[MD] suspended in language

[MarshaV]

Hi Steve,

Thanks for the post, but I think you and dmb should update your rather naive
understanding and reading list on the topic.  You've bought into the same
assumptions that Plato would have wished you to. Somewhere in LILA RMP sees
this is what Plato is up to, and Protagoras really is not.  Protagoras was
not teaching absolute relativism or any type of 'whatever you please', and
neither are modern relativists heading in that direction either.  I see some
sort of relativism as the best way to make sense of conventional reality,
which I see as a synonym to the static patterned world.     

I'm exploring perceptual relativism, epistemological relativism, ontological
relativism and ontological indeterminism, and there are a whole lot of very
up-to-date, interesting books on the topic.  I've never believed in an
independent truth, so this seems right up my alley.  The Measure Doctrine
"says something about the conditions of truth and knowledge, but it also
takes open reference to the ontology of the world and it can also be read as
a maxim that says something about the nature of truth".(Zilioli)  You
wouldn't ask me to bypass such delicious topics, would you?  So no to
'absolute relativism' and yes to further exploration into the topic.  There
should be some tolerance for the diversity of knowledge and interest. 

Ever hear of the 'Cosmic Porridge' ontological view?  Robert Kirk's view
extracted from Zilioli's book:
"All that really exists [...] is an indeterminate something, and -- the key
component of the idea -- this something has no features of its own: the
porridge is undifferentiated.  Instead, we somehow impose features on it
[...].  On the one hand, something really exists 'out there', but on the
other hand nothing else can be said about it which is objectively true
[...].  Sticks and stones, atoms and electrons, stars and clouds are our
construction in the strong sense that there is no more to existence than the
fact that we have imposed those particular concepts on the otherwise
indeterminate stuff, the cosmic porridge itself."  Sounds most interesting
to me, and I've only just scratched the surface.



Marsha






-----Original Message-----
From: moq_discuss-bounces at lists.moqtalk.org
[mailto:moq_discuss-bounces at lists.moqtalk.org] On Behalf Of Steven Peterson
Sent: Thursday, November 05, 2009 10:04 AM
To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
Subject: Re: [MD] suspended in language

Hi Marsha,

The following is excerpted from a recent blog post of mine about
relativism that grew out of our discussion omn the topic and my
discussion with DMB:

Since James subordinated the true to the good by calling the true that
which is good by way of belief, and since the good is often taken to
be just whatever you like, perhaps it is no surprise that pragmatists
are a favorite target for being criticized as being relativists. And
since it is so hard to pin down what anyone means when they call us
that, it is also not surprising that we pragmatists are often at a
loss as to how to respond to this charge. Since relativism is often
taken to be the claim that truth and morality are just subjective,
this charge must be denied. The claim that relativism is true is
self-defeating because that claim itself then must be viewed as merely
subjective and needn't be taken seriously. So I don't think anyone
should want to call herself a "relativist" because such a person will
not be taken by others to even believe herself when she calls herself
that.

The pre-Socratic philosopher Protagorus is the poster child for
relativism for coining the slogan "man is the measure of all things."
Though Protagorus was pretty much reduced to a punching bag in Plato's
dialogues, pragmatists may still like his slogan because it captures
the notion that, unlike theists and rationalists, pragmatists are not
looking for a great, non-human, ahistorical power to tell us right
from wrong; however, pragmatists deny being relativists as well as
absolutists.

In fact, we deny the absolute-relative distinction altogether on the
same grounds that we deny the appearance-reality distinction. Asking
whether truth, be it scientific or ethical, is absolute or relative is
to ask whether this truth is part of the essence of what we are
talking about or merely an accidental property. It is the same
conundrum that Robert Pirsig was faced with when he was asked by his
colleagues whether Quality is in the subject or in the object. If it
is objective, why don't we all agree about what it is and how to
measure it? If it is just subjective, then what do we make of such
human endeavors as art and music? Why should we pay Pavarotti any more
for his performances than we would pay an eight year just beginning to
learn the violin? If quality is just subjective, then saying so is no
better than saying that it is actually objective. So we have come back
around and realized the problem of choosing either horn of the
dilemma.

So what do we do? Do we follow Aquinas's dictum "whenever you reach a
contradiction, make a distinction"? Or should we follow Ayn Rand who
said, "Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think you are facing
a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them
is wrong"? While pragmatists probably tend to be more comfortable with
contradictions than Rand or Aquinas, they think that the metaphysical
premise, the subject-object picture of reality, that leads us to such
questions as "Is it absolute or relative?", "Is it real or apparent?",
"Is it essential or accidental?" is problematic and is one that we
would do well to drop. Pragmatists use terms such as
"anti-essentialism" and "anti-foundationalism" as labels for the
opposition to subject-object metaphysics, and they use
"panrelationalism" and "perspectivalism" as terms for the sorts of
pictures we can work with once we drop the notion of essences. But we
shouldn't take panrelationalism, which says that everything stands in
relationship to other things and that no one of these relations can be
priveledged as the true essence of a thing, as equivalent to
relativism, which says that such relations are just whatever you want
them to be.

Though we don't worship Reason as a god, pragmatists don't reduce
reasoning to whimsical belief as relativism suggests. Reasoning is the
practice of justifying beliefs. Relativism is correct in pointing out
that this practice is always done within a cultural context and that
no particular culture has the final say on reality, but part of that
practice of reasoning involves questioning the assumptions that we use
to justify beliefs for what we mean by "reasonable." As Jeffrey Stout
explained in his book exploring relativism, Ethics After Babel, "We
may have no power to transcend our traditional inheritance
completely--for we are finite, historically situated beings--but we do
not have to rise above history to call our assumptions into question.
The attempt to stand outside one's age, Hegel said in a famous phrase,
is like trying to jump over the Rhodes. You cannot do it. the danger
comes when you think you have. for then you will be more likely to set
limits on criticism. You will view some of your asumptions as eternal
deliverances of reason. It would be better to think of them as
predjudices...any one of which can be placed in question provided most
are kept in place at any given moment." In other words, we have
nowhere to stand to question all of our assumptions at once, but if we
stand on this bit over here we can question our assumptions relative
to where we are now standing, and then we can move over to somewhere
else and question the assumptions we were standing on before.

With such hopping from platform to platform while questioning our
beliefs and inventing better ones, we can progress without needing to
ground all our beliefs in a philosophical foundation--and it's a good
thing too, since no one has ever found a method for choosing among the
various proposed philosophical and theological foundations that have
been offered and the root assumptions on which they are based. So
though there may be no ahistorical foundation for Reason, we are still
better off than relativism--holding whimsical preferences for what we
deem to be reasonable.

Absolutism-relativism is one of those philosophical platypi (Pirsig's
turn for what Dewey called the Greek nest and brood of dualisms that
resist classification within the subject-object picture that dominates
Western Philosophy) that get dissolved to the point where you wonder
why you even asked the question to begin with. Are morals cultural
constructs? Of course they are, but so are electrons and mathematics.
It doesn't mean that there aren't true and false things to be said
about them. Since pragmatists see no ontological difference between
assertions of fact and moral assertions, there is no problem for moral
claims as well as factual claims to be thought of as having
truth-value, so pragmatism denies relativism. And we can make such
claims without imagining such essences as Natural Law or The Moral Law
for such claims to try to conform to. We see no way that the notion of
truth as conforming to such essences could be helpful in determining
whether beliefs are true or false, so pragmatism also denies
absolutism. In short, pragmatists avoid the charge of relativism by
denying the premise of essentialism that is behind the
absolutism-relativism dilemma.




If we make such an argument with our interlocuters will we convince
them that we are not actually relativists? Not by a long shot. It
would only be by convincing others to stop asking the question "is it
absolute or relative?" that we would be free of this charge, since
anyone who still asks this question has bought into the underlying
essentialism and will consider anyone "relativists" who doesn't claim
a metaphysical foundation for their beliefs.

If Rorty is right, we will always be labelled "relativists" because we
have lost hope in the project of finding a way to justify beliefs that
is ahistoric, transcultural, and universal. If someone ever finds one,
then great, but until then pragmatists think that the best we can do
is to tell our stories to one another, which is what we've always done
with a lot of success. As Jeffrey Stout said, "...unless something
substantial can be made of the appeal to pure reason without tacitly
smuggling in the content donated by tradition, we should not be
tempted to think of our moral thought as somehow lacking simply
because it has not been given a basis in pure reason. To have such a
basis would not be to have anything more than we already have." We've
never had access to a God's-Eye-View that would allow us to claim a
universal foundation that everyone else will have no choice but to
accept, so we are no worse off than we have ever been for dropping
foundationalism.

When we get labelled "relativists," what we are hearing is the sound
of disappointment that foundationalists make in confronting the fact
that no one has ever found the sort of grounding that philosophers
have always told us that we should demand. The cure for this anxiety
is simple. Just stop demanding the sort of foundation that philosphers
never should have promised us in the first place. Stop asking for the
sort of metaphysical certainty for our knowledge claims that our
epistemic context doesn't allow for. Instead of trying to ground our
past practices in eternal principles, focus instead on creating a
better future. Since we have no access to a God's-Eye-View,
pragmatists see absolutism-relativism as a false choice between being
hopelessly out of touch with something absolute or believing something
that is merely relative or just subjective. We get out of the dilemma
by denying that the purpose of intellect is to represent reality at
all and instead see intellect from an evolutionary perspective as a
way of using reality.

Best,
Steve
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