Absolutely

Absolutely

If you have something better to do, you should probably get on with it. Better, I wonder what that word means.  If you have listened to the country artist LeAnn  Rimes you might have heard her sing the song  Nothin’ Better to Do.  Oh, the trouble you’ll get into    You got nothin’ better to do, got nothin’ better to do    Yeah!  That song made the top 20 U.S. Billboard Hot Country Song list in December 2007. So maybe sometimes when you got Nothin’ Better to Do its ok to do what you’re doing.  So now that you got through the leadoff of this blog make a decision to continue reading or stop at this point.

For those who fall into the category of a self centered narcissist, know it all, the idea of analyzing the nature of knowledge, or theory of knowledge or meaning of words might be a foreign & unnecessary idea.  For those who already know it all, Epistemology is a waste of time.  For me, who knows little, it’s fascinating.  The standard question that’s asked is “How do we know what we know?”  There is no way that I am going into the details of Epistemology, primarily because I don’t consider myself qualified to discuss propositional knowledge , the aspects of belief and truth in personal knowledge and justification. The ‘knowledgeable’ person will talk about externalism and internalism, empiricism, constructivism, skepticism  & rationalism and who knows what other kinds of isms or ists.  Just to show more knowledge, terms like priori and posteriori knowledge, analytic and synthetic distinction and other equally confusing terms might be used.  Enroll in my daughters Philosophy class if you want to explore  this in greater depth.

Let’s think about sets of words that seem to be antonyms (opposite in meaning .)  For instance if I say ‘beginning’ you might say ‘end.’ There are many words that fit into this way of thinking & I have listed a few in the table below and will use some of them in our discussion.

Beginning	End		Full	Empty
Continue	Stop		Freedom	Slavery
New	Old		Loss	Gain
Do	Don’t		Small	Large
Forward	Reverse		Right	Wrong
General	Unique		Good	Bad
Absolute	Arbitrary		Negative	Positive
Like	Opposite		Truth	False
Ahead	Behind		Add	Subtract
More	Less		Finite	Infinite

 

If you thought you might gain some knowledge from reading this blog you may want  to consider the more important things that you could be doing but if you don’t have Nothin’ Better to Do then hang in there and we will continue until the end of this page.

When one uses the word absolute what do you think? You might associate absolute in conjunction with another word such as absolute zero, absolute monarchy,  absolute freedom, absolute certainty and so forth.  I have listed the word arbitrary as an opposite of absolute, so what are some word combinations? What about arbitrary choice, arbitrary penalty, arbitrary rule, arbitrary decision, arbitrary demand and so forth.   Well did I make an arbitrary choice in listing arbitrary as the opposite of absolute. I bet some of you have already thought that the word relative would have been a better choice and you might be right. I would say that this was a relatively arbitrary choice on my part.

For those who like to think in numbers, if I said that two numbers represented by, A & B are said to be opposite if A+B=0  you would say Yeah, or at least you might say that. Since in you’re mind you might think of the number 1 and the number -1 when added together would equal zero (and any other like positive and negative combination.)  Thinking in numbers,  1 and -1 are opposite and thinking in language I would say that freedom and slavery are opposites.  I gave you an example with a formula to show how 1 & -1 are opposites but now I am asking you to take a leap of wisdom in accepting ‘freedom and slavery‘ as opposites.  Sounds right but how can you prove it. How do you know what you know?

 In algebra you learned that the absolute value of a non-negative number is the number itself & the absolute value of a negative number is the opposite that number (absolute numbers are always positive or zero.)  Not that it will make much difference to us, but we can think of the absolute value of x as the distance from  center zero(0) in either direction on a line & is never negative. The closer something is to zero, the smaller it is. Size is a way to talk about ‘absolute value.’ Now we have learned  that in math an opposite is not the same as the absolute value. "So what???  I am just pointing out that it’s easier sometimes to think in numbers than with language concepts.  Many times we accept language logic just because it sounds right or from personal knowledge or belief.  In the ‘Zero-Day’ blog I made this statement “What I know with absolute certainty is that an ever present God created all and will continue to exist.” Now how can I convince you that I know this with ‘absolute certainty?’ The answer I am afraid is I likely can’t unless you share my same faith. In my mind I know this to be true through faith so does that make it true for all or just me? Must something be true for all for it to be true?  A mathematician would likely answer in the affirmative, that it’s true if you can prove it or false if you can’t.  So if I can’t prove it does it make it false?  I am getting tired talking about this idea of absolute & opposite. At this point I am making an arbitrary decision since I am relatively certain that you and I are getting tired of this subject.

Maybe later we will discuss large & small, finite & infinite, forward & reverse, new & old, general & unique  and other words in the table. For now, So Long & have a Good Day…

Jim Sohn

April 28^th 2010 AD