I am simultaneously a passionate proponent of relativism and a passionate critic of the preponderance of relativism in our cultures. I will provide two conflicting sets of arguments to illustrate this. I am currently passionately in favor of both sets of arguments. I want to know how I can reconcile them. Or perhaps you think one should be rejected? Interested in your feedback.

Arguments 1 - Truth is the mechanism by which knowledge is no longer sought

Consider this statement;

“There is such a thing as a perfect epistemological system, or a reliable way to ascertain truth and falsehood.”

Is the above statement true or false?

If you say it’s true, according to which epistomolicial system do you do so? Because if it is any epistemological system then you are begging the question (and if you are not using an epistemological system then you’re just sayin’ sh*t, and that doesn’t do us any good!).

If you say it is false, then by golly! How do you know that?

All of this to say, that truth is stupid. I think it is very clear that if truth exists (which I guess it might) we have no way of knowing it. Not with certainty.

But that’s not even my biggest problem.

Maybe, if I’m understanding this wrong, or there are some fancy-shmancy advances in Science and Mathematics that account for epidemiological concerns, we will discover that it is, beyond a shadow of a doubt (beyond even the shadow of a really tenacious doubt), possible for humans to ascertain truth with 100% certainty.

This discovery would, with 100% certainty (that “with 100% certainty” was rhetorical) be the single most harmful intellectual development in human history.

Consider that there is such a thing as deception.

To deceive someone, it’s easy, you simply present a fictitious world which has enough convincing elements to appear as a non-fictitious world from the perspective of the victim in question. Many elements can help the believability of your deception. Rhetorical techniques can be employed to build rapport with you and your victim. You can speak with authority, evoke the feeling of trustworthiness by associating yourself with well respected people or concepts (it’s always good to surround your lies with truths).

The danger of a perfect epistemological system is that, by definition, it would be the single most powerful and convincing rhetorical element to employ when constructing a lie. All you have to do is be smart enough to convincingly associate whatever idea you like with the all-powerful objective system of truth, and ironically enough, you can make people believe whatever you want.

Furthermore, even if you were sincere in your efforts to use this epistemological system, how would YOU know that it really was as reliable as its proponents claimed? The only way would be to investigate its underlying logic yourself, which would require time, honesty, and interest in philosophy, which is another way of saying that almost no one would actually do this. Thereby, even in the case of a real system of epistemological truth actually existing and actually being proven, this only solves the problem for a small subset of the population (namely the nerds [and I don't think it would be good for us to hold all the power]).

This exact problem is already basically happening with science. Scientific methods are nearly universally respected as reliable ways to ascertain truth AND not everyone is a scientist, so pretty much all anyone has to do is articulately say that their ideas are associated with science, and many well meaning people will just be deceived.

Worse yet, once a deception has taken place, and it is wrongly understood as truth, any objection is often met negatively, sometimes with very deeply rooted vengeance, and this volatility increases the more strongly believed the fiction is. A perfect epistemological system would increase the capacity for fictions to be deeply rooted, worsening this problem.

When things are not said to be certain, and the question is still up in the air, more inquiry and investigation is wont to take place. Where firmly held beliefs are not involved, there is a playground for creativity in intellectual investigation that is actually really welcoming to an investigation of whatever deeper truths (or at least phenomena) there might be.

Conversely, once something is said to be true, there is no longer a need for investigation and the result is only stagnation.

In this way, relativism is in the service of truth, and systems of truth are directly in service of deception and control over the freedom of thought.

People want their worldviews to be justified, so they look for ways to really ground and make believable their ALREADY EXISTING notions about the world. Perhaps with no exceptions, we DO NOT disinterestedly ask “what is true” and embark on an unbiased and completely impersonal investigation of our minds and the universe. We do not have the pure-hearted aim of finding something beautiful.

“Therefore, we need to be rid of this dangerous apparatus of truth before more falsehoods are convincingly propagated, and the investigation of questions is made to be taboo”.

(The above statement is of course TRUE and not FALSE).

Arguments 2 - No, I’m sorry. Your “subjective preference” does not make a 10 second TikTok video of a dog standing on the floor and being a dog more enriching to your life than the complete works of William Shakespeare.

Relativism allows the appeal to subjectivity, making it perhaps the single most harmful intellectual development in human history.

The appeal to subjectivity is a universally applicable way to shut down any question you do not like. One’s subjective experience, in virtue of not being accessible to anyone else, can be said to be whatever the subjective agent in question wants it to be. Therefore, the appeal to subjectivity can be tailor made for any argument, so as to reject (or make) any proposition, without fear of recompense.

This makes it possible for all propositions to be of equal value. And all (or a butt load of) beliefs to be believable. I suppose, by no appeal to truth can I reasonably convince a relativist that such wishy-washiness is adverse in the least. But if I present the following two propositions:

Proposition 1:
You should eat food today.

Proposition 2:
You should take some forks, and jab them into your eyes.

“I have a difficult to articulate but immensely powerful feeling that the first proposition is somehow categorically preferable to the second one”.

(The above statement is of course, itself, an appeal to subjectivity).

One has to imagine that the amalgamation of all the propositions in the world would not be a collection of exactly interchangeable dopplegangers. Why would we need to exchange any idea at all if the ideas that we started with were already as useful as they could be? The appeal to subjectivity can equally be in service of a bland idea, as it can be in service of a beautiful idea, so it is not a good measure as to which ideas have value.

A better solution would be an epistemological system of truth, whereby given propositions could be measured according to some standard of value that is traceable so that consistent, measurable progress could be made in the analysis of ideas.

I am suspicious that many (not all) appeals to subjectivity are not motivated by a sincere, and defensible effort to implore us to recall our biases and increase the nuance of our ideas by incorporating considerations from the multiple perspectives from which different individuals (and even the same individuals at different times) necessarily have to contend with. Instead, I fear that many (not all) appeals to subjectivity are merely defense mechanisms, with which interesting (or dangerous, which should be a synonym for interesting in my opinion [yet another appeal to subjectivity]) ideas can reliably be disregarded. This is yet another weapon in the service of reducing the propagation of variable investigation of ideas.

Thus, systems of truth are in service of the investigation of ideas, and relativism is in service of confusion, denial and (all too often) low quality ideas.