Relativism: So What? (Part Three)
Jul. 2nd, 2008 12:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
koganbotI read an anecdote years ago - think it was from Erik Erikson, probably set in the 1940s. A young man walks into the student rec center, sits down in an armchair, rubs his chin thoughtfully, and says, "Life is strange." A pretty young coed snaps back at him, "Compared to what?"
If "relativism" were the name for a useful attitude rather than a quagmire of inarticulate concerns and projections, that would be the attitude, a way of jogging the intelligence: e.g., when I'm saying something that doesn't seem to be getting across to people, then maybe I need to be precise about what it is that my statement is trying to counter (and by doing so I'll see how to make my idea better); and if other people's words and actions seem inexplicably stupid or strange, maybe I need to ask myself what it is the people are trying to counter or forestall, rather than assuming that they're countering or forestalling what I would be countering and forestalling if I were using their words. I'll point out that this just makes self-conscious what we try to do normally. When we say or do something, we think there's a difference between saying and doing it and not saying or doing it. And when we observe other people we project behind their words and deeds a landscape of reasons and possibilities that sets their behavior off by contrast.
So "relativism" in this sense is the normal state of affairs. There is a line of philosophers who find this state of affairs problematic, but unless I'm dealing with such philosophers I have no reason to assert my "relativism" any more than I need to point out that, like everyone else, I breathe and have a mouth.
So, in order to think that relativism is any kind of a big deal, you have to come up with a different relativism, one that somehow includes this normal relativism but makes it seem threatening or liberating, in any event at odds with the worlds we know rather than a facet of them. You can't do this without making several basic mistakes. You convince yourself that the philosophical ideas that relativism runs counter to are themselves embedded in everyday life, though they're not. You forget that "relative" is itself a relative term. You confuse the meaning of terms; e.g., what I said yesterday: "As a relativist I can say, 'Nothing exists in isolation,' and two minutes later say, 'I grew up in an isolated village,' without contradicting myself, since the standards for isolation are different in the two sentences." So you make the former statement as if it referred to the latter "isolation," to the village's isolation, to the isolation that matters. I don't think it's possible to believe that relativism (or pragmatism or deconstruction) plays a significant role in the world unless you make this sort of mistake.
Future posts will detail the mistakes (so far I've been making assertions rather than arguments). But I'll reiterate that what's at issue here isn't an intellectual mistake, but why smart people make such a mistake. They could just as easily not make the mistake. So what do people gain by making the mistake? The consequences of the mistake don't result from the mistake; rather, the mistake is the result of a desire for such consequences.
If "relativism" were the name for a useful attitude rather than a quagmire of inarticulate concerns and projections, that would be the attitude, a way of jogging the intelligence: e.g., when I'm saying something that doesn't seem to be getting across to people, then maybe I need to be precise about what it is that my statement is trying to counter (and by doing so I'll see how to make my idea better); and if other people's words and actions seem inexplicably stupid or strange, maybe I need to ask myself what it is the people are trying to counter or forestall, rather than assuming that they're countering or forestalling what I would be countering and forestalling if I were using their words. I'll point out that this just makes self-conscious what we try to do normally. When we say or do something, we think there's a difference between saying and doing it and not saying or doing it. And when we observe other people we project behind their words and deeds a landscape of reasons and possibilities that sets their behavior off by contrast.
So "relativism" in this sense is the normal state of affairs. There is a line of philosophers who find this state of affairs problematic, but unless I'm dealing with such philosophers I have no reason to assert my "relativism" any more than I need to point out that, like everyone else, I breathe and have a mouth.
So, in order to think that relativism is any kind of a big deal, you have to come up with a different relativism, one that somehow includes this normal relativism but makes it seem threatening or liberating, in any event at odds with the worlds we know rather than a facet of them. You can't do this without making several basic mistakes. You convince yourself that the philosophical ideas that relativism runs counter to are themselves embedded in everyday life, though they're not. You forget that "relative" is itself a relative term. You confuse the meaning of terms; e.g., what I said yesterday: "As a relativist I can say, 'Nothing exists in isolation,' and two minutes later say, 'I grew up in an isolated village,' without contradicting myself, since the standards for isolation are different in the two sentences." So you make the former statement as if it referred to the latter "isolation," to the village's isolation, to the isolation that matters. I don't think it's possible to believe that relativism (or pragmatism or deconstruction) plays a significant role in the world unless you make this sort of mistake.
Future posts will detail the mistakes (so far I've been making assertions rather than arguments). But I'll reiterate that what's at issue here isn't an intellectual mistake, but why smart people make such a mistake. They could just as easily not make the mistake. So what do people gain by making the mistake? The consequences of the mistake don't result from the mistake; rather, the mistake is the result of a desire for such consequences.
no subject
Date: 2008-07-05 08:31 pm (UTC)Which doesn't mean I don't want to figure out what's going on with the stupid/lazy people's attack on relativism, but first I'm interested in how the issue manages to ensnare non-idiots.