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Moral Philosophy: Truth-Driven Relativism

Moral Philosophy: Truth-Driven Relativism

August 05, 2025

 

Moral Philosophy: Truth-Driven Relativism

✦ Overview

Truth-Driven Relativism (TDR) is a moral philosophy that bridges the gap between absolute moral objectivism and cultural relativism. It asserts that objective truth is the necessary foundation for all ethical reasoning, but that moral values beyond these truths must be shaped through participatory human agreements. This philosophy acknowledges the relational nature of morality while grounding it in what is verifiably real.

✦ Metaphysical Foundation

The Ontological Structure

  • Truth (•): The objective center; what is, regardless of belief.

  • Agreement (⊙): The relational field; what we collectively negotiate and experience.

  • Logic (⊕): The process of aligning agreement with truth.

  • Emergence (✶): The result; coherent ethical action, selfhood, and social norms.

  • Shared Reality (⧉): The world we create together through moral participation.

Morality emerges through convergence between what is true and what we agree upon.

✦ Core Axioms

  1. Truth Is Real
    Reality exists independently of opinion. Ethics must begin here.

  2. Agreement Is Necessary
    Morality without participation is tyranny. The people affected must shape the norms.

  3. Logic Is Our Compass
    Reason is not to erase the human, but to align us more clearly with truth.

  4. Participation Is Sacred
    No moral code is valid unless all affected parties have the right to consent.

  5. Change Is Growth
    Morality must evolve as new truths emerge and new perspectives are included.

  6. Mistakes Are Integral
    We must allow for error, accountability, and repair. Ethics is a living system.

  7. The Self Is Emergent
    Moral agency arises from the convergent alignment of body, mind, and soul.

✦ Moral Decision-Making Process

1. Establish Objective Truth

  • Identify verifiable facts.

  • Cross-check evidence.

  • Eliminate distortion and bias.

2. Map the Moral Field

  • Understand who is affected.

  • Identify existing agreements, norms, and values.

  • Include marginalized or dissenting voices.

3. Align Agreement with Truth

  • Use logic to bring shared beliefs into coherence with objective reality.

  • Update or discard moral norms that contradict facts.

4. Act Ethically

  • Make a decision that honors both the truth and the people involved.

  • Communicate transparently.

  • Be willing to adapt post-action if new insights arise.

✦ Ethical Response Modes

Urgent Situations

  • Prioritize known truths.

  • Use trained intuition to make fast, harm-reducing decisions.

  • Reassess afterward and revise agreements.

Complex Systems

  • Identify long-term feedback loops.

  • Consider consequences across time and scale.

  • Invite ongoing ethical dialogue.

✦ Comparison to Traditional Models

Framework TDR Difference
Utilitarianism Happiness is not the only truth; harm and good are defined through participatory agreement grounded in reality.
Deontology Duties are contextual and emergent, not fixed universals.
Virtue Ethics Virtue is coherence with one’s truth and context, not static ideals.
Moral Relativism TDR is relativistic but bounded by truth.
Objectivism Truth is real, but morality is plural and participatory.
Contractarianism Agreements must be real and evolving, not hypothetical.

✦ The TDR Ethical Algorithm

  1. Converge on Truth (•)

  2. Assess Agreements (⊙)

  3. Apply Logic (⊕)

  4. Emerge Ethical Action (✶)

  5. Participate in Shared Reality (⧉)

  6. Reflect and Adapt (∞)

This process continues forever, it is how ethical growth unfolds through time.

✦ Moral Agency in TDR

  • The Self is the emergent field of coherence shaped around a center of convergence (the soul).

  • Moral decisions are not made by abstract reason alone, but by embodied, relational beings.

  • Every soul participates uniquely in the moral fabric of reality.

✦ Final Declaration

Truth-Driven Relativism offers a moral compass for a pluralistic world:
grounded in reality, shaped by relationship, and evolved through conscious participation.

Truth is the foundation. Agreement is the field. Morality is the bridge.



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○

BODY

The Living Boundary

Your body is not one boundary. It’s boundaries all the way down.

○ is body as interface. It’s the place where inside meets outside, where you open and close, where you breathe in air, take in food, receive touch, absorb experience. It is not a wall. It’s a selective membrane—alive, responsive, and always in motion.

Try This

Close your eyes and feel where your body ends and the air begins. Notice how many tiny sensations are being woven into that one felt “edge.”

Explore: Φ Mind • Soul ⊙ The Whole
Φ

MIND

The Field Between

Φ is mind as field—the living medium between center (•) and boundary (○). It’s the whole relational space where signals from the body come in, where awareness from the center flows out, and where the two blend into conscious experience.

Try This

Notice your body breathing by itself. That’s ○. Now notice that you’re noticing. That reflective awareness is flowing from •. Then feel the space in which both are happening. That’s Φ.

Explore: ○ Body • Soul ⊙ The Whole
•

SOUL

The Aware Center

• is soul as center—not a substance lurking somewhere inside you, but the point of view from which everything is seen. It is the structural center of the whole circumpunct.

Bodies change completely over a lifetime. Memories blur, identities shift. And yet, there’s a sense that the one who was there then is the same one who is here now.

Try This

Close your eyes. Notice your breath. Then, gently, turn attention back toward that awareness itself—not the objects in it, but the fact that knowing is happening. That’s •.

Explore: ○ Body Φ Mind ⊙ The Whole
⊙

CIRCUMPUNCT

The Whole You

⊙ is the circumpunct: a circle with a point at the center. The circle is the boundary that holds everything that is “you” as a single system. The point is centeredness—the soul that experiences from within.

Instead of thinking, “I have a body, I have a mind, I have a soul,” you can think, “I am ⊙: a whole being whose body, mind, and soul are three faces of the same process.”

Try This

Feel your body as one shape (○). Notice the space of awareness in which thoughts arise (Φ). Sense the quiet center that’s aware of all of this (•). Then soften your attention to hold all three at once. That’s ⊙.

You are not on your way to being ⊙. You are ⊙, right now.

Explore: ○ Body Φ Mind • Soul