CHAPTER 5: RELATIVISM A little learning is a dangerous thing Drink deep or taste not the Pyrean spring These shallow draughts intoxicate the brain But drinking deeply sobers us again ------Alexander Pope ‘America is awash in tolerance’, writes William B. Irvine. In my own life I confront this epidemic of tolerance every time I discuss value theory in the college philosophy classes that I teach. Relativism runs rampant among the undergraduates, and those undergraduates who cling to absolutes often do so surreptitiously, fearing the scorn of the relativists around them…The first task in any college ethics class, then, is to confront relativism. 1 And it should also be one of the first tasks in any logic class since one of the hard sayings of classical logic is that truth is ‘objective’—in particular that it is not relative to persons or to cultures. Many people find this view not only implausible but also offensive, particularly when it is held as regards disputed questions in theology and ethics. Relativism however not as good as it’s cracked up to be. Some forms of relativism—in particular subjectivism, the view that whatever anyone believes is true—are logically incoherent. Other forms of relativism have consequences that most of us would find unacceptable. In this chapter we will consider and respond to some objections to the notion of ‘objective truth’, including claims about the objective truth of moral claims. 1 SUBJECTIVISM Relativism is not a modern invention. Protagoras, one of the Pre-Socratic philosophers who lived in Greece over 2500 years ago held that we, in effect, make our own truth. In the most famous of the surviving fragments of his writing he states: "Man is the measure of all things: of things which are, that they are, and of things which are not, that they are not” Like many fragments of the Pre-Socratics, this phrase has been passed down to us without any context, and its meaning is open to interpretation. Plato ascribes relativism to Protagoras 1 William B. Irvine, “Confronting Relativism,” in Academic Questions vol. 14, No. 1, 42-49 (2000)., http://0- www.springerlink.com.sally.sandiego.edu/content/mw7jqntd16fc6y53/?p=b885ed17be2641b693daa3cdff9c5168&pi =8. 68 and uses Protagoras’ teachings as a foil for his own commitment to objective realities and transcendent values. Plato writes, “Protagoras, admitting as he does that everyone’s opinion is true, must acknowledge the truth of his opponent’s’ belief about his own belief, where they think he is wrong.”2 Plato here is arguing that Protagoras’ view, which he interprets as the claim that whatever a person believes is true, is logically incoherent. his argument against this subjectivist thesis is in the form of a reductio ad absurdum. 1.1 REDUCTIO AD ABSURDEM (‘PROOF BY CONTRADICTION’) A reductio argument proves that a thesis is false by showing that it leads to an ‘absurdity’—in particular, that implies a contradiction (a statement of the form ‘P and not-P’). This argument form, therefore, is often called ‘proof by contradiction’—and it is very handy! In doing formal logic we will study this argument form, also called ‘indirect proof’ since it is typically used to prove a thesis is true ‘indirectly’ by showing that assuming it to be false leads to a contradiction. To do a reductio proof we begin by assuming the opposite of what we want to prove. So, if we want to prove a thesis, T, we assume NOT-T: that is the ‘assumption for reductio’. We then derive contradiction from it, which shows that NOT-T is false by “reducing” it to absurdity. If NOT-T is false, then T itself must be true. So, having derived a contradiction from NOT-T, we have proved T. Here is Plato’s reductio argument against subjectivism 1. Suppose subjectivism is true, i.e. that if a person believes that P, then P. [assume subjectivism for reductio] 2. X believes that P and y believes that x is wrong in believing that P, i.e. y believes that NOT-P. [empirical fact: people disagree] 3. P and Not-P [follows from 1 and 2] 4. Therefore subjectivism is false [reductio! Given that people disagree, subjectivism implies a contradiction.] The claim is that, given the fact of disagreement, subjectivism implies a contradiction and is therefore shown to be false. 2 Plato, “Theaetetus,” 171 a, trans F. M. Cornford, in The Collected Dialogues of Plato,eds. Edith hamilton and Huntington Cairns (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961), p. 876. 69 Premise 1 is just a ‘what-if’—‘what if subjectivism were true’—as the assumption for reductio. We aren’t claiming that subjectivism is true. We’re just playing Let’s Pretend: let’s try it out the subjectivist thesis (the view that whatever anyone believes is true) and see what happens. If bad things happen, then we know we have to reject it. Premise 2 is uncontroversial. People disagree: x and y are any old guys, and P is any old proposition. It doesn’t matter who they are, or what P is: in 2, we’re just claiming that there is at least one case of disagreement. If y believes that x’s claim is false, then y believes that NOT-P. Given their disagreement, we have x believing P and y believing Not-P. Now according to subjectivism whatever anyone believes is true. So, since x believes P, P is true and, since y believes Not-P, Not-P is true. We can therefore infer Premise 3, the contradiction P and Not-P, which is necessarily false. Given the fact of disagreement, subjectivism implies a contradiction, and therefore must itself be false. Summing up: in a reductio argument, strange as it sounds, we assume a thesis we want to refute (the ‘assumption for reductio’) which we put it together with other premises that are clearly true; we then show that the set of sentences implies a contradiction—something that must be false and so conclude that the premises can’t all be true. But we know the other premises are ok: it is uncontroversial that people disagree. So the problem must be the assumption for reductio—the subjectivist thesis, that whatever anyone believes is true. We conclude, therefore, that the subjectivist thesis is false. 1.2 IT’S ALRIGhT TO BE WRONG! Most people aren’t tempted by subjectivism, or by relativism about all propositions whatsoever. Very few people are tempted by relativism when it comes to ordinary, uncontroversial claims. The temptation is to be a relativist about claims that are controversial— which are generally held to be matters of opinion because there doesn’t seem to be any generally accepted, conclusive reason to accept or reject them. These include most notably moral judgments. We will argue in the next chapter, in our discussion of knowledge as justified true belief, that is, that it is a matter of having good reasons for one’s belief, and that relativism about controversial claims is a consequence of confusing truth with justification. When it comes to difficult questions, which are disputed, including questions in ethics, metaphysics and theology, there is a lot of disagreement and smart, educated, informed people quite often disagree. When it comes to such claims, people on both sides may have very good reasons for the views they hold. But this is not to say that their views are both true (or that neither are true, or that there is no objective fact of the matter when it comes to such claims). We can have very good reasons for holding beliefs that are false. Indeed we are sometimes justified in holding beliefs that are in fact false. To this extent it’s alright to be wrong! For now however, let us consider relativism as regards a special class of controversial claims, viz. moral judgments. Many otherwise reasonable people, who would never be tempted by Protagoras’ subjectivism, nevertheless hold that moral judgments are mere matters of 70 opinion, which are not, in any objective sense, either true or false or which are true or false relative to persons or cultures. Unlike unrestricted subjectivism, ethical relativism, is not logically incoherent. But as we shall argue, it is not as good as it’s cracked up to be. 2 ETHICAL RELATIVISM Moral judgments are claims to the effect that some action, or kind of action, is right, wrong or obligatory or that some moral agent is good or bad, and so on. Ethical relativists hold that there are no true universal moral judgments. Some hold that moral judgments are only true relative to individuals: crudely, that what’s right for one person may not be right for another. Others hold that moral judgments are only true or false relative to cultures. Ethical relativism is the denial of ethical universalism. To be an ethical universalist is to hold that there are some moral judgments that are true everywhere, always and for all moral agents. We note that in logic ‘some’ always means ‘at least one’. It does not mean ‘a few’ and it certainly does not mean ‘not all’. So the ethical universalist’s claim is minimalist: he holds only that there is some moral judgment or other that goes for everyone—not that all moral judgments go for everyone. This means that ethical universalism is the ‘weaker’ and hence more readily defensible position. All the ethical universalist needs to show is that there is at least one moral principle— however minimal, however abstract—that holds for all people. You can bring up case after case of moral judgments that don’t apply universally without undermining his position.