What do you think of relativism?

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Rhubarb said:
is that I see a lot of people use the term “relativism” and “objective” as sort of buzzwords.
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Well that is what I want to avoid. I might even be doing that here. But my gut feeling at the moment is that relativism is evil. I will use it mostly in a negative sense to describe people who wish to create their own set of truths instead of accepting Church teachings for instance. What is a buzzword? Something that has become fashionable or something clichéd?
No relativism is not a passing phase. It is something that will continue as people make themselves their own gods and decide their own truths.
 
What do I think of relativism?

Well… for some people it’s true, and for others it’s not! 🤣
 
goodcatholic said:
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Can you justify being a Catholic and also believing in relativism? …
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Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, said to the Papal Conclave of 2005, in the Sistine Chapel:
Every day new sects are born and we see realized what St. Paul says on the deception of men, on the cunning that tends to lead into error (cf. Ephesians 4:14). To have a clear faith, according to the creed of the Church, is often labeled as fundamentalism. While relativism, that is, allowing oneself to be carried about with every wind of “doctrine,” seems to be the only attitude that is fashionable. A dictatorship of relativism is being constituted that recognizes nothing as absolute and which only leaves the “I” and its whims as the ultimate measure.
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Cardinal Ratzinger's Homily in Mass Before Conclave - ZENIT - English

Jesus Christ: "The Measure of True Humanism"
zenit.org zenit.org
 
Rhubarb said:
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HarryStotle:
Nope, there is a very fine distinction to be made between making distinctions and splitting hairs.
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Oh do tell. Ooh, I’m too excited to wait for a reply. So I’ll preempt it.

Because MY definition of splitting hairs is “1. make small and overfine distinctions.” So, like, definitionally, splitting hairs IS making distinctions. Fine, small distinctions.
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Like a good mechanic, a good philosopher knows when and where to stop with the diagnostic enterprise. The problem appears when we move from making fine distinctions to “overfine” distinctions. Having splits in the ends of hairs is not the natural or optimal condition for hairs. It is a degenerative condition. Ergo, someone is splitting hairs when they go too far, they weren’t sufficiently aware of where they needed to stop making distinctions.

Clearly you didn’t because you suppose splitting hairs is the same enterprise as making distinctions. It isn’t.
Distinctions non-philosophers and bad philosophers might not easily pick up on - thus I say philosophers are especially the sort of people who split hairs.
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Distinctions that don’t need to be made is what good philosophers do pick up on and bad-philosophers and non-philosophers don’t. Which is why bad-philosophers and non-philosophers wrongly apply the term to philosophy, in general.

Unfortunately, bad philosophy has been regnant in the academy for the past several hundred years, which is why your view appears to be true, but isn’t. In fact, it is from the fact that modernism and post-modernism, which have given up the task of making distinctions completely, have been the dominant schools of philosophy that all the art and finesse of sound thinking has departed from philosophy in the academies. Now it is simply about domination and using coercion to instill viewpoints rather than to persuade by intellectual skill and precision.

It is obvious from the rise of intimidating language, the use of ridicule and rhetorical polemical writing and social activism and change for its own sake.
But anyway. Anyone who has studied philosophy - at least analytical philosophy, knows that philosophers LOVE small and overfine distinctions.
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No good philosopher LOVES “overfine distinctions.” They love fine and accurate distinctions that reveal the truth of things more clearly. It is akin to moving from a low resolution image to a high resolution one where the depth of conceptual reality is of higher quality and more clearly understood.
Like say, between emotivism, quasi-realism, expressivism, prescriptivism, norm-expressivism, etc. All of which are non-cognitivist theories, if you recall.
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None of these are philosophies. They are pseudo-philosophies which have become dominant in the academies because they traffic in “simple” low-resolution patterns of thinking. They have taken hold because they are simple and primitive and require far less intellectual acumen, if any at all.

Continued…
 
It’s kind of like, a tree of a bonsai and a split hair are similar. One thing splits into two branches. Except the hair is… overly fine and small. There’s less space between the Y split parts. But the structure is the same.
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The branching of trees is natural and organic to the kind of things trees are. Splits in hairs are not organic nor natural to healthy hair. There is the difference. I suppose the fact you think they are referencing the same type of phenomenon reveals your lack of knowledge of, at least, trees, if not both.

Which takes us back to modern philosophers not having the intellectual finesse with regard to knowing where making distinctions needs to begin or end. Their crudeness of thought makes them think things are the same when they are in fact different and distinctions ought to be made. Charges of racism or “phobia,” and the dominance of isms are all blatant examples of this philosophical barbarism present in society and in many academic institutions.
 
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Rhubarb said:
Strictly speaking, a relativist does believe in absolute truth in moral matters - the absolute truth depends on what their kind of relativism is.
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There is a problem with your view that a cultural relativist believes in the absolute truth in moral matters.

The problem is that any such claim from or on behalf of a relativist ends up being a sheer assertion without any warrant whatsoever or it devolves into a vicious case of question begging.
Rhubarb said:
Cultural relativist believes that moral statements can be true or false - it’s just that how a culture views an act is what makes it true or false.
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Let’s take this statement – that how a culture views an act is what makes it true or false – as the “absolute truth in moral matters.”

The question to be asked, and likely also begged, is how does a cultural relativist arrive at the truth or falsity of that claim itself? How are we to be certain that “how a culture views an act is what makes it true or false?” Merely because the relativist asserts it? Or because the culture of the relativist asserting such a thing told the relativist that that statement is the absolute truth concerning moral matters?

If the truth of that claim is merely a matter of our culture telling us it is true then is the fact that our culture says it what makes it the absolute truth? So the absolute truth of a grounding moral statement such as “how a culture views an act is what makes it true or false” is absolute and correct merely because any culture just happens to say it is? Doesn’t that beg the question of how we know that the culture itself is correct in making that claim? It just is true and absolutely so merely BECAUSE the culture says it is?

What if you happen to live in a culture that doesn’t have such a high regard for its own views – i.e., that the culture is self-critical and doesn’t think its morality could possibly be a function of merely what it says is morally true or false but the culture itself believes there are moral truths that transcend its culture and every other culture? Would THAT culture be correct to assert that how any culture views an act is NOT what makes it true or false – as the absolute truth regarding morality? Even though it contradicts what more relativistic cultures happen think about moral truths?

Which of the two views is the absolute moral truth? That moral truths transcend cultures or merely derive from cultures? Is there no way of knowing? Certainly not from the perspective of a cultural relativist who merely insists or asserts without warrant that the ground for deciding the truth of that matter just happens to stop at the culture. So there can’t be an absolute or authoritative “truth” on the matter from the perspective of cultural relativists because even cultures themselves could and do disagree about whether cultures are the final moral authority.
 
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Please note I have said several times that cultural and individual moral relativism is very easy to defeat in argument. And those arguments need not even rely on your… Let’s just say deeply held belief on the subject of morality. I was only describing how their meta-ethics work.
 
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Rhubarb said:
Ahem.
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You need to have that little cough looked at. It may indicate something more serious.

Interesting Wikipedia reference.

So there is a fine distinction to be made between genuine semantic differences and those which involve mere equivocation.

The problem with modernism (and post-modernism) is that they both traffic in the redefinition of words to suit their take on the subject or issue at hand (thanks to and justified by the influence of nominalism).

So what we have in modern philosophy is the tendency to cite “semantic” differences as opposed to delving more deeply into understanding what is being discussed.

Far easier to dismiss a counter argument by reference to “you mean something different by that word than I do, so the discussion stops here.”

No need to answer salient points, just deflect from them by citing “semantic differences.”
 
I think relativism and indifferentism are often two sides of the same (dirty) coin.
 
Not a lot. It’s subjectivism, a rejection of objective truth. The one about the tree falling in the forest - it only makes a sound if someone hears it. I have always been pretty pro-objective truth, as long as I can remember. Never could see my way to relativism. Which has put me quite at odds on a number of levels with this present time.
 
HarryStotle said:
Let’s take this statement – that how a culture views an act is what makes it true or false – as the “absolute truth in moral matters.”
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It is not an absolute truth but is a working rationale. Take for example capital punishment. Relative to the culture of 500 years ago, it was said to be a just punishment. However, relative to today’s culture, Catholic Bishops have issued a statement calling for an end to capital punishment because in today’s culture, society can protect itself without denying criminals the chance to reform.
 
I would argue they are overstepping their bounds here. The state still has the right to exercise the death penalty at its discretion. The state is responsible for social order, justice. Countries still have the right to go to war. I am fine with the bishops counseling against the death penalty or war, but not denying the state its right to do it. In fact, my guess is this is where the bishops actually stand, to be more accurate. I would hope so.
 
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Good question. I have no idea. I just remember it from school, maybe 7th, 8th grade. I never forgot what an impact it made on me that someone could even suggest that if no one heard the sound it did not happen. I argued, what about the squirrels, the flies? Good God. It is so wacko. Kick the stone, to quote my buddy Samuel Johnson.
 
goodcatholic said:
So does Pope Francis have the same issue with relativism?
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Yes, but also rigidity is to be avoided.
December 31
Francis of Assisi tells us we should work to build peace, But there is no peace without truth! There cannot be true peace if everyone is his own criterion, if everyone can always claim exclusively his own rights, without at the same time caring for the good of others, of everyone, on the basis of the nature that unites every human being on this earth. – Address, March 22, 2013
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Through the Year with Pope Francis: Daily Reflections, by Pope Francis
 
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