RED DAVE

I'd like to start a thread discussing the Pre-Socratics.

Here are some resources to start with, including the basic texts. All comments are welcome. (If this works out, I'll start one on Pre-Philosophic Thought, on the Greeks, etc.)

Pre-Socratic Texts

John Burnet - Early Greek Philosophy

RED DAVE

Kantian

It's fashionable to call Protagoras a 'relationalist' instead of a 'relativist' these days, up in the constipated air of the ivory towers.

RED DAVE

Kantian, please elaborate on the above.

RED DAVE

Kantian

W. K. C. Guthrie, the 900 pound name in ancient Greek philosophy, argued that Sophists refused to undertake the Eleatic dilemma (the choice between being and becoming, stability and flux, reality and appearance), realizing that they were incompatible concepts, and gave up on the idea of a permanent reality behind appearances, settling for an extreme phenomenalism, relativism and subjectivism. Nonetheless, recent scholars like Richard Bett, Paul Woodruff, and others deny that the sophists were ever relativists, that they were diametrically opposed to objectivity. What the sophists actually embraced was a ‘trivially relativistic doctrine’ which is now called ‘relationalism,’ where certain predicates apply objectively, not absolutely. In other words, the applicability of objectively applied predicates is contingent of certain sort of circumstances. The phrase ‘good for’ or ‘bad for’ is a relational notion. What is good for me, is good. What is good for another, is good for that person. All such judgments are relational, but they are also objectively true or false.

In Plato’s Protagoras 334, Protagoras acknowledged relationalism, and also made a conciliary concession in Theaetetus that judgments about what is beneficial are objective, that it is an objective relational fact that X is bad for me, but good for somebody else. Nietzsche also held this view, that certain types of moralities are good for certain types of people but bad for others.

Since relationalism does not undermine objectivity, it is not a relativist doctrine.

~Transcendentalist~
__________________
Reason has often led us into transcendent metaphysics that "overstep the limits of all experience, [and] no object adequate to the transcendental ideal can ever be found within experience."

John Page

This is a non seq, surely.

Relativism eschews the idea of an uninterpreted reality, leading us to understand that our "view" is subject to the characteristics within our organ(s) of perception. Relativism is not inconsistent with the relationalism you describe and does not deny there are "objects" of which we have "views" that we communicate about. Hence we can understand and convey "good for you, not for me" re moral properties and "big for me, small for you" re physical properties.

Arguably, relativism implies an element of objectivity (i.e. regarding the relations between things we perceive) otherwise there would be nothing we could coherently communicate about. I don't think relativists are arguing for "absolute relativity" for this very reason.

As I understand it, Protagoras had the notion that "mankind" was the interpreter of the world around him and, in this sense, was a relativist.

Cheers, John

faustuz

Kantian,

I want to thank you, not for explicating the views of the pre-Socratics, but for helping me out with Nietzsche. I’ve been trying to wrap my mind around Nietzsche lately (no trivial task), and read in an introduction to Zarthustra that Nietzsche was a relativist. This didn’t sit well with me, but I could not find the words to explain why. Something just went “click”.

Kantian

Again, you need to study the history of philosophy much more carefully. Ancient empiricism – the acceptance of the testimony of the senses shows us a world of constant change and passing away (becoming) – is in opposition to idealists who posit an ideal world of ‘being,’ a timeless and unchanging reality. Heraclitus is among the few Greeks who did not reject the evidence of the senses, and stood in contrast to the ‘Platonic slander of the senses.’ Plato fled reality in the hopes of locating things in ‘pallid mental pictures’ sub specie Eternity.

Furthermore, uncompromising endorsement empiricism results in relativism or the view that judgments are valid relative to a framework or perspective, so that conflicting judgments can be, in principle, true. Because knowledge comes from the senses, and each person’s sensory experience may be different, it follows that there is no objective knowledge.

However, if empiricism entails relativism - i.e. that the truth or falsity of judgments are always relative - then it is difficult to reconcile with naturalism. The essential presupposition of naturalism is that naturalistic claims are epistemically superior explanation of phenomena. A class of claims, which are epistemically privileged if and only if objective truths about them are possible, and we can have objective knowledge of those truths.

Woodruff writes that the Sophists were “founded not on relativism but on views about the fixed natures of things. The traditional view that the Sophists are relativists must give way to the recognition that what most characterizes Sophists as a group is their commitment to human nature as a subject of study.” (Cambridge companion to Early Greek Philo, 305) The Sophists were united by their empiricism, their skepticism, and their interest in rhetoric, but the notion that empiricism entails relativism is generally overblown.

Read Plato’s dialogues and note Protagoras’ concessions.
~transcendentalist~

Kantian

You are more than welcome, Faustuz. There are commentaries on Nietzsche that reject the Skeptical Reading - which is the Postmodern, Deconstructionist reading. They are embarrased with certain elements in Nietzsche, the metanarratives, his empirical background, and other aspects of philosophy.

~transcendentalist~

John Page

From your viewpoint, maybe
It's still sense data Kanto, still good for relations between relativism and non-relativism.
Sligth modification "there is no completely objective knowledge.
But it doesn't! All empiricism says is that knowledge is derived from sense data. The issue IMO is whether the sense data should be viewed a relative to each other or as absolute values.
Yes, something to be skeptical about, indeed. I have yet to find a sensible definition of naturalism because of the vague nature of "just nature".
Agreed, however, this what confused me from your prior post:
I still don't accept your premise, at best relationalism is relativism applied to a limited set of circumstances - but that's all relativism is.

In this way, one may also conclude that relativism does not undermine or conflict with objectivism. Rather, relativism explains how our minds can believe there are objective truths. I think it is this latter conclusion that supports my statement "As I understand it, Protagoras had the notion that "mankind" was the interpreter of the world around him and, in this sense, was a relativist.

Cheers, John

AnthonyAdams45

If Protagoras isn't a relativist, who is? I mean, really, is there any philosopher who arrives a doctrine identified as relativism who does not take Protagoras as a prototype? Might it not just be the case that relativism is compatible with objectivity, and thus, like absolutism, have room for both modes: objective and subjective? Leading to the conclusion that absolutists since Plato have been attacking a straw man?