Marsh said to Steve and dmb:
Would you gentlemen explain how if context and history are key factors in
determining truth (conventional), why can it not be said that truth
(conventional) is relative to context and history? It seems obvious: truth
(conventional) is relative.
dmb says:
There are lots of different kinds of relativism and the word "relative" has
several related meanings too. The debate between Steve and I have been engaged
in has mostly been about what would probably be called "truth relativism" and
"cultural relativism". Since you're question involves contextualism and
historicism, you seem to be asking about cultural relativism. But the use of
"relative" in the phrase "truth is relative to context and history" is really
just a synonym for "related". Anyway, because of your question, it occurred to
me that there might be a very important but unspoken difference between the way
Steve and I understand how context and history is related to truth and then
what that means for the notion of truth.
I'm going to guess that Steve (and/or Rorty) thinks that context and history
aren't just important factors in determining truth but are more like the only
factors. This is true for some relativists. As they see, context and history
dictate what we can think and believe in an almost deterministic, cause and
effect sort of way. Others are softer about this contextualism and think the
historical situation is certainly something we need to take account of and
factor into our deliberations but they don't believe we are hopelessly trapped
in our perspectives in a way that prevents us from making valid judgments about
and comparisons to other times and cultures. I think this latter position is
pretty obviously true just because there are so many people who are
multi-lingual, multi-cultural and can earn a good living as a translator. I
mean, as a practical matter people transcend their inherited context in all
kinds of ways besides literally functioning in another context. Education
and personal growth is practically a deliberate and predictable means of
expanding one's context and one of the most important features of human
intelligence is the ability to put yourself in the other gal's shoes. Nobody
could successfully lie without that skill and we all know human civilization
was built on lies. That's why I believe in truth. The world couldn't function
normally without it. If you say, "that's not true" then all I can say is, "see,
I told you so". ;-)
_________________________________________________________________
Hotmail: Free, trusted and rich email service.
http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/196390708/direct/01/
Moq_Discuss mailing list
Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc.
http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org
Archives:
http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/
http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
