Jokers to the Left. Clowns to the Right. Fools in the Middle.

[Stevicus]

This is correct as marxism and post-modernism overlap but are ultimately opposed.

Post-modernism and marxism overlap in treating ideas as man-made and can criticise them as propaganda tools for power structure. Hence the overlap in critical theory in treating culture as a form of production of ideas. Who controls the production of ideas, therefore controls a great deal of social consciousness.

However, (Orthodox) Marxism is materialist and believes in an objective world as a source for objectively valid truth and knowledge. The marxist conception of Ideology is like looking in a distorted mirror- yes, it reflects an objective reality but not with 100% accuracy and considerable distortion depending on which position from the social hierarchy you are looking at the mirror from. Some aspects of reality are exaggerated whilst others are under-emphasised depending on each persons experience within the same system. It doesn’t treat it exclusively as a product of the mind or pure illusion as a “social construct”.

There are currently major feuds going on amongst the far left on this issue and how far you can take the identity politics of gender, race, sexuality, etc before it becomes anti-marxist. Its all related to where the boundary between social criticism of post-modernism ends and marxist social criticism begins.

This discussion may be a bit over my head, although I do recall some discussions in my linguistics classes about words and their relation to objective reality.

For example, there's a stick coming out of the ground in my yard - and for English-speakers, this thing is known as a "tree." But the word "tree" itself is not the reality. The word is a marker, a symbol to represent the object - but not the actual object. So, while there may be a truly objective reality out there, humans have insufficient means to perceive and describe it, since words are imperfect reflections of human thought.

A scientist might study the tree, categorize it, and label it with its official scientific term (usually in Latin, to make it sound more high-falutin'). That might give a more accurate description for the sake of clarity, but it still may not be a 100% perfect description of objective reality. But that may be the best we can do.

Could relativism simply be a way of saying that no human being is perfect?

 

[exchemist]

This discussion may be a bit over my head, although I do recall some discussions in my linguistics classes about words and their relation to objective reality.

For example, there's a stick coming out of the ground in my yard - and for English-speakers, this thing is known as a "tree." But the word "tree" itself is not the reality. The word is a marker, a symbol to represent the object - but not the actual object. So, while there may be a truly objective reality out there, humans have insufficient means to perceive and describe it, since words are imperfect reflections of human thought.

A scientist might study the tree, categorize it, and label it with its official scientific term (usually in Latin, to make it sound more high-falutin'). That might give a more accurate description for the sake of clarity, but it still may not be a 100% perfect description of objective reality. But that may be the best we can do.

Could relativism simply be a way of saying that no human being is perfect?

That I think must have been the original insight: that how we communicate, think - and thus even perceive - the world around us is influenced by who we are, our culture and language, etc. There is arguably no such thing as perfect objectivity in human thought, though I suppose maths and logic come close. In many disciplines of thought we go to great lengths to try to be as objective as we can, but we can't ever say we have managed it completely.

But saying we cannot capture reality perfectly, in human perception and expression, does not mean there is no objective reality at all.

 

[Laika]

Could relativism simply be a way of saying that no human being is perfect?

I think it's more a question of recognising that, even if the whole world is cognisable and all within the realm of our understanding, our knowledge is limited by our experience and our ability to reproduce natural phenomena in a laboratory.

 

[exchemist]

I think it's more a question of recognising that, even if the whole world is cognisable and all within the realm of our understanding, our knowledge is limited by our experience and our ability to reproduce natural phenomena in a laboratory.

Hmm, not sure I buy the second half of that. Ability to reproduce phenomena in a laboratory is not intrinsic to the understanding of nature. Many branches of science make little or no use of that. What is intrinsic is reproducible observation of nature. We take reproducible observations as being as close to objective as we can practically get.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

Perspective matters, but to suggest equivalence in perspectives is not justifiable to me.

That's because apparently you're too bright to fall for the nonsense. It doesn't make any real sense, but it's what they really believe. Such as a thread here about what happens when you believe certain stuff, belief in demonic possession that resulted in a dead child in this case, where indeed these views of other cultures, including their beliefs in the supernatural, magic, and ghosts, are just as valid as our views because their beliefs are required to explain their world view.

 

[Nakosis]

Thread Questions...

What is going on with epistemic relativism? Why on earth has it become popular with people on the left, right, and center? Is there any sound justification for it at all? If so, what is that justification?

_______________________
The relativist’s key claim is that varying and often contradictory epistemic systems have equal legitimacy. See here, here, and here.

......
My opinion (if anyone is interested)...

I am not fond of epistemic relativism. That's putting it mildly. I see epistemic relativism as a threat to the sciences, representative democracy, humanism, universal liberalism, and reason. Beyond that, I think it's more often than not an intellectually dishonest position. But other than those things, I'm sure it's ok, and that its mother loves it.


.....
And now, in a futile effort to make it up to you for a boring OP...

Note that despite some ‘association’ (in the minds of some folk) between relativism and scepticism, the two aren’t even compatible, let alone the same. Sceptics think knowledge is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to attain. Relativists think it’s rather easy, and that there’s a lot more of it about than one might think!
Epistemological Relativism

I have maybe a weird view on this. To me, facts are few and difficult to validate. Many things I can't personally verify and people I don't personally know, I have little reason to trust.

So being skeptical, I am skeptical of claims of knowledge.

At the same time, assuming we have only one life, might as well do your best to make it a happy one. So if a belief make you happy, in lieu of facts you can verify for yourself, might as well believe whatever makes you happy.

Personally, I don't need a lot of beliefs to make me happy. I happy being skeptical of "knowledge". However I don't begrudge the beliefs others need to keep themselves happy. Generally the belief of others is not relevant to my life.

 

[Laika]

Hmm, not sure I buy the second half of that. Ability to reproduce phenomena in a laboratory is not intrinsic to the understanding of nature. Many branches of science make little or no use of that. What is intrinsic is reproducible observation of nature. We take reproducible observations as being as close to objective as we can practically get.

That's fine. I have no issues with that.

 

[Terry Sampson]

We take reproducible observations as being as close to objective as we can practically get.

Our Lady of Zeitoun - Wikipedia

 

[sealchan]

Thread Questions...

What is going on with epistemic relativism? Why on earth has it become popular with people on the left, right, and center? Is there any sound justification for it at all? If so, what is that justification?

_______________________
The relativist’s key claim is that varying and often contradictory epistemic systems have equal legitimacy. See here, here, and here.

......
My opinion (if anyone is interested)...

I am not fond of epistemic relativism. That's putting it mildly. I see epistemic relativism as a threat to the sciences, representative democracy, humanism, universal liberalism, and reason. Beyond that, I think it's more often than not an intellectually dishonest position. But other than those things, I'm sure it's ok, and that its mother loves it.


.....
And now, in a futile effort to make it up to you for a boring OP...

Ooh, ooh, Mr. Carter!...

Epistemic relativism is definitely a camp that my own thinking falls into and I think that this thread may make an excellent place for me to make a case for it.

Epistemic relativism is, in fact, the way that nature gets truth done. Epistemic relativism frees a natural system to be able to not get stuck in sphexish infinite loops (see World Wide Words: Sphexish) and to escape the trap of the problem of self-reference (see Self-Reference (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)). To avoid this death trap in natural systems and organisms it is advantageous to always have multiple epistemic systems...multiple ways of knowing that help to determine action. The indecision caused by ambiguities between two epistemic systems are less stable (less likely to cause a fundamental failure of decisioning) than those of simpler mono-modal epistemic methodologies.

As such our human cognition is based on multiple ways of knowing truth. I believe that the four cognitive functions thinking, feeling, sensation and intuition plus the two attitudes introversion and extroversion plus the two styles (my thing) separative and cooperative describe a finite set of cognitive systems that each obey their own logic. This provides our human cognitive systems a great deal of adaptability. In fact, a science of human personality as a branch of psychology, is largely a study of how we as individuals develop in a biased fashion the growth of the above mentioned cognitive systems.

Now the trick here is not to think of epistemic relativism as an absolute subjectivity as, I imagine, it may often be utilized. The trick is to realize that there is a finite set of independent systems which we all share that make up the foundation for discovering and/or creating truth. The natural diversity of these systems combined with the biased configurations of these systems at the individual and cultural level give us a sense of a great divergence in the experience of truth. However, there is also a great deal of synergy and progression that is also achievable.

Again I would argue that nature and human nature is essentially founded on a finite set of epistemological systems which give us, more or less, a highly adaptable ability to re-present the reality that we find ourselves in. Anything less and we wouldn't be the relative masters of our destiny that we are.

 

[Guitar's Cry]

I don't think any relativist thinks relativism implies universal equality. That's a bugaboo being generated in the minds of absolutists who can't seem to accept the reality of relativism as a fundamental characteristic of human cognition. Because to accept that means that everything we think we 'know' to be good, right, and true is profoundly biased.

There are philosophers who have suggested that what we call relativism--with the assumption that relativism accepts all "truths" as equal--is actually something more like pragmatism: Pragmatism - Wikipedia

 

[Sunstone]

There are philosophers who have suggested that what we call relativism--with the assumption that relativism accepts all "truths" as equal--is actually something more like pragmatism: Pragmatism - Wikipedia

Good gods! Who are those philosophers? That is so far from my own understanding of pragmatism I wonder who those philosophers can be, GC.

 

[Guitar's Cry]

Good gods! Who are those philosophers? That is so far from my own understanding of pragmatism I wonder who those philosophers can be, GC.

There's this guy: Richard Rorty - Wikipedia

"Relativism" is the view that every belief on a certain topic, or perhaps about any topic, is as good as every other. No one holds this view. Except for the occasional cooperative freshman, one cannot find anybody who says that two incompatible opinions on an important topic are equally good. The philosophers who get called 'relativists' are those who say that the grounds for choosing between such opinions are less algorithmic than had been thought.' From: Relativism - Wikipedia under views and Richard Rorty.

 

[Guitar's Cry]

My current philosophical position is (hehehe!) relative. But in a relative way. (Haha!)

I believe in an objective reality, but I do not believe that its true nature can be known through our current means of perceiving it. We can glean patterns from it--our brains are well-equipped to do so--and our technological and scientific achievements reflect the accuracy we can achieve. But these are patterns, formed from discriminating senses being interpreted in discriminating brains and communicated through language that is necessarily relative (since language is arbitrary to time, environment, and culture).

Since I believe the patterns we are able to discover are accurate, science should most certainly be considered worthy of holding important truths, the ignorance of such would be to our detriment on a community level. I fully support individuals who wish to believe in Creationism over Evolution if they choose and it doesn't affect the community. But that doesn't mean as a community we should ignore scientific evidence of climate change based on any relativistic notions. The map may not be the territory but it is useful in not getting lost.

 

[lewisnotmiller]

So the 'difference' is based entirely on YOUR cognitive perception of it ... interesting.

No, my perception of it is...obviously...different based on my background, etc.
That doesn't mean the difference is purely perception-based.

Kinda my point. But I'll extrapolate more in response to your other post.

 

[PureX]

That's because apparently you're too bright to fall for the nonsense. It doesn't make any real sense, but it's what they really believe. Such as a thread here about what happens when you believe certain stuff, belief in demonic possession that resulted in a dead child in this case, where indeed these views of other cultures, including their beliefs in the supernatural, magic, and ghosts, are just as valid as our views because their beliefs are required to explain their world view.

The "validity" is as relative as the criteria for assessing it. But no one ever seriously claims this makes all propositions equally valid, and that isn't what relativism means. What it means is that we are all biased by our own criteria for assessing the 'validity' of a given proposition. Not equally biased, but in most if not all cases, profoundly biased.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

But no one ever seriously claims this makes all propositions equally valid,

Then why have I seen and heard people seriously make that claim?

 

[lewisnotmiller]

I don't think any relativist thinks relativism implies universal equality. That's a bugaboo being generated in the minds of absolutists who can't seem to accept the reality of relativism as a fundamental characteristic of human cognition. Because to accept that means that everything we think we 'know' to be good, right, and true is profoundly biased.

I'm a relativist if you're talking about the term in a general sense.
I don't believe in what Id see as objective morality, or objective truths.

However, this thread isn't about relativism in a general sense. It's more specifically about epistemic relativity. In that light, I think there is a more stringent interpretation of what is required, beyond mere recognition that truth and perspective are relative.

To paraphrase, I completely agree that 'good', 'right' and 'true' are biased concepts.
But I don't subscribe to epistemic relativity.

 

[PureX]

Then why have I seen and heard people seriously make that claim?

Perhaps you're seeing what you want to see. Or perhaps you spend too much time conversing with idiots. I don't know. The only people I ever see trying to float this idea that "relativism proclaims equal validity" foolishness are people who are trying to use it to discredit relativism.

 

[PureX]

I'm a relativist if you're talking about the term in a general sense.
I don't believe in what Id see as objective morality, or objective truths.

However, this thread isn't about relativism in a general sense. It's more specifically about epistemic relativity. In that light, I think there is a more stringent interpretation of what is required, beyond mere recognition that truth and perspective are relative.

To paraphrase, I completely agree that 'good', 'right' and 'true' are biased concepts.
But I don't subscribe to epistemic relativity.

Well, that would be illogical, since 'epistemology' is itself a biased form of reasoning, leading to a biased set of criteria for determining biased assessments of cognitive validity.

That's why I commented as I did to your post.

 

[lewisnotmiller]

Well, that would be illogical, since 'epistemology' is itself a biased form of reasoning, leading to a biased set of criteria for determining biased assessments of cognitive validity.

That's why I commented as I did to your post.

Biased and equivalence are completely different issues though. I can acknowledge bias, but still see something as 'more' true than something else, even whilst acknowledging truth as a concept rather than a reality.

Perhaps a different approach would be more fruitful then.
What do you see as the difference between 'relativity' in general terms (about which we broadly agree I think) and epistemic relativity as a more specific concept?