"What is the significance of the fact that "abstractions" and "generalizations" and the very concepts of "time" and "space" occur only in conjunction with a human nervous system?"
Percy Bridgman (1955)
I am pondering absolutism and what may be its polar opposite, relativism. Some random reflections:
If faith in God is not absolute, then it is faith in some god other than the one depicted in the Bible, and taught by the Catholic church.
Wherever relativism is allowed to gain a purchase, regardless of on how small a corner of our understanding, it goes on to necessarily subsume AlL of our understanding. It cannot coexist with any vestige of absolutism.
A compelling question is whether any concept of an objective reality must invoke some form of absolutism. I think not. Bridgman worked to refine the criteria which would justify what he termed "the ascription of physical reality" to a concept. Of course, he saw all science as at bottom the operations of an individual human mind or brain. He took this view to an almost solipsistic extreme.
Furthermore... Should we not raise the bar, so to speak, by insisting that the source of our knowledge of the existence of the, or an, Absolute be itself one such Absolute? Or is it not "fair" to point out that our concept of the Absolute is the product of mental processes supported by a very fragile assortment of chemicals which float, as it were, on the surface of the volatile soup of our brain fluids?
And... No. It is not fair, but Bridgman believes only in individuals, and thinks the notion of "public" can only denote entities that do not exist. The real question about The Absolute is how it can exist in anything greater than the consciousness of a singular individual. It is foreclosed from the use of an absolute source with which it might announce its Presence to us.
Bridgman wanted to find a way individuals isolated in their inevitable solipsism could live and work together on a plane above that allowed by solipsistic isolation.
to be continued...
To further complicate things, I am driven to ask: "Is it incumbent on those of us who put great stock in the idea of "physical reality" to also make the case for the idea of "objective reality?", as if the former were, perhaps, one species of the latter. I need to gird my loins and find the courage to tackle the Stanford Encyclopedia article on physicalism.
Yes, I am painfully aware that I have more than likely mixed apples and oranges now in this rambling poor excuse for a discussion. It is the question, again of what if any intellectual kinship exists between the ideas of "the absolute," and "objective reality." As already asked, does a belief in objective reality presuppose participation in some sort of absolutism?