| Yeah it's the "partially" part that's important. You could be right that: Blood keeps you alive, working hard is important, community makes you happier overall. While being wrong that: If you're sick it's because your blood is poisoned, you should work as hard as possible no matter what, you should always put community first. This is an imperfect set of examples. A better set would look like a graph of interconnected beliefs that are hard to disentangle, each node being a statement that is true under certain circumstances but not others. The idea that there is an absolute truth with no shades in between truth and falsity... that: 1) ignores the graph-theoretical nature of truth 2) is a form of psychological "splitting" (which is described in the article) 3) is basically a fundamentalism When we decide to label someone's statements as wrong and act against them, we ought [;-)] to be aware of this and take ownership of that stance, not attribute our epistemic decision to absolutes. |