1) What are facts? We speak of facts as being hard, cold, objective, and
stubborn. We are asked for the plain, observable, unvarnished facts. We are told
to face the facts, to collect them, or to check them out. These comments might
lead us to think that facts are physical things out there in the world, independent
of us. But are facts items in the world alongside trees, rocks, and grass? We can
trip over a rock, but can we trip over a fact? The moon looks round but what does
a fact look like? We can photograph a sunset but can we photograph facts? We
can weigh apples but can we weigh facts? You can say how many objects are in
your room but how many facts are in your room? Is there space enough for all of
them?
If these questions have convinced you that facts are not out in the world, then
where are they? Could we say that facts are somehow embedded in our
language or belief systems? If so, then is a fact a function of who we are, how we
see the world, and how we think or speak about it? What would be the
implications of this “fact”?
2. We believe that the material objects of our everyday lives are incapable of
vanishing into thin air by magic. If we can't find our keys, we believe that they
are somewhere; they did not just cease to exist. But imagine a culture in which
the people do believe that material objects sometimes disappear into
nothingness (without being crushed, melted, burned up, or destroyed in other
ways according to our laws of physics).
So, when you lose your keys in this culture and never find them again, these
people would assume that the keys had just dematerialized without a trace.
According to their laws of physics, nature sometimes behaves this way. Many
have had the experience of pulling a load of laundry out of the dryer and finding
that one sock is missing. Sometimes, no matter how hard we search, we never
find the missing sock. “So there you have it,” the people from this culture say,
“irrefutable evidence that occasionally things can simply vanish. How would you
convince these people that they are wrong and that our laws of physics are
right?
Skepticism, Rationalism,
Empiricism, Constructivism
and....
?
Socrates, Plato, Descartes, Locke, and Berkeley disagreed over the nature of
knowledge and the best method for attaining it.
BUT they were all in agreement that if we obtain knowledge, we will have arrived at
objective, universal truths about the world. They all agreed that there's one true story
about the world. They have various versions of objectivism.
Objectivism (in epistemology) is the claim that there is one set of universal truths
about the world and that these truths are independent of us
Even Immanuel Kant was an objectivist. Why?
Because Kant believed that the way in which our minds structure
experience (ie. the categories) is the same for everyone. Therefore
objective, absolute knowledge of the phenomenal world was possible.
Now suppose Kant's revolution in thought was correct (ie. the mind structures our
experience of reality). But suppose that he was wrong in maintaining there is only one
way in which all human minds are structured. It would then follow that different people
would experience the world in different ways. What would the consequences of this
be?
There would be no one set of truths about the world, and no set of particular opinions
would be more true than another. Everyone's “lenses” through which they view reality
would give them a different understanding.
I may think that my position is more “true” and a more “accurate” account of reality
than yours, but I am always viewing your position and reality itself through my
particular mental lens. We cannot jump outside our minds to compare our mental
concepts with reality itself.
We can't see anything from
outside ourselves. We can't
jump outside ourselves and
view the world objectively
Epistemological relativism is the claim that there can be no universal, objective
knowledge of reality because all knowledge is relative to the conceptual system of
either the individual or one's culture. There is no one story, no one overriding truth.
“That may be true for you, but it's not true for me.”
“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder”
“When in Rome, do as the Romans do.”
“Different strokes for different folks.”
“It all depends on your point of view.”
Can you think of other common ways of
expressing relativism?
See Handout
“For you, oysters taste delicious, but for me, they taste awful”
Statements like this are always relative because even if they don't say it
directly, they always imply “to me,” “from my taste standpoint.”
Similarly, if I'm standing on the front steps of the library, then for me, the library
is”here.” If you are across the street, then for you, the library is “there.” Terms like
here and there, as well as left and right, are always relative to the location of the
speaker (ie. Consider the focal point of world maps. Who is in the middle?)
“That's true for you but it's not true for me.”
This statement is ambiguous because it could have 2 different meanings:
1) “If someone believes X, then for that person X is thought to be
true. (ie. the world is flat).
2) “There is no objective truth about the matter, there are only different
opinions, and one opinion is just as true as another.”
Is there a difference between truth and falsehood? Or
does it just depend on how you look at it?
1. Is this picture of a family or a group of strangers?
2. How many adults are in the picture?
3. Is this picture an indoor scene or an outdoor scene?
4. Are the people happy or sad?
What's the difference between skepticism and relativism?
The skeptic may accept the possibility that a philosophical question has one true
answer, but simply claim that it is impossible for us to know the truth about the
matter.
-ie. Either God exists or God doesn't exist...but there's no way of
knowing
The relativist says that there is no one true answer to any philosophical question.
Truth claims are always relative to the beliefs of the individual or society.
-ie. God's existence is relative like the tastes of food are relative
But does the relativist believe that there is no reality outside our
belief systems? Well, yes and no.
1)
2)
3)
Reality, like fact, rationality, and truth, is a word and a
concept. Reality is always rooted in a particular conceptual
and linguistic scheme.
To ask if our belief system conforms to reality is like trying to
use a pair of pliers to grab itself. We use our particular idea of
reality to get a grip on our experience, but we can't use it to get
a grip on our conceptual scheme because it is a part of what
makes that scheme.
Or look at it like this: I view the world through my eyeglasses,
but I cannot take my glasses off and examine them without
using some other glasses through which to see them. But how
can I tell if this second pair of glasses is adequate unless I
examine them through some other lenses? In the end, there is
no neutral instrument by means of which we can examine and
evaluate our own or anyone else's conceptual scheme.
Stop and Think:
Imagine that you were to make a list of all your beliefs. Now imagine that you
made a second list of everything that was true. Would the lists be any different?
Surely not. If you believe something, you do so because you think it is true,
and if you consider something to be true, then you believe it.
Is the relativist therefore correct in claiming that truth is always a function of
our web of beliefs? Can we ever break out of our belief system to compare it
with what lies outside it?
Varieties of Relativism:
1) Subjectivism: All knowledge or truth is relative. But relative to what? Beliefs are
relative to each person's individual perspective.
The Greek Sophist Protagoras is said to have claimed:
“Each on of us is a measure of what is and what is not; but there is all
the difference in the world between one man and another just in the
very fact that what is and appears to one is different from what is and appears
to the other.”
“Gradually it has become clear to me what every great
philosophy so far has been: namely, the personal
confession of its author and a kind of involuntary
and unconscious memoir.
2) Cultural Relativism: The view that all beliefs are relative to a particular culture
Ex. Rather than viewing Western culture as superior to those of “primitive”
cultures, we should see it as merely one way people in society adjust to one
another.
Is it wrong for women to wear blue jeans? To cultural relativists, it all depends.
The facts cannot prove or disprove a conceptual scheme,
Because what we accept or reject as a fact and how we
interpret it will always be decided in terms of the whole
fabric of our web of belief. --Willard Quine
3) Historical Relativism:The claim that each historical age had difference conceptual
frameworks such that there are no universal truths but only truths that are correct for a
particular age.
“As far as philosophy is concerned, each individual is in any case
A child of his time; thus philosophy too, is its own time comprehended
in thoughts it is just as foolish to imagine that any philosophy can go
beyond its contemporary world as that an individual can overleap
his own time.”
Philosophy's traditional “Correspondence Theory”
(1) reality has a determinable, objective
character...and
I say NO!
Nietzsche
(2) a belief or statement is true or false to the
degree to which it corresponds to or represents
the objective features of reality.
We can never have that sort of relationship with reality. Like a goldfish who is confined to its bowl,
Looking out at the world from within it, each of us thinks, speaks, and lives within our own,
subjective perspective
No, facts is precisely what there is not, only interpretations.
We cannot establish any fact “in itself”: perhaps it is folly
To want to do such a thing.
Nietzsche calls this approach his theory of perspectivism.
Suppose that there is an impersonal, objective, and perspective-free outlook on reality is
like supposing that we could take a picture of the Eiffel Tower in which the perspective was
neither from the north, east, south, west, or any direction whatsover.
So, although there is obviously no visual perspective-free perception, most
objectivists claim that a conceptual perspective-free standpoint is possible—a
“view-from-nowhere” assumption
Read the following triangles:
-In studying ancient texts, such as a Greek play, we never have the original manuscripts.
-What we have are copies of copies that were passed down through the centuries and
were put together from multiple, partial, and sometimes inconsistent versions of the
original.
-During this process it was inevitable that errors and mistakes crept into the copies
that were then passed on as part of the manuscript.
-Because of these errors, it was necessary for each ancient scribe copying the text or a
present-day scholar reading the text to interpret and reconstruct it to make the best
possible sense out of it,
-But in reconstructing the text, the copyist's or the scholar's outlook, their personal
judgment, and the bias in their interpretations became part of the text itself.
Similarly, Nietzsche thought that each of us interprets the “text”
Of the world. In perceiving and thinking about the world, we
are not like mirrors that passively record what is out there
(ie. Locke). Instead, we are reconstructing and interpreting the
data to create a vision of the world that not only makes sense
to us, but that conforms to our subjective, personal needs.
Nietzsche thinks that instinct decides on our perspectives