[MD] Humanism

[david buchanan]

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."