Talk:Relativism

message: This is taken from the criticisms section of the article:
6. Since logic is inherently constant, and that some things are more true than others, it means that "strong" relativism cannot hold true under many conditions. Relativism often ignores how views have different weight to another. An example of a similar phenomenon is the Gay Marriage debate in the U.S. - an example where the majority dictates the rights of the entirety even when it doesn't apply to them, as they do not weigh up the effects of their views. 
Can someone explain what exactly this means? 
I do not follow the first half of the paragraph (the one that actually pertains to relativism), and the example reads as complete nonsense to me, especially this part:
"...the majority dictates the rights of the entirety even when it doesn't apply to them, as they do not weigh up the effects of their views."
I do not think that:
a) The majority in question believes that "it" doesn't apply to them. (Though I'm not sure what "it" is in this context, so the sentence may be true.) The majority believes that allowing gay marriage would undermine the moral standards of their society, which, of course, applies to everybody in that society.
b) The majority in question does not "weigh up the effects of its views". Its views are that gay marriage should not be allowed, for the benefit of society; it is aware of the effects; and does not object to them. Tullie 23:44, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: From the text example, it would appear that it implies a majority, who are not heavily committed on an issue (gay marriage in the example) forcing their opinions on a minority to who it is a highly significant issue.  To the majority, granting the issue is more or less trivial and cost free, but forces a significant violation of conscience onto the minority.  62.196.17.197 (talk) 15:00, 17 January 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Can someone explain criticism #6 to me? 

message: This criticism is also nonsensical. I've added italics to the below citation:
5. Moral Relativism, in particular, in its more pure forms, often defies logic and acts in ignorance of possible truths. With any given action, it (what is "it"?) has the ability to inflict positive and negative states on other sentient beings, meaning it's impossible for relativism to be "the" law as even with hundreds of factors there is still usually an overall positive or negative outcome, and thus "wrong" would be attempting to seek more negative states than positive ones (why would "wrong" be this? Where does relativist theory claim this?), possibly for personal gain. Moral Relativism either ignores this or seeks to overwrite it. Because certain things, such as logic, do exist and are constant, it is difficult for relativism to hold true in all scenarios.
I may be misunderstanding something, but the argument makes no sense. I'm going to remove it, unless anyone sees any reason why it should stay. Tullie 16:23, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It makes no sense. But nor does anything written about "relativism." The article and discussion pages are based on a fundamental misunderstanding of "postmodern" philosophers like Foucault and Baudrillard, none which is a "relativist." —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 212.73.175.238 (talk) 00:57, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  They are widely considered relativist in aspects of their thought.  Do you own the rights to attribution of something as relativist or non?  Probably not.  But of course they don't subscribe to what people commonly regard as the "dirty relativism" or pure sophistry.  This is discussed at length in the book "Scandalous Knowledge" -- how even relativists try to hedge their theories in order to distance themselves from dirty relativism which no serious thinkers ever subscribed to, who are lambasted as subscribing to such for example in the Fashionable Nonesense and similar works of intellectual dishonesty where quotes are cherry picked and the authors run rampant with their own extrapolations based on either incomplete or ideologically motivated readings. DivisionByZer0 (talk) 07:55, 19 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Criticism #5 

message: "he maintains that a relativistic, many valued logic just might be the most apt for the artworld or history since"
Since when has "many-valued logic" been the same thing as relativism? I mean, the guy
might have a perfectly good argument but it needs to be given. It is not standard or obvious.
"relationalism, the doctrine of true-for l or true for k, and the like, where l and k are different speakers or different world, or the like. "
That is what everybody else calls relativism.
'For Margolis "true" means true.'
Then he is not a relativist in the sense used in the rest of the article. Which at least
needs to be made explicit.
1Z 19:08, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Margolis

message: This page has nothing to do with philosophy. This page, like Relativism, is absolute bunk. Nobody calls himself a relativist. Relativist and relativism are labels created by the religious right. They are used as derogatory slurs.
These people call themselves relativists.
1Z 22:54, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Your comments look like a bunch of random, unsupported opinions to me. 1Z 15:58, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

text: You say everybody but the religious are relativists.
I don't say that. 1Z (talk) 17:08, 25 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Re-think 

message: The following section is so confusing that I have read it ten times and still do not understand what it is saying. Can someone please explain what this section is trying to say? The paragraph itself seems nonsensical to me.
Responses
Contradictions such as "all beliefs are equally worthless" are nonsensical, as they constitute arguing from the premise. Once you have said if the X is absolute (e.g. "all beliefs are equally worthless") you have presupposed relativism is false. And one cannot prove a statement using that statement as a premise. There is a contradiction, but the contradiction is between relativism and the presuppositions of absoluteness in the ordinary logic used. Nothing has been proven wrong and nothing has been proven in and of itself, only the known incompatibility has been restated inefficiently.
--Logiboy123 (talk) 21:43, 11 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Responses section problem. 

message: I have to admit that I'm having trouble reading the article, and understanding the most basic concepts of relativism.  It's a subject that I am interested in, but have little pre-existing knowledge of.  In my opinion, the article jumps right into a large mess of confusing concepts.  I appreciate that there is so much detail and in-depth discussion of multiple views - the more information, the better - but... can someone knowledgeable put in some sort of practically worded definition?  Or better yet, some basic, every-day type of examples near the beginning of the article, to familiarize a wider range of readers?  *Vendetta* (whois talk edits) 07:23, 25 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Requesting a breakdown

message: I plan to revise the article as follows:
1) Shorten the lede, moving some material to new section
2) Expand "forms of relativism". Mention social constuctivism and and the Stong Programme 
3) Add a section on Wittgenstein
4) Add a section on Setven Hales
5) Rewrite the section on Margolis.
6) restructure the 'advocates' section, separating out those
whoe status as relativists is contentious (Rorty, Wittgenstein, Derrida).
7) Expand the "critics" section, adding David Hirsch, Paul Bhogossian, etc
8) inclduding moving the material on religion there
9) Restructure pro and con. Initial arguments for relativism need to be made.
Human Universals as a counterargument to Descriptive Relativism needs to be mentioned.
The political aspect of the debate needs to be mentioned.
10) Clarify the alternatives to relativism -- absolutism, objectivism, realism, etc.
11) Improve the level of citation.
This will all proceed quite gradually , for lack of time among other reasons
1Z (talk) 17:05, 1 July 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Revision 

message: "'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."
-Richard Rorty, "Pragmatism, Relativism, and Irrationalism"
from here
Consider that everything is opinion, and opinion is in thy power. (Marcus Aurelius)  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 211.29.233.5 (talk) 21:21, 25 April 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Is anyone a relativist?

message: Does the article make a strong/clear enough distinction between mild and extreme relativism? And it doesn't seem to emphasise sufficiently that the main objectors to relativism seem to be (a) scientists and (b) religious folks. The reasons for that might profitably be explored further. Maybe someone can comment? thanks Peter morrell 15:18, 31 July 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks. Well, maybe these points can be added to the article along with the quotes you mention. Peter morrell 07:04, 4 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Absolute relativism

message: Regarding the Catholic Church and relativism, I noticed this atypical 1884 document called Humanum Genus which condemns both relativism and Freemasonry, and claims that both are closely tied together.  It's unclear what is the historical etymology for relativism, but 1884 is a fairly ancient date for this kind of word. Anyways, it would a good idea to further describe how Masonic ideology and philosophy are conductive of relativism. ADM (talk) 18:03, 15 March 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Freemasonry

message: "Alethic" should be removed from this article or a definition should be supplied -- I have never seen this term in philosophic writings.  Wikipedia articles should be written so that they are accessible to non-experts who don't know all the jargon of this or that field.  If the jargon of the field is used it should have an entry or it should be defined for the reader DivisionByZer0 (talk) 04:09, 19 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Undefined terms

message: The statement, "Another argument is that if relativism presupposes that "all beliefs are equally valid," it then implies that any belief system holding itself to be the only valid one is untrue, which is a contradiction" is a straw man relativism is more of a concept not an opinion, like say, math (1+1=2), or the statement, "In order for something to be living it must satisify the criteria required to be classified as such", a good analogy would be saying that the Chaos theory can't be true because it would say that the theory itself would be subject to the uncertainty, which is untrue since the theory only aplies to dynamic systems.Props888 (talk) 01:01, 26 April 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Biased against subject matter 

message: His work and influence in the fields of anthropology and linguistics I believe merit a section on Wittgenstein in this Wikipedia article. Don't have enough knowledge on the subject to make an addition, but I would suggest maybe information from his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus or Philosophical Investigations would be relevant to discussion. Shaded0 (talk) 05:28, 9 May 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Suggest to include Wittgenstein under advocates 

message: The lede of this article defines relativism in contrast to the concept of 'absolute' {truth, validity, existence, etc.}.  And rightly so.  Why is it, then, that this is shaping up to be a commendable article, when the 'absolute' one is completely awful?
If I knew nothing about the subject, and wanted to quickly gain an appreciation for it, I might want to look up 'relative' and 'absolute' and read the ledes, to see what was broadly meant, without delving into the weeds of the various arguments.  But I can't do that.  
Curiously, this article is of high importance on your scale, but 'absolute' is of low importance.  I understand that due to the subtleties underlying relativist arguments, they're inherently more interesting and probably more valid in many respects, but the belief in an 'absolute underlying something' as a naive metaphysical position is so ubiquitous that it surely merits proper explication in an encyclopaedia.
And no, I'm not prepared to do it, as I wasted far too much time on this project years ago, and was driven away by the loonies and vandals.  But I know there're many good people for whom it's still a worthwhile hobby.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.112.23.99 (talk) 00:23, 10 August 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: You're making some good points. Wikipedia is only supposed to be a compendium of the literature on each topic. Unfortunately, all professional literature is sadly deficient both in breadth and depth when it comes to relativism. BlueMist (talk) 14:46, 3 March 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Absolute (philosophy) 

message: Where is the section here on philosophical and ontological theories about relativity???  Your section on the Theory of Relativity refers us to this site with the words:
"For philosophical or ontological theories about relativity, see Relativism."
Yet on this site there is no material whatsoever about the philosophical and ontological issues about relativity in physics e.g. the issue of an absolute reference frame.
Wikipedia is thus shamefully deficient here!  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.7.52.82 (talk) 02:56, 18 May 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Deficient Material and Subject Matter under "Relativism". 

message: "... and much of the recent literature on these matters is explicitly concerned with the extent of, and evidence for, cultural or moral or linguistic or human universals (see Brown,[which?] 1991 for a good discussion)".
With regard to the [which?] tag: This is the book "Human Universals" (1991) by Donald Brown. I'm not sure how to specify this so as to remove the tag.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.126.200.132 (talk) 02:05, 27 May 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  How to specify a reference?  

message: relativism is appropriate up to a point and then it breaks down to the incoherent self contradicting dysfunctional pattern of thought that it is.it's bigoted hypocritical and obliviously ignorant to all of this as it applies it's philosophy to only certain cultures and sub cultures and definitely not others.for if one was to refer to nazi germany or the kkk ruled southeast usa or other disgustingly bigoted cultures their "there's no better or worse-there's only different" mentality would show their obvious error in thinking.in the end it's just another idea with followers whose primary ideology is a reflexive "whatever's convenient for me and mine".meet the new boss.......same as the old boss.maybe one day all of us will pledge allegience to good over bad,right over wrong, and true over false which at the heart of the matter are all universally and kosmically objective.represented and expressed in many differnt ways,with different symbols,rituals,traditions,customs,languages and accents.as we evolve evolution will take care of diversification,we have to work on narrowing down our understanding and perception of the big three mentioned above.there is most certainly a better and worse.we have enough recorded history to look back on and learn from.if what's most important to you is "never offending anybody",especially certain peoples over others, than you're going to create a society where people,good people,are terrified of possibly saying the wrong thing or it being mis-perceived by someone who wants nothing more than to be offended.if you don't allow for an open and free exchange of ideas and opinions on anything and everything,with tact and civility,then you are gonna have a society that stagnates and withers away,like certain cultures and societies before us which have been granted beyond reproach status by these same relativists.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.14.82.169 (talk) 19:54, 17 October 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  you can't fix inequality by throwing more inequality at it 

message: Greetings,
Seeking your valuable inputs @ Talk:Cognitive relativism#Redirect discussion.    
Thanks and warm regards
 Bookku, 'Encyclopedias = expanding information & knowledge' (talk) 05:41, 4 September 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Requesting inputs 

message: Ciao Fellow Wikipedia editors -- Just a quick note -- I have included a section for the contribution made by Colin Murray Turbayne to the debate about Relativism in his books Metaphors for the Mind: The Creative Mind and its Origins and The Myth of Metaphor.Metaphors for the Mind: The Creative Mind and its Origins by Colin Murray Turbayne on Philpapers.org Murphy, Jeffrie G. "Berkeley and the Metaphor of Mental Substance." Ratio 7 (1965):171, note 3.The Carleton Miscellany, 1965 Spring, Carleton College pp. 94-101  Critical Review of The Myth of Metaphor by Colin Murray Turbayne on Carleton Digital Collections  at carleton.eduDictionary of Modern American Philosophers Shook, John. 2005  p. 2451 Biography of Colin Murray Turbayne on Google Books I hope that this is OK and that it is helpful to the article! Enjoy!
160.72.80.178 (talk) 22:32, 21 February 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Re: A new section describing the contribution of [[Colin Murray Turbayne]]