Steve introduced the topic by answering: "yes, there are absolutes, but we cannot know what they are; we can only commit ourselves to believing one fundamental view or another." He then defined four key terms: something is "absolute" if it is always true, good, or beautiful, from any/every perspective; what is not absolute is "relative", which means true, good, or beautiful from
one or more previously assumed perspectives; "knowledge" (according to Kant) refers to claims that have both objective and subjective certainty; "belief", by contrast, involves only subjective certainty. On this basis, Steve supported his initial answer with a four-step argument: (1) all relative claims to truth, beauty, or goodness depend on some ideal (i.e., absolute) assumption; (2) the fact that people often disagree about how to move from the ideal to the real leads some people to defend relativism, the view that there are no absolutes at all; (3) yet this view is self-contradictory, because it too depends on an ideal assumption; therefore (4) there must be at least one absolute, or else life would be absurd--but even "life is absurd" would be a claim to know the absolute truth! Steve illustrated his position with two examples: although the basic law of logic (A is not -A) ordinarily functions as an absolute principle for assessing truth, the opposite law (both A and -A are true) works better for interpreting paradoxes, but we cannot always predict which principle is more appropriate; and Kant famously begins one of his books by claiming that only a "good will" is absolutely good, but he later admits that nobody can know for sure whether or not his/her own will is really good.

Claudia began the discussion by asking whether anyone believes we are born with a fundamental sense of right and wrong. Tom replied: no, the human mind is a "tabula rasa" (blank tablet) at birth. Veronica suggested that self-preservation seems to be an inborn impulse. And Janice added that empathy might be in the same category. This led to a general discussion on whether or not there is any evidence that a baby comes to the world with any inborn absolutes. Idy remarked that the urge to eat and breathe seem to be inborn.

Tom then proposed that existence (i.e., the fact that things exist) and consciousness (i.e., the fact that we are aware of our own thinking) are two knowable absolutes. Steve noted that some philosophers have doubted the absolute reality of one or both of these, and that such doubt is only possible because our belief in them is fundamentally subjective--i.e., it is a belief, not an
objectively absolute item of knowledge.

Claudia raised the possibility that "change" might be regarded as an absolute.  Steve connected this with Heraclitus' view that everything is in a state of constant flux: the problem is that if change is absolute, then there is one thing that does not change and that is change itself; so not everything changes! Clifford then observed that change is relative to time; only what is in time
changes, and everything that changes must be in time. Steve agreed, pointing out that if we picture God as existing outside of time, then from God's point of view there would be no change. Everything would just be as it is, with all time and all space being immediately observable. Tom related this to Little's recent attempts to construct a Unification Theory in physics.

Clifford argued that if everything humans can know is controlled by (i.e., is relative to) time, and if God is outside time, then God alone would be absolute or have access to absolute knowledge. Steve agreed, suggesting that this may be a clue to the nature of human freedom: instead of spoon feeding us with absolute rules, God leaves us totally free to decide for ourselves what is true, good, and beautiful. Our inability to know for certain what is absolute can therefore be regarded as a safeguard on human freedom.

Claudia suggested that if "God is love", then both God and love would seem to be absolutes, though they apply to different aspects of human life. Love, for example, does not appear to be a law that governs the physical universe. Steve replied that love provides a good illustration of his position on the question of absolutes: love makes us subjectively certain of another person's beauty; yet we can never know for certain (objectively) what love is or when it is genuine. Tom claimed that love is an emotion, and that emotions are consequences of actions and thoughts, so love need not be regarded as irrational.

Claudia, Tom, and several others then discussed evolution, focusing in particular on the issue of whether or not evolution provides us with objective evidence that existence is absolute.

At one point Claudia claimed that time exists only through its relation to existing things (i.e., objects) and suggested that we focus our attention on the nature of time after taking a break. But her comment sparked so much immediate interest that the break ended up coming after considerable further discussion. Janice, for example, argued that time has an independent reality that does not depend on the objects in time. Tom disagreed, portraying time as a product of human creativity. Wayne argued that Tom's position confuses the measurement of time with time itself. Claudia likewise asked whether time would still exist if
everything were to stop changing. Tom replied that there would no longer be any reason to say time exists, but that such a situation is impossible. Steve noted that for Kant space and time function as an absolute ("transcendental") boundary
line defining the nature of the empirical world, just as the good will defines the nature of the moral world. But Tom claimed Steve was failing to distinguish between physical and metaphysical time. Claudia asked if the tall building we could see outside the window exists in the same sense that time exists. Tom answered that time is an abstraction, whereas the building is not. Claudia countered that the latter is man-made, whereas the former is not. When Janice challenged Tom to define time, he replied that it is a unit of measurement that human beings use to deal with change--to which Wayne responded by asking which
came first, the change or the measurement. On this "chicken-and-egg" note, we finally agreed to take a break.

Claudia reconvened the meeting by asking whether time will ever begin or stop. It seems as if change will never stop, though we cannot be certain. On this basis, she opined that time must operate in a circular pattern of some sort. Wayne related this to a book he recently read, called Einstein's Dreams, which says Einstein had a very similar way of depicting time: when experiencing a lover's kiss, for example, it might just as well be the case that time will go back to its beginning, with everything leading again to this final experience.  Steve mentioned Nietzsche's concept of eternal recurrence in this connection.
And Clifford pointed out a similarity with the mathematical proofs for zero and infinity. Steve then pointed out that the concepts of infinity and zero are good illustrations of his main thesis: they do not exist in any objectively verifiable way, yet we believe in both and our beliefs alone are what transform these into absolute mathematical principles.

Tom then made some comments about the infinitely expanding nature of space-time, which sparked a discussion on the topics of infinite space, quantum theory, quarks (physicists' name for the unknowably small, absolute building-blocks of
physical space), and Schroedinger's Cat (mentioned in Little's book). Claudia remarked that infinity is beautiful, and its existence implies that we are everything and nothing. Steve pointed out that this statement is a good example of where the apparently absolute law of non contradiction (A is not -A) breaks down and a contradiction seems to express the truth more meaningfully.

After Tom exhorted us to remember that all philosophy must be practical, Claudia reminded us of Plato's story about Socrates saying he was the wisest person in Athens because he was the only one who knew he was not wise.

At this point Tom reiterated his claim that existence is the most fundamental absolute. Steve pointed out a potential connection between that position and Kant's fundamental assumption that the "thing in itself" (i.e., reality apart from the conditions that make it knowable to us) is unknowable. Tom interpreted this to mean that our senses distort the nature of reality and give us a wrong view of what exists. But Steve claimed that this is an incorrect interpretation of Kant, and that a more commonly accepted interpretation nowadays is that Kant was trying to explain why we can *trust* our senses--i.e., why they are right
about what exists. Kant's point is that they are right, but that the knowledge they give us is always only relative knowledge. Something absolute (the "thing in itself") exists, but remains inaccessible to our knowledge. The most we can do is to believe in its reality. Claudia asserted that Tom and Steve were really saying the same thing in two different ways; but Tom disagreed, claiming that these represent two fundamentally different conceptions of how existence is viewed. Claudia then concluded the meeting by suggesting that even this fundamental difference seems to confirm Steve's original thesis, that we all implicitly believe in some absolute(s), but that we can never know them with enough certainty to resolve all the differences we have in identifying what they are.

Posted with permission of the author. 1997 - 2000 Hi-Tech Development Co., Ltd.  All rights reserved.