Relativism... Logical?

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As you may already know, I consider myself to be a relativist. I have been trying to come up with anything that may be illogical about relativism, and have come up with nothing. I would like to know other's points of view on this mindset?

[Geoff332]

It depends what you mean by relativism.

There are lots of different theories of relativism; but most share two features:

1. The 'object' of the study is relative to a given standpoint or framework.
2. No framework or standpoint is uniquely priviledged above any other.

The first point is a denial of objective knowledge (Popper described it as 'knowledge without the knower'). Some people apply this to everything; other apply it to specific domains -- such as morality, knowledge, meaning, values etc.

The second point tells us that there is no meta-framework that incorporates all others (one of my lecturers keeps talking about meta-rationality and strategy; relativism is the denial of this meta-framework).

One framework for relativism that's quite common today is cognitive relativism. It basically asserts the relativism of 'truth' (although, as I have pointed out else-where, it is really talking about knowledge of truth). In technical terms, cognitive relativism claims that no one set of epistemic norms is metaphysically priviledged over any other. What this means is that different standards for what constitutes knowledge (epistemic norms) are equivalent.

The standard critique of cognitive relativism is that it is self-refuting. The statement that "no one set of epistemic norms can be priviledged over any other" is, in fact, an epistemic norm that your relativist is telling you should be priviledged over all others. If you can't know anything for certain, how can you know for certain that you can't know anything. The reply is pretty much, "no, you're wrong". The claim of relativistic knowledge does not require a commitment to a non-relativisitic notion of 'truth' or 'knowledge'.

The second critique is less common, but kind of interesting, in light of another discussion. It is that if all claims to knowledge are relative and valid, then you must conceed that from some positions relativism will appear false. So relativism is both true and false. Once again, the reply is, "yeah, so?" More precisely: anyone who is a genuine relativism would not adopt a position where relativism would appear false, so for them it is never false. If someone else adopts a position where it appears false, then they were never a genuine relativist and therefore, they never believed it was true.

I tend to losely split things into four areas. On material issues, I'm all for science and relativism goes out the window. On social issues -- my speciality -- it's all relative. Morally, I'm not sure. I tend to argue for moral relativism, but there's usually a sneaking notion of objective morality in the backgroud: different people or cultures tend to enact objective moral standards in different, and imperfect, ways. Cognitively, I am a relativist (which sits uneasily with the notion of science in the material world: I resolve this by recognising that 'science' is a work in progress that will never end, but is useful along the way).

Geoff, sorry to haunt you - tell me if you want me to get off your back - but I was once tempted by the following position: all truths are relative, some falsities are absolute. I think this is commensurate with scientific position of falsifiability. Although it requires a bit more speech to get out of some liar's paradox type issues, I still believe - but never got to this, myself, as far as argueing it out - that the position is not self-refuting. GuidoNius

[Geoff332]

But you would have to argue it from a position that gave a privilegde to some for of knowledge over another -- which is contrary to cognitive relativism.

For something to be (absolutely) false, you need a set of criteria against which falsity is determined (eg the scientific method uses empirical data to falsify hypotheses). These criteria are then considered more important that any other criteria that consider those falsities to be false. This is a form of priviledge which requires a postive choice, even if you frame it negatively. (The privledged criteria by which you judge some things absolutely false are positive selected). To me, that's a cop out on a relativist position -- only taking it so far.

The scientific method is not generally considered relativist. Popper (who probably has the best articulation of contemporary philosophy of science) was not trying to make science a reletivistic enterprise. He bounded science (to the material realm, leaving out metaphysical and moral judgements); but he privledged its claimn to knowledge within the material realm -- something I tend to agree with.

[fedfem]

I am a relativist. I also feel that most disciplines of science depend on a relativist approach. Ironically, a relativist becomes an objectivist as the subject is narrowed, relatively speaking of course.

I just confused myself with this post. Sorry.

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Geoff, in your post, you mentioned this:

"On material issues, I'm all for science and relativism goes out the window. On social issues -- my speciality -- it's all relative."

I like to believe that I am both all for science and for relativism. I think that as far as we can measure things scientifically, they generally come out with the same results, but could you not argue that this is just because of our (as a human species) perspective? What is there were some other world where our accepted rules of science were totally different? I know I am speaking in terms of a lot of 'what ifs' here, but I dont like to deny anything as being possible.

I definately do agree with most of what you say, though. One of my favortie quotes actually is "If its real to me do I have to prove it to you? Its all relative."

As a side note, one of the only good arguments I have heard against relativism is that in believing in relativism, you are essentially denying that all other forms of belief are incorrect, which is counter to the most basic concept of relativism in the first place.

I have been sloppy. I should have said clearly: no I´m not a relativist. I do think some things are objectively true whatever perspective, relation or whatnot one may have to those things.

Only I tend to believe that there´s only a specific type of objective truth possible. The type of a negation. The type definitely ruling out a theory, like Newton is definitely ruled out as the best approximation in physics.

Therefore, I believe that no theory, social or otherwise, will definitely be proven to be true - our knowledge progresses by finding some things to be false.

Very Popperian indeed.

But the maxim "nothing is true, some things are false" is only consistent with itself if one accepts it as a statement of a character outside of what is falsifiable. It is one of the consistenecy requirements of our thought - an a priori condition of (our) thought reflecting the Gödelian, Tarskian et al. systematic indeterminacies.

Hope I am making some sense here.

GuidNius

PS: relativism & perspectivism are just plain self-defeating, inconsistent claims that go nowhere as far as explanaining anything