[MD] Intellect's Symposium

[david buchanan]

Marsha asked:
Is there within this post a hidden definition of relativism that you'd like to adopt as your own?

dmb says:
You should be able to see what the complaint is here. It's not hidden and the explanation offered here is actually more specific and concrete than a definition. In this case, relativism is notion that there is nothing outside the text, that conversation or the consensus it generates is the only constraint on "truth". 

Once you reject the correspondence theory of truth (SOM), language is not merely the naming of a pre-existing reality but rather it constructs our reality. For most postmodernists, this means that each context is an arbitrary construction and usually that is taken to mean that it is inherently unjust and dishonest and constructed to serve political and economic power. 

As I understand it, the MOQ agrees with contextualism (we're suspended in language) and it agrees that these contexts are constructed (analogy upon analogy) but it says these contexts are not constructed arbitrarily (Quality is not arbitrary or capricious) and the pragmatic theory of truth does not abandon empirical restraints (it has to agree with experience and function in experience). These non-linguistic constraints distinguish the MOQ from this relativism. 

 

 
> On Feb 6, 2010, at 1:51 PM, david buchanan wrote:
> 
> > 
> > Gav said to dmb:
> > isn't this splitting hairs? i mean if truth is contextual and perspectival isn't that a form of relativism? 'truth is relative'... another way of saying that might be 'context-dependent'.
> > 
> > 
> > Ron chimed in:
> > after reading up on it, it seems the term "relativism" is mostly used as a perjorative in the respect that it is a term for pragmatism used by those positivists that do not understand the point that pragmatism is trying to make about empiricism. It carries such a spector of meaning meaninglessness or truthlessness when in fact it's more a statement about the plurality of truth and how humans relate to those truths.
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> > dmb says:
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> > I really don't think this is a matter of splitting hairs. In fact, in making the case against relativism and for the pragmatic theory of truth last week, which took the form of making a case against Rorty and for the classical empiricists, I was able to quote from two books that were largely aimed at making the same case. Most of the explanations offered by Hickman, the director of Dewey Studies and SIU and Hildebrand, one of the professors I'm studying with, were not addressed so it would be okay with me if you wanted to look at that and drag some of the quotes into it.
> > 
> > But let take a different approach. I was just looking at the pieces of Matt's essay on SOM. I don't know if it was Bo or Matt who left it out, but a very crucial piece of the story is missing. The whole book is structured around the quest for Quality and yet that's exactly what's missing from the story. In the post, the story is construed as a contest between Plato's absolutism and the Sophist's relativism. Matt quotes a passage that SEEMS to support this view. "Their object was not any single absolute truth, but the improvement of men. All principles, all truths, are relative, they said. 'Man is the measure of all things.' These were the famous teachers of 'wisdom', the Sophists of ancient Greece." If Pirsig had stopped there, I might be able to go along with Matt's reading but he didn't. In fact, Pirsig goes on to say the very opposite, that they were NOT relativists and that coming to such a conclusion about the Sophists doesn't make much sense.
> > 
> > On the next page (374) he says, "the one thing that doesn't fit what he says and what Plato says about the Sophists is their profession of teaching VIRTUE. All accounts indicate that this was absolutely central to their teaching, but how are you going to teach virtue if you teach the relativity of all ethical ideas?" He explores the issue for a couple of pages and then says, (377) "Lightning hits! QUALITY! VIRTUE! DHARMA! THAT is what the Sophists were teaching! NOT ethical relativism. NOT pristine 'virtue'. But ARETE. Excellence. DHARMA! Before the Church of Reason. Before substance. Before from. Before mind and matter. Before dialectic itself. Quality had been absolute. Those first teachers of the Western world were teaching QUALITY, and the medium they had chosen was that of rhetoric. He has been doing it right all along." (Emphasis is Pirsig's)
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> > Now if that book is about Pirsig's quest for Quality and this anti-relativistic passage is where he finally finds it, then it's a hell of a thing to leave out. That reading quite literally takes the Quality out of the MOQ and converts it instead to Rortyism or postmodern neopragmatism or linguistic idealism or something that otherwise excludes the main idea. And in Lila, the conflict between Richard Rigel and the captain is all about relativism. Pirsig had been accused of relativism between the two books and part of what he's doing in Lila is disputing that charge. That's why you find all that talk about moral codes and how you can judge other cultures, not according to the standards of your own culture of course but by assessing their contribution to the ongoing process of life, how you can judge values according to their evolutionary status, etc. 
> > 
> > Or you could think of it in very broad terms. If the trick is to strike a balance between static and dynamic, then absolutism is too static and relativism is too dynamic. Too much rigidity prevents growth but so does too much instability. And that's what you get with relativism, too much instability. This is what you get when you take the view that there is nothing outside the text, which is to say that words don't refer to anything except other words. That is a very slippery situation and that's why people say Rorty is a relativist. Those book I was quoting from are written by contemporary pragmatists who think it's important to take issue with Rorty's assertions and distinguish them from the assertions made by Dewey, James and other classical pragmatists. I mean, the professionals don't think it's a matter of splitting hairs. As Hildebrand puts it, Rortyism "eviscerates" Dewey's pragmatism. And from there it's pretty easy to see that Rortyism eviscerates Pirsig's work in 
>  a 
> > similar way.
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> > Thanks,
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> > dmb
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