Exposure to moral relativism compromises moral behavior

Across two studies we investigated the relationship between moral relativism versus absolutism and moral behavior. In Experiment 1, we found that participants who read a relativist argument for tolerating female genital mutilation were more likely to cheat to win an incentivized raffle than participants who read an absolutist argument against female genital mutilation, or those in a control condition. In Experiment 2, participants who read a definition of morality phrased in absolutist terms expressed less willingness to engage in petty theft than those who read a definition of morality phrased in relativist terms, or those in a control condition. Experiment 2 also provided evidence that effects were not due to absolutist arguments signaling that fewer behaviors are morally permissible, nor to relativist arguments defending more disagreeable moral positions. Rather, the content of the philosophical positions themselves—the fact that relativism describes morality as subjective and culturally-historically contingent, whereas absolutism describes morality as objective and universal—makes individuals more likely to engage in immoral behaviors when exposed to moral relativism compared to moral absolutism.     

Whose social values? Evaluating Canada’s ‘death of evidence’ controversy

With twentieth- and twenty-first-century philosophy of science’s unfolding acceptance of the nature of scientific inquiry being value-laden, the persistent worry has been that there are no means for legitimate negotiation of the social or non-epistemic values that enter into science. The rejection of the value-free ideal in science has thereby been coupled with the spectres of indiscriminate relativism and bias in scientific inquiry. I challenge this view in the context of recently expressed concerns regarding Canada's death of evidence controversy. The worry, raised by Stathis Psillos, is that as constructivist accounts of science demoted the previously secure status of evidence for drawing justified conclusions in science, we were left with no rational delineation between the right and wrong values for science. The implication for the death of evidence controversy is that we may have no rational grounds for claiming that the Canadian Government is wrong to interfere with scientific enterprise. But he does offer another avenue for reaching the conclusion that the wrong social values are directing the current stifling of some sectors of Canadian science. Psillos draws from standpoint epistemologies to devise a salient defence of ‘valuing evidence’ as a universalizable social value. That is, government bodies ought to enable scientific research via adequate funding as well as political non-interference. In this paper, I counter that (i) non-epistemic values can be rationally evaluated and that (ii) standpoint epistemology’s universalizable standpoint provides an inadequate framework for negotiating social values in science. Regarding (i), I draw from the evidence-based medicine debate in philosophy of medicine and from feminist empiricist investigations into the science–values relationship in order to make the argument for empirically driven value arbitration. If social values can be rationally chosen in the context of justification, then we can have grounds for charging the Canadian leadership with being ‘at war with science’. (ii) I further argue that my recommended empiricist methodology is preferable to Psillos’s search for universalizable perspectives for negotiating social values in science because the latter method permits little more than the trivial conclusion that evidence is valuable to science.     

RESPONSE TO CRITIQUES OF RELIGION IN AN AGE OF SCIENCE

Abstract. In replying to the four thoughtful critiques of my first Gifford volume I try to clarify the differences among us. I defend my use of Kuhn's concept of paradigms against Nancey Murphy's use of Lakatos's concept of research programs and then compare both of us with advocates of the “strong program” in the social construction of science. Sallie McFague identifies me with the empiricist, objectivist, “modernist” tradition and contrasts it to her own “postmodernist” acceptance of cultural relativism and the social construction of science, but I argue that I am seeking an intermediate position that redefines objectivity rather than rejecting it. Some themes common to feminist and process theology are also examin ed. In dialogue with Bob Russell I discuss the metaphysical and theological implications of the unity of space and time in relativity, the beginning of time in recent cosmology, and the thesis that God acts by determining events in indeterminate quantum systems. Finally I compare John Cobb's indebtedness to Whitehead with my own and suggest that I am more willing to adapt or modify process thought in the interpretation of scientific theories and religious experience.     

Relativism, sceptical paradox, and semantic blindness

Relativism about knowledge attributions is the view that a single occurrence of ‘S knows [does not know] that p’ may be true as assessed in one context and false as assessed in another context. It has been argued that relativism is equipped to accommodate all the data from speakers’ use of ‘know’ without recourse to an error theory. This is supposed to be relativism’s main advantage over contextualist and invariantist views. This paper argues that relativism does require the attribution of semantic blindness to speakers, viz. to account for sceptical paradoxes and epistemic closure puzzles. To that end, the notion of semantic blindness is clarified by distinguishing between content-blindness and index-blindness, and it is argued that the attribution of index-blindness required by the relativist account is implausible. Along the way, it is shown that error-theoretic objections from speakers’ inter-contextual judgments fail against relativism.     

In defence of a perspectival semantics for ‘know’

Relativism offers an ingenious way of accommodating most of our intuitions about ‘know’: the truth-value of sentences containing ‘know’ is a function of parameters determined by a context of use and a context of assessment. This sort of double-indexing provides a more adequate account of the linguistic data involving ‘know’ than does standard contextualism. However, relativism has come under recent attack: it supposedly cannot account for the factivity of ‘know’, and it entails, counterintuitively, that circumstances of evaluation have features that cannot be shifted by any intensional operator. I offer replies to these objections on behalf of the relativist. I then argue that a version of contextualism can account for the same data as relativism without relativizing sentence truth to contexts of assessment. This version of contextualism is thus preferable to relativism on methodological grounds.     

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.     

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.     

后经验主义时代的理论心理学

随着经验实证主义的衰落,心理学迎来了后经验主义时代。在后经验主义时代,人们对理论和经验观察的关系有了新的理解。理论不再是经验观察的附属物,相反,经验事实是被理论决定的。理论不是经验事实的概括和归纳,而是一种文化历史的建构。后经验主义时代的理论心理学以库恩的范式论、现象学、释义学和社会建构论作为自己的哲学基础。理论的评价标准不再是与经验事实的一致性。因为经验事实由于受到理论的污染,不再是一种客观的标准。在后经验主义条件下,理论的评价标准可建立在概念和逻辑、价值观和意识形态、修辞与叙事以及实践和应用的水平上     

Social values influence the adequacy conditions of scientific theories: beyond inductive risk

The ‘death of evidence’ issue in Canada raises the spectre of politicized science, and thus the question of what role social values may have in science and how this meshes with objectivity and evidence. I first criticize philosophical accounts that have to separate different steps of research to restrict the influence of social and other non-epistemic values. A prominent account that social values may play a role even in the context of theory acceptance is the argument from inductive risk. It maintains that the more severe the social consequences of erroneously accepting a theory would be, the more evidence is needed before the theory may be accepted. However, an implication of this position is that increasing evidence makes the impact of social values converge to zero; and I argue for a stronger role for social values. On this position, social values (together with epistemic values and other empirical considerations) may determine a theory’s conditions of adequacy, which among other things can include considerations about what makes a scientific account unbiased and complete. I illustrate this based on recent theories of human evolution and the social behaviour of non-human primates, where some of the social values implicated are feminist values. While many philosophical accounts (both arguments from inductive risk and from underdetermination) conceptualize the relevance of social values in terms of making inferences from evidence, I argue for the need for a broader philosophical framework, which is also motivated by issues pertaining to scientific explanation.     

Pragmatism, Relativism, and the Critique of Philosophy

The relativist strain in Rorty's work should be distinguished from the Davidsonian strain. The latter may be exploited in support of Rorty's critique of philosophy but it is at odds with his use of "solidarity" and "ethnocentrism"as explanatory concepts. Once this is recognized, there remains in Rorty's work a consistent challenge to the search for general philosophical theories of truth, objectivity, and rationality (of which relativism itself is an example). On this reading, however, Rorty's pragmatism is not a theory that offers answers to questions about the authority of beliefs and practices but rather a critical tool used to open detailed, concrete, and critical investigation into particular questions about the establishment and viability of the beliefs and practices we have.     

Assessor Relativism and the Problem of Moral Disagreement

I consider sophisticated forms of relativism and their effectiveness at responding to the skeptical argument from moral disagreement. In order to do so, I argue that the relativist must do justice to our intuitions about the depth of moral disagreement, while also explaining why it can be rational to be relatively insensitive to such disagreements. I argue that the relativist can provide an account with these features, at least in some form, but that there remain serious questions about the viability of the resulting account.     

What is Structural Empiricism? Scientific Change in an Empiricist Setting

In this paper a constructive empiricist account of scientific change is put forward. Based on da Costa's and French's partial structures approach, two notions of empirical adequacy are initially advanced (with particular emphasis on the introduction of degrees of empirical adequacy). Using these notions, it is shown how both the informativeness and the empirical adequacy requirements of an empiricist theory of scientific change can then be met. Finally, some philosophical consequences with regard to the role of structures in this context are drawn.Now, we daily see what science is doing for us. This could not be unless it taught us something about reality; the aim of science is not things themselves, as the dogmatists in their simplicity imagine, but the relations between things; outside those relations there is no reality knowable.Henri Poincaré (1905), p. xxi     

Redirecting Feminist Critiques of Science

Applying the insights of Donna Haraway (1989 , 1991 ) and Helen Longino (1989 , 1990 ), this paper reviews Sandra Harding's (1986a) tripartite model of feminist critiques of science—empiricist, standpoint, and postmodern—and argues that it is based on misunderstandings of the relationship between scientific inquiry, objectivity, and values. An alternative view of scientific inquiry makes it possible to see feminist scientists as postmodern and postmodern feminists as having standpoints.     

The limits of selflessness: semantic relativism and the epistemology of de se thoughts

It has recently been proposed that the framework of semantic relativism be put to use to describe mental content, as deployed in some of the fundamental operations of the mind. This programme has inspired in particular a novel strategy of accounting for the essential egocentricity of first-personal or de se thoughts in relativist terms, with the advantage of dispensing with a notion of self-representation. This paper is a critical discussion of this strategy. While it is based on a plausible appeal to cognitive economy, the relativist theory does not fully account for the epistemic profile that distinguishes de se thinking, as some of its proponents hope to do. A deeper worry concerns the reliance of the theory on a primitive notion of “centre” that hasn’t yet received enough critical attention, and is ambiguous between a thin and a rich reading. I argue that while the rich reading is required if the relativist analysis of the de se is to achieve its most ambitious aims, it also deprives the theory of much of its explanatory power.     

Some Problems with Scientific Relativism and Moral Realism

In its early development philosophy of science did not allow the possibility of a relativistic approach with regard to explanation of external phenomena. Relativism was seen as justified exclusively with regard to internal phenomena, for example, in the realm of moral and aesthetic judgment. In the realm of moral judgment, external realism functions as a necessary hypothesis, according to which our moral judgment and moral decisions have a real effect in the external world, for which we can be held responsible. A paradigm shift in the theory of science, inaugurated by Th. S. Kuhn, led to the rise of relativism with regard to judgment in the realm of external phenomena and specifically with regard to the validity of scientific theories. Critics of relativism do not take into account that it is not enough to point out the logical inconsistency of relativism. Most arguments for scientific justification of external realism are doomed to failure, because they do not take into account the role of the judgmental subject. In this article I will show that the role of “second nature” is significant not only for the constitution of moral realism, but also for the implementation of scientific naturalism.     

Relativism or Relationism? A Mannheimian Interpretation of Fleck’s Claims About Relativism

The paper explores the defence by the early sociologist of science Ludwik Fleck against the charge of relativism. It is shown that there are crucial and hitherto unnoticed similarities between Fleck’s strategy and the attempt by his contemporary Karl Mannheim to distinguish between an incoherent relativism and a consistent relationism. Both authors seek to revise epistemology fundamentally by reinterpreting the concept of objectivity in two ways: as inner- and inter-style objectivity. The argument for the latter concept shows the genuine political background and intent of Fleck’s sociology of science and its ambition to relieve the cultural struggles of his time.     

I—The Relativism of Blame and Williams's Relativism of Distance

Bernard Williams is a sceptic about the objectivity of moral value, embracing instead a qualified moral relativism—the 'relativism of distance'. His attitude to blame too is in part sceptical (he thought it often involved a certain 'fantasy'). I will argue that the relativism of distance is unconvincing, even incoherent; but also that it is detachable from the rest of Williams's moral philosophy. I will then go on to propose an entirely localized thesis I call the relativism of blame , which says that when an agent's moral shortcomings by our lights are a matter of their living according to the moral thinking of their day, judgements of blame are out of order. Finally, I will propose a form of moral judgement we may sometimes quite properly direct towards historically distant agents when blame is inappropriate— moral-epistemic disappointment. Together these two proposals may help release us from the grip of the idea that moral appraisal always involves the potential applicability of blame, and so from a key source of the relativist idea that moral appraisal is inappropriate over distance.     

Normative naturalism and the challenge of relativism: Laudan versus Worrall on the justification of methodological principles

In Science and Values, Larry Laudan argues that rational scientific change is not restricted to scientific theory, but may also affect the methodology and axiology of science. In subsequent debate, John Worrall has raised the question of whether invariant principles of methodology are necessary in order to avoid epistemological relativism. Worrall argues that Laudan's denial of such principles leads straight to relativism. By contrast, Laudan claims that, rather than methodological invariance, what is required to escape relativism is a rational justification of such principles. In this paper, it will be argued that the normative naturalist meta‐methodology, which Laudan has developed in work subsequent to Science and Values, contains the resources needed to mount a satisfactory response to Worrall's charge of relativism.     

Epistemic modals, relativism and assertion

I think that there are good reasons to adopt a relativist semantics for epistemic modal claims such as ``the treasure might be under the palm tree', according to which such utterances determine a truth value relative to something finer-grained than just a world (or a <world, time> pair). Anyone who is inclined to relativise truth to more than just worlds and times faces a problem about assertion. It's easy to be puzzled about just what purpose would be served by assertions of this kind, and how to understand what we'd be up to in our use of sentences like ``the treasure might be under the palm tree', if they have such peculiar truth conditions. After providing a very quick argument to motivate a relativist view of epistemic modals, I bring out and attempt to resolve this problem in making sense of the role of assertions with relativist truth conditions. Solving this problem should be helpful in two ways: first, it eliminates an apparently forceful objection to relativism, and second, spelling out the relativist account of assertion and communication will help to make clear just what the relativist position is, exactly, and why it's interesting. Thanks to Brian Weatherson, John Hawthorne, Daniel Stoljar, Frank Jackson, Ben Blumson, Seth Yalcin, Karen Bennett, Kent Bach, Matthew Weiner, Jonathan Kvanvig, Eric Swanson, David Chalmers, Agustin Rayo, Dustin Locke, Aaron Bronfman, Michael Allers, Ivan Mayerhofer, and to the participants at the BSPC 2005 for helpful discussion.