nermal

I don't possess the knowledge required to design an airplane, but I do know that the knowledge exists. Is this too banal?

Relativism posits (if my very limited understanding is correct) that no position is priviledged. This is a position that the relativist chooses over all other positions. But that ain't priviledge, or something like that.

Ed

Kim o' the Concrete Jungle

Does it though? We actually know less about how an aeroplane flies than you might suspect. The people who design them have to resort to the crude method of building scale models and testing them in wind tunnels. So perhaps you haven't chosen the best example here.

My original point still stands, because even though you might not personally possess a certain piece of knowledge, for it to be knowledge in the first place, someone somewhere must have thought it up. Presumably this someone has a brain. And presumably this person's brain must work in a way roughly similar to your own.

This is correct, no philosophical model is priveleged. You can argue about whether some particular idea fits into a particular model or not. For example, you can say that 2+2=4 is true according to the standard arithmetical model. This is a simple matter of following the rules set out by a particular philosophical model.

What you cannot do is say that one philosophical model is right and another philosophical model is wrong. Models can't be right or wrong, they just are. In the same way the relativist position isn't priveleged. It is not "right" as such. And to ask whether relativism is right or wrong is just as illogical as asking whether a triangle is true or false.

I can say, however, that a certain philosophical model might be more useful for some purpose than another philosophical model. In the general course of things, I find that relativism is much more useful than absolutism, because by being a relativist, I don't have to tie myself in knots trying to come up with the "absolute truth" about anything.

When it comes to distinguishing between philosophical models, one doesn't do this by trying to figure out which is true and which is false (a futile exercise, given the impossibility of absolute knowledge about the universe). Instead one does it by applying a criterion of usefulness when comparing two competing models.

We don't, for example, have to try and figure out whether Einsteinien mechanics makes Newtonian mechanics false. Saying that Newtonian mechanics is wrong is a silly -- or at least, misleading -- statement, because Newtonian mechanics works just as well as it always did. Einstein didn't prove Newton false, he just came up with a second, different theory of mechanics which just happens to provide more accurate results. Therefore, Einstein's mechanics are more useful than Newton's if you happen to require a very accurate result. But if you're, say, an artilleryman, and you don't need to make such fine distinctions, then it's Newton all the way.

This co-existence of two completely different sets of mechanics only gives you a headache if you're an absolutist, looking for some holy grail of the one and the only "absolute truth". A relativist can happily accomodate both.

I suspect the problem you're having here (and you're not alone) is that you are trying to understand relativism in absolutist terms. That's a bit like trying to understand an apple by looking at an orange. So if you value your sanity, don't do this.

I have argued in another thread that, since the fundamental axioms of a philosophical model have no other justification apart from the model itself, philosophical models tend to be circular and self-supporting systems. Logic, for example, is such a system. The reason why the axioms of logic are the way they are is because they seem to be logical. Logic comes from the logical axioms, but the logical axioms come from logic. It's a circular system. And the whole thing is self-supporting -- it doesn't rely on any "absolute truth", it only relies upon itself.

The reason why we know logic is a good system is because we can evaluate the results we get out of the system as a whole. We can see for ourselves that logic is a good and fairly reliable system for making inferences from the known to the unknown. We are justified in making our logical axioms what they are, because we know that the system as a whole works. It is useful.

We can make the same sort of judgement call about other philosophical system, like relativism. You don't judge relativism in terms of another system (like absolutism), you judge it on its own terms. My own own feeling is that relativism is useful, and more useful than absolutism, because it doesn't force you into a true/false dichotomy. A true/false dichotomy fails in every instance where you can't determine an answer with 100% certainty, and in every instance where there may be more than one valid answer to a problem.

Relativism allows for uncertainty, and it allows for many "correct" answers to coexist in parallel. Furthermore, if you couple relativism with the criterion of usefulness I have mentioned several times in this forum, or with some other similar selection method, you don't even have to put up with the traditional weakness of relativism -- its refusal to make value judgements.

John Page

Agreed! However, it may be useful to consider any stateemnt of what relativism is or isn't as having a preface "The author acknowledges that he/she has made errors in the following text." If this is truly a preface, how does the author know there are errors? If there are no errors, then the preface is in error....

Link on paradoxes of self-amendment

Cheers, John

Keith Russell

Greetings:

Why would a relativist want to offer a logical defense of relativism?

Isn't 'logic' just one of the 'world-views' that relativism acknoweldges, but which it also believes may not apply in all situations?

Keith.

Theli

Even this wouldn't work, as I (refering to the sentient "me") am my brain I cannot step outside it, not even with magic.
And even if I did, and thus managed to change my being and view on reality it would still be subjective. Just like a photo is a camera's subjective view on reality.

And in the same sense, "objective" is defined by us aswell. I am sitting on a chair, regardless of weither I am in a Matrix, or if I am just a brain in a jar, because the chair is defined by me only in relation to myself (just like anything else), it's what I am sitting on.

long winded fool

Relativism only seems to work without applied value. Murder is not right or wrong anymore than charity until value is applied. They are both just systems. Once value is applied, right and wrong (or rational and irrational) is no longer a false dichotomy. Logic and rationality are only relative systems without inherent value until they become goals. Since all human beings value something, no human being is a true relativist. While not all humans value the same things, the vast majority claims at least to value the survival and prosperity of the species as a whole. (A result of natural selection, I suppose.) Belief systems about how to go about ensuring this extremely basic "assumed absolute" value may differ, but the philosophical systems that show us the most efficient way to accomplish this goal of survival are superior and "more right" than systems which do not efficiently accomplish it. Philosophical models which promote behavior ultimately detrimental to the survival of the species in even a small way are wrong models. Humans who claim survival is not an absolute value still retreat from pain and pursue pleasure, a behavior system designed solely for survival. Therefore, humans consider survival absolutely more valuable than extinction. Once you establish any absolute value, application of logic will subject all corresponding subjective beliefs that arise from it to critical analysis and value judgment and will label all personal opinions as either right or wrong/correct or incorrect/rational or irrational.

I don't believe any one individual is qualified to declare what is right and wrong for anyone else, of course, and I don't advocate forcing one particular arbitrary belief over another. But the fact remains: Application of any value destroys relativism, and all thinking humans are incapable of complete detatchment from value application. Like mathematical and physical absolutes, we may be wrong about what we assume to be philosophical absolutes, our understanding of these "absolutes" may even evolve with our understanding of reality, but they must be considered absolutes for any intellectual growth to occur. Since everyone is intellectually growing at some rate, no one is a relativist.

nermal

Ed

Kim o' the Concrete Jungle

I might just as well say -- and with greater justification -- that I've never met a human being who is a true absolutist. People's value systems tend to be remarkably flexible. If murder is absolutely wrong, always and forever, no matter what the circumstances, then how come it's right to drop bombs on Baghdad and "murder" Iraqi soldiers? How come nobody's calling Dubya a murderer for all those condemned criminals executed in Texas during his term as governor?

Even in the example of murder that you cite, there is clearly a good deal of relative thinking going on. So why try to pretend that the sanction against murder is somehow "absolute", when it's clearly not?

Agreed. But that still doesn't make these values absolute. Even if a particular value was shared by every single human being on the planet, that still wouldn't make it an absolute value. It is a relative value, because it's only common to human beings. It's not necessarily shared by other animals, and it's not necessarily integral to the universe as a whole.

To uncritically apply human values to inhuman objects and animals is a common and very primitive error, and it leads to such things as animism. It also leads to huge problems in the conservation movement, because everyone wants to save endangered cute, furry mammals, but nobody wants to save an endangered species of cockroach -- even if the cockroach happens to be more important in the ecosystem than the cute and cuddly mammal.

You see, here you're trying to have it both ways. You use the phrase "more right" which is a relative judgement. I thought you were arguing against relativism here? The traditional judgement system requires that something either be right or wrong. It's not supposed to be an "assumed absolute", it's supposed to be an absolute and universal truth. The whole point of absolutism is that you're supposed to be discovering an idea that is incorruptible and 100% certain, which is supposed to then become the unchallengeable basis of your philosophical system.

For a true absolutist, near enough isn't good enough (because near enough can still be challenged). But since it's impossible to determine whether an idea is "absolutely true" (for reasons I've already mentioned), if you're a true absolutist, you must also be a solipsist.

They're not "wrong" models, they're just less useful models. You might point to one philosophical model and say it is "wrong" because it promotes some behaviors that are detrimental to the survival of the species. But what happens if you then come across somebody who holds to an even more detrimental philosophical position? For this unfortunate person, upgrading to the model you have just labelled "wrong" would actually be an improvement.

Take, for example, the Deism of eighteenth century intellectuals. From my atheistic viewpoint, I would have to label Deism wrong, if I was an absolutist. Deism still assumes the existence of a god that I don't think exists. But Deism is still an improvement over the supernaturalism of a medieval churchman. And in the eighteenth century, before Darwin, Wallace, Einstein, and company, we didn't know enough about the workings of the universe to reason our way to an atheistic point of view.

So as far as I'm concerned, it was a good thing that the great thinkers of the eighteenth century became Deists. That sort of value judgement on my part only gives you a headache if you're an absolutist. As a relativist and atheist, I don't have any trouble at all with the relative concept that Deism is better than theism, but not as good as atheism.

As an absolutist, you would have to conclude that the eighteenth century intellectuals should have held off becoming deists, and sat around and twiddled their thumbs for two hundred years until the "truth" became known. Indeed, as an absolutist, you would have to conclude that we should still be sitting around and twiddling our thumbs, because we still don't know the "absolute truth" about everything (and we probably never will).

Sooner or later, you've got to say to yourself, "okay, this is the best we can do for now, and we'll use this idea until something better comes along." That is a purely relativistic judgement.

Here you're saying "humans consider survival... more valuable than extinction". That's a relative judgement, not an absolute judgement. And I'd be willing to bet that, in practice, there are all sorts of exceptions to the rule. A mother, for example, will often favor the survival of her children more than her personal survival. You can't really say that survival is right and extinction is wrong in any absolute sense. Otherwise you would have to conclude it would have been better for the dinosaurs to have survived, even though this would have made the evolution of human beings impossible.

But you cannot in practice establish an absolute value. That's the whole point. That's why I'm a relativist rather than an absolutist. Any scientist with a good understanding of the scientific method would tell you that it is not possuble to prove a theory true, you can only demonstrate that it hasn't been falsified yet.

In philosophy, the only thing you really can do is say, "let us assume this set of axioms for the sake of the exercise", but that's a very long way from proving those axioms true in any absolute sense.

In other words, you're saying, "Shhh! I'm really a relativist underneath, but don't tell anyone."

How do you figure that then? I think you're assuming that "values" are absolute. Throughout this response, I think I have amply shown that values are relative as well. Remember the example concerning "murder" I gave above? There are any number of circumstances where killing another human being is deemed by some people to be appropriate, so murder is a relative judgement -- something to be decided on the merits of the case, not an "absolute" value. And even if you could get everyone to agree about what constituted murder, it still wouldn't be an absolute value, because it would be "true" only of human beings and not the universe as a whole.


I disagree most strongly with this. I would consider that for intellectual growth to occur, we must first realize that the "truths" we see in the world around us are not absolutes; they are just patterns we impose on reality in order to understand it. From this comes the realization that there could be different patterns -- different systems of organization -- other than the ones we just happen to have inherited. And we can realize that perhaps we can build better and more useful philosophical frameworks than the ones we have. That, I think, is the very essence of intellectual growth itself.

To progress we require humility rather than certainty, and the willingness to learn rather than the arrogance to exterminate everything that doesn't fit one notion of "absolute truth".

Kim o' the Concrete Jungle

I'd just like to amplify one point I made in my previous post, because it's a point where I might differ from some extreme relativists.

Some people assume that because there is no absolute basis for judgement, that you cannot make any qualitative distinctions between different ideas. I don't hold this opinion. While it is impossible to say that one philosophical model is right and the other is wrong, you might still judge one model to be more useful for some purpose than another model.

Usefulness is (if you'll pardon the tautology) a useful idea. It acknowledges that there might be uses other than the one you're presently interested in, so it is not exclusionary principle (such as you will find in an absolutist system of judgement). Similarly, if you restrict yourself to saying "more useful for some purpose" or "less useful for some purpose" you are avoiding making absolutist judgements. Also "more useful than" and "less useful than" implies a comparison between two competing models, instead of judgement against some absolute standard, which is the right way of going about things for a relativist.

"Usefulness" is, therefore, compatible with the relativist's point of view. And it can be the basis for a relative system of judgement that avoids falling into the trap of claiming absolutes.

In general, the way you tell the difference between an absolute judgement system and a relative judgement system is the kind of language each uses. An absolute system uses terms like yes/no, right/wrong, true/false, and good/evil. A relative system uses terms like more/less, better/worse, and so on.

Zulu

Great discussion...

Kim [and others], here are a few questions:

What would a relativist reply too the following statements:

1.) Cogito ergo sum

2.) Hitler is a good person

Also, if a relativist saw a pedophile raping a child, would he intervene? If so: why? Isn't everything relative? Who are we to say that the pedophile's actions are wrong?

-Zulu