Steve:
At this point someone who thinks that they do have in hand some method
that stands outside of culture and history to uncover the truth will
call me a relativist. This is not a charge that we need to accept any
more than we ought to feel forced to answer "is the Quality in the
subject or in the object?" The charge of relativism comes from the
presupposition that we ought to have a philosophical foundation for
our truth claims and in not having one we are thought to be somehow
suffering for its lack. "Is it absolute or relative?" is a version of
"is it objective or merely subjective?" It is one of those
philosophical Platypi hat get cleared up once we drop the
subject-object picture. We don't need a philosophical foundation
grounded in objective first principles to assert that the Nazis were
wrong. We just need to offer some high Quality reasons why that is so
perhaps based on a story of, say, the evolution of types of value
patterns instead of a philosophical system of deductions based on
ahistorical notions of Human Nature or Reason. We MOQers have dropped
such notions in favor of a Darwinian account of the evolution of
language and humanity and intellect. We don't have a way of answering
the charge of relativism other than by attacking the philosophical
premises from which it makes sense to ask "Is the Quality in the
subject or the object?" and "is it absolute or merely relative?", but
I think we should deny it nevertheless just as we deny being
absolutists.
Ron:
Truth is a species of the good, and being a species of the good
it is a first priciple of explaination. Especially since the Good
accounts for all experience. I would say thats an explaination thats out side of
culture and history.
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