Everything that follows comes from SEP's article on Relativism and I am not
going to tell anyone what it means because I think you should be able to see
that for yourself. Am I wrong to give people that much credit? I don't really
want to debate anyone who can't read and think for themselves. I don't want to
argue with anyone who resents the use of an encyclopedia or anyone who feels
persecuted by any kind of textual evidence. Any reader can see that I picked
these passages for a reason and a good reader will be able to see what that
reason is.
SEP says:
"Over two thousand years ago the Greek philosopher Protagoras declared that man
is the measure of all things. Plato interpreted this as the claim that what is
true is relative to each individual person's beliefs. But virtually all of the
versions of relativism that have been defended in any detail since Plato's time
treat it a social phenomenon, and almost no later writers take their
inspiration from Protagoras."
"Virtually all versions of relativism that have been defended in any detail
treat it as a social phenomenon. We can, however, allow for a subjective
version of relativism as limiting case in which each person has her own
concepts, epistemic standards, moral principles, or the like. For example, the
view that Plato attributes in his dialogue the Theatetus to the Ancient Greek
Sophist Protagoras relativizes truth to the individual."
"Truth is the Achilles' heel of relativism. According to the normative thesis
of strong truth-value relativism one and the same thing can be true relative to
one framework and false relative to another, true for some groups and false for
others, and ever since Plato's argument against this form of relativism in the
Theatetus many philosophers have agreed that the view is self-contradictory or
self-refuting. Plato's argument is sometimes known as the peritrope; it's a
turning the tables, turning the relativist's line of reasoning back against
itself to show that his thesis succumbs to the very relativity he defends.
Relativists always face the occupational hazard of sawing off the limb they are
sitting on, but with strong truth-value relativism they seem to cut down the
whole tree.
The Problem is General
The problem of self-refutation is quite general. It arises when truth is
relativized to a framework of concepts, beliefs, standards, or practices. It
also arises for many of the more sweeping claims that central epistemic notions
are somehow relative. If the epistemic relativist argues that all justification
or rationality is framework relative, he lays himself open to the reply that
his very claim is at best justified relative to his framework, only rational by
his own standards, only defensible by his own guidelines, just as much a social
construction as he insists everything else is.
Plato's argument against strong truth-value relativism is typically said to go
like this: either the claim that truth is relative is true absolutely (i.e.,
true in a non-relative sense) or else it is only true relative to some
framework. If it is true absolutely, all across the board, then at least one
truth is not merely true relative to a framework, so this version of the claim
is inconsistent. Furthermore, if we make an exception for the relativist's
thesis, it is difficult to find a principled way to rule out other exceptions;
what justifies stopping here? On the other hand, if the relativist's claim that
truth is relative is only true relative to his framework, then it can be false
in other, perhaps equally good, frameworks. And why should we care about that
the relativist's (perhaps rather idiosyncratic or parochial) framework?"
"5.10 “Beyond Relativism”
It is difficult to deny some of the key premises relativists employ in
defending their views. We are historically and culturally situated creatures
who cannot step outside our concepts and standards and beliefs to appraise
their fit with some mind-independent reality of “things-in-themselves.”
Furthermore, although we can justify many of our more central beliefs and
epistemic standards in a piecemeal way, we cannot justify all of them at once,
and perhaps we cannot justify some of them, like induction, at all.
The challenge is to do justice to such facts without ending up in the quicksand
of extreme relativism, and many writers now advise moving “beyond relativism”
(many books, chapters, and articles bear this phrase in the title), counseling
us to steer a course between the Scylla of relativism, on the one side, and the
Charybdis of an over-simplified absolutism, on the other. Finding such a course
is easier said than done, however, and there is more agreement on the
desirability of such a project than on how to carry it out. Still, various
proposals recur in the literature.
5.10.1 Not Just Anything Goes
Relativistic claims often sound better in the abstract than they do when we get
down to cases (a point that made an unusual appearance in the public press in
1996 with the Sokal hoax).[6] When we turn to concrete examples, extreme
relativistic claims are often not at all true to experience. No one really
supposes that a postmodernist witness can justify his testimony, come what may,
that he saw Jones commit the murder on the grounds that everything is a social
construction and this is just how he constructs things. Indeed, our belief that
such practices are unacceptable is much stronger than our beliefs in most of
the premises used in arguments for stronger versions of relativism.
Once a framework is up and running, there are many obvious facts about what is
right or wrong, probable or improbable, true or false. Furthermore, coherent
and workable frameworks cannot be created by simple fiat. It took several
millennia of extraordinary imagination and labor on the parts of thousands and
thousands of people to produce the frameworks of modern science. It just isn't
true that “anything goes.”"
"Various philosophers have suggested ways in which our beliefs and standards
could improve over time in spite of the fact that we are historically and
culturally situated creatures. For example, John Dewey and others argue that
our epistemic standards evolve in trial-and-error process of inquiry itself.
Others suggest that the criteria for rational change, even in science,
sometimes involve things like problem-solving ability, rather than getting
closer to the truth about some reality that is independent of our language and
thought. Again, the method of reflective equilibrium may allow us to improve
both our general standards and our particular beliefs from the inside, without
having to employ some timeless and immutable standards. Although this method
cannot guarantee that groups that begin with different standards and beliefs
will converge, it may nevertheless lead both groups to better-justified overall
sets of standards and beliefs."
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