The knight in the big world of American TV series

Chapter 2313

Strictly speaking, neither of them is wrong!

There is no right or wrong, only perspectives.

Although the firm and decisive tone of this statement may seem irritating, a closer look reveals that the issue is not as simple as it appears—most people would agree that this statement holds true in many situations.

To give a common example: Is the death penalty right?

Clearly, we cannot obtain a definitive answer. There is no absolute truth regarding the death penalty; rather, it depends on each individual's perspective. Technically, the most we can study is the relationship between the death penalty and crime rates, the fairness of the death penalty, and the probability of wrongful convictions resulting from it… but these results are unlikely to sway people's beliefs. Some believe that criminals should receive the most severe punishment to set an example, and they are willing to pay any price for it; others feel that the death penalty is too cruel and may lead to injustice. They both have their reasons. At least on a moral value level, the state of the world and "what we hope the world will be" are two different things—this is the famous "Hume principle."

However, we often find ourselves believing that this statement is untenable. For example, the statement "The Earth is round" seems like an absolute fact. We can certainly believe that there are flat-Earth theorists who would say the Earth is flat, but at the same time, we would find their claims utterly unbelievable. There is far too much scientific evidence strongly supporting the conclusion that "The Earth is round." To insist that there is no right or wrong, only a matter of perspective, on this issue would likely make most people think that the person making such a statement is mentally unstable.

So the question arises: when does the statement "There is no right or wrong, only stance" hold true, and when does it not? Fortunately, many questions that seem difficult to the public were discussed in academia decades ago, and this question is no exception. Paul Bogsien, director of the Philosophy Institute at New York University, even wrote a book on this topic called *The Fear of Knowledge*. His argumentative steps can clarify this issue to some extent.

Fact constructivism, which holds that "there is no absolute truth, and all beliefs stem from one's position," is philosophically known as "relativism." Relativism inevitably leads to another conclusion: because humans cannot naturally possess a certain position, our positions are necessarily instilled by our social environment; in other words, all beliefs are socially "constructed." Therefore, we can broadly call this view "constructivism."

Among the many constructivist schools, the most extreme is "fact constructivism." According to it, there are no facts in the world independent of humanity; all facts are social constructs. Sounds absurd, right? But what's even more absurd is that this view was once very popular in the West. For example, Michel Foucault famously argued that before people began using the term "homosexual" to describe certain groups, there was no homosexuality; there were only ordinary people who preferred same-sex relationships. Therefore, in his view, the existence of "homosexuality" was not a historical fact.

If you can't see the problem, just try replacing the example of "homosexuality" with "dinosaur": there were no dinosaurs before people started using the word "dinosaur" to describe certain animals, so "dinosaurs" did not exist before humans unearthed dinosaur fossils.

The fallacy of this argument lies in the fact that nitpicking over the definition of words cannot erase the physical existence of certain individuals with specific fetishes or certain large animals. Homosexuality can be described without the term "homosexual," and dinosaurs can be described without the term "dinosaur," but this does not prevent these things from truly existing. Factual constructivism cannot avoid the "problem of causality," meaning that both dinosaurs and historical homosexuality existed before we discussed them. To say that dinosaurs from 100 million years ago could only exist after humans defined them with a certain term 100 million years later is to reverse the causal relationship of time. Moreover, constructivism presupposes that construction is accidental, meaning that we could have constructed an opposite idea. For example, society A could consider the death penalty both just and evil, without conflict. However, once constructivism is applied to facts, conflict arises: "This society believes the earth is round, but it could also have believed the earth is flat." This statement itself is not problematic, but considering that the earth can only have one physical property, one of the two constructions must be wrong, and the two statements cannot truly coexist. They cannot simply be differences in stance; there must also be a distinction between right and wrong in fact.

Furthermore, we cannot truly believe in fact-constructivism because it violates the most basic human intuition from any perspective. Throughout evolution, humanity has lived under the presupposition of the existence of "facts," meaning that humans instinctively and firmly believe in the existence of an external world unaffected by human discourse. While we may champion fact-constructivism in academic papers and editorials, very few people genuinely believe that dinosaurs never existed unless they explicitly stated it.

Because fact-constructivism is difficult to scrutinize, Richard Rorty, one of the most outstanding contemporary philosophers, chose a more compromising relativistic approach, namely "epistemological relativism." According to him, facts may indeed be objective, such as the Earth revolving around the Sun, not the other way around. But the facts themselves are not important, because they cannot determine which worldview is more reasonable. Those who support geocentrism can simply say, "I just like geocentrism, what can you do about it?" while supporters of heliocentrism can't really do anything about it. Similar debates can be seen in the discussion of Traditional Chinese Medicine vs. Modern Medicine.

While Rorty believed that objective facts wouldn't force us to choose only one way to describe the world, he also didn't believe all worldviews were equal, because, for practical reasons, some ways of describing the world better meet our needs. Take diarrhea, for example. We can explain it as a result of bacterial contamination, or as a result of a disruption in fluid balance. The former explanation isn't inherently superior to the latter, but from a practical standpoint, taking antibiotics is much easier than "restoring fluid balance," so we tend to prefer the explanation from modern medicine.

According to Rorty, different interpretive systems are like the settings in different novels. As long as they are internally consistent, different novels can naturally have different systems, and there's no reason to force everyone to accept the settings of the same novel. Based on epistemological relativism, we shouldn't say "stealing is wrong," but rather "according to my accepted moral principle M, stealing is wrong." Furthermore, we should add, "Although moral principle M does not allow stealing, there may be many different moral principles, among which there may be a moral principle S that does not oppose stealing, and there is no reason to believe that moral principle M is superior to moral principle S."

Why should we say that moral principle M is not superior to moral principle S? Because without adopting the premise of M, there is no way to prove that M is better. For example, we can defend M using the following argument: "The goal of morality is to make everyone happier and avoid suffering, and stealing money causes suffering, therefore stealing money is wrong."

However, this argument ignores the fact that "morality = avoiding suffering" is inherently part of M. In fact, the moral principle S might be something like this: "The goal of morality is to make everyone more free, and everyone certainly has the freedom to steal money. If the person whose money was stolen didn't hide it properly, it's their own fault." In other words, without adopting the premises they support, they cannot prove that their conclusion is better, which is tantamount to circular reasoning.

This is why, in debates about the effectiveness of medicine, proponents of modern medicine may present a wealth of data and believe they have provided sufficient proof, while proponents of traditional medicine remain unmoved—because their opponents disagree with their approach to argumentation from the outset.

From this perspective, epistemological relativism is quite powerful compared to unreliable fact-constructionism. It tells us that simply stating right or wrong is meaningless, because right and wrong depend on certain premises, and different cognitive systems have different premises. When encountering different ideas, we can at most say that the other party is wrong according to our standards, but if we change to their standards of judgment, the result may be the opposite.

While the relativism of knowledge seems reasonable, and in a weaker sense proves the saying "there is no right or wrong, only positions," the matter doesn't end there. Borgesien adds a crucial point: it's not that we are incapable of proving our own system of knowledge superior to any other. Other ways of describing the world must at least be internally coherent to qualify as competitors to our system. Just as a novel's setting can be diverse, and self-consistent settings are not inherently superior to one another; but if your setting is self-contradictory, then you lose the right to compare from the outset. Borgesien further points out that most ways of describing the world we encounter in daily life actually fail to meet the seemingly simple requirement of "self-consistency."

A self-consistent system of knowledge must have the following characteristics: given the evidence, the system should be able to make consistent judgments.

We can't let you believe P one minute and then say P isn't important the next.

A system does not contradict itself; its logic cannot lead to conclusions that refute itself.

The system should have a consistent source of belief.

For example, Marx's view on "exploitation" is difficult to reconcile. In Marx's view, the difference between the worker's compensation and the value they create is the exploited portion, and exploitation is an unfair use of the worker. However, according to this definition, taxes intended to protect children or the elderly should also be considered exploitation, a point Marx would not accept—he adds that a certain share should be deducted from the social product before distribution to achieve goals such as expanding the means of production and redistribution. In other words, he arrives at a self-contradictory judgment from a single premise, and this part of his argument is, of course, self-defeating.

Therefore, the premise of "there is no right or wrong, only positions" is that other positions must be genuine, different, and internally coherent, rather than an unthought-out cognitive system.

Thomas Nagel once offered a decisive rebuttal to those who attempt to claim that "there is no right or wrong, only positions" in all fields: Is the statement "there is no right or wrong, only positions" itself a truth, or merely a position? If it is a truth, it is tantamount to saying that the statement is "right," thus contradicting oneself; if it is merely a position, then we do not need to take it seriously.

Therefore, this statement cannot be true in all fields, and it is even untrue for itself. In other words, its application must be strictly limited.

What about Sif and Heimdall's positions?

It's a mess!
Depending on your perspective, the conclusions you draw about things will be completely different.

It's impossible to say who's right or wrong.

"German!!! Surrender!"

Thor showed no mercy this time, relentlessly smashing Mjolnir down at Gale!

Ger did not refute this; he did not believe himself to be innocent, but he did not want to surrender.

This is crap.

"I will pay the price for what I have done! But not now! Once I make my wish and it comes true, I will immediately commit suicide!"

Geer did not refute it, after all, the murder was real.

Gol never felt anything about killing those scum of the Pantheon; he didn't think he had done anything wrong.

But regarding the deaths of others... Ger does not deny that he has committed a sin.

But everything will have to wait until he resurrects his daughter!

"Bullshit!!! You lunatic, I absolutely will not let you make a wish!"

Thor didn't quite understand what the Eternal Altar was before, but now he does.

Even those inhuman idiots in the Pantheon don't dare to come here to make a wish, so you can imagine what kind of bastard this thing is!

They're even worse than those bastards at the Pantheon!
Besides, Ger is a madman; who knows what wishes he might make?

For example, wiping out all life in the universe... Hmm, given how insane Gale is, it's actually quite possible! (That's how it was in the movie... I really don't know what this guy was thinking. What's even more ridiculous is that the Godslayer was actually defeated by Thor's talk in the end, which is one of the reasons why Thor 4 wasn't good... In the end, it was all about talk. The Americans actually learned the tricks of the common folk! If they can't win with raw power, they resort to talking!)