[MD] qualified relativists

[Tuukka Virtaperko]

Marsha,
this is interesting. It seems like a somewhat fumbling attempt to go 
towards the Eastern type of relativism, but the writer is trying to be a 
bit too clever with how he expresses it. The emphasis on social affairs 
could mislead some readers, but it's good work anyway. It resembles 
Quine's confirmation holism.

I have mixed feelings about this. You were right in using the word 
"relativism" in our earlier conversation, or at least, you certainly 
weren't wrong. But the proper technical term would be "qualified 
relativism", which gets quite cumbersome and ugly, yet this ugliness 
does very little to actually describe, what "qualified relativism" is. 
I'm still hoping for a more elegant term that any layman could remember.

-Tuukka



25.3.2012 12:11, MarshaV wrote:
> "...  Qualified relativists: “assume … that knowledge is the product of human beings. Thinking is a form of human activity which cannot be treated in isolation from other forms of human activity including the forms of human activity which in turn shape the humans who think. Consequently, philosophies will inevitably bear the imprint of the social relations out of which they and their creators arose.”37 They argue that our ontological and epistemological premises are like a net of beliefs woven together which become partially self- validating, and which are greatly affected by our contextuality. Qualified relativists argue that Euro-western philosophy and science are both embedded within layers of contextuality which influence and limit philosophers’ and scientists’ theories and experiments continually.
>
> "Qualified relativists find that criteria for choosing ideas are fallible, as they are human constructions, and therefore subject to change and improvement. As Sandra Harding describes, “…the grounds for knowledge are fully saturated with history and social life rather than abstracted from it.”38 Or, as Lorraine Code asserts: “theories that transcend the specificities of gendered and otherwise situated subjectivites are impotent to come to terms with the politics of knowledge.”39 Feminists describe the criteria we use to help us settle our doubts similiarly to the classic pragmatists, yet without the bias toward science that Peirce, James, and Dewey express. They place an emphasis on the social negotiating process that inquiry must go through, to help us reach satisfactorily (though usually temporary and tentative) conclusions. We continue to inquire, and we try to support our understandings with as much “evidence” as we can socially construct, qualified by the best criteria upon which we can agree. A qualified relativist grounds her claims “in experiences and practices, in the efficacy of dialogical negotiation and of action.”40
>
> "Qualified relativism should not be confused with vulgar relativism. A qualified relativist stresses that the construction of knowledge is social, interactive, flexible, and on-going. Yet we find that what I describe is different from Peirce’s non-vulgar absolutist view. I suggest that the difference lies in our ontology and logic, for Peirce remains clearly within the traditional Enlightment paradigm. His desire to defend pragmatism against charges of relativism is based on an acceptance of a Real world independent of human influence, thus maintaining a split between the known and knowers and relying on a binary logic which Dewey and James worked hard to dissolve. James and Dewey offer us a way out of dualistic thinking, by embracing a concept of experience as an unanalyzable totality. Our analysis is what we add to pure experience. Experience can take on many shapes and forms, depending on its functions. We understand experience in terms of its relations. What a qualified relativist proposes is nothing less than a transformation of the Enlightenment paradigm by dissolving the binary logic and the Realism that supports that paradigm. Qualified relativists embrace a unifying logic that describes the universe as pluralistic, in the sense of being open and unfinished. Yet qualified relativists (pragmatists, feminists, and postmodernists) can claim roots to their positions in Peirce, James, and Dewey, some of the very scholars McCarthy turns to for her pragmatic realism."
>
> http://www.ovpes.org/2002/Thayer-Bacon.pdf
>
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