[MD] Marsha's Relativism

[david buchanan]

Steve:
I don't understand this. How can Bob be "justified" in believing what is "not true"? How can a moral claim about the dignity human beings be compared to a mathematical definition? I think you're using some unexplained distinctions here. Without some explanations, all these questions seem pretty absurd. Please, educate me.
dmb
 

> From: peterson.steve at gmail.com
> Date: Thu, 20 Aug 2009 18:02:04 -0400
> To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
> Subject: [MD]  Marsha's Relativism
> 
> Hi Marsha, DMB,
> 
> Do you believe that moral assertions can have truth-value? For example, 
> do you see statements like "slavery is evil" as either true or false in 
> the same way that assertions of fact such as "2 is the smallest prime 
> number" is either true or false?
> 
> If you take X to be some such proposition, do you see any of the 
> following to be problematic?
> (1) Bob is justified in believing X given his context, but X is not 
> true.
> (2) X is true for Bob but not true for Rich
> (3) I used to be justified in believing X, but X is not true and never 
> was true.
> (4) I am now justified in believing X, but X may turn out to be false
> 
> I would say that if you see no problem with any of these, your view 
> would typically be called relativism. I think that anyone who objects 
> to 2 but sees nothing wrong with 1, 3, or 4 is using the usual 
> understanding of truth and it's relationship to justification but may 
> still be called relativism by some. If so, I would call this second 
> version of relativism the good kind and the first version the bad kind.
> 
> The bad kind of relativism says that a proposition can be true to one 
> person and false to another while the good kind admits that belief in a 
> proposition may be justified for one person but not justified for 
> another but holds that truth is another matter entirely. The cure for 
> the bad kind of relativism may simply be to say, "If you think that a 
> statement like 'slavery is evil' can be both true and false at the same 
> time depending on who makes the assertion, then I don't think we both 
> mean the same thing when we use the word 'true.'"
> 
> Best,
> Steve
> 
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