"What's true for me may not be true for you". How is this a fallacy?

[Ben_Sinner]

If someone were to believe “Whats true for me, may not be true for you and vice versa”. How could they be proven wrong.

At first, it could be easy just to say “What if me and you disagree with each other, that would mean one of us is not telling the truth”

That makes sense, but we are assuming that we are all in the same reality and under the same universal laws with each other,

Hypothetically…what if each person was endowed with their own ‘reality’ and 'law’s that were not in the same realm as any one else. What I mean is what if what each one claimed was actually objectively true in their individual reality…yet all these different people in their own individual realities can still communicate with each other.

So when two people had an argument which led to person A saying “Whats true for me, may not be true for you and vice versa”…and person B to say “That is false because whats true for you HAS to be true for me too or else it isn’t truth”

Remember, this is two different individual realities where A’s stance of “Whats true for me may not be true for you and vice versa” is objectively true in his reality but false in person B’s reality…While person B’s stance of “What’s true for you HAS to be true for me too or else it can’t be truth” is objectively true in B’s reality, but false in A’s

How can we show that this hypothetical situation would be logically impossible in the first place?

If A, then that means they disagree and nothing is proven to show that A is wrong because A is standing on their assertion of truth and B is standing on their opposing assertion of truth. How can we prove A’s stance would be impossible even in this hypothetical situation

 

[ahs]

If someone were to believe “Whats true for me, may not be true for you and vice versa”. How could they be proven wrong.

Primarily, “truth” has zero meaning in this statement. It is the exact same thing as saying, “I have my opinion, and you have yours”. Whether our opinions are “right” or “wrong” doesn’t matter. The person either shows he/she does not believe in “truth”, or believes that truth does not matter. So, it’s a pointless and meaningless statement.

OR you can point out that the statement is based in circular logic (by presuming a definition of “truth” which they have yet to demonstrate). Since it’s based in faulty logic, it refutes itself.

OR, you can look at it from a different angel. It’s the exact same thing as saying, “I have the truth, and you have something different than that, but by my authority I grant you the right to believe something other than truth, and I won’t hold it against you.” (A.k.a., I’m right and you’re wrong, but I will allow that.) Again, they beg the question (circular reasoning).

Either way, it’s based in faulty logic and they are “refuted” that way.

 

[GLam8833]

“truth” with a small “t” is the light of an individual
or group of people. It depends on their world view
and the angle they look at things in the world.
“Truth” with a capital “T” is Objective truth, it follows
the Laws of God and can be defended by math and
science, it also follows Spiritual Laws, like the
Ten Commandments.
So it DEPENDS what the person is talking about
being “true” or “True” that makes the statement
right or wrong, if it is the former, then maybe he/she
is right, but if the latter, the capital “T” True, then
NO, it is not correct to say “What’s True for me may
not be True for you”.

 

[Just_Lurking]

I’m not sure about all this philosophy stuff, but here is an example from physics. According to special relativity, it is possible to have three observers, A, B, and C, and two events, 1 and 2, such that:

According to A, events 1 and 2 occurred simultaneously.
According to B, event 1 occurred before event 2.
According to C, event 1 occurred after event 2.

Relativity of Simultaneity

 

[AngelBerp]

If someone were to believe “Whats true for me, may not be true for you and vice versa”. How could they be proven wrong.

I’m sure others will weigh in with a much better explanation but I believe the statement is self-refuting.

Person A: “What is true for me may not be true for you”.

Person B: Ok… Then the statement you just made is not always true. The statement itself “What is true for me may not be true for you”…isn’t always true. I think that makes the statement self-contradictory.

A delineation should be made between things that are relatively true (our favorite ice cream flavors, etc.) and the existence of absolute truths (God exists or God doesn’t).

 

[edwest2]

Where does right and wrong come from? Believe it or not, we can and do make wrong decisions for a number of reasons, but it seems that the past is being entirely overlooked. It’s as if man, who has not changed in the last 2,000 years years, has not looked at or discarded past answers to everyday questions that work.

No, I’m not referring to a perfect past but me watching “what worked” being rejected by some for “alternative lifestyles” over the years, followed by a push to make those lifestyles normative or OK. If we cannot have common ground now then true society is impossible. We get tribalism and isolation.

I generally don’t associate with certain people not because I don’t like them but because we have nothing in common. Nothing to talk about. If people want “go there own way,” they don’t need my permission, but I’ll offer advice if asked.

Pluralism without common truths leads to tribalism where truth claims are just the particular opinions of various tribes of people, from 1 to many.

Ed

 

[Crusaderbear]

I met my wife in a bar and it was love at first sight, we’ve been married 35 years. I knew she was the one from the very beginning, but, what’s true for me, may not be true for you…

It is a very ‘situational’ statement…

 

[edwest2]

I met my wife in a bar and it was love at first sight, we’ve been married 35 years. I knew she was the one from the very beginning, but, what’s true for me, may not be true for you…

It is a very ‘situational’ statement…

A personal event does not qualify as a social norm. An isolated incident is isolated. The goal in this discussion is defining truth claims, not, “I got hit by a bus, but you didn’t.”

Ed

 

[Mike0000]

I would say because we have no reason to hold to such beliefs. The same reason we can’t prove that we aren’t a brain in a vat receiving electrical stimulus to make us think we are living in our reality, or that other minds besides our own exist, or that the physical world wasn’t created 5 minutes ago with the appearance of age and all our memories implanted in our minds. It’s possible, but unless we’ve been given a reason to think it’s the case, we are perfectly reasonable to hold to the belief, in a properly basic way, that we all inhabit the same world / reality and that logical truths hold true for all of us equally. If this is the case, the statement “what’s true for me may not be true for you” is a fallacy because it violates the law of non-contradiction (LNC). Something can’t be “A” and “Not A” at the same time and in the same sense. So if the statement “I’m 36 years old” is “true for me”, yet you say “you are not 36 years old”, they both can’t be true, given the LNC. This is obviously provided that by the word “truth”, the person means actual truths, not just opinions, as a previous poster pointed out.

 

[Wesrock]

Such a universe would essentially make all scientific inquiry not only pointless, but impossible. Same for all engineering endeavors. Same for a lot of stuff, really. And it doesn’t conform to our everyday experience.

 

[Iron_Donkey]

Hypothetically…what if each person was endowed with their own ‘reality’ and 'law’s that were not in the same realm as any one else. What I mean is what if what each one claimed was actually objectively true in their individual reality…yet all these different people in their own individual realities can still communicate with each other.

There might be a more direct answer, but this is what occurred to me first. It is rather long, so apologies.

Suppose so. Then it is absolutely true that each person has his own reality. Therefore, if one person (me, for example) says that in his reality, other people don’t have their own reality, then either his “reality” is wrong and so is not a reality, or he is mistaken about what is true in his reality.

In the first case, the idea completely falls apart.

In the second case, it becomes apparent that there are restrictions on each person’s reality that are not determined by the person. That is, each person does not create their own reality, but is merely in this reality which is subject to some sort of rules.

At least some of these rules are cross reality. But then the realities aren’t completely distinct, and must all logically agree with at least some basic truths (under our assumption, at least that there are other realities). The question is then “what truths must be constant across realities?”

For any sort of claim that a personal reality is actually a reality, then it must at least conform to the law of non-contradiction and similar logical rules (if that is false, then things just get silly, and there’s really no point in talking about anything).

Likewise, if this reality is a reality, it must exist - otherwise, well you know. A reality that doesn’t exist is not much of a reality.

So it follows that every reality exists, and also has logic. That’s enough for an Aquinas style proof within every reality that there is a God. But these proofs show that God must be totally transcendent, that is He can’t be different in different realities. So every reality is under the same God. Likewise, these proofs show that God is the source of all truth. So every reality is under the same God who is the source of all truth. But if each reality has the same exact source of truth that behaves in the same exact way, then each reality must have all the same truths, and so might as well be said to be the same.

I’m not sure about all this philosophy stuff, but here is an example from physics. According to special relativity, it is possible to have three observers, A, B, and C, and two events, 1 and 2, such that:

According to A, events 1 and 2 occurred simultaneously.
According to B, event 1 occurred before event 2.
According to C, event 1 occurred after event 2.

Relativity of Simultaneity

Nevertheless, it is true that from the perspective of A, the events occurred at the same time. That there are other perspectives does not have any impact on that fact, so the fact that from the perspective of A, the events occurred at the same time is “true for” A, B, and C.

That different perspectives can have different answers just means that simultaneity is like the phrase “I am closer to,” - it has perspective built into it (we just don’t mention it because it’s irrelevant in every day life). So in the same way that the fact that Washington DC is closer than Las Vegas from my perspective, but not from the perspective of someone in California, doesn’t say anything about different things being true for different people in any real sense, neither does the relativity of simultaneity.

 

[Crusaderbear]

A personal event does not qualify as a social norm. An isolated incident is isolated. The goal in this discussion is defining truth claims, not, “I got hit by a bus, but you didn’t.”

Ed

As you wish…

 

[decatholic]

Such a universe would essentially make all scientific inquiry not only pointless, but impossible. Same for all engineering endeavors. Same for a lot of stuff, really. And it doesn’t conform to our everyday experience.

Wes,
That conclusion (… a universe would essentially make all scientific inquiry not only pointless…) may be true for you, but it isn’t true for me.

What are you trying to ask? Are you wresting to justify a position that isn’t true or True?

 

[Bradski]

The statement is correct.

Consider an animal in a restricted environment, say a lion. Picture the zoos of not that many years ago. Small enclosures, no room to move. If you made it so small that the animal could not literally move, then all reasonable people would say it was immoral. So lets keep making that enclosure bigger.

At some point, one person will say: ‘Yes, that’s plenty of room. No need to make it larger’.

If there is a definite size for the enclosure and that size is the absolute truth of the matter and all people agree, then what is true for you is true for me.

Let me know how big you think it should be…

 

[Iron_Donkey]

The statement is correct.

Consider an animal in a restricted environment, say a lion. Picture the zoos of not that many years ago. Small enclosures, no room to move. If you made it so small that the animal could not literally move, then all reasonable people would say it was immoral. So lets keep making that enclosure bigger.

At some point, one person will say: ‘Yes, that’s plenty of room. No need to make it larger’.

If there is a definite size for the enclosure and that size is the absolute truth of the matter and all people agree, then what is true for you is true for me.

Let me know how big you think it should be…

1. There is a difference between “what I think” and “what is true for me”. A person may very well be wrong. So if you reach a size and I say that it’s big enough, and you say that it’s not (ambiguities aside, those later), it is entirely possible that I’m just wrong because I don’t know anything about lions. Certainly, there is no reason to assume that I have one reality of my own where the enclosure is big enough and the lion is perfectly happy, whereas you have some other overlapping reality where that same lion is sad because his enclosure is too small. The lion is sad or not, independent of what I or you think.
2. In your case, part of the issue is an unclear question. If you want an enclosure that is “big enough” for a lion, you need to define “big enough” precisely, otherwise it’s a question about opinion - because it involves each person’s different idea about what that phrase means. If you define an enclosure to be big enough when, for instance, the lion has sufficient freedom to move about that lack of such freedom does not cause it annoyance more than x% of the time, you could experiment with lions and electrodes in their brains etc, until you found a size that was big enough.

But without clear definitions, your question is essentially “what size enclosure doesn’t make [the observer] think we’re being cruel [according to what the observer considers to be cruel] to the lion?” And of course different observers will give different answers, but this is not an evidence of lack of absolute truth, but rather just a collection of several absolute truths: Observer a does not think that this is big enough, but observer b does.

1. Disagreement over something does not imply a lack of an absolute answer. For instance, many Calculus II students think that if the limit of a sequence is 0, then the associated series must converge. This is simply not true, and the disagreement doesn’t have anything to do with it.

 

[Bradski]

1. There is a difference between “what I think” and “what is true for me”. A person may very well be wrong. So if you reach a size and I say that it’s big enough, and you say that it’s not (ambiguities aside, those later), it is entirely possible that I’m just wrong because I don’t know anything about lions.

There is no right size. What size you select depends on whether you personally think it is cruel or not. That is a relative concept. There is no absolute point either side of which something is cruel and something isn’t. You just have no cruelty on one end of the line and maximum cruelty on the other and an infinite grade between the two along the line.

You simply decide where the point is which is acceptable to you.

1. In your case, part of the issue is an unclear question. If you want an enclosure that is “big enough” for a lion, you need to define “big enough” precisely, otherwise it’s a question about opinion - because it involves each person’s different idea about what that phrase means. If you define an enclosure to be big enough when, for instance, the lion has sufficient freedom to move about that lack of such freedom does not cause it annoyance more than x% of the time, you could experiment with lions and electrodes in their brains etc, until you found a size that was big enough.

No, you just find a size that is a little bit more or less cruel. There is no definitive point. That IS the point.

But without clear definitions, your question is essentially “what size enclosure doesn’t make [the observer] think we’re being cruel [according to what the observer considers to be cruel] to the lion?” And of course different observers will give different answers, but this is not an evidence of lack of absolute truth, but rather just a collection of several absolute truths:

A collection of absolute truths, on all the same question? I’ve never heard multiple relative statements being called ‘a collection of absolute truths’. Good grief, you’ve just defined the term out of existence.

1. Disagreement over something does not imply a lack of an absolute answer.

True. But neither does universal acceptance imply that an absolute answer exists. And still no-one seems able to tall me how to access it.

 

[Iron_Donkey]

There is no right size. What size you select depends on whether you personally think it is cruel or not. That is a relative concept. There is no absolute point either side of which something is cruel and something isn’t. You just have no cruelty on one end of the line and maximum cruelty on the other and an infinite grade between the two along the line.

You simply decide where the point is which is acceptable to you.

When you say cruelty is a relative concept, what this really means is that it is not well defined except at the extremes, which I already talked about. You come up with an explicit definition of cruelty, and there will be one answer.

Without an explicit definition, different people are are either using different definitions, or not using definitions at all and answering based on gut feeling or emotion. The fact that people have different emotions, or use different definitions when no definition is specified, is both obvious and irrelevant to the question of absolute truth.

No, you just find a size that is a little bit more or less cruel. There is no definitive point. That IS the point.

There is no definitive point because you didn’t ask an explicit enough question to obtain one. Which, for practical applications is fine - we don’t always need an exact point. This is why we get away with fuzzy language so often. Nevertheless, questions generally can be tightened up to get rid of such fuzziness if required.

A collection of absolute truths, on all the same question? I’ve never heard multiple relative statements being called ‘a collection of absolute truths’. Good grief, you’ve just defined the term out of existence.

No, you just ignored the context, such context being that you didn’t ask a well defined question. If I ask “what is the best ice cream?” with no explanations of what “best” means, then you will get Fred saying that it’s chocolate because he likes it best, Bob saying that it’s vanilla because the largest number of people like it a reasonable amount, and Joe saying that it’s some kind organic additive free type because he thinks that sort of thing is important.

There is no absolute answer to that question because that is a bad question, if you’re looking for an actual answer. But each answer you just got is an absolute answer to a different question: it is absolutely true that, at the time of asking the question, the answer to “what does Fred say is the best ice cream?” is “chocolate.” That is an absolute truth that is related to your question, but again is not an absolute answer to the question because it’s a bad question.

The fact that not all questions phrased in all ways have absolute answers is not really a problem for the concept of absolute truth. This is because we can talk in ways that are imprecise (“what’s the best ice cream,” with no definition of best; “how big is big enough not to be cruel” with no definition of cruel or big enough), or even just don’t make sense (what single time, measured in meters, is the amount of time that it takes every single human to distinguish between the textures blue and orange by smell?).

True. But neither does universal acceptance imply that an absolute answer exists. And still no-one seems able to tall me how to access it.

Also true. But basic logic kind of does imply that there are absolute truths (you have the old standby: if there were no absolute truths, then it would be absolutely true that there were no absolute truths).

As for how to find them, no one said it would always be easy. But the basic idea is simple: if it’s a direct result of logic alone, then it is true (and absolutely so). Results of scientific inquiry are not known (via the scientific method alone, and phrased without a million qualifiers that render them impotent) to be absolutely true (they may or may not be), because of the (remote) possibility that all of the data collected in support of a theory is a fluke - but with enough data and some statistical analysis, we can be pretty sure, in many cases, that basic scientific claims are likely to be absolutely true (eg, “without interference, any object release directly above the ground (on planet Earth) will fall to the ground, in a way matching [some equations that take a bunch of stuff like air resistance, starting height, etc. into account]”) . Likewise with less precise reasoning off of less carefully collected data, with varying degrees of supported certainty.

 

[Bradski]

I think it’s pretty obvious that if someone asks: ‘what is the bests ice cream’, it is patently obvious that they are asking what the best ice cream is for you, as a personal preference. Any statement in response would be a relative one.

If the question was: ‘what is the best ice cream for treating a burn’, then there would be a scientific objective answer. In that case, you are not asking if it’s true for you because it isn’t relative to what you think.

All objective facts are simply that. Objective. And they don’t allow for personal interpretation. Compared to concepts such as cruelty which is not objective, so allows for personal interpretation, so what is true for you may not be true for me.

If you were to say what size cage would induce a certain degree of stress, then that isn’t asking a subjective question. There would probably be a scientific method to ascertain it and you would have an objective fact. However, it would be a matter of personal opinion as to whether that degree of stress could be describes as cruel.

So what is true for you would not be for me.

And by the way, whether you consider something to be morally acceptable or not does not change that fact. If you maintain that, for example, that sex outside marriage is objectively wrong, then that is only true for you.

 

[Iron_Donkey]

I think it’s pretty obvious that if someone asks: ‘what is the bests ice cream’, it is patently obvious that they are asking what the best ice cream is for you, as a personal preference. Any statement in response would be a relative one.

Perhaps it’s obvious, perhaps not. But if the question were in fact “what is your personal preference in ice cream?” then the response would actually be absolute: It is absolutely true that Fred’s personal preference for ice cream is chocolate. Bob doesn’t have his own reality where Fred likes vanilla.

Now, you can say that different people like different flavors of ice cream, which is true, but that doesn’t mean that Fred’s favorite flavor is relative.

If the question was: ‘what is the best ice cream for treating a burn’, then there would be a scientific objective answer. In that case, you are not asking if it’s true for you because it isn’t relative to what you think.

All objective facts are simply that. Objective. And they don’t allow for personal interpretation. Compared to concepts such as cruelty which is not objective, so allows for personal interpretation, so what is true for you may not be true for me.

It is true that the word “cruelty” is ill defined on the boundaries. But this is again not an issue for objective truth. If one person thinks it means X and another person thinks it means Y, then they may disagree about how the word applies to a particular cage that meets criteria X but not criteria Y.

But the cage still meets X for everyone, and not Y for everyone. Likewise, the first person uses “cruel” to mean X - this fact does not change depending on who you ask.

A question you could ask is when there is an objective moral obligation to increase the size of the cage (if you don’t like the word objective there, read it as “when a person in the exact same circumstances as the zoo who knows absolutely everything there is to know about everything and reasons perfectly would be morally obligated to increase the size of the cage”), and I suspect this is what you’re getting at, but again the mere fact that people don’t agree is pretty irrelevant.

Of course people disagree. They disagree even over the types of facts that you freely admit are objective. (Either CO2 emissions are accelerating the rate of global warming or not, but people disagree as strongly on that as any other question that you haven’t labeled as objective.) What does disagreement have to do with anything, and how could it possibly mean that their opinions translate into personal realities that they carry around with them wherever they go?

If you were to say what size cage would induce a certain degree of stress, then that isn’t asking a subjective question. There would probably be a scientific method to ascertain it and you would have an objective fact. However, it would be a matter of personal opinion as to whether that degree of stress could be describes as cruel.

So what is true for you would not be for me.

That would be an issue with the definition of the word cruel. People use the same words differently. But I suppose what you’re doing is using “cruel” as a stand in for “morally prohibited”. And different people disagree there as well, but speaking does not make it so.

True there is such thing as subjective morality, ie what a person is obligated to do given the (possibly partially false) information (and conclusions) he has. (This is not morality that’s true for me, more on which below.) But that does not say anything about the existence of absolute truth, only that a) we must act according to what we know, and b) we must do our best to make what we know be accurate.

But this subjective morality is dependent on a larger objective morality (otherwise it’s not morality at all, but just an ingrained set of drives derived from whatever). In order for a person to be morally bound to do what they think they must do, it must be possible for them to be morally bound.

And by the way, whether you consider something to be morally acceptable or not does not change that fact. If you maintain that, for example, that sex outside marriage is objectively wrong, then that is only true for you.

Then is it true for me that it’s true for everyone that sex outside marriage is objectively wrong? Because I maintain that fact too. And you may say that sure, but that it’s false for you. But it’s certainly false for me that it’s false for you, so even if all of this relative nonsense is true (for you? for me?) why should I care? It’s true for me that it’s false. Or alternatively (and more sanely), what I maintain is merely what I maintain, and no more true for me by the mere power of my assertion than the statement “the earth is flat” was true for cavemen by the power of theirs. A single question (interpreted the same way) doesn’t magically gain the ability to have contradictory answers “for different people” just because said people, for example, really, really want to have a lot of sex.

Either the act is objectively wrong or not. A particular person may or may not have the knowledge required to know whether it is objectively wrong, but that is also an objective fact: if Fred is confused to the point that he has no current moral obligation to follow a certain moral precept, then he is objectively so confused, and is objectively not under moral obligation during such confusion.

So even the subjective morality I mentioned above is not a set of what is “true for me,” but rather a collection of objective facts about how levels of knowledge and understanding bind us to act. Absolute truth applied to imperfect knowledge.

 

[Bradski]

But if the question were in fact “what is your personal preference in ice cream?” then the response would actually be absolute: It is absolutely true that Fred’s personal preference for ice cream is chocolate. Bob doesn’t have his own reality where Fred likes vanilla.

I’m not sure you understand the difference.

What is your favourite ice cream, Fred?
Vanilla.

That is a relative statement. It is true dependant only on what Fred thinks.

What’s Fred’s favourite ice cream, Bert?
Vanilla.

That is an absolute statement. It is true whatever Bert or anyone else thinks.

A question you could ask is when there is an objective moral obligation to increase the size of the cage (if you don’t like the word objective there, read it as “when a person in the exact same circumstances as the zoo who knows absolutely everything there is to know about everything and reasons perfectly would be morally obligated to increase the size of the cage”), and I suspect this is what you’re getting at, but again the mere fact that people don’t agree is pretty irrelevant.

But you are suggesting that the only way to find this ‘objective truth’ is to be all knowing and have perfect reason. Maybe you can see where this takes us. But us poor mortals, not being granted the means to reason perfectly and not being omniscient cannot access this ‘objective truth’. In which case, the question of whether it actually does exist becomes moot.

Of course people disagree. They disagree even over the types of facts that you freely admit are objective. (Either CO2 emissions are accelerating the rate of global warming or not, but people disagree as strongly on that as any other question that you haven’t labeled as objective.) What does disagreement have to do with anything, and how could it possibly
mean that their opinions translate into personal realities that they carry around with them wherever they go?

The fact that people disagree means that if this ephemeral objective truth exists, then we have no way of knowing how to access it. As you explained above.

But this subjective morality is dependent on a larger objective morality (otherwise it’s not morality at all, but just an ingrained set of drives derived from whatever). In order for a person to be morally bound to do what they think they must do, it must be possible for them to be morally bound.

Morally bound? To what? You have just said that you cannot access it. That you don’t know what it is. Yet you feel quite entitled to say that you should be bound by it. Doesn’t that strike you as being a nonsensical position?

Then is it true for me that it’s true for everyone that sex outside marriage is objectively wrong?..It’s true for me that it’s false.

Exactly. It’s true for you. No problem there…

Either the act is objectively wrong or not. A particular person may or may not have the knowledge required to know whether it is objectively wrong, but that is also an objective fact: if Fred is confused to the point that he has no current moral obligation to follow a certain moral precept, then he is objectively so confused, and is objectively not under moral obligation during such confusion.

It’s not Fred that is confused. You have already maintained that he would need to know: ‘absolutely everything there is to know about everything and reasons perfectly’. He’s in exactly the same position as you. The same position as me. He makes decisions relative to his own beliefs and his own circumstances.