Frank Kogan

Mmm, it's possible that relativism is victim to its own consequence. I have to say, I'm a bit of a positivist at heart (and generally think people have to be- you can't not think you're 'right' or 'wrong' about some things) so it basically peeves me because it tended to be implemented by smartasses in my seminars, usually wrongly, just to annoy everyone else (eg: 'but is there really a difference between our experience in a classroom and the experience of someone in a sweatshop, if this is each of our regular experience?' answer: 'err, yes, outside the baser elements of epistemology, which, whilst relevant on a metaphysical level are not actually used as poverty indicators') and so I'm a bit biasedly hostile towards the whole thing.

The problem with relativism in analytical action, actually, is that it's devil's advocate and it's often a good devil's advocate and one I've played myself a lot. However, it tends to be used by people who are debasing the idea of a structured value system (of any kind) rather than understanding that any value system has a structure which, if examined, is likely to be logical, etc. I feel I am probably not explaining this at all well.

I think I might have interpreted your question a bit literally when you asked what relativism means to us- I thought you meant our personal experience of it (like if you'd asked what Ashlee Simpson means to us) rather than something we would write in an wikipedia article or something. Of course this is all v. relativist itself.

I think this is the thing about relativism; you only experience relativism when it is used by a third party analytically, however, interaction is positivist and so no one can really say they're a relativist, however, analysis can be relative. Or something?

I am v. bad at talking about these things without sitting down for a week and thinking about them first, though, so I imagine I have just further obfuscated whatever it is I actually think about relativism to both you and I. I'll have a proper think about the whole thing after this interview business tomorrow, until then I have to re-learn French.