One thing the responses to your post haven't mentioned is that you flatten (or "thin" or "reduce") relativism to its most simple form. I find people tend to do this with pluralism, as well. And I think Marcus does a nice job of showing that nihilism isn't as thin as we may think, either.
Since I care most about pluralism, I'll make my argument there. A pluralist isn't required to believe in an infinity of things, only more than 1 thing. E.g., to my mind, those who believe the standard model's particle zoo is a problem may *still* be pluralists. But there's just too many fundamental objects. So, let's unify them down to, say, 3 things. But we don't necessarily have to unify them down to 1 thing. Of course, pluralists need not be discretists, either. So, there's nothing special about 1 vs 2. What fractal dimension *should* have taught us is that there are probably competent ways to model reality that allow for, say, 1.001 fundamental types of thing ... or 13.7 or whatever. Oversimplification is a risk for any -ism unifier. And it seems like you've done that for relativism. On 11/15/19 3:47 AM, Eric Charles wrote: > The relativist asserts that competence-incompetence and stupid-smart have no > tangible meaning. > > Who is competent and who isn't? Eh, it depends on your point of view, and no > point of view is better than another. The designation of "competence" is a > colonialist activity providing illusory justification for the marginalization > already oppressed groups, and while it has a valence, it has no basis in > "reality" (i.e., it is bad, you should stop doing it, and you should deeply > hate yourself for ever having had done it). To label the president as > incompetent is to inappropriately invalidate his way of being in the world; > ways of being are all equally valid. > > Who is stupid and who isn't? Eh, it depends on your point of view, and no > point of view is better than another..... > > If you believe that SOME people ARE competent and/or smart, then you can't be > a relativist. If you believe there is still some chance that competent and > smart people can make a difference, you are not a nihilist. > > Old Soviet Joke: A man walks into a shop and asks, "You wouldn't happen to > have any fish, would you?". The shop assistant replies, "You've got it wrong > – ours is a butcher's shop. We don't have any meat. You're looking for the > fish shop across the road. There they don't have any fish!" -- ☣ uǝlƃ ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
