You know the Ontological Argument; an old proof for the existence of God. The modern mind finds it intuitively unsatisfying. Perhaps it is the ex nihilo nature of the argument that is so disturbing. Well, it seems that there is an even older argument that is quite popular (not in the base and common sense) these days, that tries to refute the skeptic (read: relativist, constructivist), that seems no less ex nihilo.
The Ontological Argument, very very roughly, says something like, there must be something that is the most perfect thing there is (or you can imagine something absolutely perfect), perfection must include the property of existence, therefore the most perfect must exist, therefore God exists!
There you have it. You get a very real, in fact potentially empirically efficacious, entity like God, as the output from an argument that inputs only logical premises. Seems like there is a category mistake somewhere. It seems ex nihilo in the sense that an argument using pure logic has no substance; certainly not when you consider the magnitude of the output that is expected to ride on it.
Now here is a way of solving that most difficult of problems, absolute relativism. Absolute relativism expresses skepticism about the existence of any absolute facts, that there is anything at all that we can confidently say is true, that there is anything that is true - whether we can know it or not, or that there is any argument that can be absolutely valid. To take one example: any assertion requires some reason or method for justifying that it is true. The method used must itself have a justification. However, the justification regress must either continue indefinitely, which means that there is no basis, or hit circularity (including a one-statement circularity) which is, by most lights, an invalid form of argument.
How do you deal with the fact that by appealing to the standards required by rationality itself, it is impossible to meet those standards? How can you justify that there exist at least some absolute facts?
That's where the Ontological Argument for Facts comes in. All you have to do is postulate a skeptic. The skeptic (once postulated) asserts that there are no absolute facts. Everything is relative. Something can only be true relative to some theory T, but T can never be absolutely grounded. (Theory T presumably includes both axiomatic assertions as well as mechanisms for deriving conclusions from premises). However, when the skeptic is busy asserting that "nothing is absolute" or "everything is true only relative to T", she is making a statement of absolute fact. If instead, the skeptic is saying "perhaps nothing is absolute", that too is saying that the "perhaps" is absolute. Suggesting "perhaps perhaps ... nothing is absolute" would require an infinite regress of the "perhaps".
In conclusion, the skeptic must be incoherent. If the skeptic is incoherent, the skepticism is invalid. Therefore, absolute facts exist!
The argument is as old as Plato (Protagoras). However, it is being used to this day. The argument needs a name. I suggest: "The Ontological Argument for Facts and Truth".
