John Page

Quite Kantrary:

Yes. Relativism can be arrived at by believing all propositions and winnowing out those that are most coherent. Ergo, relativism does not entail skepticism - the latter being the doubting of all propositions.
Agreed, but I would expand this to any belief, even the one you think you apprehend in your consciousnesses "now".

Please see paragraph three in this link to Reconciliationism - Methodology for reason and belief .

Cheers, John

AnthonyAdams45

Consider that some properties are relative:

• to the left of
• is more beautiful than
• true in Spanish, but not in English

Under the principle of parsimony, if one class of properties is enoough to describe all properties. After an initial investigation, most properties appear to be relations. The investigation cannot be considered complete, but relativism may be accepted as a provisional hypothesis. I think I would even say that such an approach will only permit provisional acceptance, which seems to me in complete accord with relativism's general thrust. In short, relativism is only relatively true.

Keith Russell

Gurder:

I disagree. A relativist doesn't choose the same way I do.

I use reason, and reason alone.

The relativists say that they sometimes choose to employ reason, and sometimes they do not.

In those times that they do not, I still use reason.

Why don't they, and how do they decide when not to use reason?

Keith.

Keith Russell

Originally posted by Keith Russell
Is relativism, then, only good for dealing with other people? Is it a paradigm useful only when one person attempts to persuade another?

I understand--and agree--that one should deal with people by recognizing their subjective, personal 'learning styles', and/or by appealing to their individual, particular interests, beliefs, values, etc. (But, this sounds more like the tactics of corporate 'get-ahead' books, than philosophy--at least to me.)

Hugo:
You are taking my words out of context here, Keith.

Keith:
Hugo, that is why my first two sentences are questions, rather than statements. It's not that I took your words out of context, I wasn't sure I understood them at all.

Hugo:
I was discussing how to persuade people in the light of relativism, showing that your comment about rejecting reason need not follow. I would employ reason when talking to you because you say that you use rationalist demarcation criteria; this says nothing about the validity or otherwise of relativism.

Keith:
Then say something about the validity of relativism, please!

Keith, earlier:
And, none of it relates to whether the notion of human rights is valid, or whether Nazism is wrong (or false, bad, invalid, evil--or whatever other qualitative term one wishes to use).

Hugo:
Of course it does. The point is that a relativist does not consider Nazism intrinsically wrong--

Keith: I guess there are no Jewish relativists, then, eh?

Hugo:
the notions of Good and Bad are dispensed with in favour of an intersubjective agreement as to what we shall call good and bad, based on shared values and goals.

Keith: What 'we' shall call good and bad? 'We'? Myself and the Nazi, the Nazi and the Jew? Who?

Keith, earlier:
I think a good philosophy, though, should help one not only to promote what one believes to be good ideas, but must first provide a means by which one can verify that one's beliefs are good (or beneficial, important, moral--or whatever other qualitative term one wishes to use).

Hugo:
Surely one's belief's are important to oneself? Am i reading you correctly in that you still want a foundationalist epistemology? If so, that is not relevant here (although it will be later on when i come to making some further comments on relativism); your question was asking "given relativism, how can we decide between ideas?", and i have explained how to do so.

Keith: In this thread? When?

Hugo:
You must appreciate that relativists are having done with the concept of one methodology or set of demarcation criteria being intrinsically better than any other, without reference to some presupposition such as utility or rationality.

Keith:
Oh, I understand that you believe you have dispensed with it. I just don't think that your belief is correct.

Keith, ealier:
How does a relativist choose? How do you decide when reason is or is not appropriate, when you're alone?

You say that the relativist can have both reason and intersubjectivity.

If that is true, then you have a different definition of reason than I.

Thus, I must ask how you define 'reason'.

Keith.

Keith Russell

Kantian said:
"However, since knowledge is not a singular noun, but an abbreviated description for 'the X that is correct information,' the skeptic's sentence logically reads as 'there is nothing that is correct information.' The apparent word, 'knowledge' has disappeared from the skeptic's sentence.

In deeper grammar, definite descriptions are not names, and sentences with definite descriptions are not singular, but actually general sentences.

Therefore, the philosophical position of skepticism may be expressed without suffering any inconsistencies."

Keith:
All you've done is substitute 'knowledge' for 'the correct information', but the concept remains the same. You can play the semantic shell-game, and change the words you use, but the thing to which the words refer, is still the same.

OK, I'll grant you that you don't presuppose 'knowledge', but you've only created another contradiction:

Now you have to get out of presupposing 'correct information'.

Keith.

Keith Russell

Greetings:

Relativism, it seems, wants to claim that no viewpoint is priveledged--

--except relativism.

The problem is, relativism eschews any of the ways in which the relative quality of the various available viewpoints can be established.

So, it seems, one chooses to be a relativist by fiat, with no means by which to justify or defend their position: relativism.

To even claim that one has evaluated all viewpoints as being equal, takes judgment, evaluation--the very things relativism claims to reject.

Can't be done, not really.

Back to the drawing board, gentlemen.

Keith.

John Page

Go Keith!

How about faith? Do you use faith at all?
Beer? I use beer alone.

Cheers, John
__________________________________________________ _
"And Pooh :notworthy .... thought how wonderful it would be to have a Real Brain which could tell you things." A.A. Milne
__________________________________________________ _

AnthonyAdams45

I have suggested above why one might be a relativist. How, then, do relativists proceed? Tentatively, but not shyly.

I talk to you. I try to discover if there are grounds on which we can talk. For example, you are committed to reason. I, too, am committed to reason. Your commitment is stronger than mine, but I am committed. My commitment is contingent on reason surviving tests that are not absolute, but rather relative to my needs and plans. Do I abandon reason when it gets in the way of my needs and plans? Sometimes, sometimes not. Just as you do.

How does a relativist justify moral decisions? With appeals to moral principles. But the relativist is aware that the priniciple which appealed to has no absolute weight, merely the weight the relativist choose to give it, which no other person need give it.

The difference between relativists and absolutists, as near as I can tell, cannot be found in how they live or act; no relativist believe that guns or trees or gravity can be wished away. Nor can it be found in scientific principles or political ideals; relativists have to deal with the same physical phenomena, the same social interactions. It is found in two places: metaphysics and religion.

The relativist denies that any quality exists independent of any other quality. So nothing is intrinsically or absolutely X (where X is some descriptive predicate), but only X to a degree, or in relation to something else. For this reason, no relativist can be a traditional monotheist, for the properties of the divine would be dependent on some other entity, which is inconsistent with traditional montheism.

AnthonyAdams45

Do not confuse relativism with nihilism. Relativism doesn't want for values; it just acknowledges that values (alethic, aesthetic, ethical) are only valued from some standpoint, and that different standpoints have different values.

Nevertheless, I do judge what I judge. That is, I do not say "Oh, you think what you think, and I think what I think! So who's to say?" Instead I say " I think you are wrong, and will treat you as I think fit.' Which, oddly enough, is what absolutists do, too! The difference is that I don't try to paint the wrongdoer as evil, nor as stupid, but rather as an other that I have judged behaving wrongly. I may try to educate the other, as the American abolitionists tried to educate slaveholders. I may shun the other, as the US did apartheid South Africa and currently does Cuba. I may reach out and destroy the other, as President Bush threatens the world's terrorists. I act from my principles, just as you do. but I do not pretend my principles are the only ones, nor the "right" ones (whatever that might mean), but rather that they are miine, and so are all I can use to justify or understand anything.

AnthonyAdams45

I am sure I did not suggest that relativism was privileged, only that some justification might be proposed. Unlike absolutists, relativists, at least reflective relativists, are rather forced to acknowledged that they might be wrong. Even a reflective absolutist could consider relativism possible. To do so would abandon absolutism. Relativism has room for doubt, must have room for doubt, since the relations may change, may have been wrongly assessed, may even be absolute.

To be sure there are non-reflective knee-jerk relativists who simply bellow, "Everything is relative," so that they may avoid thinking and wade into arenas for which they have no preparation and no skills of discernment. The same is true of non-reflective absolutists, see our friends, the fundamentalists. I cannot absolutely condemn them, but I will condemn them according to my values, values which are the product of my particular collection of relations, experiences, and evaluations.

I certainly think that I have the right of things, else I would not bother you with the issue. However, I am not certain that I am right, as certainty seems to me absolute, and I can only pass judgment relative to myself, and my knowledge.