APELC Class Notes
Objectives: APELCers processed texts from multiple genres.
We began by looking at “lies” in the Ericsson piece, and Taylor offered the idea of relativity in truth, that truth is perspectival, based on one’s own perception of reality and many students seemed to agree. Then I offered the following idea from theologian and philosopher Ravi Zacharias (which caused Megan’ brain, she admitted, to begin to melt):
When someone says that all truth is relative, he or she is making either a relative statement or an absolute one. If it is a relative statement, then that statement, by definition, is not always true. On the other hand, if the belief that all truth is relative is absolute, then the very statement itself must be denied, because it denies absolutes.
Understand that this isn’t necessarily a theological concept, but, rather, it’s a philosophical one, and has roots in the law of non-contradiction. But what is truth then? Aristotle attempts a definition in his Metaphysics that I failed to give in class but offer now:
To say of what is that it is not, or of what is not that it is, is false, while to say of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not, is true; so that he who says of anything that is, or that it is not, will say either what is true or what is false; but neither what is nor what is not is said to be or not to be.
Whaddya think about them apples? Of course, this isn’t the last we’ll discuss this. Indeed, the ideas of objective truth and objective reality are the ultimate problems of existence and are the impetus behind all forms and products of artificial human expression.
We continued processing Bob Roberts and will continue to do so next class.
Check your class page for homework, and if you’re not watching or listening to the news tonight, try any one of these: ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, FOX, the NewsHour, or NPR.
See you next class.
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