SANCTITY
Contents:
Relevant:
That which pertains to the purpose in hand.
Context:
The facts that condition a given pursuit.
In a cognitive pursuit, the context refers to knowledge that is relevant to the cognitive purpose. In a practical pursuit, the context refers to set of circumstances that is relevant to the practical purpose. The distinction between cognitive and practical is only to clarify the meaning of “context”, because in fact, cognition is always purposeful and thus practical with respect to some purpose, whereas action for a human being (beyond reflexes and routines) is always based on some form of cognition.
Absolute:
Always valid in a given context/range of contexts.
To extend the meaning of “absolute”, if something is of absolute value/importance, it means it is always relevant in the given context/range of contexts, since it means that the statement about the value/importance of something is always valid within the given context/range of contexts. In this way, “absolute truth” and “absolute value” are tied to the same concept of “absolute”.
Objective:
That which is known to correspond to reality.
In practice, the above means: that which is certain by reason. Hence, a statement is objective if and only if one’s observations and logic therefrom can be validated with certainty. On the other hand, a statement is not objective in the following cases: (1) if it is of unknown/questionable validity (even if it is reached by reason), (2) if it turns out to be false (even if it was reached by reason), or (3) if it is true but is not reached by reason (in such a case, the fact that it is true is unknown, which means, in practice, case 3 is the same as case 1).
NOTES ON OBJECTIVITY:
1.
“Truth” is defined as “that which corresponds to reality”, which means objectivity is not just about truth but about one’s conscious grasp of the truth (i.e. one’s awareness of that which exists). The truth is grasped through sense-perception (which is the fundamental form of interaction between consciousness and reality) and logic therefrom (which is the art of non-contradictory identification); the validity of sense-perception and logic are topics of epistemology. Note that other mental faculties, e.g. intuition, can point toward potential truths, but actual truth can only be grasped through logic; for example, a mathematician may intuit a way to solve a problem, but he can only confirm the validity of his way through the use of logic.
2.
In the presence of uncertainty, statements that accurately take the uncertainty into account are objective, since these statements are based on what is known to be true, including what is known about the unknown. For example, an objective statement about the risk of injury in an activity, e.g. wood-working, is a statement that takes into account the known statistics, the knowledge of how injury occurs and can occur in certain cases, etc. Hence, even if there are unknowns, e.g. the future result of doing the activity, the statement of risk is objective as per the given cognitive context.
The hierarchical nature of contexts:
Due to the law of identity and its corollary, causality, everything in reality has an identity and changes only according to its identity. Now, note that there are multiple parts of reality that can and often do interact. Hence, by identity and causality, since each part of reality changes only according to its nature, the way a narrower part of reality changes is conditioned by the nature of any broader part of reality that subsumes it. Hence, the way things change in a narrower context is conditioned by the nature of any broader context that subsumes it. Hence, contexts are necessarily hierarchical, and any set of contexts have at least one context that subsumes the whole set.
Sanctity refers to the quality of being ultimate and inviolable in value. “Sacred” is the adjective corresponding to “sanctity”; in other words, if X is sacred, X has sanctity. Perhaps the most common use of this concept is in religious contexts, where certain ideas, figures, practices and places may be considered “sacred”. In religious contexts, sanctity is ascribed mostly due to dogma, and thus, the concept connotes a view of values based on faith. However, this connotation is just a connotation, and the concept of sanctity as such is tied to a valid idea, namely the idea that there are moral absolutes.
An objective morality as such is absolute, although, like any system of ideas, it must be applied contextually. Hence, it is not useful to use the concept of sanctity to refer to moral absolutism as such, because morality, properly understood, is absolute. However, as in any system of ideas, there is a hierarchy of contexts, at the top of which is the broadest context whose truths condition the truths in every other context, because by logic, facts in a narrower context are conditioned by facts in a broader context that subsumes it. In other words, there are ideas that tie everything else together, and are thus valid and relevant in every context. It is thus useful to identify such ideas and their corollaries, which is what the concept of sanctity is useful for.
Evidently, something sacred is that which is the core of morality or a logical extension of this core. Thus, the source of sanctity, objectively, is the standard of value, i.e. one’s own life as a volitional being (see: The Standard of Value from Ethics) and all that it implies. Concretely, this translates to the affirmation of life in the moment, which, for a volitional being, needs an orientation not just toward survival in the moment but toward one’s potential for life long-range. Poetically, the following may be said:
Most treasured is the next breath,
Null without the breath of now.
Never shall we see its death;
That, we the living can avow.
In other words, life is sacred not in the sense that death must be feared above all, but in the sense that death means nothing to the living, and what life means for a volitional being is the enjoyment of actual while striving for the potential, no matter when one’s life ends. To conclude: I care not about how I die, only about how I live, keeping in mind that my life is finite and of irreplaceable value to me.
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