Relativism Ethics

Relativism is the view that the meaning and value of humanbeliefs and behaviors have no absolute reference. Relativists claim that humans understand and evaluate beliefs and behaviors only in terms of, for example, their historicaland culturalcontext.

Philosophersidentify many different kinds of relativism depending upon what allegedly depends on something and what something depends on. The term is often used for truthrelativism - the doctrine that there is no absolute truth(i.e. whether a belief is true or not depends on the believer).

Advocates of relativism

The concept of relativism has importance both for philosophersand for anthropologists, although in different ways. Philosophers explore how beliefs might or might not in fact depend for their truth upon such items as language, conceptual scheme, culture, and so forth; with ethical relativismfurnishing just one example. Anthropologists, on the other hand, occupy themselves with describing actual human behavior. For them, relativism refers to a methodologicalstance, in which the researcher suspends (or brackets) his or her own cultural biases while attempting to understand beliefs and behaviors in their local contexts. This has become known as methodological relativism, and is specifically concerned with avoiding ethnocentrism, or applying one's cultural standards to the assessment of other cultures.

The combination of both approaches results in what is known as descriptive relativism, which claims that different cultures have different views of morality, which cannot be unified under one general conception of morality. Thus, one might want to claim that all cultures, for example, prohibit the killing of innocents. The descriptive relativist reply to this is that while this might be true at a general level, different cultures have different understandings of what "innocent" means, and so are still culturally relative.

One argument for relativism is that our own cognitive biasprevents us from observing something objectively with our own senses, and notational biaswill apply to whatever allegedly can be measured without using our senses. In addition, we have a culture biasshared with other trusted observers, which cannot be eliminated. A counterargument to this is that subjective certainty and concrete objects and causes are part of our everyday life, and that there is no great value in discarding such useful ideas as isomorphism, objectivityand a final truth.

Another important advocate of relativism, Bernard Crick, a British political scientist, wrote the book In Defence of Politics (first published in 1962), suggesting the inevitability of moral conflict between people. Crick stated that only ethicscould resolve such conflict, and when that occurred in public it resulted in politics. Accordingly, Crick saw the process of dispute resolution, harms reduction, mediationor peacemakingas central to all of moral philosophy. He became an important influence on the feministsand later on the Greens.

George Lakoffand Mark Johnsondefine relativism in their book Metaphors We Live By as the rejection of both subjectivismand metaphysical objectivismin order to focus on the relationship between them, i.e. the metaphorby which we relate our current experience to our previous experience. In particular, they characterize "objectivism" as a "straw man", and, to a lesser degree, criticize the views of Karl Popper, Kantand Aristotle.

Postmodern relativism

The term "relativism" often comes up in debates over postmodernismand phenomenology. Advocates of these perspectives are often identified by critics with the label relativism. For example, the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesisis often considered a relativist view because it posits that cultural, linguistic and symbolic beliefs shape the way people view the world. Similarly, deconstructionis often termed a relativist perspective because of the ways it locates the meaning of a text in its appropriation and reading, implying that there is no "true" reading of a text and no text apart from its reading. Claims by literary critic Stanley Fishare also often discussed as "relativist".

These perspectives are not strictly relativist in the philosophical sense, because they are agnostic on the nature of reality and their claims are epistemological rather than ontological. Nevertheless, the term is useful to differentiate them from realistswho believe that the purpose of philosophy, science, or literary critique is to locate externally true meanings. Important philosophers and theorists such as Michel Foucault, Max Stirnerand Friedrich Nietzsche, political movements such as post-anarchismor post-left anarchycan also be considered as relativist in this sense - though a better term might be social constructivist.

The spread and popularity of this kind of "soft" relativism varies between academic disciplines. It is widely supported in anthropologyand has a majority following in cultural studies. It also has advocates in political theory and political science, sociology, and continental 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 of performative contradictionin the process). Advocates of this kind of relativism often also claim that recent developments in the natural sciences, such as Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, quantum mechanics, Thomas Kuhn's work on paradigms, chaos theoryand complexity theoryshow that science is now becoming relativistic. However, many scientists who use these methods continue to identify as realist or post-positivist.

Arguments against relativism

A common argument against relativism suggests that it is inherently contradictory or self-refuting or self-stultifying: the statement "all is relative" is either a relative statement or an absolute one. If it is relative, then this statement does not rule out absolutes. If the statement is absolute, 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 is only applied to relativism that posits truth as relative - i.e. epistemological/truth-value relativism. More specifically, it is only strong forms of epistemological relativism that can come in for this criticism as there are many epistemological relativists who posit that some aspects of what is regarded as "true" are not universal, yet still accept that other universal truths exist (e.g. gas laws).

Another strong argument against relativism is that of Natural Law. Simply put, the universe works under basic principles. (the Laws of Nature; ex: Math, Laws of Science, and maybe Moral Law) Thus relativism goes against the grain of world as we know it throughout science, most religious and social traditions, and logic.

A third argument would be that of the effects of relativism. As an idea, the only social value it has is making everyone equal by taking away any rules. (anarchy; complete social darwinism) As an individual, it basically allows you to do as you please. Many relavists would add a corollary about harming others, but these kinds of ideas are negated by relativism itself. If I can believe it's wrong for me to harm others, I can also believe it's right no matter what the circumstances are. It makes no difference in this idealogical scheme.

Lastly, there's the problem of negation. If everyone with differing opinions is right, then no one is. Thus instead of saying "all beliefs (ideas, truths, etc.) are equally valid," one might just as well say "all beliefs are equally worthless." (see article on Doublethink)

Counter-arguments

However such a contradiction is irrelevant as it constitutes arguing from the premise. Once you have said if the X is absolute you have presupposed relativism is false. And one cannot prove a statement using that statement as a premise. There is a contradiction, but the contradiction is between relativism and the presuppositions of absoluteness in the ordinary logic used. Nothing has been proven wrong and nothing has been proven in and of itself, only the known incompatibility has been restated inefficiently.

Another counter-argument uses Bertrand Russell's Paradox, which refers to the "List of all lists that do not contain themselves". This paradox has been famously debated by Kurt Gödel, Jorge Luis Borges, and Jean Baudrillard.

A very different approach is to explicate the rhetorical production of supposedly 'bottom line' arguments against relativism. Edwards et al?s influential and controversial Death and Furniture paper takes this line in its staunch defence of relativism.

A strong epistemological relativist could theoretically argue that it does not matter that his theory is only relative according to itself. As long as it is "true" according to a relative framework, then it is just as true as any apparently "absolute" truth that a realist would argue is true. The dispute lies in the distinction between whether the framework is relative or absolute, but if a realist could be persuaded it was relative, then the relativist theory could exist logically within that framework, albeit accepting that its "truth" is relative. A strong epistemological relativist must remove his own notions of universal truth if he is to embrace his theory fully, he must accept some form of truth to validate his theory logically, and this truth, by definition, must be relative. In other frameworks his theory might be regarded as untrue, and so the theory cannot exist here. Looked at from this perspective, with all notions and premises of universal truth removed, the notion of strong epistemological relativism is logically valid.

The Catholic Church and relativism

The Catholic Churchfor some time now, especially with Pope Benedict XVI, head of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faithwhen he was a cardinal, has identified relativism as one of the problems of today. [1]

According to the Church and some philosophers, relativism, as a denial of absolute truth, leads to moral license and a denial of the possibility of sin and of God.

Relativism, they say, is a denial of the capacity of our mind and reason to arrive at truth. Truth, according to Catholic theologians and philosophers, following Aristotle and Plato, is adequatio rei et intellectus, the correspondenceof the mind and reality. Another way of putting it is: the mind having the same form as reality. This means when the form of the computer in front of me (the type, color, shape, capacity, etc.) is also the form that is in my mind, then what I know is true because my mind corresponds to objective reality.

Relativism, according to the Catholic and Aristotelian viewpoint, violates the philosophical principle of non-contradiction, a most fundamental principle of all thinking without which there is no way to understand each other nor any possibility of science.

The denial of an absolute reference is a denial of God, who is Absolute Truth, according to these Christian philosophers. Thus, they say, relativism is linked to secularism, an obstruction of God in human life.

John Paul II

John Paul IIin Veritatis Splendor (the Beauty of the Truth) stressed the dependence of man on God and his law ("Without the Creator, the creature disappears") and the "dependence of freedom on the truth". He warned that man "giving himself over to relativism and skepticism, goes off in search of an illusory freedom apart from truth itself".

Benedict XVI

Benedict XVI in his address to the cardinals during the pre-conclave Mass which would elect him as Pope, a key public address to the top leaders of the Church, talked about the world "moving towards a dictatorship of relativism." (Italics added)

Then during the World Youth Day, he also traced to relativism the problems produced by the communist and sexual revolutions, and provides a counter-counter argument.

References

Relativism

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