How can I refute a colleague's claim that truth is relative?
The short answer
The claim defeats itself. If all truth is relative, then there is no objective truth, and nothing can ever be stated as fact — including the claim that truth is relative. Taken seriously, that position leads to chaos and makes logical communication impossible.
The claim refutes itself
Your colleague is asserting, as a fact, that there are no facts. But if every truth is only relative, then the statement "truth is relative" is relative too, and there is no reason anyone should accept it. The claim can only stand by contradicting itself.
What follows if it were true
If there is no objective truth, nothing could ever be put forward as a fact — not in science, in law, in history or in an ordinary conversation. That would be chaos.
It undoes conversation itself
Discussion depends on the assumption that some statements are true and others false. Remove that, and every logical exchange becomes empty — including the conversation in which your colleague is trying to persuade you.
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