How to get post-modernists/relativists to stomache Absolute Truth??

[TimStr]

A big part of my social circles worldview is steeped with post-modernism. And this especially come to light when I talk about Truth to them.

Basically, their main argument is: All I have is a perspective, all other people have is a perspective. That means that there are only different perspectives out there and therefore, there is no absolute truth / absolute truth cannot be known. When asserting that there is such a thing as Absolute Truth they tend to fall into a pre-trans fallacy: "Oh, you're argumenting for Absolute Truth, therefore you are not acknowledging different perspectives. Another person has another perspective, ‘truth‘ can be entirely different." Essentially putting me into a (pre-)modernist camp while I am arguing from a post-postmodernist perspective. They try to discredit Absolute Truth based on relativism.

How would you argue against that? How to make them construct aware of their post-modernism?

And how would you actually open those peoples minds up to the possibility that absolute truth is out there?

I guess the only get them "convinced" is for them to have a direct experience of truth. But how can they even have that, when their worldview doen't hold such a thing possible?

[zurew]

You dont necessarily need to argue for it, you can just stay inside their frames and let them explain why they go with certain perspectives over other perspectives and then after that you can lay down your version and frame it as a perspective and then check if they would buy into it or not and if not ask them why not.

The only thing you need to establish is some hierarchy of perspectives (you dont need to necessarily establish that there is some kind of top to that hierarchy), and the case that certain perspectives are more inclusive and take more other perspectives into account. Perspectives dont necessarily need to be mutually exclusive, they can be inclusive.

You can also remind them that they already take it that certain truths are not perspective dependently true-  for instance, the claim that "all or most truths are perspective dependently true" cant be perspective  dependently true or if it is, well then you can ask them why they buy into that rather than into the negation of that claim (and then whatever process or epistemology they will describe or appeal to there, you can just use that as a ground to build your case on).

But I often times dont like these talks, because its unclear what they mean by perspective and most of the debate is dependent on clarifying that phrase and often times people have a hard time explicating what they even mean by it.

Edited 3 hours ago by zurew