Normative Naturalism and Epistemic Relativism

In previous work, I defended Larry Laudan against the criticism that the axiological component of his normative naturalism lacks a naturalistic justification. I argued that this criticism depends on an equivocation over the term ‘naturalism’ and that it begs the question against what we are entitled to include in our concept of nature. In this paper, I generalize that argument and explore its implications for Laudan and other proponents of epistemic naturalism. Here, I argue that a commitment to naturalism in the methods and aims of science inevitably entails a kind of epistemic relativism. However, I argue that this should not be interpreted as a reductio of naturalism, since the admission of contextually based standards and aims of science does not result in quietism when it comes to important questions concerning scientific rationality.     

Quasi-Realism,Sensibility Theory,and Ethical Relativism

Because of a widespread criticism of the Enlightenment sense of reason for its unilateral privileging of unity and its solipsistic conception of the thinking subject, many turn to postmodern difference as a remedy. But an alternative can also be found in a renewed appropriation of the tradition. This essay is an attempt at such an appropriation, through a philosophical analysis of Heraclitus' conception of logos. A new interpretation of Heraclitus is offered, which affirms the equiprimordiality of unity and difference. This view is shown to have implications first of all for the mode of reasoning: thought, in its most genuine sense, cannot be accomplished in isolation but is an essentially joint act. Further, the view has implications for the content or object of thought: the ‘seat’ of intelligibility is not the abstract idea which the mind assimilates to itself but rather the concrete whole, the complex ‘one-many’ structure in the world, in which minds constitutively participate. An attempt is made, at the end of the essay, to show how the convergence of form and content, and the concrete sense of rationality it implies, comes to dramatic expression in Heraclitus' style.     

伦理相对主义辨析

伦理相对主义的基本特征是否认道德普遍性、绝对性、客观性。它的论据主要是文化相对主义所描述的不同民族或同一民族在不同时代所奉行的不同的乃至相反的道德风习。然而 ,这些道德规范的差异 ,只能说明道德具有特殊性、相对性、主观性 ;却不能否认道德具有普遍性、绝对性、客观性。因为一方面 ,这些不同的乃至相反的道德规范所由以推出而为其前提的更高的、最终的道德标准必是完全相同的、绝对的 :保障社会存在发展、增进人的利益 ;另一方面 ,道德的规范虽然都是主观约定、制定的 ,但是 ,这些道德规范的正确性或优良性却是客观的、不依人的意志而转移的。因此 ,道德是特殊性与普遍性、相对性与绝对性、主观性与客观性的统一 :伦理相对主义犯了以偏概全的错误     

Consequences of Ethical Relativism

The aim of this paper is to investigate the temporal content of perceptual experience. I argue for a view according to which we must recognize the existence of perceptions the content of which cannot be spelled out simply by looking at what is the case at an isolated instant. Acts of apprehension can cover a succession of events. Howev er, a subject who has such perceptions can still fall short of having a concept of time. I compare this with arguments which have been put forward to show that a subject who has spatial perceptions can fall short of having a concept of space. In both cases, it is the fact that perception is from a point of view which stands in the way of it constituting an exercise of a concept of how things are objectively. However, I also show that the way in which perception is perspectival takes a different form in each of the two cases.     

西方伦理相对主义的方法论基础

伦理相对主义是西方伦理思想史上的重要思想倾向,它的方法论基础既包括理性主义,也包含非理性主义和反理性主义.伦理相对主义的根本局限在于形而上学的思维方法.     

西方伦理相对主义的层次和类型

伦理相对主义是西方伦理思想史上重要的思想倾向.它具有多个层次和多种类型.其形成原因也非常复杂.西方伦理相对主义在理论思维上的经验教训能够促进我们的伦理学研究,它在实践上既具有消极的意义,也具有积极的意义.     

Ruth Macklin,Against Relativism: Cultural Diversity and the Search for Ethical Universal in Medicine

Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics -     

Ruth Macklin,Against Relativism: Cultural Diversity and the Search for Ethical Universal in Medicine

Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics -     

Value Commitment,Resolute Choice,and the Normative Foundations of Behavioural Welfare Economics

Given the endowment effect, the role of attention in decision-making, and the framing effect, most behavioural economists agree that it would be a mistake to accept the satisfaction of revealed preferences as the normative criterion of choice. Some have suggested that what makes agents better off is not the satisfaction of revealed preferences, but ‘true’ preferences, which may not always be observed through choice. While such preferences may appear to be an improvement over revealed preferences, some philosophers of economics have argued that they face insurmountable epistemological, normative, and methodological challenges. This article introduces a new kind of true preference – values-based preferences – that blunts these challenges. Agents express values-based preferences when they choose in a manner that is compatible with a consumption plan grounded in a value commitment that is normative, affective, and stable for the agent who has one. Agents who choose according to their plans are resolute choosers. My claim is that while values-based preferences do not apply to every choice situation, this kind of preference provides a rigorous way for thinking about classic choice situations that have long interested behavioural economists and philosophers of economics, such as ‘Joe-in-the-cafeteria.’     

Relativism,truth, and incoherence

Conclusion There are many contemporary sources and defenders of epistemological relativism which have not been considered thus far. I have, for example, barely touched on the voluminous literature regarding frameworks, conceptual schemes, and Wittgensteinian forms of life. Davidson's challenge to the scheme/content distinction and thereby to conceptual relativism, Rorty's acceptance of the Davidsonian argument and his use of it to defend a relativistic position, Winchian and other sociological and anthropological arguments for relativism, recent work in the sociology of science, and Goodman's novel articulation of a relativism of worlds and of worldmaking, to mention just some of the contemporary loci of debate, all need to be addressed. So also do the plethora of relativistic arguments spawned by Kuhn and related literature in recent philosophy of science. Therefore, it cannot be said that there is no more to be said on behalf of epistemological relativism. Moreover, the positive task of delineating a defensible version of absolutism remains to be accomplished.Nevertheless, the defenses of relativism considered above do seem to have been successfully undercut. More specifically, the arguments for the incoherence of relativism are as compelling as ever, and have manifestly not been laid to rest by contemporary relativists. The basic Socratic insight that relativism is self-refuting, and so incoherent, remains a fundamental difficulty for those who would resuscitate and defend the ancient Protagorean doctrine or a modern variant of it.     

Relativism,rationality and repression

This paper was presented at the Pacific Division Meeting of the APA on 28 March 1987.     

Color,Relativism, and Realism

It is plausible to think that some animals perceive the world as coloreddifferently from the way humans perceive it. I argue that the best way ofaccommodating this fact is to adopt perceiver-relativism, the view that colorpredicates express relations between objects and types of perceivers.Perceiver-relativism makes no claim as to the identity of color properties;it is compatible with both physicalism and dispositionalism. I arguehowever for a response-dependence version of it according to which an object counts as red (for a type of perceiver) iff it standardly looks red to normal perceivers (of that type). Finally, I develop a notion of minimal realism on which this account counts as realist despite its subjectivist elements, in that it is committed to the objectivityof truth.     

Relativism, Absolutism, and Tolerance

Abstract: A common view is that relativism requires tolerance. We argue that there is no deductive relation between relativism and tolerance, but also that relativism is not incompatible with tolerance. Next we note that there is no standard inductive relation between relativism and tolerance—no inductive enumeration, argument to the best explanation, or causal argument links the two. Two inductive arguments of a different sort that link them are then exposed and criticized at length. The first considers relativism from the objective point of view ‘of the universe’, the second from the subjective point of view of the relativist herself. Both arguments fail. There is similarly no deductive relation between absolutism and tolerance—neither entails the other—and no inductive connection of any sort links the two. We conclude that tolerance, whether unlimited or restricted, is independent of both relativism and absolutism. A metaethical theory that says only that there is one true or valid ethical code, or that there is a plurality of equally true or valid ethical codes, tells us nothing about whether we should be tolerant, much less how tolerant we should be.     

Nihilism,Relativism, and Engelhardt

This paper is a critical analysis of Tristram Engelhardt's attempts to avoid unrestricted nihilism and relativism. The focus of attention is his recent book, The Foundations of Bioethics (Oxford University Press, 1996). No substantive or content-full bioethics (e.g., that of Roman Catholicism or the Samurai) has an intersubjectively verifiable and universally binding foundation, Engelhardt thinks, for unaided secular reason cannot show that any particular substantive morality (or moral code) is correct. He thus seems to be committed to either nihilism or relativism. The first is the view that there is not even one true or valid moral code, and the second is the view that there is a plurality of true or valid moral codes. However, Engelhardt rejects both nihilism and relativism, at least in unrestricted form. Strictly speaking, he himself is a universalist, someone who believes that there is a single true moral code. Two argumentative strategies are employed by him to fend off unconstrained nihilism and relativism. The first argues that although all attempts to establish a content-full morality on the basis of secular reason fail, secular reason can still establish a content-less, purely procedural morality. Although not content-full and incapable of providing positive direction in life, much less a meaning of life, such a morality does limit the range of relativism and nihilism. The second argues that there is a single true, content-full morality. Grace and revelation, however, are needed to make it available to us; secular reason alone is not up to the task. This second line of argument is not pursued in The Foundations at any length, but it does crop up at times, and if it is sound, nihilism and relativism can be much more thoroughly routed than the first line of argument has it.Engelhardt's position and argumentative strategies are exposed at length and accorded a detailed critical examination. In the end, it is concluded that neither strategy will do, and that Engelhardt is probably committed to some form of relativism.     

Relativism,Disagreement and Testimony

This article brings together two sets of data that are rarely discussed in concert; namely, disagreement and testimony data. I will argue that relativism yields a much more elegant account of these data than its major rival, contextualism. The basic idea will be that contextualists can account for disagreement data only by adopting principles that preclude a simple account of testimony data. I will conclude that, other things being equal, we should prefer relativism to contextualism. In making this comparative point, I will also defend self‐standing relativist accounts of disagreement and testimony data.     

Relativism,realism, and subjective facts

Synthese - Relativists make room for the possibility of “faultless disagreement” by positing the existence of subjective propositions, i.e. propositions true from some points of view...     

MacIntyre on Tradition,Rationality, and Relativism

MacIntyre’s critique of liberalism relies crucially on a distinctive moral particularism, for which morality and rationality are fundamentally tradition-constituted. In light of this, some have detected in his work a moral relativism, radically in tension with his endorsement of a Thomist universalism. I dispute this reading, arguing instead that MacIntyre is a consistent universalist who pays due attention to the moral-epistemic importance of traditions. Analysing his teleological understanding of rational enquiry, I argue that this approach shows how it is possible, dialectically, to reconcile the particularity of our starting-points with the assertion of universal truths. What MacIntyre offers, I contend, is a moral universalism that avoids the pitfalls of its liberal counterpart, and invites an important meta-theoretical shift with respect to the scope for toleration and social critique and toleration in contemporary pluralist society.