“Nothing is true” – This is actually part of the tagline of the video game Assassin’s Creed and made me laugh when I saw it for the first time and heard so many fans repeat it like it’s the greatest thing; it sure sounds deep. Too bad it’s self-defeating.
If nothing is true, the statement itself falls under that category, making itself false and thereby irrelevant. Congratulations!
“Everything is relative” – Really? For everyone? Everywhere? At any time? Sounds like a very absolute statement to me. This is my personal favorite and also self-defeating.
“We can’t know anything for sure” – Another good one and the sceptic’s best friend. Unfortunately, it’s self-defeating, too. It seems like we at least know for sure that we can’t know anything for sure.
I hope this small overview was helpful. Beware of those absolutes!
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I Absolutely Agree
Hey Chris. Good thought, but I think the problem is that all these are “recursive” statements, i.e. they refer (among other things) to themselves, and by that allow for some kind of contradiction. “This sentence is not true” doesn’t make use of absolutes, but it bears the same contradiction as the “Nothing is true” one. Cheers Thomas
Thomas,
You’re right, the liar paradox is self-defeating. That’s not a problem with my examples though, because absolutes, by definition, refer to everything or nothing, including themselves, but not just themselves, like the liar paradox. And once I can give one counterexample that contradicts an absolute, it’s defeated. That counterexample happens to be the sentence itself.
Christoph