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Relativism is a family ofphilosophical views which deny claims toobjectivity within a particular domain and assert that valuations in that domain are relative to the perspective of an observer or the context in which they are assessed.[1] There are many different forms of relativism, with a great deal of variation in scope and differing degrees of controversy among them.[2]Moral relativism encompasses the differences in moral judgments among people and cultures.[3]Epistemic relativism holds that there are no absolute principles regarding normativebelief,justification, orrationality, and that there are only relative ones.[4]Alethic relativism (also factual relativism) is the doctrine that there are noabsolute truths, i.e., that truth is always relative to some particular frame of reference, such as a language or a culture (cultural relativism), whilelinguistic relativism asserts that a language's structures influence a speaker's perceptions.[5][6] Some forms of relativism also bear a resemblance tophilosophical skepticism.[7]Descriptive relativism seeks to describe the differences among cultures and people without evaluation, while normative relativism evaluates the word truthfulness of views within a given framework.
Anthropological relativism refers to amethodological stance, in which the researcher suspends (or brackets) their own cultural prejudice while trying to understand beliefs or behaviors in their contexts. This has become known asmethodological relativism, and concerns itself specifically with avoidingethnocentrism or the application of one's own cultural standards to the assessment of other cultures.[8] This is also the basis of the so-called "emic" and "etic" distinction, in which:
Philosophical relativism, in contrast, asserts that the truth of a proposition depends on the metaphysical, or theoretical frame, or the instrumental method, or the context in which the proposition is expressed, or on the person, groups, or culture who interpret the proposition.[9]
Methodological relativism and philosophical relativism can exist independently from one another, but most anthropologists base their methodological relativism on that of the philosophical variety.[10]
The concept of relativism also has importance both forphilosophers and foranthropologists in another way. In general, anthropologists engage in descriptive relativism ("how things are" or "how things seem"), whereas philosophers engage innormative relativism ("how things ought to be"), although there is some overlap (for example, descriptive relativism can pertain to concepts, normative relativism to truth).
Descriptive relativism assumes that certain cultural groups have different modes of thought, standards of reasoning, and so forth, and it is the anthropologist's task to describe, but not to evaluate the validity of these principles and practices of a cultural group. It is possible for an anthropologist in his or her fieldwork to be a descriptive relativist about some things that typically concern the philosopher (e.g., ethical principles) but not about others (e.g., logical principles). However, the descriptive relativist's empirical claims about epistemic principles, moral ideals and the like are often countered by anthropological arguments that such things are universal, and much of the recent literature on these matters is explicitly concerned with the extent of, and evidence for, cultural or moral or linguistic or human universals.[11]
The fact that the various species of descriptive relativism are empirical claims may tempt the philosopher to conclude that they are of little philosophical interest, but there are several reasons why this is not so. First, some philosophers, notably Kant, argue that certain sorts of cognitive differences between human beings (or even all rational beings) are impossible, so such differences could never be found to obtain in fact, an argument that places a priori limits on what empirical inquiry could discover and on what versions of descriptive relativism could be true. Second, claims about actual differences between groups play a central role in some arguments for normative relativism (for example, arguments for normative ethical relativism often begin with claims that different groups in fact have different moral codes or ideals). Finally, the anthropologist's descriptive account of relativism helps to separate the fixed aspects of human nature from those that can vary, and so a descriptive claim that some important aspect of experience or thought does (or does not) vary across groups of human beings tells us something important about human nature and the human condition.
Normative relativism concerns normative orevaluative claims that modes of thought, standards of reasoning, or the like are only right or wrong relative to a framework. 'Normative' is meant in a general sense, applying to a wide range of views; in the case of beliefs, for example, normative correctness equals truth. This does not mean, of course, that framework-relative correctness or truth is always clear, the first challenge being to explain what it amounts to in any given case (e.g., with respect to concepts, truth, epistemic norms). Normative relativism (say, in regard to normative ethical relativism) therefore implies that things (say, ethical claims) are not simply true in themselves, but only havetruth values relative to broader frameworks (say, moral codes). (Many normative ethical relativist arguments run from premises about ethics to conclusions that assert the relativity of truth values, bypassing general claims about the nature of truth, but it is often more illuminating to consider the type of relativism under question directly.)[12]
In Englishcommon law, two (perhaps three) separate standards of proof are recognized:
Relationism is the theory that there are only relations between individual entities, and no intrinsicproperties. Despite the similarity in name, it is held by some to be a position distinct from relativism—for instance, because "statements about relational properties [...] assert an absolute truth about things in the world".[14]On the other hand, others wish to equate relativism, relationism and evenrelativity, which is a precise theory of relationships between physical objects:[15] Nevertheless, "This confluence of relativity theory with relativism became a strong contributing factor in the increasing prominence of relativism".[16]
Whereas previous investigations of science only sought sociological or psychological explanations of failed scientific theories or pathological science, the 'strong programme' is more relativistic, assessing scientific truth and falsehood equally in a historic and cultural context.
A common argument[17][18][19] against relativism suggests that it inherentlyrefutes itself: the statement "all is relative" classes either as a relative statement or as an absolute one. If it is relative, then this statement does not rule out absolutes. If the statement isabsolute, on the other hand, then it provides an example of an absolute statement, proving that not all truths are relative. However, this argument against relativism only applies to relativism that positions truth as relative–i.e. epistemological/truth-value relativism. More specifically, it is only extreme forms of epistemological relativism that can come in for this criticism as there are many epistemological relativists[who?] who posit that some aspects of what is regarded as factually "true" are not universal, yet still accept that other universal truths exist (e.g.gas laws or moral laws).
Another argument against relativism posits the existence ofnatural law. Simply put, the physical universe works under basic principles: the "Laws of Nature". Some contend that a natural moral law may also exist, for example as argued by,Immanuel Kant inCritique of Practical Reason,Richard Dawkins inThe God Delusion (2006)[20] and addressed byC. S. Lewis inMere Christianity (1952).[21] Dawkins said "I think we face an equal but much more sinister challenge from the left, in the shape of cultural relativism - the view that scientific truth is only one kind of truth and it is not to be especially privileged".[22]PhilosopherHilary Putnam,[23] among others,[24] states that some forms of relativism make it impossible to believe one is in error. If there is no truth beyond an individual'sbelief that something is true, then an individual cannot hold their own beliefs to be false or mistaken. A related criticism is that relativizing truth to individuals destroys the distinction between truth and belief.
Sophists are considered the founding fathers of relativism inWestern philosophy. Elements of relativism emerged among theSophists in the 5th centuryBC. Notably, it wasProtagoras who coined the phrase, "Man is the measure of all things: of things which are, that they are, and of things which are not, that they are not." The thinking of the Sophists is mainly known through their opponent,Plato. In a paraphrase from Plato's dialogueTheaetetus, Protagoras said: "What is true for you is true for you, and what is true for me is true for me."[25][26][27]
Bernard Crick, a British political scientist and advocate of relativism, suggested inIn Defence of Politics (1962) that moral conflict between people is inevitable. He thought that onlyethics can resolve such conflict, and when that occurs in public it results inpolitics. Accordingly, Crick saw the process ofdispute resolution,harms reduction,mediation orpeacemaking as central to all of moral philosophy. He became an important influence onfeminists and later on theGreens.
Philosopher of sciencePaul Feyerabend is often considered to be a relativist, although he denied being one.[28]
Feyerabend argued that modern science suffers from being methodologically monistic (the belief that only a single methodology can producescientific progress).[29] Feyerabend summarises his case inAgainst Method with the phrase "anything goes".[30]
Thomas Kuhn's philosophy of science, as expressed inThe Structure of Scientific Revolutions, is often interpreted as relativistic. He claimed that, as well as progressing steadily and incrementally ("normal science"), science undergoes periodic revolutions or "paradigm shifts", leaving scientists working in different paradigms with difficulty in even communicating. Thus the truth of a claim, or the existence of a posited entity, is relative to the paradigm employed. However, it is not necessary for him to embrace relativism because every paradigm presupposes the prior, building upon itself through history and so on. This leads to there being a fundamental, incremental, and referential structure of development which is not relative but again, fundamental.
But Kuhn rejected the accusation of being a relativist later in his postscript:
Some have argued that one can also read Kuhn's work as essentially positivist in its ontology: the revolutions he posits are epistemological, lurching toward a presumably 'better' understanding of an objective reality through the lens presented by the new paradigm. However, a number of passages inStructure do indeed appear to be distinctly relativist, and to directly challenge the notion of an objective reality and the ability of science to progress towards an ever-greater grasp of it, particularly through the process of paradigm change.
George Lakoff andMark Johnson define relativism inMetaphors We Live By as the rejection of bothsubjectivism andmetaphysical objectivism in order to focus on the relationship between them, i.e. themetaphor by which we relate our current experience to our previous experience. In particular, Lakoff and Johnson characterize "objectivism" as a "straw man", and, to a lesser degree, criticize the views ofKarl Popper,Kant andAristotle.[page needed]
In his bookInvariances,Robert Nozick expresses a complex set of theories about the absolute and the relative. He thinks the absolute/relative distinction should be recast in terms of an invariant/variant distinction, where there are many things a proposition can be invariant with regard to or vary with. He thinks it is coherent for truth to be relative, and speculates that it might vary with time. He thinks necessity is an unobtainable notion, but can be approximated by robust invariance across a variety of conditions—although we can never identify a proposition that is invariant with regard to everything. Finally, he is not particularly warm to one of the most famous forms of relativism,moral relativism, preferring an evolutionary account.
Joseph Margolis advocates a view he calls "robust relativism" and defends it in his booksHistoried Thought, Constructed World, Chapter 4 (California, 1995) andThe Truth about Relativism (Blackwell, 1991). He opens his account by stating that our logics should depend on what we take to be the nature of the sphere to which we wish to apply our logics. Holding that there can be no distinctions which are not "privileged" between thealethic, theontic, and theepistemic, he maintains that amany-valued logic just might be the most apt foraesthetics orhistory since, because in these practices, we are loath to hold to simplebinary logic; and he also holds that many-valued logic is relativistic. (This is perhaps an unusual definition of "relativistic". Compare with his comments on "relationism".) To say that "True" and "False" are mutually exclusive and exhaustive judgements onHamlet, for instance, really does seem absurd. A many-valued logic—with its values "apt", "reasonable", "likely", and so on—seems intuitively more applicable to interpretingHamlet. Where apparent contradictions arise between such interpretations, we might call the interpretations "incongruent", rather than dubbing either of them "false", because using many-valued logic implies that a measured value is a mixture of two extreme possibilities. Using the subset of many-valued logic,fuzzy logic, it can be said that various interpretations can be represented by membership in more than one possible truth set simultaneously. Fuzzy logic is therefore probably the best mathematical structure for understanding "robust relativism" and has been interpreted byBart Kosko as philosophically being related to Zen Buddhism.
It wasAristotle who held that relativism implies that we should, sticking with appearances only, end up contradicting ourselves somewhere if we could apply all attributes to allousiai (beings). Aristotle, however, made non-contradiction dependent upon hisessentialism. If his essentialism is false, then so too is his ground for disallowing relativism. (Subsequent philosophers have found other reasons for supporting the principle of non-contradiction.)[clarification needed]
Beginning withProtagoras and invokingCharles Sanders Peirce, Margolis shows that the historic struggle to discredit relativism is an attempt to impose an unexamined belief in the world's essentially rigid rule-like nature. Plato and Aristotle merely attacked "relationalism"—the doctrine of true for l or true for k, and the like, where l and k are different speakers or different worlds—or something similar (most philosophers would call this position "relativism"). For Margolis, "true" means true; that is, the alethic use of "true" remains untouched. However, in real world contexts, and context is ubiquitous in the real world, we must apply truth values. Here, in epistemic terms, we mighttout court retire "true" as an evaluation and keep "false". The rest of our value-judgements could be graded from "extremely plausible" down to "false". Judgements which on a bivalent logic would be incompatible or contradictory are further seen as "incongruent", although one may well have more weight than the other. In short, relativistic logic is not, or need not be, the bugbear it is often presented to be. It may simply be the best type of logic to apply to certain very uncertain spheres of real experiences in the world (although some sort of logic needs to be applied in order to make that judgement). Those who swear bybivalent logic might simply be the ultimate keepers of the great fear of the flux.[citation needed]
PhilosopherRichard Rorty has a somewhatparadoxical role in the debate over relativism: he is criticized for his relativistic views by many commentators, but has always denied that relativism applies to much anybody, being nothing more than a Platonic scarecrow. Rorty claims, rather, that he is apragmatist, and that to construe pragmatism as relativism is tobeg the question.
Rorty takes adeflationary attitude totruth, believing there is nothing of interest to be said about truth in general, including the contention that it is generally subjective. He also argues that the notion ofwarrant or justification can do most of the work traditionally assigned to the concept of truth, and that justificationis relative; justification is justification to an audience, for Rorty.
InContingency, Irony, and Solidarity he argues that the debate between so-called relativists and so-called objectivists is beside the point because they do not have enough premises in common for either side to prove anything to the other.
In his bookMage Lokaya (My World), 1986,Nalin de Silva criticized the basis of the established western system of knowledge, and its propagation, which he refers as "domination throughout the world".He explained in this book that mind independent reality is impossible and knowledge is not found but constructed. Further he has introduced and developed the concept of "Constructive Relativism" as the basis on which knowledge is constructed relative to the sense organs, culture and the mind completely based onAvidya.[39]
The term "relativism" often comes up in debates overpostmodernism,poststructuralism andphenomenology. Critics of these perspectives often identify advocates with the label "relativism". For example, theSapir–Whorf hypothesis is often considered a relativist view because it posits that linguistic categories and structures shape the way people view the world.Stanley Fish has defended postmodernism and relativism.[40]
These perspectives do not strictly count as relativist in the philosophical sense, because they express agnosticism on the nature of reality and makeepistemological rather thanontological claims. Nevertheless, the term is useful to differentiate them fromrealists who believe that the purpose of philosophy, science, or literary critique is to locate externally true meanings. Important philosophers and theorists such asMichel Foucault,Max Stirner, political movements such aspost-anarchism orpost-Marxism can also be considered as relativist in this sense - though a better term might besocial constructivist.
The spread and popularity of this kind of "soft" relativism varies between academic disciplines. It has wide support inanthropology and has a majority following in cultural studies. It also has advocates in political theory and political science, sociology, andcontinental philosophy (as distinct from Anglo-American analytical philosophy). It has inspired empirical studies of the social construction of meaning such as those associated with labelling theory, which defenders can point to as evidence of the validity of their theories (albeit risking accusations ofperformative contradiction in the process). Advocates of this kind of relativism often also claim that recent developments in the natural sciences, such as Heisenberg'suncertainty principle,quantum mechanics,chaos theory andcomplexity theory show that science is now becoming relativistic. However, many scientists who use these methods continue to identify as realist orpost-positivist, and some sharply criticize the association.[41][42]
Madhyamaka Buddhism, which forms the basis for manyMahayana Buddhist schools and which was founded byNāgārjuna.[43] Nāgārjuna taught the idea of relativity. In the Ratnāvalī, he gives the example that shortness exists only in relation to the idea of length. The determination of a thing or object is only possible in relation to other things or objects, especially by way of contrast. He held that the relationship between the ideas of "short" and "long" is not due to intrinsic nature (svabhāva). This idea is also found in the Pali Nikāyas and Chinese Āgamas, in which the idea of relativity is expressed similarly: "That which is the element of light ... is seen to exist on account of [in relation to] darkness; that which is the element of good is seen to exist on account of bad; that which is the element of space is seen to exist on account of form."[44]
Madhyamaka Buddhism discerns two levels of truth: relative and ultimate. Thetwo truths doctrine states that there areRelative or conventional, common-sense truth, which describes our daily experience of a concrete world, andUltimate truth, which describes the ultimate reality assunyata, empty of concrete and inherent characteristics. Conventional truth may be understood, in contrast, as "obscurative truth" or "that which obscures the true nature". It is constituted by the appearances of mistaken awareness. Conventional truth would be the appearance that includes a duality of apprehender and apprehended, and objects perceived within that. Ultimate truth is the phenomenal world free from the duality of apprehender and apprehended.[45]
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TheCatholic Church, especially underJohn Paul II andPope Benedict XVI, has identified relativism as one of the most significant problems for faith and morals today.[46]
According to the Church and to some theologians,[who?] relativism, as a denial of absolute truth, leads to moral license and a denial of the possibility ofsin and ofGod. Whether moral or epistemological, relativism constitutes a denial of the capacity of the human mind and reason to arrive at truth. Truth, according to Catholic theologians and philosophers (following Aristotle) consists ofadequatio rei et intellectus, thecorrespondence of the mind and reality. Another way of putting it states that themind has the same form as reality. This means when the form of the computer in front of someone (the type, color, shape, capacity, etc.) is also the form that is in their mind, then what they know is true because their mind corresponds to objective reality.
The denial of an absolute reference, of anaxis mundi, denies God, who equates to Absolute Truth, according to these Christian theologians. They link relativism tosecularism, an obstruction of religion inhuman life.
Pope Leo XIII (1810–1903) was the first known Pope to use the word "relativism", in his encyclicalHumanum genus (1884). Leo condemnedFreemasonry and claimed that its philosophical and political system was largely based on relativism.[47]
John Paul II wrote inVeritatis Splendor
InEvangelium Vitae (The Gospel of Life), he says:
In April 2005, in his homily during Mass prior to the conclave which would elect him asPope, thenCardinal Joseph Ratzinger talked about the world "moving towards a dictatorship of relativism":
On June 6, 2005, Pope Benedict XVI told educators:
Then during theWorld Youth Day in August 2005, he also traced to relativism the problems produced by the communist and sexual revolutions, and provided a counter-counter argument.[50]
Pope Francis refers inEvangelii gaudium to two forms of relativism, "doctrinal relativism" and a "practical relativism" typical of "our age".[51] The latter is allied to "widespread indifference" to systems of belief.[52]
Mahavira (599-527 BC), the 24thTirthankara ofJainism, developed a philosophy known asAnekantavada. John Koller describesanekāntavāda as "epistemological respect for view of others" about the nature of existence, whether it is "inherently enduring or constantly changing", but "not relativism; it does not mean conceding that all arguments and all views are equal".[53]
InSikhism theGurus (spiritual teachers) have propagated the message of "many paths" leading to theone God and ultimatesalvation for all souls who tread on the path ofrighteousness. They have supported the view that proponents of all faiths can, by doing good and virtuous deeds and by remembering theLord, certainly achieve salvation. The students of the Sikh faith are told to accept all leading faiths as possible vehicles for attaining spiritual enlightenment provided the faithful study, ponder and practice the teachings of their prophets and leaders. The holy book of theSikhs called theSri Guru Granth Sahib says: "Do not say that the Vedas, the Bible and the Koran are false. Those who do not contemplate them are false."Guru Granth Sahib page 1350;[54] later stating: "The seconds, minutes, and hours, days, weeks and months, and the various seasons originate from the one Sun; O nanak, in just the same way, the many forms originate from the Creator."Guru Granth Sahib page 12,13.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)...methodological relativism - impartial assessment of how knowledge develops - is the key idea for sociology of scientific knowledge...
What is true for you is true for you.
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