"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

[ludickid.livejournal.com]

1. When I use the word "relativism", I refer to the belief that human ideals, truth, morals, ethics, and other values are relative to the time, place, culture and circumstance under which their judgments are developed, and cannot be held as being universally true. It holds that there is no bias-free platform from which a universal truth can be established, and that all human ideas are necessarily socially constructed.

Perhaps just as important is what relativism is NOT: it is not the belief that nothing is true. It is not a position from which you can make no moral judgments. Belief in it does not preclude you from thinking you are right about any given issue, or in pursuing a political or legal goal based on that premise.

2. Yes, I think relativism is important. It is important largely because it is misunderstood, and it is blamed (fraudulently) for all sorts of social ills, mostly by those who either don't understand it or deliberately misinterpret it. But it is also important because I think a lot of problems in our society come from the widespread adherence to non-relativistic – that is to say, so-called 'objective' or 'absolute' notions of morality, achievement, opportunity, culture, and behavior. I think if relativism were more widely understood and applied, we would be able to approach a lot of social and political problems in a more straightforward way, without a lot of unhelpful moral baggage (after Rorty, I am a neo-pragmatist in this regard).

3. I'm not sure; I'd have to ask them. I do think that when a lot of conservatives and right-wingers use the term, they more or less mean it as nihilism, a sort of omnipresent belief that nothing is true and all moral judgments are equally false and should be ignored. When they say "such-and-such is a relativist", they mean "such-and-such is a moral monster with no values", which is not correct.

4. I'm not sure how to address this either. I suppose if they're sincere, they worry that those under the sway of moral relativism have lost their moral compass and are capable of believing any sort of pernicious nonsense. If they're not sincere, they're just deliberately muddying the waters to make it look like people who adhere to a philosophy that threatens their position as arbiters of the only acceptable moral code are vile beasts inclined to murder and rapine.

[koganbot]

Hey Leonard, nice to have you on my lj!

The question I'd put to you is this: what do you mean by "universal"? For instance, I'd say that natural selection is a social construct, it's use is historically contingent, etc., but nonetheless it's an idea that I think is applicable wherever there is life. And I take the idea as axiomatic, meaning not just that I think it's true but that it's a principle used to organize facts. So I'd have trouble even imagining how a fact could run counter to natural selection, given that I'm using natural selection to interpret the facts rather than using the facts to test the axiom. So, do I believe in universals? Well, I understand that axioms get overthrown* (but that doesn't necessarily mean that this one will get overthrown), and though I think that natural selection is true, I don't believe it must be true in all possible universes (though I still can't imagine how it could be untrue), or even, therefore, in this one.

So, would an antirelativist call me a "relativist"? Probably, in that I don't think there's something beyond the practice of evolutionary biology that "grounds" or "proves" natural selection, that takes me beyond the axiom to a set of facts that could disprove natural selection. But to me that's a rather esoteric philosophical point I've made, that you can't get beyond the axiom to a set of facts that are "independent" of the axiom and that therefore can be used to test the axiom. For practical purposes, natural selection might as well be a universal, in the way that I use it.

My question, therefore, is why do people think that the esoteric philosophical point is a big deal? (My answer would be "Well, they don't understand the point," but that just begs the question.)

*The way an axiom gets overthrown isn't by being compared to a set of facts but by a different axiom appearing that seems to do a whole lot more than the first axiom.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

"why do people think that the esoteric philosophical point is a big deal" -- i've tried to answer this before (very speculatively) as being an epiphenomenon of the institution of the university, which is a social construct in a slightly different sense, with a fairly particular history which "philosophy" as a discipline (ignoring its specific content in any book, or college department, or general fashionable tendency) has an early and an intimate role: i think two-fold, one being the militant mind-army of scepticism against the hegemony of the church in matterws academics; two being a kind of handily pre-generalised organisational principle when it came to deciding what counts as an acceptable dicipline (yes to maths and greek and history, no to chemistry, until the late 19th century); how the departments are structured (no accident btw that DEWEY is famous for pragmatism AND the decimal library system)

given the pragmatics of departmental structure, any attempt to banish philosophy from its upper level role is going to seem to like the introduction of a revolutionary barabarian chaos -- it wouldn't BE this in my opinion, but to many embattled defenders of the state-funded liberal-arts college system we have, it would be opening the gates to catastrophe

so i think ceding big-deal-dom to the esoteric philosophical point is -- largely speaking -- an acknowledgement who the prevailing big daddy is of safe civil academic discussion: it's a kind of mental protection money

[koganbot]

Different Dewey who did the decimal system.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

oh! my entire system of value just collapsed!

haha my kind of dewey!!

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

"He advocated English language spelling reform... He considered changing his own name to simply Melvil Dui.. Late in his life [he] helped found the Lake Placid Club as a health resort. His theories of spelling reform found some local success at Lake Placid: there is an "Adirondac Loj" in the area, and dinner menus of the club featured his spelling reform. AA September 1927 menu is headed "Simpler spelin" and features dishes like Hadok, Poted beef with noodls, Parsli or Masht potato, Butr, Steamd rys, Letis, and Ys cream."

(also he was a racist, bah)

[koganbot]

I don't know. I think people's attachment to the big dealness of something is more than an attachment to the pragmatics of departmental structure. (Why would the far left be committed to the pragmatics of departmental structure?) They think it's more than an esoteric philosophical point that's at issue. And you do too, don't you? And Leonard does, and Martin does, right?

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

well the far left -- if this means communists -- argued that university departments should be entirely shaken up and reorganised along party lines: they felt what was being protected was merely the social structures of capitalism as extended in the structures of knowledge -- they were anti-philosophy, considering it more or less the church of the bourgeoisie, as the (actual) church was more or less the church of feudalism

the point i'm making is more this: the attachment is not the pragtmatics itself, so much as a safe space in which "we" (ie those who believe they act as guarantors of open discussion) get to stay in charge of departmental pragmatics: for it to stay SAFE it has to stay sacred, hegemony not AT ALL up for negotiation, and attachments to the Sacred mean (in my judgment) intense passionate emotional and not necessarily very rational attachments --- and i think that "metaphysics" as the queen of the sciences does function as that kind of unthinking allegience, in the higher-ed community

as a triage thing, my feeling is that the reorganisation is would a GIANT FvCKLOAD of work (the debate and then the actual moving of furniture) and actually there's a ton of more urgent day-to-day firefighting to be done, and so the reorganisation always languishes; and rather than admit that it needs doing, we find ourselves acceding to a heirarchy of wisdoms which is a rationalisation

i don't think philsopsphy is higher knowledge; i think there are all manner of tactical and strategic reasons for not dissolving disciplinary structure too precipitately, but there are arguments in the other direction also

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

but what i'm giving is a negative reason -- why people feel alarmed by giving up on the centraloty of philsopsoph -- rather than a positive reason: what people think they're actually getting FROM philosophy

an old-fashioned answer for the latter would be that it allowed you to sharpen your mind in debate and intricate discussion about things which WEREN'T in daily political play, before going out into the concil chamber por courtroom to do verbal battle with your foes -- with the handy savant who taught the nobleman's son persuading him as a teen not to go clubbing all night and hawking all day but instead to study rhetoric and the classics, by impressing on him (maybe invoking plato), that disinterested logical speculation was nobler and deeper and more important than all local pressing political or legal concerns

the result would of course be a grown-up nobleman with all kinds of excellent
courtroom and council chamber skeez, who felt he partly owed his gift to time spent at the disinterested logical speculation-face as a child: even though actually, in practical terms, this had been a kind of feint by an employee to keep his boss's unruly kid in line

(there's a nice version of this in PRINCE CASPIAN -- the book if not the film -- where doctor cornelius manages to teach caspian stuff by appealing to his sense of the deep past and the deep future, via philososphy)

in other words: the apparent claims of the immediate important now may NOT as unproblematic as they seem

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

the thing that's a "big deal" is control of the world, or lack of it -- from your immediate locality on outwards: what's being ceded, when you accept "everything is still at issue", isn't just your sense of control over your neighbourhood (or deaprtment), it's control over the very language you speak, as well opening up the nature of the courtoom to contest also -- who will even get to be a judge here? what are the rules, the laws, the means of effective persuasion?

i think the attachment to philosophy is an attachment to a belief that some (moral) things are stable and decided: that there are these old folks out there, with beards and togas and everything, who have established structures we can all agree we should stay within

(the "groves of academe" was a little wood outside athens where the eggheads gathered to yatter -- kind of like ilx with olives)

which makes the idea of depth (as regards philosophy) a kind of optical illusion: what's being relied on is that a system of thought or analysis has "stood the test of time", so shoukd be maintained; rather than how revolutionaries think, which is that the problems that immediately face us create their own systems of solution, and too bad what everything that came before

[koganbot]

I'm not seeing where you came to grips with my question "why do people think that the esoteric philosophical point is a big deal?" - the esoteric point being that "you can't get beyond the axiom to a set of facts that are 'independent' of the axiom and that therefore can be used to test the axiom." The reason I think this is a mere esoteric mere philosophical point is that (a) there are other ways to test an axiom (e.g., adopt a competing axiom and see what happens) and (b) an axiom such as natural selection isn't weakened by the philosophical point that its facts aren't "independent" of the axiom. The only thing that could weaken the axiom is a viable competing axiom that appeared to do more than natural selection does. The esoteric point says nothing about whether natural selection is likely to be superseded someday, no more than the absence of such a point (that is, the presence of the belief that there are theory-independent facts) implies that natural selection won't be superseded. (All you need to supersede it would be something that explains the (supposedly independent) facts better.)

I've not read more than a paragraph of Karl Popper, but I'd think his view - that theories can only be falsified rather than confirmed, right? - would come closer to "nothing is decided yet" than would "relativism."

In any event, your answer to my question, "why is the esoteric philosophical point a big deal," seems to be, "because people esteem philosophy." I don't know enough about academia, but I'm skeptical that people esteem philosophy all that much or that people have much of a clue what modern-day philosophers actually talk about. And my assumption is that it's English and Art Departments where "relativism" gets talked about, not philosophy departments.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

"Always to keep hold of Nurse, For fear of meeting something worse..."

i guess what i'm trying to get at is that it's more "bcz ppl disesteem the concept of 'non-independent facts' -- or think they do": they and not very clearheadedly place philosophical demands in the role of nurse --- they assume it has the big back-up arguments if they had the time or patience or inclination to master them

we're back at characterising other ppl's bad arguments: i'm hesitant to lay this out in the form "they must think THIS even though HAH they'd be wrong to because THIS step is clearly wrong" -- bcz that's not how i think wrong arguments work

(eep have to break off as my furniture is arriving)

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

what i'm proposing is less "esteem" than "isn't this as problem other smarter people have solved and therefore not my responsibility" -- which i'm suggesting is a fossil of an attitude somewhat built into the stones and corridors of the institution you're part of -- english and arts departments being late into the institution histrocially, and as a result ALWAYS somewhat over-aware of their "place" ("philosophy" was there from the START: and -- i just realised this -- plato's most famous disciple, aristotle, was alexander the great's tutor

i think the "esteem" is a structure-buttressing myth to keep outside forces (military, political) not so much at bay as onside: by keeping such fvorces believing that there are "bigger forces than might-as-right they don't want to tangle with; and indeed will do well to engage with respectfully" (cf how alexander got on)

this isn't all that's going on -- because this entire treats the content of philosophy as nugatory -- but, even as a negative reason for alleigance, i think it may have more shaping power than any positive reasons (not least bcz, as you have pointed out, the esteem seems to arrive from small knowledge: active modern philosophers don't believe they ought to be running everything; but they do often believe that the ppl who DO run things will do so most wisely when they have access to the esoteric grounding reasons philosophy provides) (arguably bcz these grounding reasons take the philosopher king AWAY from mere captious self-interest as a grounding drive)

this is totally a just-so story -- the situation we are "currently in" is one of unimaginably expanded literacy (compared even to the 19th century, let alone ancient greece) combined with a cosntant defensive semi-panic on the part of the long-term literate and/or learned classes; first, what manner of useless piffle are the newly literate classes using their literacy FOR; second, what myth do we hold out to THEM AND their untrammelled -- if currently sleeping or distracted -- might; third, plz to say we DON'T HAVE TO RESTRUCTURE cz it's too late for me to re-learn everything from the bottom up

i guess i see american pragmatism, jazz, rockwrite, as three different strategies to address this issue NON-defensively

[ludickid.livejournal.com]

I can tell, and not just from your tag, that you've read Thomas Kuhn. When you shift from moral relativism to scientific relativism, you're getting a tad out of my comfort zone (only because I've read a lot less philosophy of science than I should), but yeah, the principle is the same, and you can refer also to Derrida's claim -- feeding off of Kuhn's writing about paradigm shifts -- that what really happens in scientific study isn't the discovery of a new truth, but the development of a new language by which to describe observations, meaning that the whole thing is simultaneously becoming more "true" in a scientific way, and more "relative" in a linguistic way.

There's certainly nothing wrong with using something as a practical universal while at the same time admitting that it's based on something unverifiable or perspective-specific. The problem with some (not all) anti-relativists is that they get so hung up on the concept of there not being an ultimate absolute and discoverable truth that they ignore the fact that 'truth' isn't all that interesting or useful a concept. Richard Rorty is my guide here, and the philosopher has the most interesting things to say about the issue: he essentially argues that, since they disagree on so many basic premises, relativist and absolutists have nothing to say to each other, and so there's no point in them even having a conversation. Instead, they should focus on pragmatic issues, ignoring whether or not decisions should be made or programs should be pursued because they meet some 'truth' qualification and more whether or not they have an agreed-upon use value to which their absolute value isn't especially relevant.

[koganbot]

I've just added the "rorty" tag. I wrote about him a little bit here, if you're interested:

The Death Of The Philosopher

[koganbot]

Long ago in a distant galaxy I created a thread on Thomas S. Kuhn. I think it's one of the best things I've written. Also I believe it's relatively easy to read: I actually find the principles clearer when applied to science than elsewhere, despite my usually not understanding the science itself.

Also, while I'm in link-happy mode, if anyone is interested, here are my first two Department Of Dilettante Research posts, the second one of which is very Rorty heavy:

Department of Dilettante Research, Part 1

Department Of Dilettante Research, Part 2: Depart Harder