Key Terms Flashcards
Relativism
Relativism about F (for example) means that something does not intrinsically have or not have F but that is determined by context
Relativism (about truth at least) seems self-undermining
- The claim that something is relative to a perspective..is relative to that perspective
Absolutism
Absolutism about F means that something does intrinsically have or not have F regardless of context
Absolutism is the standard view in PoS
Language and Relativism
Truth can be thought to be relative to language. There is a choice involved but once we have chosen then truths become absolute.
Example:
“We are all sinners.”
– True if you accept the traditional moral vocabulary of Christianity or Islam.
– False if you reject the idea of sin.
● This is an example where there is disagreement about which concepts to use at all
Truth of Absolutism
– It is never the case that one claim is both true and false
Truth of Relativism
There is a nevertheless a sense in which a claim can be (and not just thought to be)
true for one person, but false for the other.
Solution to tension between Relativism and Absolutism
Disagreement goes deeper than truth: it is about the choice of which concepts
to use; a choice of vocabulary.
Connection to Thomas Kuhn’s paradigms!
Traditional Lens of Subjectivity & Objectivity
subjectivity and objectivity are each
other’s opposites.
● Therefore: objectivity is attained only when the subject plays no role at all.
● something is objective if it is a property
of the object itself, subjective if it has to do with the subject’s relation to the object.
Helps us explain why ‘the chocolate ice cream is -7 degrees’ seems to be more objective than ‘the chocolate ice cream tastes good
Objectivity Problem
Not much is truly objective.
primary qualities = those properties that objects themselves have;
secondary qualities = those properties that describe how we perceive the primary properties.
● For instance, fire does not itself have the property ‘painful’,
for that depends on our capacity to feel pain.
● But also not the property ‘yellow’, for that depends on our
eyes and brains.
Giving an objective account of physical properties would already be limited but applying it to the humanities and social sciences is near impossible
Standard Argument Against Objectivity
“We human beings always only see things from our particular perspective. Since we
cannot see things from other people’s perspective, and certainly cannot see things
from no perspective at all, anything we know is subjective. Hence, objectivity is
impossible.”
● The underlying assumption here is this:
– Objectivity means seeing things from no perspective at all.
Perspectives and Objectivity
It would make literally no sense to say that the objective way of seeing a figure is seeing it from no perspective at all.
– There is no such thing as seeing something from no perspective.
And seeing only from one perspective gives us a limited view/knowledge
Solution:
So we must combine perspectives to get a fuller picture
Another way of understanding: Objectivity
objectivity is what accommodates the
experiences of many different subjects.
To be objective is to be such that different subjects who may have different perspectives on the matter can all end up agreeing on it.
Benefits to the alternative way of understanding objectivity
Thinking about objectivity in this way pushes us to:
– Listen to people from different backgrounds (scientific, cultural, and so on)
– Try to broaden our own perspectives on things
– Try to reach agreement through argument and accommodation
– In some cases, pay special attention to underrepresented groups
It does not push us to:
– Abandon the hope of ever breaking out of our own limited perspective
– Accept uncritically everything that other people think
– Believe that we can ever finish broadening our perspective
Collingwood: Actions and Events
Natural Sciences:
- Study events
- They occur, have no meaning, and are described by causes
Humanities/Social Sciences
- Study actions
- They occur, have a meaning, and are described by reasons
Collingwood: Events
Fall under causal laws, and are explained by them
– There are no normative questions to be asked: we can ask whether something was the
real cause, but not whether it was a good cause
– They don’t have a meaning, and don’t require interpretation
Example: An eruption is unequivocally an eruption.
Collingwood: Action
Are done for reasons, and are explained by them
– There are normative questions to be asked: we can as whether something was the real
reason, but also whether it was a good reason
– They have a meaning, and require interpretation
Example: Is Hamlet’s not killing of his uncle an act of mercy, a theatrical performance, an act
of cowardice, an act of vengeance?
What is ‘meaning’
Meaning is holistic:
– What something is, depends on the greater whole of which it is a part.
– individual elements are determined by their context.
Interpretation: The Hermeneutic Circle
Crucially, interpretation is gradual. We need to start off with some understanding to get the hermeneutic circle going.
● From this pre-understanding, we can go through the hermeneutic circle as often as we want, increasing our understanding and the amount of context we bring in.
● The hermeneutic circle is more of a hermeneutic spiral.
● The process is circular and the potential context is unlimited = interpretation is in principle open-ended.
You have never finished interpreting something.
3 ideas about interpretation
- There is one correct interpretation, even if we can
perhaps never reach it. - There are possibly many good interpretations, but
also many less good or outright bad ones. - All interpretations are equally good.
