dmb said:
... the Wikipedia article on RELATIVISM has a section on RORTY: Let me repeat
the salient point. "He also argues ...that justification is RELATIVE;
justification is justification to an audience, for Rorty. Thus his position, in
the view of MANY COMMENTATORS, adds up to RELATIVISM."
Steve replied:
Does he argue that? You have someone from wiki saying that Rorty's argument
that justification is relative to an audience amounts to relativism, but you
still haven't said what relativism is. Just because something is relative to
something else doesn't amount to relativism. Does it? Isn't everything relative
to everything else in lots and lots of ways? What is something that is in no
way related to anything else?
dmb says:
Firstly, yes, he does argue that. The Stanford article on Rorty says the same
thing and you can find corroboration in many, many other places.
Secondly, it's not just someone from Wiki saying that justification is relative
to an audience for Rorty. You have someone from Wiki reporting that many
commentators think that Rorty's views add up to relativism. Since I've read
some of these commentators, I can testify to that fact. Rorty himself was
perfectly aware of this common accusation.
Thirdly, there are lots of different kinds of relativism but this little Wiki
is very specific. It defines relativism as the view that justification is
relative to the group and it describes Rorty's position as exactly that. You
have both a definition and the reason for thinking Rorty fits that definition.
I think this is about as clear as it can be.
Fourthly, the idea that everything is related to everything else simply isn't
what we mean by relativism. To say that justification is "relative" to the
group is not to say it is "related" to the group. That would not really be
incorrect so much as empty and obvious. It means that the standards of
justification depend entirely on the group and will therefore differ from group
to group. We see this in the position that Rorty himself calls "ethnocentrism".
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