ON RELATIVISM IN CONSTRUCTIVIST PSYCHOLOGY

Many scholars criticize constructivist approaches to psychology for culminating in a nihilistic relativism. This article reviews the problem of relativism within personal construct psychology and social constructionism. It argues that labeling constructivist approaches to psychology as essentially relativist or nonrelativist simplifies the debate by assigning indisputable characteristics to a family of theories. Both relativist and nonrelativist interpretations of personal constructivism and social constructionism are presented in suggesting that the current terms of the relativism debate often hinder constructivists, who are forced to defend themselves against charges of relativism using objectivist terminology. Some common arguments about the advantages and disadvantages of constructivist relativism are outlined and discussed. Further, the implications of relativism for constructivist ethics and action are contemplated, with particular attention paid to the roles of commitment and hermeneutic understanding. The article concludes that, while constructivist psychologists may not agree on whether to endorse or reject relativism, in order to maintain the viability of the constructivist viewpoint, they need to be able to formulate thoughtful responses to those accusing them of relativism.     

Narcissism in the Epistemological Pit

For some people, the move from dualistic to relativistic epistemological thought is accompanied by significant psychological distress. Although there are several possible sources of psychological difficulty in stage transition, we argue that long-standing deficits in object relations can predispose a person to clinical crisis during particular life phase and cognitive stage transitions. Specifically, a person is likely to experience clinical crisis during a particular life phase or stage transition if that developmental advance requires abandoning strategies that have been used to shore up faulty self and object representations. The life phase move from adolescence to adulthood and the cognitive stage shift from dualistic to relativistic thought often pose particular difficulty for persons with a narcissistic personality organization. The epistemological move to relativism can be particularly traumatic when adolescents have cathected their own intellectual products (ideas, ideologies) as idealized self-objects. A case study is presented to illustrate the clinical crisis that can be precipitated by the narcissistic adolescent's loss of intrapsychic supports in the move to adulthood and to committed relativism.     

PRAGMATISM,CONSTRUCTIVISM, AND ETHICS

Stojnov (1996) has argued that personal construct psychology furnishes us with a universalist, as opposed to a relativist, ethics. This is a universalism of form rather than content of construing: we have a "personal responsibility of knowledge". The author critiques Stojnov's view, arguing that the Sociality Corollary does indeed provide an ethical basis for Kelly's thought. However, he contends that the construct universalism/relativism is of limited value, and that the apparent relativism in constructivism provides a valuable guide to moral construing. It is argued that the certainty that comes from moral absolutism readily leads not to moral action, but to moralism. The foundationlessness of constructivism provides a valuable counterbalance to this moralism.     

Relativism and Two Kinds of Branching Time

This essay examines the case for relativism about future contingents in light of a distinction between two ways of interpreting the ‘branching time’ framework. The first step of the relativist argument is to argue for the ‘Non-Determination Thesis’, the view that there is no unique actual future. The second step is to argue from the Non-Determination Thesis to relativism. I show that first step of this argument fails. But despite that result, the second step is still of interest, because one might hold the Non-Determination Thesis on alternative grounds. I then argue that whether the second step of the argument succeeds depends on how the branches in question are interpreted. If the branches are ersatz possible worlds, then the argument for relativism might go through. But if the branches are concrete parts of a ‘branching multiverse’, then the argument for relativism turns out to make implausible assumptions about the nature of personal identity over time.     

Muhammad in Christian and Jewish apocalyptic expectations

After the destruction of the Temple by the Romans, Jews continued to look for the coming of the Messiah and the re‐establishment of the kingdom. In this they differed sharply from Christians, for whom the Messiah had already come. The rise of Islam and the Muslim defeat of the Roman‐Byzantine empire was interpreted by some Jews as a sign of the coming of the Messiah. Some of the earliest Christian writings to mention Islam were produced as part of the ongoing Jewish‐Christian polemic, and only with time does the emphasis move into a Christian‐Muslim polemic.     

Prudence and Person-Stages

Persons care about their future selves. They reason about their future selves’ interests; they plan for their future selves’ happiness and they worry about their future selves’ suffering. This paper is interested in the interplay between diachronic prudential reason and certain accounts of the metaphysics of personal identity that fall under the broad umbrella ‘conventionalist’. Some conventionalists conclude that under certain conditions there are intractable decisions for there is no fact of the matter regarding whether a person-stage ought (prudentially) to φ. This paper suggests otherwise. These decisions are not intractable if we allow that it is sometimes rational for a person-stage to discount the utility of certain future person-stages. The paper then goes on to explore an alternative position that conventionalists might occupy which does not involve any such discounting: prudential relativism. According to prudential relativism, it is impossible to offer a single, correct, answer to the question: should person-stage, P, φ at t? For according to prudential relativism there is no stage-independent stance from which to evaluate whether a person-stage ought to φ. Yet it is not, for all that, intractable, from P’s perspective, whether or not to φ.     

Why a hermeneutical philosophy of the natural sciences?

Why a hermeneutical philosophy of the natural sciences? It is necessary to address the philosophic crisis of realism vs relativism in the natural sciences. This crisis is seen as a part of the cultural crisis that Husserl and Heidegger identified and attributed to the hegemonic role of theoretical and calculative thought in Western societies. The role of theory is addressed using the hermeneutical circle to probe the origin of theoretic meaning in scientific cultural praxes. This is studied in Galileo's discovery of the phases of Venus; the practice of measurement; the different theories and practices of space perception; the historicality and temporality of scientific research communities which ground paradigm change; and the process of discovery. The paper draws particularly from the work of Heidegger. Though envisaging all science and scholarship, the highlighted theme is research in the natural sciences.     

Ethical Antecedents of Cheating Intentions: Evidence of Mediation

Although the pedagogy literature indicates significant relationships between cheating intentions and both personal and situational factors, no published research has examined the joint effect of personal moral philosophy and perceived moral intensity components on students’ cheating intentions. Hence, a structural equation model that relates magnitude of consequences, relativism, and idealism to willingness to cheat, is developed and tested. Using data from undergraduate business students, the empirical results provide insight into these relationships and evidence of mediation for magnitude of consequences on idealism and students’ cheating intentions. Implications for educators are offered.     

Can Ethical Ideologies Predict Prejudice?

Idealism and relativism were designed to assess different ethical ideological views. Their relation with attitudes toward a variety of outgroups has not been previously studied. Understanding how concerns over ethical principles and consequences are related to prejudiced attitudes could provide some insight into these constructs and into the nature of prejudice. In two studies totaling 311 participants, participants completed measures on ethical ideologies, right-wing authoritarianism, and attitudes toward various outgroups. The differential predictive validities of ethical ideologies, in comparison to right-wing authoritarianism, on prejudicial attitudes toward dangerous, derogated, and dissident outgroup members were examined. We found that both idealism and relativism contributed to predicting attitudes regarding outgroup members, over and above right-wing authoritarianism. As such, people’s personal moral standards and code of conduct for dealing with interpersonal problems and transgressions can partly explain their negative attitudes toward outgroup members. More research is required to determine the unique influence of ethical ideologies over other constructs previously shown to predict prejudice.     

White Jesus and Antisemitism: Toward an Antiracist and Decolonial Christology

This article argues that traditional Christology is intimately bound up with a triumphalist agenda that denies Jesus’ Jewishness and is structurally antisemitic. Taking an antiracist stance, the article argues that systemic rethinking of Christianity’s theological resources is needed, which must be anti-antisemitic and antiracist. This involves reconfiguring how we take on board Jesus’ Jewishness in a post-Holocaust context and recognizing Jesus as a Jewish prophet. From this, it is tentatively suggested that rethinking the role of the Messiah involves understanding a Levinasian Messiah who does not come, but rather calls upon us to act in a Messianic role before the Other as an ethical imperative.     

Another ‘Second Coming’? The Jewish Community at Odds Over a New Form of Lubavitch Messianism

Book reviewed in this article
David Berger, The Rebbe, The Messiah and the Scandal of Orthodox Indifference     

The evidence for relativism

The aim of this paper is to examine the kind of evidence that might be adduced in support of relativist semantics of a kind that have recently been proposed for predicates of personal taste, for epistemic modals, for knowledge attributions and for other cases. I shall concentrate on the case of taste predicates, but what I have to say is easily transposed to the other cases just mentioned. I shall begin by considering in general the question of what kind of evidence can be offered in favour of some semantic theory or framework of semantic theorizing. In other words, I shall begin with the difficult question of the empirical significance of semantic theorizing. In Sect. 2, I outline a relativist semantic theory, and in Sect. 3, I review four types of evidence that might be offered in favour of a relativistic framework. I show that the evidence is not conclusive because a sophisticated form of contextualism (or indexical relativism) can stand up to the evidence. However, the evidence can be taken to support the view that either relativism or the sophisticated form of contextualism is correct.     

Do cultural values predict individuals' moral attitudes? A cross‐cultural multilevel approach

This study examined whether cultural values predict individuals' moral attitudes. The main objective was to shed light on the moral universalism and relativism debate by showing that the answer depends on the moral issues studied. Using items from the Morally Debatable Behaviours Scale (MDBS) fielded in the World Value Survey (WVS), we found that moral issues can be differentiated cross‐culturally into attitudes towards (1) dishonest–illegal and (2) personal–sexual issues. Drawing upon evolutionary and cultural theories, we expected that the former moral domain is not related to cultural values, whereas the latter is influenced by cultural conceptions of the self (i.e. independent versus interdependent selves). We used multilevel modelling with Schwartz' cultural values as the independent variables and the two moral domains as assessed through the MDBS as dependent variables to test our hypothesis. After controlling for individual‐level differences in moral attitudes as well as the socio‐economic development of countries, our findings confirmed that attitudes towards dishonest–illegal issues were not related to cultural values whereas attitudes towards personal–sexual issues were predicted by the Autonomy–Embeddedness value dimension. We conclude that our study sheds not only light on the universalism and relativism debate, but also on the discriminant validity of cultural values. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Relativism of Distance - a Step in the Naturalization of Meta-Ethics

Bernard Williams proposed his relativism of distance based on the recognition “that others are at varying distances from us”. Recent work in moral psychology and experimental philosophy highlights the prevalence of folk relativism in relation to spatial and temporal distance. However, Williams’ relativism of distance as well as recent empirical findings which seem to support some of Williams’ main ideas on this issue have received scant attention. In this article, we would like to focus on the phenomenon of moral relativism regarding spatiotemporal distance as an entry point to the nature of folk moral relativism and the methodology of meta-ethics. To do so, we first introduce Williams’ relativism of distance. Then we compare Williams’ approach on this matter to recent experimental approaches on folk relativism. On this score the main result is that Williams’ proposal is consistent with several well-established insights on the experimental study of folk relativism. Williams’ relativism of distance is not only empirically plausible, but it is also of relevance for shaping the methodology of an empirically informed meta-ethics. We close this paper by stressing this methodological contribution.     

The Inescapability of Ethics and the Impossibility of “Anything Goes”: A Constructivist Model of Ethical Meaning Making

A constructivist model of ethical meaning making is developed. The effort begins by distinguishing three versions of constructivist theory—personal construct psychology, radical constructivism, and social constructionism. Then, the following four premises of an integrated constructivist perspective are presented: (a) People are informationally closed systems, (b) people are active meaning makers, (c) people are social beings, and (d) people construe epistemologically and ontologically. These premises are used to examine and counter criticisms that portray constructivism as endorsing an “anything goes” relativism. This clears a space for the development of a constructivist model of ethical meaning making, outlined in the final section of the article. This model is rooted in personal construct psychology, but is also influenced by radical constructivism and social constructionism.     

Judgmental relativism as a validity threat to standardized psychiatric rating scales

Judgemental relativism is a threat to the replicability and validity of measures of client behavior from direct rating scales whenever raters are exposed to different levels of client functioning since the internal standards, or anchor points, used to judge dimensional continua may vary on the basis of prior experience. Traditional interrater reliability indexes fail to identify such effects. The influence of judgmental relativism on summated ratings from the Nurses Observational Scale for Inpatient Evaluation (NOSIE-30) for 1040 adult mentally ill clients was examined with clinical staff raters from 24 treatment units in which the Time-Sample Behavioral Checklist (TSBC) provided full-week objective measures of actual client functioning via hourly direct observational coding (DOC). Regression analyses found that the same level of objective performance received higher or lower ratings across treatment units dependent on the raters'exposure to client groups that differed in level of functioning. Analyses of rating errors found that clients with better levels of functioning relative to others within treatment units were rated even higher than performance warranted. The operation of halo and contrast effects is explored and guidelines are provided for determining when judgmental relativism may produce or nullify significant differences. DOC assessments should be used instead of retrospective ratings to support most decisions in residential settings. Specific recommendations for the application of rating scales and improving data quality are provided.This study was the basis of a master's thesis at the University of Houston by Betty E. Rich under the direction of Gordon L. Paul and Marco J. Mariotto. Richard M. Rozelle, to whom appreciation is expressed for helpful comments, served on the examination committee. This study was partially supported by grants to Gordon L. Paul from the National Institute of Mental Health, Public Health Service (MH-15353; MH-25464); the Illinois Department of Mental Health and Developmental Disabilities; the Joyce Foundation; the MacArthur Foundation; the Owsley Foundation; the Cullen Foundation; and the Center for Public Policy, University of Houston.     

Context,content, and relativism

This paper argues against relativism, focusing on relativism based on the semantics of predicates of personal taste. It presents and defends a contextualist semantics for these predicates, derived from current work on gradable adjectives. It then considers metasemantic questions about the kinds of contextual parameters this semantics requires. It argues they are not metasemantically different from those in other gradable adjectives, and that contextual parameters of this sort are widespread in natural language. Furthermore, this paper shows that if such parameters are rejected, it leads to an unacceptably rampant form of relativism, that relativizes truth to an open-ended list of parameters.

有关西方心理学分裂与整合问题的再思考

在心理学的分裂与整合问题上 ,西方心理学家一直争论不休。该文认为 ,心理学的确存在着分裂的危机 ,因为心理学至今没有一个共同的基础和出发点 ,且心理学的分化导致了心理学机构解体的危机。但是心理学内部各种矛盾冲突的观点是可比的 ,可公约的 ,因此整合是有希望的。在迈向整合的过程中 ,主要存在着两个障碍 ,其一是客观主义 ,客观主义力主以自然科学为楷模 ,通过严格客观方法的应用 ,实现心理学的大一统。客观主义由于压抑了不同的声音 ,阻碍了对话 ,给心理学的整合造成障碍。其二是相对主义 ,相对主义在“怎么都行”原则的指导下 ,认为任何一种理论观点和思想方法相对于它所产生的背景都是正确的、合理的 ,没有任何外在于话语群体的标准作为最终的尺度。相对主义的观点导致了理论观点和思想方法的无原则多元化 ,使得西方心理学分裂危机进一步加深。该文主张心理学的整合应该是在一个共同基础上的多元化的整合 ,即允许多元化和多样性成分的存在 ,但不同成分之间是互补的 ,而不是冲突的