Reply #11: I maintain there is no absolute standard by which to measure "Truth" [View All]

It seems to me that Truth is always relative to the frame of the observer.

Take your example of the world being flat. Well, we can agree that it's not. But that is a trivial Truth. The thing we want to know is what shape is the world in absolute terms? Is it an oblate spheroid? That's closer, but it's still a common-knowledge approximation, not an absolute Truth. Since the Earth changes its shape constantly (especially when you get close enough for thermal effects to come into play) the only True answer is, "We don't really know, and with our current level of understanding it's impossible to determine." A complete description of the shape may in fact be physically impossible to determine because of quantum effects. The point is that "Truth" in actual human experience turns out to be "close enough for all practical purposes". But that's not Truth, it's still an approximation.

Or take my original premise in the thread that spawned this one. "The primary goal of all human activity is to secure food." From one perspective that's true: if you remove food, all human activity stops. From another perspective it's not true: the majority of human time and energy is directed into non-food-producing activity. Which perspective is "True"? we have to ask ourselves what the goal of the analysis is - what is a true in the context of one goal is false in the context of another.

Which is why I disappeared the shiny picture from the OP...