Relatively Absolute (or Thank You, Wittgenstein)
Moral relativism versus moral absolutes has been a hot topic among Christians for all of my lifetime, meaning at least 40 years. But relevant writings go back at least 100 years, Dostoevsky, for example. The key concept is that morality has a firm basis in something firm, not in a person’s opinions or feelings, and not even in the current trends of a society. Because the monotheistic religions have a God who both created and gave moral imperatives, it’s obvious that people of these religions do believe in moral absolutes.
So, indeed, from Roman Catholic teaching we find a classification for the two sources of moral absolutes, Revelation and Natural Law, where the first refers to things revealed by the Creator, and the second to things that all human beings can know from lived experience. This second idea of Natural Law, although intuitively appealing, resists analysis. Discussion invariably winds up in the riddle, “How do you know what you say you know?” The only way the riddle disappears is when both sides of the argument find something that for both is an objective, fixed, reference. Whatever that something is can also be subjected to the question, “yes but how do you know that this is objective?” And if that happens, then, you can see, it goes right back to the start.
Recently I read a collection of lectures by Ludwig Wittgenstein, reconstructed from the notes of those who attended. Now although the title of this collection is Lectures on the Foundations of Mathematics, Cambridge 1939, it is not about mathematics. Wittgenstein poses and resolves a question, which turns out to solve the “how do you know” riddle. The answer is plainly offered in the first lecture: “To understand a phrase, we might say, is to understand its use.” Wittgenstein uses fundamental mathematical concepts as focal points for discussion. Later it becomes clear that variations of meaning, of definitions, of intent, and of many other things, shift the topic into a question, which, if actually asked, would sound like this: “when you say something, are you talking about real things or your opinion about them?” The answer turns out to be that meaning arises out of usage. Quite honestly this makes little sense when flatly stated this way, unless you already have a sense of what it might mean. And given what it does mean, this makes sense.
Finding Wittgenstein’s meaning requires the difficult experience of reading the lectures. But then it isn't worth the effort unless the question, or the problem, compels a yearning for an answer. So then, consider a non-mathematical example of the problem.
Mrs. Smith, having prepared the meal which the family has begun to eat,
offers the first comment, “Hmm, I think it needs more salt.”
Mr. Smith says, “Really? It tastes good like it is!”
Mr. Smith now feels that Mrs. Smith is unhappy with her work, believing
her to be a little upset. At the same time Mrs. Smith is contemplating
tomorrow’s recipe and whether seasoning adjustments might be
warranted.
So what is reality, here? With just two utterances two persons come away with a very different understanding of the situation. Note, this exchange came not in the words, but in their usage. And, although it’s easy to attach psychological causal factors in showing how things happen, doing so obscures the key observation: meaning simply does not exist in the words. Here’s another example.
Google’s privacy policy is a 9-page pdf file with many hyperlinks that provide expanded information. The last 2 pages are a list of hyperlinked definitions. How long would the document be without hyperlinks? Just one example is the phrase personal information. I dare say most of us know what this is, right? Well in the one section it appears and is hyperlinked:
Information you give us: For example, many of our services require you to sign
up for a Google Account. When you do, we’ll ask for personal information,
like your name, email address, telephone number or credit card to store
with youraccount.
Personal information: This is information that you provide to us which personally
identifies you, such as your name, email address or billing information, or other
data which can be reasonably linked to such information by Google, such as
information we associate with your Google Account.
This seems, to me, like much wording constructed for no reason. If, like me, you consider that any information I give away is out of my control, then this is all unnecessary. If, like a legal executive at Google, Inc. you are concerned about being sued by someone who does not have the view I have, then you’ll see that, perhaps, this wording is too loose. If you’re the sales executive at Google, Inc. perhaps this wording is too stringent, carrying the risk of alarming potential users. Three meanings; three different uses.
Now, return to Wittgenstein. His notoriety is as a philosopher, and the majority of people see philosophy as time wasted splitting hairs and discussing impractical things. The genius of Wittgenstein’s lectures is to show exactly the accuracy of this assessment, while simultaneously showing the necessity of hair splitting. The activity is necessary because of the confusion visible in the above two examples, which are anything but philosophical abstractions. So, on the one hand, Wittgenstein asserts as unfounded the confidence philosophers place in the rigor of their methods—logic and definition. In short, the ground isn’t as solid as they believe. But, on the other hand, the methods must be used, because understanding comes through usage. In the Google policy example, it is fair to say that the policy has an approximate meaning, but what it really means comes from what Google actually does with people’s private information. So, too, in philosophy. It is necessary to wrangle over words, but it’s not the result of the wrangle that resolves the meaning. Rather meaning is what emerges in the process of wrangling, and as observed in what each philosophy’s proponents do.
All of this is worked out using basic mathematical ideas. What drives it home is the final discussion about logic, a thing universally revered as solid and objectively reliable. Wittgenstein does not rob logic of its objectivity, and does point out uncertainties introduced when it is used. My corollary:
Every word is an abstract substitute for a concrete reality.
If the opposite of concrete is abstract, and I believe it is, then the conundrum is clear. For example, nothing can be more concrete than a brick. But the word “brick” is not a brick, but a sound (or sequence of letters) that causes your thoughts to think about a brick. Chances are good that you and I see the same kind of brick, but were you thinking of a red thing, a gray thing, or a yellow thing? The consequence of this corollary is that by means of words we can never absolutely fix the meaning of other words.
Here is where I return to the opening reference about moral relativism. The component of truth on the side of people who claim that all things are relative, i.e. not fixed nor absolute, is that they (we) are limited by the use of words in establishing beliefs, and since the meaning of those words can’t be absolutely fixed, then the discussion can never settle on a fixed meaning. The component of truth on the side of people who claim that absolutes do exists is in the shared behaviors between the two sides. For example, both sides probably ate breakfast. This shows that both sides behave as though hunger and food are concrete realities. Therefore there is an absolute reality that both are responding to. They might go in circles arguing about it, but tomorrow morning, they will likely have breakfast again.
What I have concluded from this is that the activity of discussing things is far more important than either the conclusions reached, or the points proven or disproven. Changing my behavior to match this will take time since I have many years clinging to the opposite belief, that discussion was mostly pointless if not logically coherent. Well, Wittgenstein has proven me wrong, and the fascinating thing is that there is no concise phrasing in all the collection of lectures that summarizes this. It really comes out in the activity of wrestling with his puzzling challenges. In a sense, Wittgenstein handles truth and logic apophatically, in order to make room for us to experience the solidity of these things which we can’t solidly grasp.
So, indeed, from Roman Catholic teaching we find a classification for the two sources of moral absolutes, Revelation and Natural Law, where the first refers to things revealed by the Creator, and the second to things that all human beings can know from lived experience. This second idea of Natural Law, although intuitively appealing, resists analysis. Discussion invariably winds up in the riddle, “How do you know what you say you know?” The only way the riddle disappears is when both sides of the argument find something that for both is an objective, fixed, reference. Whatever that something is can also be subjected to the question, “yes but how do you know that this is objective?” And if that happens, then, you can see, it goes right back to the start.
Recently I read a collection of lectures by Ludwig Wittgenstein, reconstructed from the notes of those who attended. Now although the title of this collection is Lectures on the Foundations of Mathematics, Cambridge 1939, it is not about mathematics. Wittgenstein poses and resolves a question, which turns out to solve the “how do you know” riddle. The answer is plainly offered in the first lecture: “To understand a phrase, we might say, is to understand its use.” Wittgenstein uses fundamental mathematical concepts as focal points for discussion. Later it becomes clear that variations of meaning, of definitions, of intent, and of many other things, shift the topic into a question, which, if actually asked, would sound like this: “when you say something, are you talking about real things or your opinion about them?” The answer turns out to be that meaning arises out of usage. Quite honestly this makes little sense when flatly stated this way, unless you already have a sense of what it might mean. And given what it does mean, this makes sense.
Finding Wittgenstein’s meaning requires the difficult experience of reading the lectures. But then it isn't worth the effort unless the question, or the problem, compels a yearning for an answer. So then, consider a non-mathematical example of the problem.
Mrs. Smith, having prepared the meal which the family has begun to eat,
offers the first comment, “Hmm, I think it needs more salt.”
Mr. Smith says, “Really? It tastes good like it is!”
Mr. Smith now feels that Mrs. Smith is unhappy with her work, believing
her to be a little upset. At the same time Mrs. Smith is contemplating
tomorrow’s recipe and whether seasoning adjustments might be
warranted.
So what is reality, here? With just two utterances two persons come away with a very different understanding of the situation. Note, this exchange came not in the words, but in their usage. And, although it’s easy to attach psychological causal factors in showing how things happen, doing so obscures the key observation: meaning simply does not exist in the words. Here’s another example.
Google’s privacy policy is a 9-page pdf file with many hyperlinks that provide expanded information. The last 2 pages are a list of hyperlinked definitions. How long would the document be without hyperlinks? Just one example is the phrase personal information. I dare say most of us know what this is, right? Well in the one section it appears and is hyperlinked:
Information you give us: For example, many of our services require you to sign
up for a Google Account. When you do, we’ll ask for personal information,
like your name, email address, telephone number or credit card to store
with youraccount.
Personal information: This is information that you provide to us which personally
identifies you, such as your name, email address or billing information, or other
data which can be reasonably linked to such information by Google, such as
information we associate with your Google Account.
This seems, to me, like much wording constructed for no reason. If, like me, you consider that any information I give away is out of my control, then this is all unnecessary. If, like a legal executive at Google, Inc. you are concerned about being sued by someone who does not have the view I have, then you’ll see that, perhaps, this wording is too loose. If you’re the sales executive at Google, Inc. perhaps this wording is too stringent, carrying the risk of alarming potential users. Three meanings; three different uses.
Now, return to Wittgenstein. His notoriety is as a philosopher, and the majority of people see philosophy as time wasted splitting hairs and discussing impractical things. The genius of Wittgenstein’s lectures is to show exactly the accuracy of this assessment, while simultaneously showing the necessity of hair splitting. The activity is necessary because of the confusion visible in the above two examples, which are anything but philosophical abstractions. So, on the one hand, Wittgenstein asserts as unfounded the confidence philosophers place in the rigor of their methods—logic and definition. In short, the ground isn’t as solid as they believe. But, on the other hand, the methods must be used, because understanding comes through usage. In the Google policy example, it is fair to say that the policy has an approximate meaning, but what it really means comes from what Google actually does with people’s private information. So, too, in philosophy. It is necessary to wrangle over words, but it’s not the result of the wrangle that resolves the meaning. Rather meaning is what emerges in the process of wrangling, and as observed in what each philosophy’s proponents do.
All of this is worked out using basic mathematical ideas. What drives it home is the final discussion about logic, a thing universally revered as solid and objectively reliable. Wittgenstein does not rob logic of its objectivity, and does point out uncertainties introduced when it is used. My corollary:
Every word is an abstract substitute for a concrete reality.
If the opposite of concrete is abstract, and I believe it is, then the conundrum is clear. For example, nothing can be more concrete than a brick. But the word “brick” is not a brick, but a sound (or sequence of letters) that causes your thoughts to think about a brick. Chances are good that you and I see the same kind of brick, but were you thinking of a red thing, a gray thing, or a yellow thing? The consequence of this corollary is that by means of words we can never absolutely fix the meaning of other words.
Here is where I return to the opening reference about moral relativism. The component of truth on the side of people who claim that all things are relative, i.e. not fixed nor absolute, is that they (we) are limited by the use of words in establishing beliefs, and since the meaning of those words can’t be absolutely fixed, then the discussion can never settle on a fixed meaning. The component of truth on the side of people who claim that absolutes do exists is in the shared behaviors between the two sides. For example, both sides probably ate breakfast. This shows that both sides behave as though hunger and food are concrete realities. Therefore there is an absolute reality that both are responding to. They might go in circles arguing about it, but tomorrow morning, they will likely have breakfast again.
What I have concluded from this is that the activity of discussing things is far more important than either the conclusions reached, or the points proven or disproven. Changing my behavior to match this will take time since I have many years clinging to the opposite belief, that discussion was mostly pointless if not logically coherent. Well, Wittgenstein has proven me wrong, and the fascinating thing is that there is no concise phrasing in all the collection of lectures that summarizes this. It really comes out in the activity of wrestling with his puzzling challenges. In a sense, Wittgenstein handles truth and logic apophatically, in order to make room for us to experience the solidity of these things which we can’t solidly grasp.
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