Marsha:
You'll also notice in the Wiki piece the long list of advocates for various
types of relativism.
dmb says:
Yes, and you'll notice that some of my fiercest rivals are among those
advocates of relativism. Relativism is THEE main reason I dislike Rortyism.
That's what Sam Harris doesn't like about Rorty. Rorty thinks "there is nothing
of interest to be said about truth in general". The relativism article you
cited gives Rorty his own section:
"Philosopher Richard Rorty has a somewhat paradoxical role in the debate over
relativism: he is criticized for his relativistic views by many naïve
commentators, but has always denied that relativism applies to much anybody,
being nothing more than a Platonic scarecrow. Rorty claims, rather, that he is
a pragmatist, and that to construe pragmatism as relativism is to beg the
question.
[Three quotes from Rorty]
'"Relativism" is the traditional epithet applied to pragmatism by realists'
'"Relativism" is the view that every belief on a certain topic, or perhaps
about any topic, is as good as every other. No one holds this view. Except for
the occasional cooperative freshman, one cannot find anybody who says that two
incompatible opinions on an important topic are equally good. The philosophers
who get called 'relativists' are those who say that the grounds for choosing
between such opinions are less algorithmic than had been thought.'
'In short, my strategy for escaping the self-referential difficulties into
which "the Relativist" keeps getting himself is to move everything over from
epistemology and metaphysics into cultural politics, from claims to knowledge
and appeals to self-evidence to suggestions about what we should try.'
Rorty takes a deflationary attitude to truth, believing there is nothing of
interest to be said about truth in general, including the contention that it is
generally subjective. He also argues that the notion of warrant or
justification can do most of the work traditionally assigned to the concept of
truth, and that justification is relative; justification is justification to an
audience, for Rorty.In Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity he argues that the
debate between so-called relativists and so-called objectivists is beside the
point because they don't have enough premises in common for either side to
prove anything to the other."
dmb said previously:
... The dispute is about epistemological relativity and its relation to the
pragmatic theory of truth. That is the context in which "relativity" means
there is no standard by which to measure things like truth and moral values. As
you may have noticed, I think relativism is a very bad idea with very bad
consequences and I think the pragmatic theory of truth is NOT a form of
relativism.
> >>>
> >>> That's what Sam Harris was complaining about, you know? A relativist has
> >>> no basis on which he can condemn those Albanian vendetta customs or
> >>> female genital mutilation or torture by the American military or the
> >>> Nazis or anything else. He's morally and intellectually paralyzed by his
> >>> own relativism. So Sam is trying to find a scientific way to condemn
> >>> objectionable cultural practices. He's trying to find a way to use
> >>> "facts" against cruelty and injustice. And he condemns Rorty's brand of
> >>> pragmatism because of the relativism he sees in it. As you may have
> >>> noticed, I'm very sympathetic with Sam Harris on both counts. I suppose
> >>> "science" has to be taken very broadly to include philosophy and
> >>> intellectual work in general and I like to think he'd like the original
> >>> theory of pragmatic truth a lot more than he likes Rortyism, but I'm
> >>> still very sympathetic with Sam.
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