Relativism

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Compare Moral relativism, Aesthetic relativism, Social constructionism and Cultural relativism. For an unrelated physics theory with a similar name, see Theory of Relativity

Relativism consists of various theories each of which claims that some element or aspect of experience or culture is relative to, i.e., dependent on, some other element or aspect. For example, some relativists claim that humans can understand and evaluate beliefs and behaviors only in terms of their historical or cultural context. The term often refers to truth relativism, which is the doctrine that there are no absolute truths, i.e., that truth is always relative to some particular frame of reference, such as a language or a culture.

One argument for relativism suggests that our own cognitive bias prevents us from observing something objectively with our own senses, and notational bias will apply to whatever we can allegedly measure without using our senses. In addition, we have a culture bias — shared with other trusted observers — which we cannot eliminate. A counterargument to this states that subjective certainty and concrete objects and causes form part of our everyday life, and that there is no great value in discarding such useful ideas as isomorphism, objectivity and a final truth.

Contents 1 Advocates of relativism 1.1 Philosophers and anthropologists 1.2 Dharmic religions 1.3 Sophists 1.4 Bernard Crick 1.5 George Lakoff and Mark Johnson 1.6 Robert Nozick 2 Joseph Margolis 2.1 Richard Rorty 3 Postmodern relativism 4 Relativism: pro and con 4.1 Criticisms 4.2 Responses 5 Theater and relativism 6 The Catholic Church and relativism 6.1 John Paul II 6.2 Benedict XVI 6.3 Criticism 7 Notes 8 References 9 See also 10 External links

[edit] Advocates of relativism

[edit] Philosophers and anthropologists

The concept of relativism has importance both for philosophers and for anthropologists, although in different ways. Philosophers explore how beliefs might or might not in fact depend for their truth upon such items as language, conceptual scheme, culture, and so forth; with ethical relativism furnishing just one example. Anthropologists, on the other hand, occupy themselves with describing actual human behavior. For them, relativism refers to a methodological stance, in which the researcher suspends (or brackets) his or her own cultural biases while attempting to understand beliefs and behaviors in their local contexts. This has become known as methodological relativism, and concerns itself specifically with avoiding ethnocentrism (the application of one's own cultural standards to the assessment of other cultures).

The combination of both philosophical relativism and anthropological relativism results in descriptive relativism, which claims that different cultures have different views of morality, which they cannot unify under one general conception of morality. Thus, one might want to claim that all cultures, for example, prohibit the killing of innocents. The descriptive relativist reply to this is that while this might be true at a general level, different cultures have different understandings of what "innocent" means, and so are still culturally relative.

[edit] Dharmic religions

Dharmic religions tend to be naturally relativistic. Mahavira (599-527 BC), the founder of Jainism, developed an early philosophy regarding relativism and subjectivism known as Anekantavada. Hindu religion has no theological difficulties in accepting degrees of truth in other religions. A Rig Vedic hymn states that "Truth is One, though the sages know it variously." (Ékam sat vipra bahudā vadanti)

It is claimed that the Sikh Gurus (religious leaders) have propagated the message of "many paths" leading to the one God and ultimate salvation for all souls who tread on the path of righteousness. They have supported the view that proponents of all faiths can, by doing good and virtuous deeds and by remembering the Lord can certainly achieve salvation. The students of the Sikh faith are told to accept all leading faiths as possible vehicle for attaining spiritual enlightenment provided the faithful study, ponder and practice the teachings of their prophets and leaders. The holy book of the Sikhs called the Sri Guru Granth Sahib says: "Do not say that the Vedas, the Bible and the Koran are false. Those who do not contemplate them are false." SGGS page 1350. ^[1]

Ethnocentrism of any sort (including the idea of belonging to a 'school of Buddhism' as well as evangelism and religious supremacism) is, according to Buddhist thought, rooted in self-grasping and reified thought - the cause of Samsara itself. The current Dalai Lama has repeatedly pointed out that any attempt to convert individuals from their beliefs is not only non-Buddhist, but abusive: the identification of evangelism as an expression of compassion is considered to be false, and indeed the idea that Buddhism is the one true path is likewise false for Buddhists.

[edit] Sophists

Sophists are considered the founding fathers of relativism in the Western World. Elements of relativism emerged among the Sophists in the 5th century BC. Notably, it was Protagoras who coined the phrase, "Man (i.e. a human being) is the measure of all things: of things which are, that they are, and of things which are not, that they are not." The thinking of the Sophists is mainly known through their opponents, Plato and Socrates.

[edit] Bernard Crick

Another important advocate of relativism, Bernard Crick, a British political scientist, wrote the book In Defence of Politics (first published in 1962), suggesting the inevitability of moral conflict between people. Crick stated that only ethics could resolve such conflict, and when that occurred in public it resulted in politics. Accordingly, Crick saw the process of dispute resolution, harms reduction, mediation or peacemaking as central to all of moral philosophy. He became an important influence on the feminists and later on the Greens.

[edit] George Lakoff and Mark Johnson

George Lakoff and Mark Johnson define relativism in their book Metaphors We Live By as the rejection of both subjectivism and metaphysical objectivism in order to focus on the relationship between them, i.e. the metaphor by which we relate our current experience to our previous experience. In particular, Lakoff and Johnson characterize "objectivism" as a "straw man", and, to a lesser degree, criticize the views of Karl Popper, Kant and Aristotle.

[edit] Robert Nozick

In his book Invariances, Robert Nozick expresses a complex set of theories about the absolute and the relative. He thinks the absolute/relative distinction should be recast in terms of a variant/invariant distinction, where there are many things a proposition can vary with, or be invariant with regard to. He thinks it is coherent for truth to be relative, and speculates that it might vary with time. He thinks necessity is an unobtainable notion, but can be approximated by robust invariance across a variety of conditions — although we can never a proposition is invariant with regard to everything. Finally, he is not particularly warm to the most (in)famous form of relativism, moral relativism, preferring an evolutionary account.

[edit] Joseph Margolis

Joseph Margolis advocates a robust relativism and defends it in his books: Historied Thought, Constructed World, Chapter 4 (California, 1995) and The Truth about Relativism (Blackwells, 1991). He opens his account by stating that our logics should depend on what we take to be the nature of the sphere to which we wish to apply our logics. Holding that there can be no distinctions which are not "privileged" between the alethic, the ontic, and the epistemic, he maintains that a relativistic, many valued logic just might be the most apt for the artworld or history since, in these practices, we are loath to hold to simple binary logic. "True" and "False" as mutually exclusive and exhaustive judgements on Hamlet, for instance, really does seem absurd. A many valued logic --apt, reasonable, likely, and so on-- seems intuitively more applicable to Hamlet interpretation. Where apparent contradictions arise between such interpretations, we might call the interpretations "incongruent", rather than dubbing either "false".

The problem with the revered two-valued logic is simply that it only ever applies to sentential formulas and not to interpreted sentences in use. The principle of non-contradiction can easily be made NOT to obtain by reinterpreting the terms involved, as is the case with the corpuscular versus the wave theory of light.

It was Aristotle who held that relativism implied we should, sticking with appearances only, end up contradicting ourselves somewhere if we could apply all attributes to all ousiai. Aristotle, however, made non-contradiction dependent upon his essentialism. If his essentialism is false, then so too is his ground for disallowing relativism.

Beginning with Protagoras and invoking Peirce, Margolis shows that the historic struggle to discredit relativism is an attempt to impose an unexamined belief in the world's essentially rigid rule-like nature. Plato and Aristotle merely attacked "relationalism" --the doctrine of true-for l or true for k, and the like, where l and k are different speakers or different world, or the something similar. For Margolis "true" means true. That is the alethic use of "true" remains untouched. However, in real world contexts, and context is ubiquitous in the real world, we must apply truth values. Here, in epistemic terms, we might retire "true" tout court as an evaluation and keep "false". The rest of our value-judgements could be graded from "extremely plausible" down to "false". There is no paradox here at all. Judgements which on a bivalent logic would be incompatible or contradictory are now seen as "incongruent", though one may well have more weight than the other. In short, relativistic logic is not, or need not be, the bugbear it is often presented to be. It may simply be the best type of logic to apply to certain very uncertain spheres of our real experiences in the world. Those who swear by bivalent logic might simply be the ultimate keepers of the great fear of the flux.

[edit] Richard Rorty

Philosopher Richard Rorty is criticized by both the Left and the Right for his relativistic views. In Contingency, Irony and Solidarity he argues that the debate between so-called relativists and so-called objectivists is beside the point because they don't have enough premises in common for either side to prove anything to the other.

[edit] Postmodern relativism

The term "relativism" often comes up in debates over postmodernism, poststructuralism and phenomenology. Critics of these perspectives often identify advocates with the label "relativism." For example, the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis is often considered a relativist view because it posits that linguistic categories and structures shape the way people view the world. Similarly, deconstruction is often termed a relativist perspective because of the ways it locates the meaning of a text in its appropriation and reading, implying that there is no "true" reading of a text and no text apart from its reading. Claims by literary critic Stanley Fish are also often discussed as "relativist".

These perspectives do not strictly count as relativist in the philosophical sense, because they express agnosticism on the nature of reality and make epistemological rather than ontological claims. Nevertheless, the term is useful to differentiate them from realists who believe that the purpose of philosophy, science, or literary critique is to locate externally true meanings. Important philosophers and theorists such as Michel Foucault, Max Stirner and Friedrich Nietzsche, political movements such as post-anarchism or post-left anarchy can also be considered as relativist in this sense - though a better term might be social constructivist.

The spread and popularity of this kind of "soft" relativism varies between academic disciplines. It has wide support in anthropology and has a majority following in cultural studies. It also has advocates in political theory and political science, sociology, and continental philosophy (as distinct from Anglo-American analytical philosophy). It has inspired empirical studies of the social construction of meaning such as those associated with labelling theory, which defenders can point to as evidence of the validity of their theories (albeit risking accusations of performative contradiction in the process). Advocates of this kind of relativism often also claim that recent developments in the natural sciences, such as Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, quantum mechanics, chaos theory and complexity theory show that science is now becoming relativistic. However, many scientists who use these methods continue to identify as realist or post-positivist, and some sharply criticize the the association ^[2][3]

[edit] Relativism: pro and con

[edit] Criticisms

• One common argument against relativism suggests that it inherently contradicts, refutes, or stultifies itself: the statement "all is relative" classes either as a relative statement or as an absolute one. If it is relative, then this statement does not rule out absolutes. If the statement is absolute, on the other hand, then it provides an example of an absolute statement, proving that not all truths are relative. However, this argument against relativism only applies to relativism that positions truth as relative – i.e. epistemological/truth-value relativism. More specifically, it is only strong forms of epistemological relativism that can come in for this criticism as there are many epistemological relativists who posit that some aspects of what is regarded as "true" are not universal, yet still accept that other universal truths exist (e.g. gas laws). However, such exceptions need to be carefully justified, or "anything goes".

• Another argument against relativism posits a Natural Law. Simply put, the physical universe works under basic principles: the "Laws of Nature". Some contend that a natural Moral Law may also exist, for example as argued by Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion (2006).^[4]

• Aside from whether relativism is true, critics say it undermines morality, possibly resulting in anomie and complete Social Darwinism. Relativism denies that harming others is wrong in any absolute sense. The majority of relativists, of course, consider it immoral to harm others, but relativist theory allows for the opposite belief. If I can believe it wrong for me to harm others, I can also believe it right – no matter what the circumstances.

• The problem of negation also arises. If everyone with differing opinions is right, then no one is. Thus instead of saying "all beliefs (ideas, truths, etc.) are equally valid," one might just as well say "all beliefs are equally worthless". (see article on Doublethink).

• Relativism is also sometimes seen as an over-reaction to colonialism. Those upset with the quick evaluation of different cultures and ideas as inferior have over-reacted into 'all cultures and ideas are equal'.

[edit] Responses

1. Contradictions such as "all beliefs are equally worthless" are non-sensical, as they constitute arguing from the premise. Once you have said if the X is absolute (e.g. "all beliefs are equally worthless") you have presupposed relativism is false. And one cannot prove a statement using that statement as a premise. There is a contradiction, but the contradiction is between relativism and the presuppositions of absoluteness in the ordinary logic used. Nothing has been proven wrong and nothing has been proven in and of itself, only the known incompatibility has been restated inefficiently.
2. Another counter-argument^{[citation needed]} uses Bertrand Russell's Paradox, which refers to the "List of all lists that do not contain themselves". Kurt Gödel, Jorge Luis Borges, and Jean Baudrillard have famously debated this paradox.
3. A very different approach explicates the rhetorical production of supposedly 'bottom-line' arguments against relativism. Edwards et al’s influential and controversial "Death and Furniture"[1] paper takes this line in its staunch defence of relativism. Part of the rhetoric discussed here involves the portrayal of relativists who say (for example), "torture is not an absolute evil", as saying, in effect, "we don't disapprove of torture as strongly as you do". Relativists argue that this is a rhetorical trick, akin to claiming "you can't throw out the bath water without throwing out the baby too": denying absolute truths not only leaves relativists perfectly free to be utterly and passionately opposed to torture, but also places them in the group less likely to commit it, given that most torture has been committed by groups who were so convinced of their absolute rightness that they were prepared to impose it by any means. However, if their lack of conviction stops them committing wicked acts, it may equally stop them intervening to prevent wicked acts, so long as they are culturally sanctioned (e.g female circumcision).
4. A strong epistemological relativist could theoretically argue that it does not matter that his theory is only relative according to itself. As long as it remains "true" according to a relative framework, then it is just as true as any apparently "absolute" truth that a realist would postulate. The dispute lies in the distinction between whether the framework is relative or absolute, but if a realist could be persuaded it was relative, then the relativist theory could exist logically within that framework, albeit accepting that its "truth" is relative. A strong epistemological relativist must remove his own notions of universal truth if he is to embrace his theory fully, he must accept some form of truth to validate his theory logically, and this truth, by definition, must be relative. In other frameworks his theory might be regarded as untrue, and so the theory cannot exist here. Looked at from this perspective, with all notions and premises of universal truth removed, the notion of strong epistemological relativism is logically valid.

[edit] Theater and relativism

Relativism found its voice in theater through Pirandello who believed that nothing, neither time nor morals, is absolute and his characters who try futilely to explain to others their personal sense of themselves.

[edit] The Catholic Church and relativism

The Roman Catholic Church, especially under John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI, has identified relativism as one of the most significant moral problems of today. [2]

According to the Church and to some philosophers, relativism, as a denial of absolute truth, leads to moral license and a denial of the possibility of sin and of God. Whether moral or epistemological, relativism constitutes a denial of the capacity of the human mind and reason to arrive at truth. Truth, according to Catholic theologians and philosophers (following Aristotle and Plato) consists of adequatio rei et intellectus, the correspondence of the mind and reality. Another way of putting it states that the mind has the same form as reality. This means when the form of the computer in front of me (the type, color, shape, capacity, etc.) is also the form that is in my mind, then what I know is true because my mind corresponds to objective reality.

The denial of an absolute reference, of an axis mundi, denies God, who equates to Absolute Truth, according to these Christian philosophers. They link relativism to secularism, an obstruction of God in human life.

[edit] John Paul II

John Paul II in Veritatis Splendor ("The Splendor of the Truth") stressed the dependence of man on God and his law ("Without the Creator, the creature disappears") and the "dependence of freedom on the truth". He warned that man "giving himself over to relativism and skepticism, goes off in search of an illusory freedom apart from truth itself".

In Evangelium Vitae (The Gospel of Life), he says:

The original and inalienable right to life is questioned or denied on the basis of a parliamentary vote or the will of one part of the people-even if it is the majority. This is the sinister result of a relativism which reigns unopposed: the "right" ceases to be such, because it is no longer firmly founded on the inviolable dignity of the person, but is made subject to the will of the stronger part. In this way democracy, contradicting its own principles, effectively moves towards a form of totalitarianism. The State is no longer the "common home" where all can live together on the basis of principles of fundamental equality, but is transformed into a tyrant State, which arrogates to itself the right to dispose of the life of the weakest and most defenceless members, from the unborn child to the elderly, in the name of a public interest which is really nothing but the interest of one part. (Italics added)

[edit] Benedict XVI

In April 2005, in his homily[3] during Mass prior to the conclave which would elect him as Pope, then Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger talked about the world "moving towards a dictatorship of relativism":

How many winds of doctrine we have known in recent decades, how many ideological currents, how many ways of thinking. The small boat of thought of many Christians has often been tossed about by these waves ¬ thrown from one extreme to the other: from Marxism to liberalism, even to libertinism; from collectivism to radical individualism; from atheism to a vague religious mysticism; from agnosticism to syncretism, and so forth. Every day new sects are created and what Saint Paul says about human trickery comes true, with cunning which tries to draw those into error (cf Eph 4, 14). Having a clear faith, based on the Creed of the Church, is often labeled today as a fundamentalism. Whereas, relativism, which is letting oneself be tossed and "swept along by every wind of teaching", looks like the only attitude acceptable to today's standards. We are moving towards a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as certain and which has as its highest goal one's own ego and one's own desires. However, we have a different goal: the Son of God, true man. He is the measure of true humanism. Being an "Adult" means having a faith which does not follow the waves of today's fashions or the latest novelties. A faith which is deeply rooted in friendship with Christ is adult and mature. It is this friendship which opens us up to all that is good and gives us the knowledge to judge true from false, and deceit from truth.

On June 6, 2005, Pope Benedict XVI told educators[4]:

"Today, a particularly insidious obstacle to the task of education is the massive presence in our society and culture of that relativism which, recognizing nothing as definitive, leaves as the ultimate criterion only the self with its desires. And under the semblance of freedom it becomes a prison for each one, for it separates people from one another, locking each person into his or her own 'ego'"

Then during the World Youth Day in August 2005, he also traced to relativism the problems produced by the communist and sexual revolutions, and provided a counter-counter argument.[5]

In the last century we experienced revolutions with a common programme – expecting nothing more from God, they assumed total responsibility for the cause of the world in order to change it. And this, as we saw, meant that a human and partial point of view was always taken as an absolute guiding principle. Absolutizing what is not absolute but relative is called totalitarianism. It does not liberate man, but takes away his dignity and enslaves him. It is not ideologies that save the world, but only a return to the living God, our Creator, the guarantor of our freedom, the guarantor of what is really good and true.

[edit] Criticism

Some critics assert that Church documents suggest the position that failure to accept its version of morality is the only alternative to relativism. Veritatis Splendor, they say, insists that we must hold onto respect for certain fundamental goods, without which one would fall into relativism and arbitrariness where it is further insisted that sodomy, contraception, etc. necessarily violate such respect for goods such as life. Persons who accept the dichotomy between Catholic doctrines and relativism but disagree about which acts are anti-life might be inadvertently encouraged to adopt relativism. In actuality, critics say, many moral systems have been proposed as alternatives to relativism; see ethics and normative ethics for systems which reject both relativism and Catholic moral doctrines.

[edit] Notes

1. ^ SGGS page 1350
2. ^ Sokal and the Science Wars
3. ^ Quantum quackery
4. ^ The God Delusion, Chapter 6

[edit] References

Relativism, cognitive and moral. edited Jack W. Meiland & Michael Krausz. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1982.

Rationality, relativism, and the human sciences, edited by Joseph Margolis, M. Krausz, R.M. Burian. Dordrecht: Boston, M. Nijhoff, 1986.

Rationality and Relativism, Hollis, Martin and Lukes, Stephen, ed., Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1982.

Varieties of Relativism, ed. Rom Harré. Oxford, UK; New York, NY: Blackwell, 1996.

[edit] See also

• Anthropology
• Christopher Norris
• Moral relativism
• Philosophical realism
• Richard Rorty
• Social constructionism
• The Science Wars
• Worldview

[edit] External links

• What 'Being Relative' Means A passage from Pierre Lecomte du Nouy's "Human Destiny" (1947).
• BBC Radio 4 series "In Our Time", on Relativism - the battle against transcendent knowledge, 19 January 2006
• Christopher Noriss's Against Relativism
• Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy on Relativism
• Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy on Cognitive Relativism
• The Friesian School on Relativism
• The Catholic Encyclopedia

Skeptical hypotheses
Evil Daemon | Brain in a vat | Dream argument | 5 minute earth
Responses
Here is a hand | Semantic externalism | Process reliabilism | Closure | Contextualism | Relativism