In reply to OPE-L 5061. "The reference to Lenin was to his *Materialism and Empirio-Criticism* in which he argues that science operates AS IF there is an absolute truth which can never be reached but we work relatively toward it. In other words, we struggle for objective truth but never reach it absolutely, only relatively." Thanks for the clarification, Paul, but I'm still not completely clear about it. Are you endorsing this view or opposing it? I like it all except for the "as if" part, which I don't understand. The last sentence may contradict the first, because it holds that there *is* an objective, absolute truth, that it isn't a convenient fiction (which may be what the "as if" indicates). Everything but the "as if" sounds to me like it is straight out of Hegel -- perhaps Lenin got this through Plekhanov and he through Hegel. Does anyone know? It seems to me that the last sentence tells us that absolute truth is knowable (in the philosophic sense). It is never fully known, but there is no inherent defect in thought that prevents it from becoming known. This is in contrast to Kant's position, which holds that only the world of phenomena, not things-in-themselves, are capable of being known by us. Ciao, Drewk
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