On 10/6/15 11:20 PM, Matt Faunce wrote:
On 10/6/15 10:05 PM, Edwina Taborsky wrote:
Science, on the other hand depends on objective reality as its
reference base - and therefore, cannot depend on encultured opinion.
Galileo was quite clear on that. That is, you can have a _belief_
that witches cause the plague but this is not science since there is
no objective empirical evidence.
I think you're example here shows that you're conflating surface
beliefs of individuals with deep-seated believes, i.e., beliefs that
are so deep seated that the all people of many contiguous eras don't
question them.
That was a hack answer by me. Deep seatedness and shallowness of belief
often accompany their truth and falseness, in relativist theory, but
that relation is besides the point. Sorry for the noise. This is to the
point:
In Margolis's relativism, if your belief is supportable with available
evidence and fares better than available alternatives, then you are
right, if not you're wrong. The belief that witches caused the plague
was not supportable at that time, so in historicism-relativism that
belief is wrong. But remember, morals belong on a multi-valent scale
with degrees of rightness and wrongness. I'm not sure what other classes
of beliefs he puts on that scale. He did put some religious beliefs on
the multi-valent scale in his article Religion and Reason.
Matt
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