Harvard University Philosophy Professor Robert Nozick told about 100 people in the Rockefeller Center he believes in absolute truth that transcends culture, race and gender.
In his speech, the 22nd annual Francis Gramlich Memorial Lecture, Nozick defined this truth as the apparatus by which human beings make decisions which lead to their desired goals. He called this apparatus the "truth property."
"All past, present and future human beings have the same truth properties," he said.
He said all human beings rely on the same truth apparatus to make decisions, exemplified by "going inside a building in order to avoid impending rain."
Thus, analysis of their decisions reveals the influence of the same universal "truth property" among other central factors like desire to make the decision, the environment in which the decision is being made and the goal the decision maker hopes to accomplish, he said.
After several members of the audience challenged Nozick to further explain "truth properties," he refined his argument, saying this absolute truth does not apply to moral or social decisions but only to scientific, practical, everyday decisions such as his example of avoiding rain.
Nozick did not attempt to prove his idea of universal "truth properties," but instead argued against relativism, his theory's primary intellectual opponent.
"If you say all truth is relative, is that statement itself relative?" asked Nozick. His speech was filled with such mind-twisting problems that often elicited giggles of confusion from the audience.
Nozick spent nearly a half-hour defining relativism because, he said, he wished to prove that it was a false but not incoherent theory.
"To say something is relative is to say there exists some un-obvious factor upon which the truth depends."
Nozick gave as an example Albert Einstein's theory of relativity, which says that time, something we take for granted as a constant in our everyday lives, is not absolute but relative to the speed we are traveling.
But Nozick never put forth a formal refutation of relativism. Instead, he said he simply could not believe that human beings on the same planet could be so different as to not share at least a basic "truth property."
Philosophy major Brandon del Pozo '96 said during the question- and-answer session at the end of the lecture that the title of the lecture had probably led many students to expect a discussion of the relativity or absoluteness of moral truths.
"Is public nudity acceptable in France, but not here? ..., Is murder wrong everywhere?" del Pozo said, suggesting challenges to a notion of absolute moral truth.
Del Pozo said this dilemma is "the sexy part of philosophy as taught now."
