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However, relativism is incorrect because it says that all knowledge depends on the context. It's a bit like saying that all questions are ambiguous just because

by swombat 17y ago

However, relativism is incorrect because it says that all knowledge depends on the context. It's a bit like saying that all questions are ambiguous just because some are and because precision is difficult. Also, relativism is ambiguous about whether contextual knowledge is absolutely truth within that context; many relativists object to the idea of any absolute, permanent, unitary truth. But why should the truth for a given context ever change? Relativism provides an argument that the context is important, but no argument that the truth can change if we keep the context constant. If you look into eastern philosophies, you'll find an interesting concept: that there is in fact no objective truth that can be expressed. This is subtly different from a relativistic argument, though. The idea is, we can only express thoughts, ideas, etc, in terms of words and concepts that are products of our minds. And those products of our minds are intrinsically personal. Even with mundane things like tables or hoovers we might disagree on the meaning of words. Society teaches us to have more or less the same meanings so we can communicate, but those are intrinsically relative. So then, there may well be an underlying, intrinsically "absolutely true" reality (in fact, there almost certainly is), but any attempt to express it results in a statement of relative truth.

xenophanes 17y ago
> those products of our minds are intrinsically personal An idea in my mind is that 2+2=4. What's personal about that?
- AngryParsley 17y ago
  >What would convince me that 2 + 2 = 3, in other words, is exactly the same kind of evidence that currently convinces me that 2 + 2 = 4: The evidential crossfire of physical observation, mental visualization, and social agreement. From http://lesswrong.com/lw/jr/how_to_convince_me_that_2_2_3/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/jr/how_to_convince_me_that_2_2_3/ I should note that Eliezer does not argue for moral relativism. Although there are no moral laws written into the fabric of the universe, humans all have very similar brains. With the exception of some outliers (sociopaths) most of our moral intuitions are very similar. There's also the caveat that culture, religion, and philosophy (among other things) can work as an "off switch" for these intuitions.
randallsquared 17y ago
that there is in fact no objective truth that can be expressed. Trivially self-contradictory. Of course, you can word it like, "I don't know of any such objective truth", but then it's not a very compelling idea.
AngryParsley 17y ago
> ...there is in fact no objective truth that can be expressed. Agree denotationally but object connotatively. There are degrees of relativeness. Just because you can't be 100% sure about something doesn't mean you can't be 99.99999(insert more nines here)% sure. Of course there's some astronomically tiny chance that I'm a Boltzmann brain, but it's so small that I simply ignore it. Likewise, it's possible that my internal representations of some words or statements are quite different from everyone else's. But people don't look at me funny very often, so I guess I do a good enough job of conveying what I mean. It's easy for someone to misinterpret your statement as endorsing the stereotypical hippie "dude, everything is like, relative, man" relativism when it's really very different. I really hate to seem like a shill for the Less Wrong/Overcoming Bias crowd, but much of the discussion here has been covered there. For example, on truth: http://yudkowsky.net/rational/the-simple-truth http://yudkowsky.net/rational/the-simple-truth

by swombat 17y ago

xenophanes 17y ago

> those products of our minds are intrinsically personal An idea in my mind is that 2+2=4. What's personal about that?

AngryParsley 17y ago
>What would convince me that 2 + 2 = 3, in other words, is exactly the same kind of evidence that currently convinces me that 2 + 2 = 4: The evidential crossfire of physical observation, mental visualization, and social agreement. From http://lesswrong.com/lw/jr/how_to_convince_me_that_2_2_3/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/jr/how_to_convince_me_that_2_2_3/ I should note that Eliezer does not argue for moral relativism. Although there are no moral laws written into the fabric of the universe, humans all have very similar brains. With the exception of some outliers (sociopaths) most of our moral intuitions are very similar. There's also the caveat that culture, religion, and philosophy (among other things) can work as an "off switch" for these intuitions.

randallsquared 17y ago

that there is in fact no objective truth that can be expressed. Trivially self-contradictory. Of course, you can word it like, "I don't know of any such objective truth", but then it's not a very compelling idea.

AngryParsley 17y ago

> ...there is in fact no objective truth that can be expressed. Agree denotationally but object connotatively. There are degrees of relativeness. Just because you can't be 100% sure about something doesn't mean you can't be 99.99999(insert more nines here)% sure. Of course there's some astronomically tiny chance that I'm a Boltzmann brain, but it's so small that I simply ignore it. Likewise, it's possible that my internal representations of some words or statements are quite different from everyone else's. But people don't look at me funny very often, so I guess I do a good enough job of conveying what I mean. It's easy for someone to misinterpret your statement as endorsing the stereotypical hippie "dude, everything is like, relative, man" relativism when it's really very different. I really hate to seem like a shill for the Less Wrong/Overcoming Bias crowd, but much of the discussion here has been covered there. For example, on truth: http://yudkowsky.net/rational/the-simple-truth http://yudkowsky.net/rational/the-simple-truth