist put it:

"The law that entropy always increases holds, I think, the supreme position among the laws of Nature. If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell's equations — then so much the worse for Maxwell's equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation — well, these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes. But if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation." — Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World (1927)

I think to know what ultimate truths there are, we will ultimately have to meet another sentient species at or beyond our technological level to see what they hit upon. I expect that if we ever do have such an encounter, we'll agree on the speed of light, we'll agree that the Universe is expanding, they will have some kind of formulation approximating classical mechanics, they'll have some kind of formulation approximating Einstein's theories of relativity, they'll have something along the lines of the atomic model and we'll agree on things like the approximate value of pi and they'll have something recognizable as quantum mechanics. I suspect that they'll understand our chemistry although not, necessarily, our organic chemistry if they aren't from a world where life is carbon based as it is here. (Silicon based life is possible, it just didn't happen here.)

After that, I think the areas that we would agree upon would fall off rather quickly. I don't think we can make any kind of pretensions to Ultimate Truth claims about the purpose of the Universe or the nature of a divine being if any such thing exists. All our religious claims are local affairs. All our history is local (although I still think that there are truth claims about history that can be made). By local, I mean here on Earth and I'm willing to be generous and extend it out to the whole of the solar system but not beyond that.