Emphatic abstractions
Any time you find that an ordinary abstraction isn't clean enough, or strong enough or is just too close to what the other chap is saying, you are liable to find yourself tagging on an abstract adjective to give it more puissance.
Don't do it! Step away from the adjective and make no sudden thoughts.
Reality is real enough, you don't need absolute reality.
Meaning is not more meaningful when it is true meaning.
If the truth is not true enough, actual truth is no improvement.
The place is littered with these double barrelled obscurities, objective reality, absolute truth, sometimes you even find double headed monsters - truly absolute objectivity.
But the worst of them is absolute. I swear that no one who uses the term knows what it means, and if they look it up on wiki they will be none the wiser.
Don't do it! Step away from the adjective and make no sudden thoughts.
Reality is real enough, you don't need absolute reality.
Meaning is not more meaningful when it is true meaning.
If the truth is not true enough, actual truth is no improvement.
The place is littered with these double barrelled obscurities, objective reality, absolute truth, sometimes you even find double headed monsters - truly absolute objectivity.
But the worst of them is absolute. I swear that no one who uses the term knows what it means, and if they look it up on wiki they will be none the wiser.
Comments (33)
Numerous historical reports of adjective-hybrid usage by folks with PhDs and other such absolute amaziball credentials makes their legitimacy unquestionable in a truly* meaningful way. Should you have doubts, I have pictures I photoshopped myself on a website I produced while smoking some stonkingly* super Afghan.
*Excuse the adverbs—poetic licence.
But we do have to account for what we know to be subjective interpretation that doesn't exist in the original. What I impose on the interpretation of the object or the author's meaning can be said not to exist outside of my reality.
If I can speak of what is actually in the original, then I'm speaking of something objective, or absolute. If I can speak of what I have added to the original, I am distinguishing the objective from the subjective. It does matter that what I see isn't actually there, especially if your vision is clearer than mine.
Fabulous.
I think the point is that if your only purpose is emphasis and there's no clear distinction to be made in context then the addition of the adjective to the concept is at best superfluous. Which is OK in everyday conversation i.e. "This steak is absolute perfection", but a symptom of muddled thinking in philosophical discourse.
And your examples don't really match up with un's.
The examples were:
Quoting unenlightened
The modifying adjectives employed all related to emphasizing the reality of the object, and the argument, as I took it, was that such modifications were superfluous because the assertion that something is absolute, objective, real, true, or whatever adds nothing.
Because he was not referencing other sorts of modifiers, but that they all related to truth, I see the concern of the OP as there really not being a distinction between the real and the perceived at least to the extent that we talk about the two as if they are the same and there is no reason to declare one more real than the other.
You looked at the OP just as a matter of useless grammar, agreeing that people throw in all sorts of unnecessary modifiers that litter a sentence and provide no additional meaning.
And my point is that those modifiers do provide additional meaning. Their significance is that they point to metaphysical distinctions.
Well, 'my reality' vs 'your reality' would be more of a psychological difference than a metaphysical one. There's an issue of mixing discourses. Context is key, of course. If you can really justify a distinction, go ahead and make it.
I'd say it was more an abuse of language. My fantasy and your fantasy can be different just because they are not reality. Reality is unqualified; that is my point.
Likewise, there are not degrees and kinds of truth.
There is no such thing as a false meaning, and there is no such thing as a true meaning. A proposition can be true, or it can be false, but its meaning is just whatever it means.
"Objective reality"appears in a title where it is proposed to have been undermined by science, as if there are other realities - experimental? - subjective? that are able to trump it. It's simply bad English and can only lead to confusion.
"Absolute truth" appears in another title, and is claimed to be impossible. I say it is incoherent. I don't believe people who talk in this sort of way have the least clue what absolute anything is, and take it to mean pure, or complete, or something even more vague but important - like very strong vodka.
If you qualify realities into "mine" and "yours," you're inserting value into the term "real," as in the phrase "real reality" would distinguish, at least in that context, not a subjective reality, but an objective reality, making the term real not superfluous per the OP.
I'd also point out that psychological differences can be metaphysical, especially in the context of idealism because they wouldn't reference just my construction or misconstruction of reality, but they would reference reality itself.
Unfortunately people still need to be convinced that the territory isn't another kind of map.
"The verb to solve, from which the term "absolute" derives, can be broken down into se-luo. In the Indo-European languages, the reflexive group *se indicates what is proper (suus)-· both that which belongs to a group, in the sense of con-suetudo, suesco (Gr. ethos, "custom, habit," Ger. Sitte), and that which remains in itself, separated, as in solus, sed, secedo. The verb to solve thus indicates the operation of dissolving (luo) that leads (or leads back) something to its own *se, to suus as to solus, dissolving it - absolving it - of every tie or alterity.
The preposition ab, which expresses distancing, movement from, reinforces this idea of a process, a voyage that takes off, separates from something and moves, or returns toward something. To think the Absolute signifies, thus, to think that which, through a process of "absolution," has been led back to its ownmost property, to itself, to its own solitude, as to its own custom. For this reason, the Absolute always implies a voyage, an abandonment of the originary place, an alienation and a being-outside. If the Absolute is the supreme idea of philosophy, then philosophy is truly, in the words of Novalis, nostalgia (Heimweh): that is, the ''desire to be at home everywhere" (Trieb uberall zu Hause zu sein), to recognize oneself in being-other. Philosophy is not initially at home, it is not originally in possession of itself, and thus it must return to itself" (Agamben, Language and Death).
Now all anything one has to do is add another grand sounding word to it and et voilà! You have philosophical garble.
The People are recklessly employing all these allegedly useless modifiers and intensifiers because, in these times, there is no Grammar King and every man does as he pleases (to paraphrase Judges 21:25). Let us not elect the Supremely Infallable Grammarian, for then there would arise an even greater lamentation.
Still, what you say is totally true: truth is truth; it doesn't, it can't, get more true. It is what it is, what is not is not, and that's that.
Scrieu vendium maximus.
Happily, that is so, and happily that is not so. There is no Grammar King and every man does as he pleases, and yet there is grammar, there is philosophy and there is a way of making sense and many ways of making nonsense, and every man who wants to philosophise must be a democratic socialist in his language or be a pseudophilosopher. Poets, politicians and mathematicians of course can do whatever they please with no qualms. If you do as you please with language, you may even have folks nod wisely at your utterances, but that doesn't mean you have said anything.
@StreetlightX is the honourable exception here, having the good sense to cast the Absolute as capitalised noun, the other to the world, rather than trying to use the unqualified as a qualifier.
On the other hand, it's an absolutely bewtiching book that sparkles on every page, regardless of all that. It's full of little gems like that small etymology of the Absolute above, and even if it takes you a while to get a fuller picture - as it did me - you will learn alot, and come away edified, even on first reading.
Saarrfssn Rk Rastrdly.
You're probably right.
This is where art is far more nimble, being less literal. The more literal the language tends to be, the more specific it becomes. The more specific it becomes, the more individual and relative it tends to be. Which is probably NOT the intent of the one making an “absolute” and sweeping statement. (Science usually has no such problem with small bits of data).
One can only imagine the comic folly that ensues when our imagined bold speaker makes “absolute, actual, and true” assertions about the “real” Absolute realm (aka God or the Ideal). Hmmm... the Tower of Babel seemed like a good idea on paper... Maybe if we try again, only taller this time. :chin: But seriously, for what it is worth, I think/believe that an Absolute realm or Being exists. Though it can be approached, I would think it is somewhat analogous to the sub-atomic sphere. Proceed carefully, at your own risk. Fools rush in, and angels roll their eyes and sigh at us fearless puppies.
Absolutely! (As Rocky Balboa might put it).
Quoting unenlightened
They have words to thank for their position. Words that scream for your submission. No one’s jamming their transmission.
Quoting frank
I like to keep the territory in my car’s glove box, being much more accurate than a drawing. But you think a map is difficult to re-fold... oy! :snicker:
Carry a phone charger in your car and use google maps. It has a GPS function and it can also tell you where the traffic is backed up.
When I was just a lad
Me father gave me nose a tweak
And told me I was bad
But then one day I learned a word
That saved me aching nose
The biggest word you ever heard
And this is how it goes
Oh, supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!
Stop trying to make 'fetch' happen.
Even if that were what the OP was about...
- I'm having trouble gleaning that, at least from the OP alone...maybe there's some extra-thread context I'm missing? -
...but even if the OP were a symptom of a broader pomo attempt to collapse the distinction between lived experience and facts - something, something, safe spaces - would it really help to save a space for emphatic 'reallys' or 'absolutelys'? as indices of a refusal to accede to the pomo safespacers' demand for insular, reassuring pseudo-realities untethered to the world as it is?
This seems like a slippery slope, which will lead inevitably to 'really' or 'absolutely' inflation. If anyone can get their grubby hands on these words - and they will, if those words have power - they won't mean much of anything.
And that's already happened.
It can be used reasonably well within rigidly set limits though. I think many fall prey to its wiley ways due to the seduction of logic. Sadly they forget that “abstract” use cannot be applied on a 1:1 with experiential being (human living).
For the “mystically” inclined it may be useful to view the term “absolute” as an artifact of language and look into the etymology. To see the term as meaning “solute,” an ocean of set limits, makes the meaning easier to handle intuitively. Within an ocean of established and set rules we can use the term “absolute”; meaning what is absolute can, and does, apply to every corner of said ocean - but remember, the ocean is not the universe!
A solution is a liquid. It can move around fill many corners. If viewed in this sense the “Absolute” can “mystically” be played with as a constant that seems to change, yet the “change” is merely due to perspective not some ubiquitous mystical field (as we’d not logically be able to perceive that which remains “unchanging” given that “perceiving” requires “change” - upon which note it may be useful to splice in the term “nascent” and be done with the semantics!).
Sure. I don't want to ban adjectives, and your example illustrates the difference quite clearly. Personally i would want to include what so-and-so is along with their thinks and feels., but is suffices for meaning to be added rather than mere emphasis that you make a distinction between absolute and relative. Once you say something meaningful, I can see where you are wrong. But still, you could have managed this more clearly by saying that what is good is always an orientation of a thinking feeling (and Material?) subject. So we can always disagree about it. And Johnny Godbotherer, can say that God's orientation is universal cos He made us in His image, or whatever. So while I'm complaining, so you don't feel left out, I'll suggest that 'isms are nearly always straw men, useful only for waving in the general direction of stuff one doesn't want to address.
But what is to be made of this? Is truth actually truth? Absolute truth is impossible.
Already there is truth, actual truth and absolute truth, and that's before we start. "If the world could all agree (on everything) there would be what I would call 'absolute truth'." we learn from the op. It would be superfluous even to comment, 'yeah, I know', because everyone would already know everything. Language would cease. Even our pig ancestor would be scratching his head a bit, wondering why he is locked up in the lounge, while this stuff is called "interesting".