A Companion to Relativism

Steven D. Hales

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN:
  9781405190213
• eBook ISBN:
  9781444392487
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophical Metaphysics

A Companion to Relativism presents original contributions from leading scholars that address the latest thinking on the role of relativism in the philosophy of language, epistemology, ethics, philosophy of science, logic, and metaphysics.

• Features original contributions from many of the leading figures working on various aspects of relativism
• Presents a substantial, broad range of current thinking about relativism
• Addresses relativism from many of the major subfields of philosophy, including philosophy of language, epistemology, ethics, philosophy of science, logic, and metaphysics

Part I: Characterizing Relativism

1

Global Relativism and Self-Refutation

MAX KÖLBEL

Abstract

Relativism, in particular global relativism, is often said to be “self-refuting.” In fact, there are several different shortcomings that may be meant by the term “self-refuting.” The purpose of this chapter is to survey and assess some interesting ways in which some forms of relativism may be thought to be self-refuting. I begin by clarifying what can be meant by “self-refutation,” and by providing a definition of “relativism” to work with. Since self-refutation is usually thought to be a problem specifically for global forms of relativism, my preliminaries will include a section that clarifies the senses in which a relativistic doctrine might be global. With the preliminaries out of the way, I consider, in sections 4 and 5, certain fundamental difficulties faced by global forms of relativism and how they might be avoided. Sections 6 and 7 then move on to an assessment of several different self-refutation arguments against relativism. The result of the investigation will be that any form of global relativism that manages to avoid the more fundamental difficulties discussed in sections 4 and 5 has little to fear from self-refutation objections.

1. Self-Refutation

The dialectical notion of self-refutation (peritrope) originates in the early Hellenistic period (third century BC, see Burnyeat 1976a). Arguments against relativism that have been styled “self-refutation arguments” go back further, for example to Plato (Theaetetus 171a–b) and Aristotle (Metaphysics Γ 1008a 28–30, 1012b 12–18, K 1063b 30–5) and even, according to Epicurus, to Democritos. The general idea of self-refutation seems to be that a claim is self-refuting if it can in some way be turned against itself. This might involve the content of the self-refuting claim entailing its own falsity, either on its own or in conjunction with further premises. Alternatively, it might mean that making the claim (perhaps making it in a certain way) somehow entails its falsity or else commits the person making it to its falsity. Or, finally, it might mean that the claim cannot be defended in a debate that is conducted according to certain dialectical rules.

It will be worth pausing briefly to appreciate these subtle and perhaps initially confusing distinctions. Consider the following sentence:

(L) What I am saying at this moment is false.

Suppose I uttered (L). I would then be claiming that what I am saying is false. Thus what I have claimed entails that my claim is false. Thus, my claim would be self-refuting in the first sense mentioned above: the content of the claim entails its falsehood. (NB: the difficulties with (L) go far beyond this: consider the assumption that my claim is false.)

Another example. Consider Would-be-Socrates, who claims to know that he does not know anything. We can again use what he has claimed as a premise in an argument that shows that what he has claimed is false:

(P1) Would-be-Socrates knows that he does not know anything. (That’s what he has claimed.)

(P2) What is known is true. (This is an additional a priori premise.)

(C1) So, Would-be-Socrates does not know anything. (Follows from P1 and P2)

(C2) So, in particular, Would-be-Socrates does not know that he does not know anything. (Follows from C1)

Thus, we have used what Would-be-Socrates has claimed (the content of his claim) together with a further a priori premise, to deduce that what he has claimed is false.

However, traditional self-refutation arguments usually seem to involve a charge that is subtler than the charge of direct or indirect self-contradiction. Consider a different example. Many of us are familiar with situations where someone shouts the following sentence at the top of their voice:

(S) I am not shouting.

It would be correct (though in many cases not prudent) to point out to such a person that their shouting is “pragmatically self-refuting” (Passmore 1961; Mackie 1964): the fact that they are shouting the sentence refutes what they are shouting, namely that they are not shouting. However, what they are shouting (the content of their claim) is in no way self-contradictory. For they could have made the very same claim – asserted the very same content: that they are not shouting – in a calm voice, or they could have remained silent altogether. In either case it would have been true that they are not shouting.

Some sentences are worse off than (S), in that one cannot use them to make a true assertion (NB: this is not the same as saying that the content expressed by such a sentence in a context could not be true). For example, the sentence “I am not saying (claiming, asserting) anything.” No one can truly say (claim, assert) that they are not claiming (claiming, asserting) anything. We could call contents of this sort “necessarily pragmatically self-refuting.”

The difference between self-contradictory and pragmatically self-refuting claims (of both kinds) may seem subtle, but it is in fact important. From the fact that a certain content is self-contradictory, one can normally safely conclude that that content is false, as in the case of P1. (The case of (L) is special: here, even the conclusion that what was claimed is false leads to a contradiction. This is what makes the liar sentence so troublesome.) However, we cannot conclude from the fact that it would be pragmatically self-refuting to assert a certain content that that content is therefore false. If I don’t assert anything, then it is true that I am not asserting anything. If I don’t shout, then it’s true that I am not shouting. Analogously, by the way, if I were to think that I am not thinking, I would be wrong. Does it follow that I am thinking?

There is yet another way in which a claim can be said to be self-refuting. Making a claim or an assertion is often thought to engender certain normative requirements. Thus, for example, it is sometimes thought that one ought to assert a content only if one believes it (e.g. Searle 1969), or only if one has reasons for believing it, or even that one ought to assert only what one knows (Williamson 1996; 2000). Let us assume the last of these views for the sake of argument. If assertion is governed by the norm that one ought to assert only what one knows, then for anything one asserts, one commits oneself to knowing it. One undergoes this commitment in the sense that one can be legitimately criticized, and perhaps forced to withdraw an assertion, if one has asserted a content one does not know. Now, if the content of an assertion is incompatible with this commitment, then that content is self-refuting in yet another way, which we might label “conversationally self-refuting.”

Consider again the self-contradictory claim made by Would-be-Socrates above: that he knows that he knows nothing. Suppose Would-be-Socrates retreats to a less problematic second assertion, namely the claim that he knows nothing (without claiming that he knows this to be so). This is clearly not self-contradictory: what he has asserted may well be true, for it may be true that Would-be-Socrates knows nothing. It is not pragmatically self-refuting for him to assert this either: the fact that he makes the claim does not entail that he knows something. However, if asserting something commits the asserter to knowledge of what he has asserted, then Would-be-Socrates’ second assertion commits him to the falsity of what he has asserted, and it is in this sense “conversationally self-refuting.” While what he has asserted may be true, given that assertion requires knowledge (as we are supposing), the truth of the assertion would show that he can be criticized for asserting something he does not know. Similarly, suppose that the assertion commits the asserter to believing (rather than knowing) what he or she has asserted. Then it is conversationally self-refuting to assert that one believes nothing.

The difference is again significant. When someone makes a pragmatically self-refuting claim, we can conclude that what he or she has asserted is false, as in the case of someone shouting (S). However, we cannot conclude from the fact that a claim is conversationally self-refuting that the claim is false. Would-be-Socrates’ assertion that he knows nothing may well be true. But it cannot meet the knowledge requirement for assertion.

A fourth notion of self-refutation is bound up not specifically with the norms governing a particular speech act, but with certain dialectical norms, i.e. rules of engagement in a debate. These rules say which sorts of conduct by the debating parties are permissible or required. Thus, an ancient debate was a kind of cross-examination (see Aristotle’s Topics discussed in Smith 2009). The rules of debate defined the role of the questioner and the respondent: the respondent had to begin by putting forward a thesis, and the questioner would then ask questions to which the answerer was supposed to answer either “yes” or “no,” though he could also reject the question for certain specified reasons. The aim for the questioner was ultimately to refute the respondent, by forcing him to concede a contradiction. Just as in other games there may be types of position that inevitably lead to defeat, given the rules of the game, there can also be theses that it is impossible for a respondent to defend in debate, given a certain set of rules of engagement.

We do not need to speculate about the exact rules of dialectic in ancient Greece, and the idea of dialectical self-refutation need not be restricted to the specific form of debate practiced then. Rather, to illustrate dialectical self-refutation let us just assume an eminently reasonable rule for any reasoned debate, namely the rule that says that in a debate each debating party must acknowledge the claims made by the other side, and not impute claims that the other side has never made. On this background, it would, for example, be dialectically self-refuting to put forward the thesis that no one claims that there are flame-spitting dragons. For the opponent need only go on to claim that there are flame-spitting dragons. The rule just mentioned requires that the proponent of the thesis now acknowledge that his or her opponent is claiming that there are flame-spitting dragons. But this contradicts the thesis. Thus a dialectically self-refuting thesis is a thesis that cannot be defended in a debate (given certain rules of debate and given an able debating opponent).

In section 8, I will assess whether relativism is self-refuting in any of these four ways: dialectically, conversationally, pragmatically, or contradictorily.

2. Defining Relativism About a Feature F

Before we can consider the question whether relativism is self-refuting in any of the four senses, we need clarity about what relativism is. I shall offer a definition that is meant to capture the core of what philosophers have had in mind when discussing relativism. I do not claim that it actually does capture their meaning – that would probably be a dialectically self-refuting claim in the sense just discussed. I am confident, however, that the position here defined as “relativism” is a position sufficiently interesting to be discussed with respect to charges of self-refutation.

One can be a relativist about one domain but not about another, so I will be defining “relativism” as a relative term. What I am trying to define is “relativism about domain D” for variable D. So what is it to be a relativist about a given domain?

The core commitment of any relativist seems to be a claim to the effect that something is relative to something. For example, that beauty is relative to an aesthetic standard, that moral value is relative to a moral code, or that truth is relative to a conceptual framework. Most people will have a vague idea of what such claims of relativity mean, but to what exactly do they commit their proponents? It turns out that it is not easy to explicate the characteristic relativity claims made by relativists.

Abstracting from concrete cases, the general idea seems to be that the possession of some feature depends on some factor. However, not just any type of dependence will qualify. We are not talking, for example, about causal dependence, as in the claim that the looks of a person depend on their genes and their lifestyle. Rather, the dependence in question seems to be similar to that claimed in the following examples:

1 Whether it is 12 noon depends on (is relative to) a time zone.

2 Whether a car is suitable depends on (is relative to) a purpose for which it is to be used.

3 Whether a quantity of wine is enough depends on (is relative to) a purpose for which it is to be used.

4 Whether a type of action is legally permitted depends on (is relative to) a legal system.

5 Whether a person is of average height depends on (is relative to) a reference class.

6 Whether the palace is to the left of the cathedral depends on (is relative to) an orientation.

It seems clear that in all these cases, the dependence is not a causal one, and not in any straightforward way empirical either. Arguably, the dependence is conceptual. Perhaps it is conceptual in the sense that anyone fully competent with these concepts (12 noon, suitability, sufficiency, etc.) will know that they are relative in this way (more on this below). This is not so in cases of causal dependence: I can fully understand the concept of body-height without realizing that body-height causally depends on, for example, nutrition in childhood.

I will say that a feature is relative to a “parameter,” where the parameter (time zone, purpose, legal system, etc.) can be thought of as a range of possible “values” of that parameter. Thus the parameter time zone consists of the values Greenwich Mean Time, Central European Time, etc., the parameter purposes for car suitability consists of the values driving on a steep dirt track, driving on a well-maintained motorway, etc., the parameter legal system consists of the values the German Civil Code in 2009, the US legal system in 1956, etc. If a feature is relative to some parameter in this way, it will depend on a choice of one of the values of the parameter in question whether an object can be correctly said to possess the feature. For example, it will depend on a choice of time zone whether it is correct to say that it is now 12 noon, and it will depend on a choice of a purpose whether it is correct to say that a given car is suitable.

It is an indication that a feature is relative to a parameter in this way when the same object can correctly be judged to possess the feature, but can also be correctly judged to lack the feature. In that case, there is either some kind of incoherence, or the feature is relative to a parameter. In that latter case, the object possesses the feature relative to one value of the parameter, but lacks it relative to another. For example, the same quantity of wine can correctly be judged to be enough (for the purpose of accompanying a dinner for two), but it can also correctly be judged not to be enough (for the purpose of getting an entire rugby team drunk).

I mentioned earlier that the relativity in question is arguably of a conceptual kind, perhaps in the sense that awareness of the relativity is a requirement for full competence with the concepts in question. However, this is not obvious in all the cases. One might argue that full competence with the concept 12 noon does not require awareness of the relativity of times to time zones and that it is an empirical discovery that this is so. For one might argue that the concept of noon is just the concept of the time of day when the sun appears the highest in the sky, and it is an empirical discovery that the time it appears the highest will be different in different locations. This is indeed true of one concept of noon, perhaps the one we used before the current system of measuring time was established, and still use occasionally in an astronomical context. However, the concept 12 noon that we ordinarily use (along with 3 pm, 10.30 am, etc.) is such that in many places the sun does not appear highest at 12 noon. The time of the sun’s highest point will vary within a single time zone, but it is 12 noon at exactly the same time at all locations within a time zone. Thus, it seems to me that even though some users of the concept 12 noon may not be aware of the relativity to time zone of time measurements, this means that these users are less than fully competent with the concept 12 noon. The relativity to time zone is part of the definition of “12 noon” and ignorance of this fact means partial ignorance of the concept 12 noon. Similarly, ignorance of the dependenci...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Blackwell Companions to Philosophy
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Notes on Contributors
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part I: Characterizing Relativism
• Part II: Truth and Language
• Part III: Epistemic Relativism
• Part IV: Moral Relativism
• Part V: Relativism in the Philosophy of Science
• Part VI: Logical, Mathematical, and Ontological Relativism
• Index