"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

[koganbot]

When I run into the word "relativism" it's usually a pejorative, with people who take relativistic positions like pragmatism, holism, contextualism, structuralism, deconstruction, etc. generally not willing to apply the term to themselves (this strategy makes sense, given the crazy ways the term gets used, but the word itself when divorced from the craziness isn't misleading). But the term is being used positively more and more, I think. Here's the post that dubdobdee was referring to above, from my friend Charlotte Pressler. It's on a Matthew Yglesias comment thread (where Yglesias says he heard on NPR that "a majority of Americans (I forget the actual number) believe that 'truth is relative'"). Charlotte's comment:

I teach an introductory philosophy course in rural South Florida and so might be able to contribute some analysis (quickly, before Hurricane Charley gets here). Almost all my students are evangelical and/or charismatic Christians who believe in the literal truth of the Bible, and almost all believe that truth is relative. I found this contradiction interesting, and looked into it further.

It appears to have two sources. First, my students apply the word "truth" to all of the statements they believe, and don't distinguish between claims of fact and claims of value. They are not encouraged to make such a distinction by the local culture; the local authorities frequently describe obvious value claims as "facts," adding that "you can't argue with facts." "Truth," in my students' dialect, thus winds up meaning something like "my basic orientation to the world, the way I see things, my perspective"-- which would be correctly described as personal, individual, and "relative."

I might add that an article in the journal Teaching Philosophy (apologies to the author, whose name I can't remember) argued that the beginning philosophy students who claim that "truth is relative" are really trying to say something like this: "I don't agree with Mom & Dad any more about a whole lot of things, and I love them, so I don't want to say they're wrong, but I don't want to give up my own point of view either."

The second reason my students believe that truth is relative, however, strikes me as much more pernicious. They have grown up in small, tribal, tightly-knit, highly conformist communities that (needless to say) did not encourage free discussion or debate. In college, they meet for the first time people who do not share their presuppositions, and they begin to get an inkling that the wider world contains many more. They have never been asked to defend their own belief systems before, and, in all honesty, some of their beliefs are quite indefensible. When students in this position say that truth is relative, they are trying to exempt their own belief system from the requirement of rationality. They want to be able to go on believing whatever their local community has decided to believe, even though both argument and evidence are against them. Again, they are encouraged in this by the local authorities, who teach them to devalue reason and (especially) "book learning."

The fact is that my students will be ostracized by their local communities (it's called "disfellowshipping") if they disagree in any point with their community's creed. It is a public, brutal shaming, and any human who could avoid it, would. If this sheds any light on the "relativism" of the American public (or, perhaps, the persistence of "creation science" and other follies), I would be glad.