| | William writes:
>I do not think there is any other rational objective meaning of "absolute" other than contextual...
William, this is a fallacy. There quite clearly *is* a rational and objective meaning of "absolute" other than contextual. It is extremely commonplace.
That is, we may *hypothetically postulate* an absolute that we may one day achieve (or alternatively may not - we don't know). "Omniscience" is not a requirement for such absolutes; that is an entirely mistaken argument.
For example, "absolute zero" in physics, which we think exists theoretically (tho we may be wrong) but which we haven't achieved in practice yet. It is also postulated that we may never reach it physically (this might also be wrong).
It is perfectly reasonable to make such hypotheses and set such standards; we do it all the time. "Omniscience" doesn't enter into it. Moreover such theoretical absolutes are highly useful, as it gives us a standard to shoot for, even if we never get it (tho we might).
To the contrary, it is this alleged "contextual absolute" that I regard as a verbalist mistake and mostly useless. as that would simply mean whatever you know at the time is "absolute". For example, if you could only get to - 35 C cos that was the best you could do given your knowledge at the time, you could declare that as "absolute zero". Well, whoop-de-doo. As I demonstrated above, the only thing absolute about the "contextually absolute" is that you can say it about *absolutely anything*. (Ironically, this unwittingly opens the door to relativism).
- Daniel
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