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Guides for the Perplexed
Relativism: A Guide for the Perplexed
Relativism is a philosophical topic that has many dimensions and can mean many things. It is the view that one thing owes existence, truth, goodness or beauty to something else and is central to an understanding of any of the four traditional divisions of ontology, epistemology, ethics and aesthetics.
A Guide for the Perplexed offers a concise introduction to relativism and how it applies to the different parts of the basic, foundational areas of philosophy and, indeed, to every area of human enquiry. Timothy Mosteller provides an overview of the topic across the discipline of philosophy, examining it in detail in its primary ontological relativism, epistemological relativism, moral relativism and aesthetic relativism. The book concludes with a summary of the role of relativism in three other key academic science, politics, and religion.
A Guide for the Perplexed offers a concise introduction to relativism and how it applies to the different parts of the basic, foundational areas of philosophy and, indeed, to every area of human enquiry. Timothy Mosteller provides an overview of the topic across the discipline of philosophy, examining it in detail in its primary ontological relativism, epistemological relativism, moral relativism and aesthetic relativism. The book concludes with a summary of the role of relativism in three other key academic science, politics, and religion.
- GenresPhilosophy
120 pages, Paperback
First published May 23, 2008
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August 11, 2022کتاب برای یه سری ایده کلی گرفتن مناسبه. 3فصل اول نسبتا خوبن ولی در مورد نسبی گرایی زیباشناسی ضعیفه.
مثلا نمیشه با ااستدلال های این کتاب به این جواب داد که آیا سیاه پوستان هم به اندازه سفید پوستان جذاب هستند یا نه؟ یا هر نوع زیبایی که در مورد انسان هاست
مثلا نمیشه با ااستدلال های این کتاب به این جواب داد که آیا سیاه پوستان هم به اندازه سفید پوستان جذاب هستند یا نه؟ یا هر نوع زیبایی که در مورد انسان هاست
November 1, 2010
“There is one thing a professor can be absolutely sure of; almost every student entering the university believes, or says he believes, that truth is relative” (Allan Bloom).
This is really a short argument (under 100 pages) against relativism. First the defines relativism (R): “the nature and existence of items of knowledge, quantities, values or logical entities non-trivially obtain their natures and/or existence from certain aspects of human activity, including, but not limited to, beliefs, cultures, languages, etc” (not the greatest definition). Then he provides a short history (including one author’s comment that Protagoras’ “man is the measure of all things” contains even more vital meaning into few words than the Delphic “know thyself” (but the latter does contain fewer words). Then he examines different forms of R, starting with the epistemological (E) variety.
ER’s core is the idea that there are no neutral (non question-begging) standards by which we can assess the justification of any knowledge claim. Mosteller’s response is key since he refers to this in regards to other forms of R as well: we may not have “global neutrality” (that hold in every dispute), but we do have “local neutrality” (the laws of logic are often one example of the latter; standards that are not in question in that particular dispute). He also approvingly cites an author as saying “to defend [R] is to defend it non-relativistically, which is to give it up; to ‘defend’ it relativistically is not to defend it at all”. Which means there is no juice in saying “Hey everyone, R is true to me”, but this is the most a proponent could consistently say. He ends the section by supporting Putnam’s claim that ER leads to solipsism.
Next he tackles ontological relativism (OR), which has its roots in Kant (not a relativist). He considers Putnam’s conceptual relativism, which comes out when our answer to "How many objects are there in a world with X, Y, and Z" depends on what our concepts are. Mosteller sees this as problematic.
He goes on to Ethical Relativism (ER). Here he says first, just because there is disagreement doesn’t mean there is no truth to an issue. Second, really smart people have argued for the objectivity of morality for milenia. Third, there is a lot of agreement (Lewis put together a list in The Abolition of Man). The tolerance that seems to come from ER is good, but maybe we need to distinguish moral from political tolerance. Then, perhaps the argument of the book comes from James Rachels: if ER, then MLK, Gandhi, and Mother Theresa were acting wrongly!
Aesthetic R (AR) argues that properties like height and weight are in objects, but properties like beauty or ugliness are in the mind of a perceiver (for nothing can be both all green and all blue for example, so how could something be beautiful to one person and ugly to another?). Hume argued against AR and said we can know ugly or pretty things by training and practice of our sense organs. He ends the section saying “In art or in ontology, universal generalizations denying the possibility of existence or reality are self-defeating”.
The chapter on Relativistic Worldviews is where things take a weird turn, perhaps this is where the author tries to put forth his own original ideas. He looks at the work of MacIntyre, Kuhn, and (interestingly), the issue of blasphemy.
Key issue: I love the idea of local vs. global neutrality, but isn’t what is local depend or is relative to who the arguers are? Now it does not seem trivially so, as when someone says “I am holding a pen” and it is true relative to who says it and when. I’m not sure what to think here and the author has not responded to my email on this issue.
This is really a short argument (under 100 pages) against relativism. First the defines relativism (R): “the nature and existence of items of knowledge, quantities, values or logical entities non-trivially obtain their natures and/or existence from certain aspects of human activity, including, but not limited to, beliefs, cultures, languages, etc” (not the greatest definition). Then he provides a short history (including one author’s comment that Protagoras’ “man is the measure of all things” contains even more vital meaning into few words than the Delphic “know thyself” (but the latter does contain fewer words). Then he examines different forms of R, starting with the epistemological (E) variety.
ER’s core is the idea that there are no neutral (non question-begging) standards by which we can assess the justification of any knowledge claim. Mosteller’s response is key since he refers to this in regards to other forms of R as well: we may not have “global neutrality” (that hold in every dispute), but we do have “local neutrality” (the laws of logic are often one example of the latter; standards that are not in question in that particular dispute). He also approvingly cites an author as saying “to defend [R] is to defend it non-relativistically, which is to give it up; to ‘defend’ it relativistically is not to defend it at all”. Which means there is no juice in saying “Hey everyone, R is true to me”, but this is the most a proponent could consistently say. He ends the section by supporting Putnam’s claim that ER leads to solipsism.
Next he tackles ontological relativism (OR), which has its roots in Kant (not a relativist). He considers Putnam’s conceptual relativism, which comes out when our answer to "How many objects are there in a world with X, Y, and Z" depends on what our concepts are. Mosteller sees this as problematic.
He goes on to Ethical Relativism (ER). Here he says first, just because there is disagreement doesn’t mean there is no truth to an issue. Second, really smart people have argued for the objectivity of morality for milenia. Third, there is a lot of agreement (Lewis put together a list in The Abolition of Man). The tolerance that seems to come from ER is good, but maybe we need to distinguish moral from political tolerance. Then, perhaps the argument of the book comes from James Rachels: if ER, then MLK, Gandhi, and Mother Theresa were acting wrongly!
Aesthetic R (AR) argues that properties like height and weight are in objects, but properties like beauty or ugliness are in the mind of a perceiver (for nothing can be both all green and all blue for example, so how could something be beautiful to one person and ugly to another?). Hume argued against AR and said we can know ugly or pretty things by training and practice of our sense organs. He ends the section saying “In art or in ontology, universal generalizations denying the possibility of existence or reality are self-defeating”.
The chapter on Relativistic Worldviews is where things take a weird turn, perhaps this is where the author tries to put forth his own original ideas. He looks at the work of MacIntyre, Kuhn, and (interestingly), the issue of blasphemy.
Key issue: I love the idea of local vs. global neutrality, but isn’t what is local depend or is relative to who the arguers are? Now it does not seem trivially so, as when someone says “I am holding a pen” and it is true relative to who says it and when. I’m not sure what to think here and the author has not responded to my email on this issue.
January 3, 2009
At 110 pages (text, endnotes, bibliography, and index), this book is deceptively meaty - especially for a "guide for the perplexed."
Mosteller discusses arguments for and against relativism in the tradition of analytic philosophy; so, you'll get a lot of this:
"According to Putnam, when P1 asserts premise 1 of RMS above, P1 is making a claim about C2. However, P1's claim about P2's C2 can only be true in P1's C1, just as P2 is nothing but something constructed out of P1's experiences in MS."
But, don't let that scare you away! Though some backgroud knowledge in philosophy would be useful, the layman can reap rewards if s/he puts in the requistite hard work.
Mosteller (i) gives a definition and brief history of relativism, discusses (ii) epistemological, (iii) ontological, (iv) ethical, and (v) asthetic reletavisms, and, lastly, (vi) closes by discussing (a) the nature of worldviews, (b) relativisms in science, politics, and religion, and then (c) looks at whether there are any such things as locally neutral standards which would make the no neutrality thesis of relativism false.
Mosteller argues that all kinds of relativism (under his definition) are, if they deny the possibility of existence or reality or knowledge or norms, self-refuting.
He also shows that many of the positive arguments for relativism are based on non-sequiturs. For example, one of the most popular arguments you'll run across is, actually, simply an observation that people differ about, say, ethical beliefs or asthetic judgments. But, this is simply descriptive relativism - and that doesn't get to prescriptive. It doesn't follow from the fact that people disagree about, say, ethical principles, that ethical principle are, therefore, relative to subjects or cultures. Or, the fact that some people may find one thing beautiful and other people may find it ugly does not logically entail that "beauty is in the eye of the beholder."
Many arguments were fairly traditional - though more rigorously stated. One interesting argument I did come across, though, was one put forward by Hillary Putnam against epistemological relativism ER. He argued that it was possible that ER entailed a kind of solipsism (the doctrine that only me and my experiences exist, or are real). Some versions of ER state that "truth" is whatever is "true for me." So the truth about anything is a simply a function of a person's disposition to believe. Therefore, the truth about any of us, besides the relativist, is just a function of the relativists disposition to believe. Thus, for the relativist, there is no extra mental truth about me or you or anyone else. What is true about me depends on the consciousness of the relativist.
Overall, if you're perplexed about relativism, and you are motivated to read analytic philosophy, this book should prove to be a good "guide" for you.
Mosteller discusses arguments for and against relativism in the tradition of analytic philosophy; so, you'll get a lot of this:
"According to Putnam, when P1 asserts premise 1 of RMS above, P1 is making a claim about C2. However, P1's claim about P2's C2 can only be true in P1's C1, just as P2 is nothing but something constructed out of P1's experiences in MS."
But, don't let that scare you away! Though some backgroud knowledge in philosophy would be useful, the layman can reap rewards if s/he puts in the requistite hard work.
Mosteller (i) gives a definition and brief history of relativism, discusses (ii) epistemological, (iii) ontological, (iv) ethical, and (v) asthetic reletavisms, and, lastly, (vi) closes by discussing (a) the nature of worldviews, (b) relativisms in science, politics, and religion, and then (c) looks at whether there are any such things as locally neutral standards which would make the no neutrality thesis of relativism false.
Mosteller argues that all kinds of relativism (under his definition) are, if they deny the possibility of existence or reality or knowledge or norms, self-refuting.
He also shows that many of the positive arguments for relativism are based on non-sequiturs. For example, one of the most popular arguments you'll run across is, actually, simply an observation that people differ about, say, ethical beliefs or asthetic judgments. But, this is simply descriptive relativism - and that doesn't get to prescriptive. It doesn't follow from the fact that people disagree about, say, ethical principles, that ethical principle are, therefore, relative to subjects or cultures. Or, the fact that some people may find one thing beautiful and other people may find it ugly does not logically entail that "beauty is in the eye of the beholder."
Many arguments were fairly traditional - though more rigorously stated. One interesting argument I did come across, though, was one put forward by Hillary Putnam against epistemological relativism ER. He argued that it was possible that ER entailed a kind of solipsism (the doctrine that only me and my experiences exist, or are real). Some versions of ER state that "truth" is whatever is "true for me." So the truth about anything is a simply a function of a person's disposition to believe. Therefore, the truth about any of us, besides the relativist, is just a function of the relativists disposition to believe. Thus, for the relativist, there is no extra mental truth about me or you or anyone else. What is true about me depends on the consciousness of the relativist.
Overall, if you're perplexed about relativism, and you are motivated to read analytic philosophy, this book should prove to be a good "guide" for you.
March 26, 2015
Just odd. First of all, if you're a complete philosophy newbie, don't bother; this is a dense book, written in a technical and often inarticulate manner which will make it very hard work for the general reader. Mosteller isn't a natural communicator, and in places (particularly the long sections about the relation between P1's C1 and P2's C2 in the context of S*) the attempted exposition achieves an entirely unintentional surreal humour.
If you already know your epistemology from your ontology and want to better understand the arguments against relativism, there's something here for you: Mosteller is unswervingly hostile to the concept in all its forms, and I found the process of thinking through his arguments and possible objections to them interesting. You'll still find the structure of the book somewhat clunky, though; I suspect this is because it's an expansion of papers he has written about particular philosophers such as Putnam and MacIntyre, who take up rather more space than you'd expect in a broad overview of the subject. There's also a closing section on blasphemy which is very much shoehorned in, presumably because the publishers needed to fill space and he had an essay on the subject knocking around.
If you already know your epistemology from your ontology and want to better understand the arguments against relativism, there's something here for you: Mosteller is unswervingly hostile to the concept in all its forms, and I found the process of thinking through his arguments and possible objections to them interesting. You'll still find the structure of the book somewhat clunky, though; I suspect this is because it's an expansion of papers he has written about particular philosophers such as Putnam and MacIntyre, who take up rather more space than you'd expect in a broad overview of the subject. There's also a closing section on blasphemy which is very much shoehorned in, presumably because the publishers needed to fill space and he had an essay on the subject knocking around.
July 24, 2015
I was convinced by this series of its simplicity and brevity in introducing the related concepts, but I found that this would require a much more concentrated peruse due to its dense content. Concise as ever, but not an easy one.
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