"Relativism: So What?": So What?

[koganbot]

I keep telling myself I'm going to write a series of lj posts called "Relativism: So What?" but I keep putting off beginning this. I think a major reason for my block is that, though I can lay out the "intellectual" issues surrounding "relativism," my true goal is to get at "what are people's underlying reasons for thinking there's an issue here?" or to put it better, "people wouldn't bring up the issue of 'relativism' if they didn't think they were taking care of something by doing so, so how do I get them to think and talk about what it is that they think they need to take care of?" A subsidiary question might be, "Frank Kogan thinks he's taking care of something when he tries to get people to think and talk about what they think they're trying to take care of when they raise the issue of 'relativism,' so what is it that Frank Kogan thinks he's trying to take care of when he does this?"

Anyhow, four questions:
(1) What do you mean by "relativism," when you use the word (assuming you use the word)?
(2) Does the issue of relativism matter to you? If so, why does it matter?
(3) What do you think other people mean when they use the word "relativism"?
(4) What do you think they think is at stake?

Don't let your answers by overconstrained by the questions. I want to hear your ideas before giving mine.

By the way, someone on my flist (though I'm not on his) used the term the other day, clearly believed that "relativism" was a potent force in the world.

Comments

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

Ah, sorry, yes; I take relativism to mean people who consider all things of equal 'ness' when regarding anything. Taken to its postmodern extreme, this would mean a lion was just as much a cat as an ocean. Relativism, as far as I think of it, is (perversely) what should be called "anti-relativism" or in other words, it's represented by the expression "it's all relative," when used to excuse oneself from bothering to properly analyse matters.

[koganbot]

Oops, I wrote this wrong the first time. In any event, my impression - correct me if you think this is incorrect - isn't that someone who would say "all points of view are equally valid" or someone who would oppose this idea but associate it with relativism thinks that the idea that all points of view are equally valid is a consequence of relativism. That is, relativism itself isn't the idea that all points of view are equally valid; rather, the idea that all points of view are equally valid is the result of relativism. Which (at least in regard to the people I'm imagining) still leaves the question what is this relativism that has such a consequence?

Note that ludickid, above, disputes the idea that a consequence of relativism is that all views are equally valid.

Also, I say in my intro that "people wouldn't bring up the issue of 'relativism' if they didn't think they were taking care of something by doing so." So what do you think they (incl. you if you're the sort who brings up the issue) are taking care of by bringing up the issue?

ack, brane rambling and have to get up in six hours

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

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.