Does "dictatorship of relativism" exist?

[Agathon]

Surely this is the same as relativism? That the context defines (and allows to exist) the rightness or wrongness of any given addition to the system (be it mathematical or moral). Without the context of mathematics as we know it, adding 998, 1000, 1004, 1008 isn't wrong. It's a different system. Without the context of society, any given morality is neither right nor wrong.

The context is human life. Hence relativism is false. We can talk and debate morality with any other human being - even if we disagree. That's a testament to how deep morality has been ingrained in us.

[Kidlicious]

You should define what you are kind of context you are talking about to. Some people believe in universal right and wrong. Some other people believe in situational right and wrong. Then other people believe in absolute relative right and wrong.

I personally believe in situational right and wrong.

[grumbler]

Originally posted by Kidicious
You're right. Kuciwalker should have said "assumption," but they aren't very good with definitions so I didn't want to fight that battle.

Okay, but "assumptions" are also accepted as true, if more provisionally. You properly make assumptions because you have to (lacking data), and you look at the implications of the assumptions being wrong. Assumptions are cool so long as you do that.

E.G. we assume that the laws of earthly physics apply everywhere in the universe, but we prepare (as the cosmologists do, in the case of gravity over long distances) to be wrong.

[Whaleboy]

Truth must have context. Why should I state that something is contextually true.

Then it isn't absolutely true. It can only be as true as "Socrates was a wise man" in the context of "all bearded men are wise" + "Socrates had a beard". That isn't to say that it was absolutely true, so your use of the word "true" has little relevance to a debate about relativism, unless you seek to demonstrate that which you attack.

You're still saying that something can be both true and false at the same time btw, which is a contradiction. I don't know why we should keep listening.

*sigh*, things can't be true or false in the same context, but different contexts can self-evidently exist simultaneously. "Sodomy is wrong" may be true in parts of Africa, but is simultaneously false in Europe. You would seek some kind of objective morality to say that, for example, Europe is closer to it than Africa, but you need to provide firstly a basis for it's existence, and an attack on the reasoning for there being no absolute morality (a premise that leads to relativism). All you have done thus far on that latter point is say it is "ridiculous", and no more. You seem hung up on being true/false at the same time, but morality is, as I have said, different from quantifiable logic in that moral propositions do not equate to 2+2=4.

Not that I'm going for any of this, but what does this have to do with the question of whether or not "absolute" is "objective" by definition as Ramo claimed?

Absolute is a sufficient condition to objective
Objective is a necessary condition to absolute, but not sufficient
Absolut is both necessary and sufficient

Are you talking about the Tractatus? I'm talking about rule following in the investigations.

No, PI. In TLP it's too hygienic if you will, it ignores the "human perceptive truth" but in PI, Wittgenstein thinks in terms of not so much subjective/objective, but hypothetical/categorical. I keep thinking of him as the anti-Kant.

According to that line of reasoning, relativism is the product of a linguistic misunderstanding.

Only between a supposed conversation where the two participants agree on assumptions, and those participants and someone objective (latterly there will be the misunderstanding). As long as we don't achieve some objective lingual+conceptual standard, we'll never achieve that superlative moral context, so again without absolutism -> relativism.

In other words, we are dealing with people who talk crap and don't even believe what they say - relativists.

We do believe what we say, though admittedly relativism is helped by being mentally ill...

No they don't. Two people with different moral systems can still have an intelligible debate about morality. The reason is that our moral systems are not free-standing, complete systems; rather they are reductionist attempts to understand our pretheoretical moral practices.

No-one said there could be some kind of moral singularity... the singularity if you will, and thus the premise for moral relativism is conscious, in the existential sense, so you could say that the predicate for moral relativism is cognitive relativism (not to be confused with solipsism) although for all intents and purposes here that's irrelevant. Our moral assumptions, if you accept that they are emotive, are unique... any debate must then follow Wittgensteinian lines.

But you can understand people when they talk about morality with you: ergo relativism is false.

True, but that requires shared assumptions, it doesn't imply absolutism, nor does it mean that their discussion of morality is necessarily absolute as far as they are concerned. As far as the debate is concerned, your statement has the same value as "I understand myself when I talk about [my] morality".

As I said: if you bothered reading more recent philosophy, you would see why relativism involves a misunderstanding of the way language works.

I think it's very unfair to say that a modern understanding of philosophy does not favour relativism. I do read the modern work as well as the older and do my best to understand it... I'd like to think my understanding is workable, if not professional, and I don't accept that Wittgenstein in particular shows us anything that refutes relativism rather than merely defining it.

It's just the same as the "adding 2" example. "Adding 2" could conceivably mean anything, and no amount of giving examples will ever be enough to satisfy us that someone knows what "add 2" means. But in practice we know exactly what adding two means and we can do it and recognize when someone else does it incorrectly. That just means that we have internalized a norm. You can't ask whether it is the "right" norm without appealing to some other norm, and if, as relativists do, you are going to doubt the legitimacy of all norms, then you are just ignoring the fact that you acknowledge thousands of norms every day without even thinking about it.

Relativism is patently dishonest position.

You're tying yourself in knots again, you can only make that work in an objective sense if you are an essentialist... the only to make essense work is subjectivity.

Yes you do. Countless times a day.

But does that mean he sees that inherent truth value is absolutely necessary to them, because that's what you have to show?

Now you are using "inherent" as a synonum with "absolute." That's even more ridiculous as using "objective" as a synonym. "inherent" means "essential." Of course, axioms do not have "inherent" truth to them. Only absolutely true axioms are true at all. You actually support our argument.

Again you're confusing your absolutes and your objectives. With no predicate, an absolute can only exist as a self-contained holism like logic itself, but a logical axiom is not a moral axiom which is something structural by definition. The upshot is that you cannot equate deductive reasoning with the inductive reasoning required here. A bridge of the is-ought gap, if you will, can only occur arbitrarily, contextually and by agreement (shared assumptions). That I might understand someone speaking Spanish doesn't mean I can understand someone speaking Russian, or that they might understand us.

The context is human life. Hence relativism is false. We can talk and debate morality with any other human being - even if we disagree. That's a testament to how deep morality has been ingrained in us.

That's self-contradictory. No-one here is disputing that morality is a very human thing, indeed I think from what you are saying that you might be more sympathetic to the emotivist argument than you claim. But we humans are not consistent beings, the question asked of MR vs. MA is "am I right to impose XYZ on someone who does not conform?", which has obvious implications for the law, for war and peace, and for religion. To answer that, you need to transcend the human context and look for something either inherently logical or something objective. The big bossman, or the dude up the stairs, to whom you can refer. Relativists say that he simply doesn't exist.

Yes we humans have morality in the same sense that we have emotions, yet we don't consider an argument by "fear" or an argument by hate to be as valid as something merely motivated by those emotions but logical in its own right. You need absolutes but all you can do is provide human truths, like relativism in itself.

[Az]

Originally posted by grumbler
That utilitarianism is A method of moral reasoning, not THE method. Most people will, if they encounter enough moral dilemmas, find themselves using utilitarian moral reasoning and most wil, if they encounter enough moral dilemmas, move beyond utilitarianism.

Few actually do get that far, though, because the kinds of moral dilemmas that get one past stage four are rare and when they occur are usually abstract or hypothetical (and thus not always considered worth changing one's moral reasoning for).

I've never seen anything better and more logical than utilitarianism.

[Agathon]

I think it's very unfair to say that a modern understanding of philosophy does not favour relativism.

The interdependence of belief and meaning has it as its obvious consequence.

Relativism assumes in principle that there could be an absolutely uninterpretable language.

But Davidson has shown that to be false.

Relativism doesn't come to anything more than a misunderstanding of how language works. It's an attempt to misuse words to say what can't be expressed.

[Whaleboy]

I've never seen anything better and more logical than utilitarianism.

Which type?

[Whaleboy]

Relativism assumes in principle that there could be an absolutely uninterpretable language.

This is new to me, do go on?

It's an attempt to misuse words to say what can't be expressed.

That's newspeak

[Agathon]

There doesn't even seem to be an argument for relativism other than "you can't prove me wrong if I say I believe it".

But that is just a feature of what belief is and has nothing to do with relativism. Someone can always stick their fingers in their ears and refuse to listen to sense, but their actions betray them.

[Az]

Which type?

Not the silly "rule" one.

[Whaleboy]

Not the silly "rule" one.

So welfare utilitarianism, not preference?

There doesn't even seem to be an argument for relativism other than "you can't prove me wrong if I say I believe it".

Assumption: Morality is predicated by emotion (Ayer/Stevenson)

1) Emotions are caused by the individuals response to their environment (not in an empiricalist sense but I'll come onto that) and life. I use the environment since any reaction has to come from the individual, though you have to have a view of objective = determinism and subjective = free will for this to work.

2) An individuals life, identity, etc etc, is a product of their entire lives and history up to this given time

3) Their lives, in a causal sense, can be taken back, from their own retrospective perspective they would seem as singular, hence we tend to judge other people more quickly than ourselves, since we are aware of the underlying narrative behind our lives.

4) The perception of narrative (you could call it "love" if you give Schopenhaur the sympathy vote) leads to the arbitrary nature or subjectivity of all that is based upon it, including emotion -> morality (iow, morality is relative and egoistic since it is based on the "I").

5) Someone's morality and someone's emotions are better understood when one better understands the narrative behind someone's life, which renders the whole purpose of moral judgements (that person was wrong, that person was right) as obsolete.

[Agathon]

This is new to me, do go on?

Great... I haven't done this trick for years.

Well, how else are you going to establish it in a sensible way? Assuming that people have private universes is just daft because it removes the intelligibility of error.

So you'll either have to say that "snow is white" means the same thing to two people and is true in one case and not in the other.

But since "snow is white" is true iff snow is white (Tarski) you'll have trouble with that.

And if you want to deny that "snow is white" means snow is white, then what on earth are you talking about.

So what do you mean? That "snow is white" said by me and "snow is white" said by you have different truth conditions (meanings)? In that case the words just mean different things to each of us – perhaps "snow is white" means to me what "grass is green" means to you.

Or do you mean that "snow is white" refers to a private fact for each of us?

I really don't know what you mean..

[Agathon]

Assumption: Morality is predicated by emotion (Ayer/Stevenson)

That's false. Sometimes I don't feel any emotion at all, or my emotions are pro doing bad things that my moral judgement opposes.

[Az]

So welfare utilitarianism, not preference?

Maybe we're thinking different layers here:

Act utilitarianism. It's the only one that flows from the framework and basis placed before them.

[Agathon]

Again you're confusing your absolutes and your objectives. With no predicate, an absolute can only exist as a self-contained holism like logic itself, but a logical axiom is not a moral axiom which is something structural by definition. The upshot is that you cannot equate deductive reasoning with the inductive reasoning required here. A bridge of the is-ought gap, if you will, can only occur arbitrarily, contextually and by agreement (shared assumptions).

I have no idea of what any of this is supposed to mean.

Well except for the is ought thing, and I don't see how anything I've said even approaches that.