tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post7252956058904459521..comments2024-03-18T21:06:42.546-07:00Comments on Edward Feser: The absolute truth about relativismEdward Feserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13643921537838616224noreply@blogger.comBlogger179125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-1424858133399904602021-04-07T18:19:53.583-07:002021-04-07T18:19:53.583-07:00During an anthropology course in the middle or lat...During an anthropology course in the middle or late 1980, the professor asked each student group to sum up what the group members read in an anthropological journal article. Luckily, I belonged to a one-student group. So I didn't need to discuss anything with anyone else.<br /><br />The article described bride-burning in India. After the class, I asked the professor what she did to stay objective in a society where the natives did something she abhorred.<br /><br />She replied that though she doubted that she could match a killing, she didn't believe we have enough information to make moral judgments.<br /><br />That ended the conversation. But I still wondered what she meant by that answer. Did she mean she thought we had too little evidence to show that it's immoral to burn a bride to death or to little evidence to discover the burner's intentions? Either way, she didn't even mention her objectivity.Bill McEnaneynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-18119319409442860732017-04-04T19:19:03.709-07:002017-04-04T19:19:03.709-07:00Can we have that as a simple flow chart please?Can we have that as a simple flow chart please?Kaiser Basileushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03077465746192192716noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-73748088934019920612016-05-18T13:52:00.520-07:002016-05-18T13:52:00.520-07:00I have interviewed several people about morality a...I have interviewed several people about morality and most of the people that I have talked to hold the belief that truth is relative. Something that is true for you is not true for someone else. But as this post talked about there are things that are absolutely true. Truth is that which corresponds with the way that things actually are. Something is not true just because you believe it to be true. Relativism, on the other hand, says that there is no such thing as right and wrong, no absolute truths. To that I ask, "Is that absolute true?"Raenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-26172327851655996722015-10-02T09:57:44.741-07:002015-10-02T09:57:44.741-07:00Scott: "utilitarianism (which, whatever else ...Scott: "utilitarianism (which, whatever else is wrong with it, isn't "relativism") was pretty popular among analytic philosophers" <br /><br />I wonder about this. In the absence of any plausible substantive account of the human good (something true of all versions of utilitarianism or consequentialism), it seems that utilitarianism naturally ends up as preference-satisfactionism. And is there are reason for saying that such a view is non-relativistic? And doesn't the same apply to any kind of Rawlsian view, that eschews metaphysically grounded accounts of moral concepts in favor of politically grounded (i.e., politically contrived) ones?<br />DavidMnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-62317963829136675592015-09-22T08:40:53.550-07:002015-09-22T08:40:53.550-07:00"The answers to these and other obvious quest..."The answers to these and other obvious questions (some would say "fatal objections") not only have not been forthcoming, but have been met by more of the same attempts to conjure spirits from the vasty deep merely by reerererererepeating catchphrases about them. That, for the record, is why so many of us no longer bother. "<br /><br />Entering into a presumed dialog, you attempt to reason. In return you get incantation, hectoring horatory, and a recycled emergentism resurrected as a kind of jury rigged pseudo-teleology - or at least as its rhetorical place holder.<br /><br />In these torrents of illogic we are informed that an historical event which has per the informant's own worldview no objective meaning, and social significance for only 20 percent of the world's population, has made it impossible to ever believe in Providence again. <br /><br />We are authoritatively informed that God is not speaking, though the existence of scriptures, saints and crackpots alike endlessly assert the contrary; and, there is no credible evidence that the author is interested in interrupting his self-gratifying masturbatory activities in order to listen. <br /><br />We are further told that an impersonal and indifferent process "EVOLUTION", which in the final logical reduction can hardly even be dignified by the name of a "process", performs "experiments". Apparently these "experiments" are blind forces acting blindly on other forces to no purpose ... with what randomly oozes out of the interstices being the result of the "experiment". <br /><br />All hail, genuflect, and self-sacrificially bless its name. If it points to the author's desired political end, that is.<br /><br />It seems we all more or less walk backwards into the future. The question that divides is whether the traces we leave and the look of the retreating background provide material for deductions as to whether we are headed for any place in particular and whether the thinking that we apply to the small patterns and intentions of our operative preoccupations, can be efficaciously applied in anyway to grasping the larger reality which seems to have no immediate obvious intentions or operator.<br /><br />Santi says he thinks not. Fine then. But the gibbering idiot just won't stop goddamn talking like he thinks it does.DNWnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-56873850658881026252015-09-21T11:31:27.638-07:002015-09-21T11:31:27.638-07:00The thread was threatening to become the most bori...The thread was threatening to become the most boring one in the history. I mean, Professor chose not to call names and stayed pretty civil. <br /><br />So, I thought who would defend an abstract relativist?<br /><br />But then someone jumped in and said: "You say the map is either absolutely true or false, I say it doesn’t matter..."<br /><br />Then someone else popped up and said that Feser's image is "playful and an invitation to energetic exchange with all-comers".<br /><br />Then he also said: "The dogmatic Phallus at the end of the mind fares poorly in open global competition."<br /><br />Whatever you think about EVOLUTION, you can not deny the entertaining value of the discussion.Sergenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-49446854817951291602015-09-21T10:18:11.894-07:002015-09-21T10:18:11.894-07:00Chris:
As DMW says,
Many here have remarked on t...Chris:<br /><br />As DMW says,<br /><br /><i>Many here have remarked on the peculiar status he has accorded "EVOLUTION", given his non-teleological worldview.</i><br /><br />…as well as on e.g. his bizarre view that X can't have a form/essence if X's great-great-…-great-grandchildren might have different ones. The answers to these and other obvious questions (some would say "fatal objections") not only have not been forthcoming, but have been met by more of the same attempts to conjure spirits from the vasty deep merely by reerererererepeating catchphrases about them. That, for the record, is why so many of us no longer bother.Scotthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11979532520761760862noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-25634160362035438632015-09-21T08:18:49.199-07:002015-09-21T08:18:49.199-07:00Chris said...
Santi,
Do me a favor, just...Chris said...<br /><br /> Santi,<br /><br /> Do me a favor, just reign in the fluff and talk straight.<br /><br /> You dogmatically reject human access to truth (which amounts to a rejection of truth) all in the name of truth?<br /> September 20, 2015 at 12:02 PM "<br /><br /><br />Your question regarding the point of Santi's little performance probably opens up an issue which can be profitably addressed.<br /><br />The Santian, despite his occasional professions to the contrary, doesn't believe in, or at least have a meaningful definition of, "truth".<br /><br />Like many, he believes that he can spin a kind of reality out of vocal acts. Whether you grant that there is an obvious kernel of non-trivial truth to that notion, or wish to go whole secular mystery-religion hog and blend it into a number of other crackpot dogmas, seems to me to make all the difference.<br /><br /><br />In any event, like his master Rorty, he has shrugged off any interest in truth, in favor of the tactic of manipulating, or coping with, the environment. And one of those manipulating mechanisms is rhetoric: verbiage intended to frame discussions and elicit the desired emotional reactions and behaviors from the target. This, in aid of some end or other which is itself presumed immune from critical analysis and ultimately pointless in itself. Thus, techniques intended to deliver organic satisfaction formally replace a quest for understanding; identification with the universe, the not-self, supposedly replaces the vulnerable ego, and removes the anxiety caused by a potential confrontation with nothingness, by psychologically merging with the nothing.<br /><br />Now, whether the average Santian would stick to this line of monist emergent evolution bullshit if you strapped him to a board and threatened him with vivisection, I cannot say. But in less dire normal circumstances, as he seeks to manipulate and cope with a political and social environment which includes others uninterested in the Rortian "details of his life", it's the path he has chosen as his best bet.<br /><br />One last comment. Many here have remarked on the peculiar status he has accorded "EVOLUTION", given his non-teleological worldview. Just how this "evolution" is supposed to carry all the morally tinged rhetorical freight he loads it up with, when "it" however defined, whatever it is supposed to be, is itself reduced to a non-teleological tautology, is a mystery only Santi himself can answer. This comical reverence, prostration before a term which on Santi's own premisses can have no "ought" about it, seems patently ludicrous.<br /><br />The question is: is he so stupid he cannot see it?; or, so crazy that he just keeps jabbering on despite the obvious incoherence of his song and ultimate futility of his project?DNWnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-26749650614232309732015-09-20T18:29:19.329-07:002015-09-20T18:29:19.329-07:00I will say, I'm not that deluded to think that...I will say, I'm not that deluded to think that Santi will pay attention to what we say, I simply thought that the argument had more to give than what the rant has to offer.Dennisnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-33738613012538143952015-09-20T17:50:14.986-07:002015-09-20T17:50:14.986-07:00First two sentences of the OP:
I don’t write very...First two sentences of the OP:<br /><br /><i>I don’t write very often about relativism. Part of the reason is that few if any of the critics I find myself engaging with -- for example, fellow analytic philosophers of a secular or progressive bent, or scientifically inclined atheists -- take relativism any more seriously than I do.</i><br /><br />So in rarely writing about relativism, Feser has really been attempting to conceal his anxiety about relativism, which is really an anxiety about evolution, variation overthrowing essences, and diversity...<br /><br /><br /><br />...<br /><br /><br /><br />Gosh, Santi. I think the problem may be that your mind is just too subtle for the likes of us. We've lived our entire lives hiding behind Oz curtains and refusing to look through telescopes, just like that apocryphal bishop. Truly, there is no hope for us. Time to shake the dust of this place off your feet and never look back, Santi. Never look back.Gottfriednoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-28466035799830995282015-09-20T12:02:26.657-07:002015-09-20T12:02:26.657-07:00Santi,
Do me a favor, just reign in the fluff and...Santi,<br /><br />Do me a favor, just reign in the fluff and talk straight. <br /><br />You dogmatically reject human access to truth (which amounts to a rejection of truth) all in the name of truth?Chrishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04865413665629644313noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-31328728396994022072015-09-20T10:16:03.750-07:002015-09-20T10:16:03.750-07:00The idea of "the relativist" is the ghos...The idea of "the relativist" is the ghost-bird that stands-in for a multitude of right-wing ambivalences; it gives diverse anxieties a single target. <br /><br />Anxiety about "the relativist" is invariably an anxiety about evolution, variation overthrowing essences, and diversity. What is really dangerous is not "the relativist," but the irreducible continuum, where no individual conforms to the Golden Mean, yet is heard from democratically. The dogmatic Phallus at the end of the mind fares poorly in open global competition.<br /><br />So blame a single target, the "relativist," for the decline of the Phallus. It's just easier. <br /><br />The decline of the Phallus has to be a sinister plot; a willful thing; something to be derisive and angry about. It can't just be impersonal. It's got to be more than simply evolutionary diversity playing itself out in a contingent cosmos.<br /><br />Even if that's the way the world actually is. Even if that's the truth.<br /><br />So the concern here is not really about the preservation of truth, but the preservation of a favored prejudice dogmatically taken to be the truth. <br /><br />Multiple anxieties have been distilled into single targets throughout human history. We all know the instances. In this instance, the intellectual conservative's fright mask is "the relativist," but behind it is evolution. Santi Tafarellahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14507111801153912438noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-51000272151780297512015-09-20T00:55:00.561-07:002015-09-20T00:55:00.561-07:00"And how prone to error the imagination is, w..."And how prone to error the imagination is, when left to itself alone and unaccompanied by experience and the precepts of a true philosophy, is well known to anyone with the slightest experience. <br /><br />"Merely try some brief excursion and see whether you will not withdraw the standards and sound the retreat, and gather fresh forces that you may return to struggles of this kind with increased powers. <br /><br />"If you would earn rewards in this camp you must first devote your whole labor and the penetration of your mind to the investigation and sifting of all such things as closely touch upon the matter in hand and serve it."<br /><br />-- Emanuel Swedenborg (notorious for his denigration of Catholics and disparagement of scholastics (even while envying the former and borrowing from the latter))Glennnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-89810991215931122792015-09-19T18:38:37.990-07:002015-09-19T18:38:37.990-07:00@Scott
Thanks for the response. I think we're...@Scott<br /><br />Thanks for the response. I think we're coming at this question from two different frameworks so it seems best that, like you suggested, we call it day. I've dusted off my copy of Scholastic Metaphysics and will see if that clarifies matters.ThatGuynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-8898565848269514872015-09-19T12:54:36.132-07:002015-09-19T12:54:36.132-07:00DNW,
Even if a dozen comments had popped up while...DNW,<br /><br />Even if a dozen comments had popped up while you were typing, I think the "it" to which you were referring would be pretty clear.Gottfriednoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-55013611205367870122015-09-19T11:23:54.237-07:002015-09-19T11:23:54.237-07:00A dead day, a moribund thread, and the first time ...A dead day, a moribund thread, and the first time ever I don't quote what I am remarking on, relying on position alone, Scott steps between me and my target in the second or two it takes to type 4 words. LOLDNWnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-58093171324300623632015-09-19T11:17:58.702-07:002015-09-19T11:17:58.702-07:00
Somebody remove its batteries ...<br /><br />Somebody remove its batteries ...DNWnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-85816212259711030132015-09-19T11:17:37.933-07:002015-09-19T11:17:37.933-07:00Alex:
Sorry about the name mixup; I have no idea ...Alex:<br /><br />Sorry about the name mixup; I have no idea where I got "Andy."<br /><br />Anyway, I have little interest in defending "analytic philosophy" as such, especially if you're going to insist on identifying it with specific views that are no longer generally held by those working in the field that now goes by that name.<br /><br />However, as a style of and an approach to philosophy, it's marked by some important virtues, including a high standard of logical rigor and close attention to precise definition. Thomism isn't somehow failing to stand on its own when it appreciates these virtues, which after all it has long practiced anyway. (And at any rate Thomism has always accepted truth from wherever it appears.)<br /><br />The real point is that philosophers who aren't Thomists are discovering that when they exercise the aforementioned "analytic" virtues, they find themselves returning to views that Thomism has held all along, sometimes without even recognizing them as Thomist (or Aristotelian). Why you think Thomism is relying on a "crutch" when it recognizes this, I do not know.<br /><br />And for the record…<br /><br /><i>You can't just say, well, "now some analytic philosophers make occasional noises about moral philosophy that aren't too bad".</i><br /><br />…I didn't.Scotthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11979532520761760862noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-70344380684988328682015-09-19T08:01:52.021-07:002015-09-19T08:01:52.021-07:00Tony:
You wrote: "The fact that behavioral p...Tony:<br /><br />You wrote: "The fact that behavioral psychologists...[now use] final causality...puts a check on JUST HOW FAR even Darwinian scientific modeling controls scientific language."<br /><br />Well, yes. Darwin checks Thomism and other languages check Darwin. But aren't you, in making this observation, making my point? The truth can be one; our language maps limited and multiple.<br /><br />Nature doesn't speak, we speak. And if God isn't speaking, we again are forced to speak, overlaying maps on the singular reality that serve our particular purposes. You can, for instance, talk about the cosmos in Newtonian terms or Einsteinian terms, and get pretty far with either language, depending on what you are trying to do. <br /><br />But you might say: Einstein's vision encompasses Newton's, and is therefore the more powerful language. Likewise, perhaps you take the view that you can give a Thomistic reading of Darwin that encompasses Darwin, proving Aquinas's language to be the more powerful language; the language that most closely corresponds with the ultimate truth. <br /><br />In turn, I might claim that reading Aquinas in the light of Darwin yields more interesting insights; more truth. Harold Bloom used to say that a Shakespearean reading of Freud was more powerful than a Freudian reading of Shakespeare. <br /><br />But I actually share Isaiah Berlin's view that useful languages generally can't be put into a hierarchy and harmonized into a synoptic vision.<br /><br />Berlin's famous example is that the language of individual liberty and the language of equality can't really be held in a single vision. I also hold with Rorty (for another example) that the language of one's aesthetic projects and the language of politics cannot be held in a single vision. No one can tell you when to stop painting landscapes and become Mother Theresa.<br /><br />I believe we should beware of recipe books, especially in an evolutionary universe where variation is the engine of change. Aquinas' Summa is a recipe book. It's insufficiently specified for facts on the ground. <br /><br />Evolution is the opposite of Thomism. It doesn't tell any particular variation what its evolutionary strategy ought to be in encountering its contingent environment. Evolution does not provide a singular map or recipe book for guiding one's next move. No one can tell a Galapagos tortoise whether to stop and eat or to keep moving to the next location. These are survival gambits that each variant tortoise puts forward on the natural selection casino table.<br /><br />We too put forth our gambits. Think Antigone. When does one bury one's brother, and when does one obey the King? Is there a prescriptive language that can hold both of these in a single vision, dictating her next move? <br /><br />When Sartre was asked by a young man whether to join the French resistance against Hitler or go on attending to a sick mother, Sartre said, "I can't tell you, now choose."<br /><br />I think a final theory is possible with physics, but absent God speaking, knowing all there is to know about how nature works isn't going to tell you whether or not gay and lesbian marriage is okay. In this sense, the language of democracy checks the language of physics (at least its applicability). Gay and lesbian marriage is a life variation that is in need of democratic and evolutionary experiment, not proscription in advance.<br /><br />This is why evolution and democracy are problematic for the Thomistic language. A cookbook with recipes for adhering to a golden brown Golden Mean only works if variation from the mean is bad; if diversity, experiment, and gambits are bad. But in evolution and democracy, variations, diversity, experiments, and gambits aren't bad. They're the signs of life.Santi Tafarellahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14507111801153912438noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-56999110842602461172015-09-18T20:57:05.606-07:002015-09-18T20:57:05.606-07:00Scott,
I'm Alex, not Andy. Sorry it took so ...Scott,<br /><br />I'm Alex, not Andy. Sorry it took so long to respond. There are many difficulties I see both in your comments and in general.<br /><br />1. As you indicate, analytic philosophy in some sense does not exist anymore as a coherent entity. It therefore becomes unclear why Thomists should regard the occasional support of some analytic philosophers on some questions as particularly interesting or worthwhile. Can't Thomist philosophy stand on it's own two feet without needing the crutch of favorable words from such a feeble entity and a failed project as analytic philosophy?<br /><br />2. You can't just say, well, "now some analytic philosophers make occasional noises about moral philosophy that aren't too bad". What analytic philosophy's grotesque inability to do any plausible moral philosophy for several generations means is that the system of analytic philosophy was deeply and inherently flawed. It's not just some random result of analytic philosophy (at least, in it's heyday) that it could not plausibly do moral or political philosophy. (And, I would argue, still can't do so.) It was driven by analytic philosophy's most deeply held ideas that it could not do so.<br /><br />3. I agree that analytic philosophy started to fragment in the early 1960s from criticism like Blanshard's. However, analytic philosophy really didn't self-correct. For many more decades, it continued as a school even though, internally, many of its top virtuosi knew the project had largely failed. Yet they insisted on retaining oversized amounts of their power over academic philosophy, including such things as repeatedly conspiring to make sure the APA would be exclusively controlled by analytics, for just one instance.Alexhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16615199937354749817noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-48011458125106115702015-09-18T20:03:21.840-07:002015-09-18T20:03:21.840-07:00How about this formulation:
There probably is abs...How about this formulation:<br /><br />There probably is absolute truth but as human beings exist, currently, our puny brains are incapable of grasping such a truth.<br /><br />Also, do you consider W.V.O. Quine a relativist?Ashernoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-6805114128515057772015-09-18T18:17:57.331-07:002015-09-18T18:17:57.331-07:00A contingent evolutionary cosmos, not tending towa...<i>A contingent evolutionary cosmos, not tending toward anything in particular, and with species lineages and species variations laid out along continuums....</i><br /><br />Tony, Chris, when Santi is saying that, I think the best interpretation to give him is with the Hobbesian one by accepting the thesis that, 'Nature is in motion.' Contra the Aristotelian thesis that 'Nature tends towards rest.' Dennisnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-52421679620723069242015-09-18T08:56:45.171-07:002015-09-18T08:56:45.171-07:00Santi,
What, exactly, is your objection, if any (...Santi,<br /><br />What, exactly, is your objection, if any (not sure), to what Professor Feser said?Chrishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04865413665629644313noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-29516436077570901282015-09-18T08:08:22.396-07:002015-09-18T08:08:22.396-07:00The fact that final causes in scientific theorizin...<i>The fact that final causes in scientific theorizing isn't going anywhere after Darwin is an example of how one language (Darwin's) puts a check on AT metaphysics' contemporary range of use.</i> <br /><br />The fact that behavioral psychologists, after decades of trying to do without final causality, tentatively have come back to including final causality as among the necessary ingredients of understanding reality, puts a check on JUST HOW FAR even Darwinian scientific modeling controls scientific language. <br /><br /><i>A contingent evolutionary cosmos, not tending toward anything in particular, and with species lineages and species variations laid out along continuums, can only ever be pragmatically characterized, </i> <br /><br />In the continued absence of any <i>direct</i> proof of a single instance of macro-evolution without the intervention of outside agency, all the not-quite-truly-Darwinian evolutionary argument for species variation on a continuum as opposed to natures and essences presents is JUST an argument for one explanation among many possible for the data available, and does not definitively constrain the allowable language by which we metaphysically understand the underpinnings of science. The bottom line is that the preference for one explanatory approach rather than others is, still, at the level of preference rather than proof. Tonynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-68244057862464936402015-09-18T08:05:27.096-07:002015-09-18T08:05:27.096-07:00"...the easiest person to fool is oneself.&qu...<i>"...the easiest person to fool is oneself."</i><br /><br />I don't normally give advice like this, but you really ought to get this tattooed on your forehead.Gottfriednoreply@blogger.com