Relativism: So What? (Part Four)
Here are six ideas that I associate with "relativism." I agree with (1) through (4), disagree with (5) and (6), but I think that (5) and (6) are where all the action is. If no one associated (5) and (6) with (1) through (4), there'd be no hullabaloo. (A better way of putting this might be that people link (5) and (6) to (1) through (4) so that they can have their hullabaloo.) I'm just sketching the ideas, might give each its own post later or elaborate here in the comments.
(1) "Independence" is a relative term. "Principal McVicker, which one of these two students is the smartest?" "Well, Butt-head's smarter than Beavis, but 'smart' is a relative term." This is where "relative" actually appears in everyday speech. The idea is that a pair of terms, such as "smart"-"stupid," is comparative, like "soft"-"loud" or "cold"-"hot," rather than being either/or, like an on-off switch. So a cold star is 2,000 degrees above zero and a high-temperature superconductor is a couple hundred degrees below zero, the comparison being to other stars and other superconductors. The gorilla is a smart animal, but if I were to call you a gorilla you'd probably take it as an insult. For our purposes, the relevant pair is "independent"-"dependent" (and similar terms such as "autonomous"). Related pairs would include "cause"-"effect," "reality"-"appearance," "intrinsic"-"extrinsic," "ground"-"that which is being grounded." A cause is supposed to be independent of its effects in that the effects don't cause the cause, reality causes appearances but appearances don't cause reality, your reasons or justifications or grounds for believing something are supposed to cause the belief not be created by the belief, and so on. To say that these are relative terms is to say that a cause can be somewhat dependent on its effect, while still being considered independent for practical purposes - just how "dependent" it can be while still being "independent" depends on the circumstances and whatever you're using for comparison. So a ground can be somewhat dependent on what it grounds. (Obviously, the future can't cause the past; I'm either/or on that one. So in the temporal sense causes are independent of their effects, and hopes and plans and goals are included within causes, since the actual outcome doesn't cause those hopes, plans, goals. But what's at issue here isn't temporal cause and effect but the supposed ontological, where one class of thing is supposed to cause another; e.g., facts causing the conclusions we draw from them, logic and axioms causing our logical deductions, our reasons causing our actions, our beliefs underlying our judgments, and so forth.)
(2) Difference, or contrast. This is the idea that for something to be meaningful it has to make a difference: i.e., for any phenomenon (word, statement, object, event, etc.) to be meaningful there has to be a difference between its existing (or occurring) and its not existing (or occurring) - which makes its significance dependent on what it is not, a matter of its contrasting with other words, statements, objects, and events, which in turn contrast with yet other words, statements, objects, and events, and so on. This connects to (1) in that it suggests that absolute independence is not really conceivable.
(3) Contextualism. Wittgenstein: "'I set the brake up by connecting up rod and lever.' --Yes, given the whole of the rest of the mechanism. Only in conjunction with that is it a brake-lever, and separated from its support it is not even a lever; it may be anything, or nothing." So what something means in one sentence, conversation, circumstance, social practice, culture, etc. isn't necessarily what it means in other sentences, conversations, circumstances, social practices, cultures, etc. This links up to (1) and (2) in that the axioms or first principles of a social practice are still dependent on the practice as a whole.
(4) "Incommensurability." The term is Kuhn's and Feyerabend's, but I'm putting it in quotation marks because it's somewhat misleading. The idea isn't that things can't be compared to one another but just that there isn't one transcendent standard that works for everything. If people make radically different assumptions in one discourse from those they make in another, then they'll use crucial words differently and they'll come up with different facts, hence they can't simply look at the facts to see who is right. An innocuous example would be that a tomato is a "vegetable" in cookery but a "fruit" in botany. A potent one would be the word "motion" as used differently by Aristotle and Newton. I talked about this a lot on the Kuhn thread, which is one of the best things I've ever written, if you want to take a look. For Aristotle, motion is a change in state leading to a particular end result, e.g., rocks moving to their place in the center of the universe, fire moving towards the periphery, an acorn growing into a tree, a man returning from sickness to health. For Newton, motion is just an object's change in position, and there doesn't need to be an end result or stopping point but rather, the object stays in motion until acted on by an outside force. If an Aristotelian and a Newtonian observe a man regaining his health, there's no third thing - "the facts," "reality" - for them to look at to see who is right, since the Aristotelian has defined what he's seeing as motion, and the Newtonian has defined motion otherwise. This doesn't mean that you can't compare the two ideas to see which is better. E.g., Newton created laws that predicted planetary motions with great accuracy and that, more convincingly than Aristotle, explained why spears didn't fall to the ground the moment they left your hand, etc. Note that botany and cookery aren't in direct competition with each other, so it's nonsensical to argue over which one is right. Whereas between Aristotle and Newton you have to choose; then, between Newton and Einstein. Also, there are fundamental disagreements where anyone who cares should have an opinion but the disagreements shouldn't get resolved (e.g., whether the Clash are real punks, whether Jay-Z is too pop to be real hip-hop, etc.). [I don't mean to imply here that I understand or have even read Aristotle's concept of motion.]
(5) Skepticism. "Skepticism" is a broad term ranging in meaning from "you should test your ideas" to "there is no way to tell that you are not a brain in a jar." But the three that are relevant here veer towards "brain in the jar." They are (i) If you are ensconced within one discourse or paradigm or culture you can't understand another one, or anyway you can't know that you understand the other one. (ii) Some fundamental, unquestioned ideas, e.g., the Earth is the center of the universe, have turned out to be false, therefore any idea could potentially be false, any discourse could potentially be displaced by another one, nothing is decided yet, and every conversation is still open. (iii) Recall that idea (2) goes: "for any phenomenon (word, statement, object, event, etc.) to be meaningful there has to be a difference between its existing or occurring and it's not existing or occurring - which makes its significance dependent on what it is not, a matter of its contrasting with other words, statements, objects, and events, which in turn contrast with yet other words, statements, objects, and events, and so on." So if you follow along on these differences/contrasts, you either go around in a circle (things contrasting with other things that contrast with the original things) or you get an infinite regress, hence the meaning of phenomena can never be nailed down, is always open. [I think (i) is stupid on the face of it and that (ii) and (iii) start reasonably and then cheat in their reasoning to get their supposed results.]
(6) Nothing is better than anything else. No one really believes this, that nothing is better than anything else, which is a self-contradictory sentence anyway. But people are willing to believe equivalents, such as no culture is better than any other, all paradigms are equally true, all metanarratives have equal value, one shouldn't privilege one discourse over another, etc. A milder idea would be that you're certainly entitled - and in some instances required - to judge and to choose between competing paradigms, but since the paradigms have some radically different assumptions, your choice is frankly a matter of taste or social preference or a value judgment, and that there's no truly rational way to decide between the paradigms. The logic goes like this: (a) the competing paradigms are equally rational (that is, smart people who work within them are being true to their own terms), and (b) there's no "neutral" ground of facts that can validate one paradigm at the expense of the other, since each paradigm creates its own facts, so (c) there can be no rational ground for saying that one paradigm is better than the other. [For me, the jump from (b) to (c) is terrible, and more to the point, is profoundly nonrelativistic. But if you want to think of relativism as something that's liberating or if you want to think of it as something dangerous, you will take that leap, and you won't notice that you've unconsciously smuggled absolutist assumptions into your idea of "relativism."]
Overall, I'd say that (1) through (3) are true but don't have much consequence, at least don't have much consequence for me; they accurately depict, e.g., how we actually use the words "independent" and "significant," but they seem like platitudes or truisms, not insights; so we need to ask ourselves why - i.e., in what contexts - people like me or Wittgenstein thought the points were worth making, thought they made a difference; (4) is true and consequential, but I think the consequences are practical rather than being a challenge to standard practice; (5) is ridiculous but I understand how it can ensnare smart people; and (6) is even more ridiculous, and I'm astonished that smart people embrace it or impute it to others, but they do, and this needs to be explained. Oh yes, and (5) and (6) are actually at odds with (1) through (4), so we need to ask ourselves what smart people gain by not noticing this.
My hypothesis is that, even among thoughtful people, "relativism" is a stand-in issue (and I'm including within "relativism" the attempts to find social implications for pragmatism or deconstruction). But I'm not wedded to that hypothesis, and I'd expect that ludickid, dubdobdee, byebyepride, piratemoggy, and martinskidmore would want to dispute it.
(1) "Independence" is a relative term. "Principal McVicker, which one of these two students is the smartest?" "Well, Butt-head's smarter than Beavis, but 'smart' is a relative term." This is where "relative" actually appears in everyday speech. The idea is that a pair of terms, such as "smart"-"stupid," is comparative, like "soft"-"loud" or "cold"-"hot," rather than being either/or, like an on-off switch. So a cold star is 2,000 degrees above zero and a high-temperature superconductor is a couple hundred degrees below zero, the comparison being to other stars and other superconductors. The gorilla is a smart animal, but if I were to call you a gorilla you'd probably take it as an insult. For our purposes, the relevant pair is "independent"-"dependent" (and similar terms such as "autonomous"). Related pairs would include "cause"-"effect," "reality"-"appearance," "intrinsic"-"extrinsic," "ground"-"that which is being grounded." A cause is supposed to be independent of its effects in that the effects don't cause the cause, reality causes appearances but appearances don't cause reality, your reasons or justifications or grounds for believing something are supposed to cause the belief not be created by the belief, and so on. To say that these are relative terms is to say that a cause can be somewhat dependent on its effect, while still being considered independent for practical purposes - just how "dependent" it can be while still being "independent" depends on the circumstances and whatever you're using for comparison. So a ground can be somewhat dependent on what it grounds. (Obviously, the future can't cause the past; I'm either/or on that one. So in the temporal sense causes are independent of their effects, and hopes and plans and goals are included within causes, since the actual outcome doesn't cause those hopes, plans, goals. But what's at issue here isn't temporal cause and effect but the supposed ontological, where one class of thing is supposed to cause another; e.g., facts causing the conclusions we draw from them, logic and axioms causing our logical deductions, our reasons causing our actions, our beliefs underlying our judgments, and so forth.)
(2) Difference, or contrast. This is the idea that for something to be meaningful it has to make a difference: i.e., for any phenomenon (word, statement, object, event, etc.) to be meaningful there has to be a difference between its existing (or occurring) and its not existing (or occurring) - which makes its significance dependent on what it is not, a matter of its contrasting with other words, statements, objects, and events, which in turn contrast with yet other words, statements, objects, and events, and so on. This connects to (1) in that it suggests that absolute independence is not really conceivable.
(3) Contextualism. Wittgenstein: "'I set the brake up by connecting up rod and lever.' --Yes, given the whole of the rest of the mechanism. Only in conjunction with that is it a brake-lever, and separated from its support it is not even a lever; it may be anything, or nothing." So what something means in one sentence, conversation, circumstance, social practice, culture, etc. isn't necessarily what it means in other sentences, conversations, circumstances, social practices, cultures, etc. This links up to (1) and (2) in that the axioms or first principles of a social practice are still dependent on the practice as a whole.
(4) "Incommensurability." The term is Kuhn's and Feyerabend's, but I'm putting it in quotation marks because it's somewhat misleading. The idea isn't that things can't be compared to one another but just that there isn't one transcendent standard that works for everything. If people make radically different assumptions in one discourse from those they make in another, then they'll use crucial words differently and they'll come up with different facts, hence they can't simply look at the facts to see who is right. An innocuous example would be that a tomato is a "vegetable" in cookery but a "fruit" in botany. A potent one would be the word "motion" as used differently by Aristotle and Newton. I talked about this a lot on the Kuhn thread, which is one of the best things I've ever written, if you want to take a look. For Aristotle, motion is a change in state leading to a particular end result, e.g., rocks moving to their place in the center of the universe, fire moving towards the periphery, an acorn growing into a tree, a man returning from sickness to health. For Newton, motion is just an object's change in position, and there doesn't need to be an end result or stopping point but rather, the object stays in motion until acted on by an outside force. If an Aristotelian and a Newtonian observe a man regaining his health, there's no third thing - "the facts," "reality" - for them to look at to see who is right, since the Aristotelian has defined what he's seeing as motion, and the Newtonian has defined motion otherwise. This doesn't mean that you can't compare the two ideas to see which is better. E.g., Newton created laws that predicted planetary motions with great accuracy and that, more convincingly than Aristotle, explained why spears didn't fall to the ground the moment they left your hand, etc. Note that botany and cookery aren't in direct competition with each other, so it's nonsensical to argue over which one is right. Whereas between Aristotle and Newton you have to choose; then, between Newton and Einstein. Also, there are fundamental disagreements where anyone who cares should have an opinion but the disagreements shouldn't get resolved (e.g., whether the Clash are real punks, whether Jay-Z is too pop to be real hip-hop, etc.). [I don't mean to imply here that I understand or have even read Aristotle's concept of motion.]
(5) Skepticism. "Skepticism" is a broad term ranging in meaning from "you should test your ideas" to "there is no way to tell that you are not a brain in a jar." But the three that are relevant here veer towards "brain in the jar." They are (i) If you are ensconced within one discourse or paradigm or culture you can't understand another one, or anyway you can't know that you understand the other one. (ii) Some fundamental, unquestioned ideas, e.g., the Earth is the center of the universe, have turned out to be false, therefore any idea could potentially be false, any discourse could potentially be displaced by another one, nothing is decided yet, and every conversation is still open. (iii) Recall that idea (2) goes: "for any phenomenon (word, statement, object, event, etc.) to be meaningful there has to be a difference between its existing or occurring and it's not existing or occurring - which makes its significance dependent on what it is not, a matter of its contrasting with other words, statements, objects, and events, which in turn contrast with yet other words, statements, objects, and events, and so on." So if you follow along on these differences/contrasts, you either go around in a circle (things contrasting with other things that contrast with the original things) or you get an infinite regress, hence the meaning of phenomena can never be nailed down, is always open. [I think (i) is stupid on the face of it and that (ii) and (iii) start reasonably and then cheat in their reasoning to get their supposed results.]
(6) Nothing is better than anything else. No one really believes this, that nothing is better than anything else, which is a self-contradictory sentence anyway. But people are willing to believe equivalents, such as no culture is better than any other, all paradigms are equally true, all metanarratives have equal value, one shouldn't privilege one discourse over another, etc. A milder idea would be that you're certainly entitled - and in some instances required - to judge and to choose between competing paradigms, but since the paradigms have some radically different assumptions, your choice is frankly a matter of taste or social preference or a value judgment, and that there's no truly rational way to decide between the paradigms. The logic goes like this: (a) the competing paradigms are equally rational (that is, smart people who work within them are being true to their own terms), and (b) there's no "neutral" ground of facts that can validate one paradigm at the expense of the other, since each paradigm creates its own facts, so (c) there can be no rational ground for saying that one paradigm is better than the other. [For me, the jump from (b) to (c) is terrible, and more to the point, is profoundly nonrelativistic. But if you want to think of relativism as something that's liberating or if you want to think of it as something dangerous, you will take that leap, and you won't notice that you've unconsciously smuggled absolutist assumptions into your idea of "relativism."]
Overall, I'd say that (1) through (3) are true but don't have much consequence, at least don't have much consequence for me; they accurately depict, e.g., how we actually use the words "independent" and "significant," but they seem like platitudes or truisms, not insights; so we need to ask ourselves why - i.e., in what contexts - people like me or Wittgenstein thought the points were worth making, thought they made a difference; (4) is true and consequential, but I think the consequences are practical rather than being a challenge to standard practice; (5) is ridiculous but I understand how it can ensnare smart people; and (6) is even more ridiculous, and I'm astonished that smart people embrace it or impute it to others, but they do, and this needs to be explained. Oh yes, and (5) and (6) are actually at odds with (1) through (4), so we need to ask ourselves what smart people gain by not noticing this.
My hypothesis is that, even among thoughtful people, "relativism" is a stand-in issue (and I'm including within "relativism" the attempts to find social implications for pragmatism or deconstruction). But I'm not wedded to that hypothesis, and I'd expect that ludickid, dubdobdee, byebyepride, piratemoggy, and martinskidmore would want to dispute it.