I don't much like either, as I suppose every right-thinking person doesn't. But how simple or difficult is it to conclusively refute them? — tim wood

Pretty simple, actually, for they are self-refuting. The claim that all truth is relative is itself asserted absolutely. The claim that nothing has any meaning or value, if true, must itself have no meaning or value.

Consider a claim such as "it is illegal for two women to marry". It's true in some places and false in others. As such, the truth of "it is illegal for two women to marry" is relative. Does it then follow that there is no fact of the matter? Of course not. In some places it really is illegal, and in some places it really isn't.

Although this really depends on what you mean by nihilism. If you mean it in the sense that there is no inherent fact of the matter (i.e. a discoverable fact like the speed of light as opposed to an imposed fact like the rules of chess), then sure; relativism likely entails nihilism. But it would be a mistake to go from "it is not an inherent fact that it is illegal for two women to marry" to "it is not a fact that it is illegal for two women to marry".

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I think the natural ground to look at is communication, since the relativist and friend are talking to each other, understanding each other's assertions, and so on. The question is how much mileage you can get out of that. It might be a lot.

I am not aware of any relativists who trouble to claim that all truth is relative. — tim wood

Then they're not relativists....

Further I do not know what truth is. Do you? — tim wood

Ignorance of the truth does not entail its nonexistence.

With respect to relativism itself, it's not whether this is true or that false, but rather the assertion that I'm right (in my beliefs and attitudes, and of course my actions), or that my position is justified (and yours isn't even part the discussion). So the first hurdle to get over, or trap to avoid, is that the refutation of relativism/nihilism is not just a clever - if irrelevant - logic game. — tim wood

I'm not seeing any great difference between asserting that something is true and asserting that one is right. "It is true that I am typing on a keyboard" and "I'm right that I'm typing on a keyboard" are making precisely the same truth claim.

rendering even his claim both meaningless and valueless, he likely would say, "Amen, buy me a beer!" — tim wood

Uh, what? I don't see any flaw you've identified here.

I define relativism, here, as simply the attitude and belief that your views cannot bind me (except perhaps as supported by irresistible force), because I have my own that I hold are at least as valid. — tim wood

Here is a definition of "relativism" from a dictionary site - "the doctrine that knowledge, truth, and morality exist in relation to culture, society, or historical context, and are not absolute." That's not necessarily inconsistent with your definition, but I think yours misses an important emphasis - the lack of absolute standards.

Nihilism (I define here): the belief and attitude that ultimately nothing matters, nothing has any ultimate or absolute value or significance. — tim wood

From a dictionary site - "The rejection of all religious and moral principles, often in the belief that life is meaningless." That definition and yours match well.

I don't much like either, as I suppose every right-thinking person doesn't. — tim wood

Hey, I resemble that remark.

But how simple or difficult is it to conclusively refute them? By conclusive refutation I understand an argument in the presence of which we may judge any relativist or nihilist as simply vicious, and act accordingly — tim wood

First of all, refutation deals with demonstrating that a statement, theory, or belief is incorrect. Why would that lead to judging a relativist or nihilist as vicious? Incorrect is not the same as vicious. And what exactly does "act accordingly" mean in this context?

Has philosophy ever conclusively refuted anything? It certainly can't deal with nihilism and relativism because these philosophies deal not with matters of fact, but with matters of human value. Nihilism seems goofy to me. I think it is unequivocally at odds with human nature. Relativism, on the other hand, I would almost say is self-evident, unless an omnipotent and omniscient god is assumed.

Actually, I don't believe anything is self-evident. Still, I think belief in any kind of absolutism without the presence of God is hard to justify.

If you're interested in a detailed examination of relativist claims and examples of refutations, then I'd recommend Paul Boghossian's book: Fear of Knowledge; against relativism and constructivism (2006).

https://www.amazon.com/Fear-Knowledge-Against-Relativism-Constructivism/dp/0199230412


A perhaps more common kind of relativism is related to bullshit, which has been studied by Harry Frankfurt: On Bullshit (2005).

https://www.amazon.com/Bullshit-Harry-G-Frankfurt/dp/0691122946/ref=pd_sim_14_2?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0691122946&pd_rd_r=TC7F1S6JA9ZZHVWZ3M0K&pd_rd_w=UCu2R&pd_rd_wg=lYeSY&psc=1&refRID=TC7F1S6JA9ZZHVWZ3M0K

Paul Boghossian — jkop

I'm not a huge fan of his, but he recently pulled off another delicious Sokal hoax: http://www.skeptic.com/reading_room/conceptual-penis-social-contruct-sokal-style-hoax-on-gender-studies/

Edit: Wrong Boghossian! I'll have to check Paul out now.

You might like Paul, that book is very well written. He also wrote an article about the original Sokal hoax in the 1990s which is available online here: http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/philo/faculty/boghossian/papers/bog_tls.html

Neat!

The splendid jargonized pyrotechnic caricatures of postmodernism discussed in your references are apt demonstrations of what happens when people come to believe their own bullshit.

Bullshit took off in the 1960s, in ever so many ways.


Google Ngram

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I don't much like either [nihilism or relativism] as I suppose every right-thinking person doesn't. But how simple or difficult is it to conclusively refute them? — tim wood

It's impossible in our current cultural context. That is because no agreed set of values or qualitative norms exist against which to adjudicate such claims. It's relatively simple in the example of change for a purchase because it's a quantitative matter. Another factor is that one fundamental plank of liberalism is the fact that the individual conscience is the ultimate arbiter of right and wrong. That actually developed out of the Christian and specifically Protestant understanding of the nature of the person. Now, however, the basis of the kind of sanctified ethos that was part and parcel of that theory of the person has been discarded, and with it any sense of the moral absolute. Now science has become the de facto arbiter of truth - but it deals in quantitative analyses, not qualitative judgement.

And indeed in informal usage it is taken as such, just as you have described. However, the sentence itself is inadequately qualified and absent the missing qualifications is actually meaningless with respect to the missing qualifications. What are the missing qualifications? For starters, just those you provide in your description; viz, that it's legal in some places and not in others. — tim wood

It's not meaningless. You understand what "it is illegal for two women to marry" means (or at least I expect you to, being that you seem to understand English). It's just that further qualifications are needed for it to have a truth value. And that's exactly the point that the relativist makes. Certain kinds of propositions – e.g. "it is illegal for two women to marry", and for the moral relativist "it is immoral for two women to marry" – must be contextualised to a particular country or culture (or in the extreme case of subjectivism, the feelings or opinions of the individual) for them to be either true or false.

Add the qualification and you get propositions that are true (or false) and are not relative at all.

And the relativist would agree. If they say that the truth of moral claims is relative to one's culture then they will also say that when qualified to a particular culture some given moral claim is absolutely true (or false). The distinction between relativism and absolutism is one that only really applies to broad statements like "it is immoral for two women to marry" and "it is illegal for two women to marry", not usually to qualified statements like "it is immoral for two women to marry in Saudi Arabia" and "it is illegal for two women to marry in Saudi Arabia".

Boghossian takes on philosophically far more interesting relativists than the postmodernists. Nelson Goodman, for instance.

Frankfurt invertigates the nature of bullshit, and does not even mention the word postmodernism, but he brings up, I think, a very interesting phenomenon where the relativist, in the assumed absence of truth, considers him/herself more sincere than those who belive in truth. Here's a description of it written by a reviewer of his book:

when a person rejects the notion of being true to the facts and turns instead to an ideal of being true to their own substantial and determinate nature, then according to Frankfurt this sincerity is bullshit. — Petter Naessan

If relativism holds, then you and I are both right (because each of us claims to be, QED). Anyone is right who claims to be right. If everyone is right, no one is. The notion of right loses its substance — tim wood

I think the difficulty with summarising 'relativism' that way is that it's a strawman. Obviously such a relativism is bollocks.

But take the study of history. History can be studied, told and disputed from as many viewpoints as there are people in the world. The way we talk to each other about it, however, enables us to do this with as much science as can be brought into the arena. We agree certain standards that underpin our disagreements. The imperialist and the Marxist can inhabit the same common room or bar room and, for a start, accept certain 'facts' and certain criteria for 'facts'. They can also agree certain evidential standards for testimony and written records.

If you start from that sort of point - what are our conversational or disputational norms? - then to me relativism make reasonable sense. For example, I've been reading about placebos and that's made me think, there is no non-relativistic way of studying the effect of pharmaceutical products on human beings, because there is no way that the effects of the beliefs of both the 'patients' and the medical practitioners can be discounted. All the same, we can arrive at reliable enough assessments of the effects of pharamaceuticals, as long as scientists and their employers are transparent with the information they have, because we have established norms that satisfy any thinking critic.

Now, in the physical, chemical and biological arenas, maybe we can discount the effect of experimenters sufficiently that knowledge is in some sense 'absolute'. But if that were easy, Meillassoux wouldn't have had to tie himself up in knots (in my opinion) trying to demonstrate that to be the case. Even here, if you accept what Popper has to say, or something like it, we stand with only provisional knowledge, relative to an imagined future which might overturn our paradigms.

I define relativism, here, as simply the attitude and belief that your views cannot bind me (except perhaps as supported by irresistible force), because I have my own that I hold are at least as valid. (An example, if any reader here needs one: you hold that all persons have equal standing, with equal justice for all, while I, on the other hand, believe that subjugation and exploitation of inferior persons - the many - for the benefit of the few - me - is right, correct, and appropriate.)

Nihilism (I define here): the belief and attitude that ultimately nothing matters, nothing has any ultimate or absolute value or significance. — tim wood

I'm a relativist, but in that I'm not saying anything about anyone's views "binding" or "not binding" anyone. What I'm saying in that primarily is that facts (states of affairs a la ontology) are relative to other facts. For example, P is the case from reference point x, but ~P is the case from reference point y. P might be "A is to the left of B," for a simple, non-controversial example, and of course y is a reference point from which A is to the left of B, while x is a reference point from which B is to the left of A.

That relativism certainly carries over to persons' views, their beliefs, the truth-values they assign to propositions and so on, but my concern is typically more one of ontology, in a general sense.

I'm also a nihilist in the way that you're defining that, if "ultimate/absolute mattering/value/significance" is supposed to denote objective mattering, valuation or significance, since I believe those things are subjective, not objective. Again, I'm making an ontological statement in that. I'm simply stating that those are things that persons' brains do--brains care about things, assign value to them, assign significance to them. Objects in the world other than brains, or the "world itself" in some general way, does not assign mattering, valuations or significance to anything.

So I'm a relativist and nihilist (I suppose), but I'm not denying that there are objective facts, and I'm not denying that things matter, have value, etc.--it's just that objective facts are relative to other objective facts, and mattering, valuing, etc. is (relative) to individuals.

And no, there would be no effective way to refute that, because you'd be arguing something that is wrong about the way the world is. (Although of course, relatively, you believe that your alternate view is correct.)

If relativism holds, then you and I are both right (because each of us claims to be, QED). — tim wood

If by "right" you're referring to truth values (namely, assigning "T" to some proposition), in my view truth values are subjective judgments that individuals make about the relations of propositions to other things. It's a category error to try to "make that" something other than a subjective judgment about the relation in question.

When you realize that this is what truth values refer to (under my view, at least), then it's far less controversial that person A assigns "T" to P and person B assigns "F" to P. They're simply making different judgments about the relation of the proposition in question. And there's nothing to talk about other than the judgment that an individual person makes there. The idea of there being a "right" (or "wrong") judgment "beyond that somehow" is nonsensical.

The claim that all truth is relative is itself asserted absolutely. — Thorongil

It's not though. If I say, "'All truth is relative' is true," as a relativist, and as a truth-value subjectivist, I'm not saying that "'All truth is relative' is true" is anything but relatively, subjectively true to me--I'm reporting my judgment about that proposition to you. Certainly other people can and do assign "false" to that statement instead. And assigning "true" and "false" to it are nothing other than judgments that we make as individuals. I'd not be claiming that the "is true" part of "'All truth is relative' is true" is something other than a judgment that an individual makes.

Often what's happening there is that the truth-value non-relativist is reading their non-relativistic framework into the statement; they're not parsing it under whatever the relativist's notion of truth is.

Further I do not know what truth is. Do you? If you think you do, please say here what you think truth is. — tim wood

I know, and I've stated it here on this board and the previous board at least a few times:

‘P’ is true for S iff S judges ‘P’ to have relation R to either S’s phenomenal P, and/or S’s stock of previously adjudged true propositions, depending on the relation R. Relation R is whatever truth theory relation S feels is the appropriate one(s)—correspondence, coherence, consensus, pragmatic, etc.

So in other words, what it is for some proposition, 'P' (quotation marks denoting the proposition literally as a sentence), to be true to some individual, some S, is for the proposition to have the relation R to S's phenomenal P (their phenomenal perception etc. of some state of affairs) or their stock of previously adjudged true propositions, in S's judgment.

That's all that truth value is.

Your argument against nihilism suffers worse flaws. If the nihilist's claim that nothing has any meaning or value is true, rendering even his claim both meaningless and valueless, he likely would say, "Amen, buy me a beer!" — tim wood

The issue is that nothing has objective meaning, value, etc. It's not that there is no subjective meaning, value, etc. Meaning and value are things that individual persons do--they're basically ways that brains work. There's no meaning and value outside of that.

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It seems pretty outrageous, but the consequence of not having any refutation for relativism is that nothing is wrong, except as we say it is, and have the power to impose what we say. — tim wood

And nothing is illegal, except as the legislature says it is, and has the power to impose what it says.

Is this outrageous, or is it common sense?

It seems to me that you've moved away from taking issue with relativism and have moved on to taking issue specifically with moral relativism?

The cry 'it's all relative!" would stand as absolute defense against any charge.

Because that works so well in a court of law.

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I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. Do you accept that things are illegal only if some relevant body of people says it is, that different bodies will say different things, and so that something can be illegal in one place but not in another?

And if you read your post closely, you've said almost nothing about truth. — tim wood

Nonsense. I explained exactly what it is. Maybe it's that you didn't understand what I wrote?

Is it then, the view of the several relativists here that, notwithstanding their private views, cannibalism, genocide, exposing infants, slavery, pedophilia (for a selection) are all ok? — tim wood

That question doesn't make sense, because whether something is okay or not is a matter of someone's "private" or personal views. "Is this okay aside from anyone's personal views" is a category error.

but the consequence of not having any refutation for relativism is that nothing is wrong, except as we say it is, and have the power to impose what we say.

And that's indeed a fact. What is is for something to be wrong is for people to feel that it's wrong. And in some situations people have the power to impose behavioral limitations based on those feelings.

But is there no commonality among otherwise healthy people that itself puts the lie to relativism?

There are certainly more or less common views, and when there's some significant consensus about a view, the people who hold that view can declare themselves (mentally) "healthy" for holding that view if they like, but it's just a common view . . . that doesn't make them objectively correct for their agreement. Of course, they're not objectively incorrect, either. Since there is no objectively correct or incorrect for this stuff. There are ways that people feel about things, and we interact and makes rules and such based on that.

the refutation of these two (or three, including skepticism) lies in persuasive and well-reasoned argument,

Well-reasoned in whose assessment?