Relativism
The relativism indicates a whole of Doctrine S varied which has as a common point to defend the thesis according to which the Pensée and the Morale can be conceived compared to another thing that with themselves, they are not founded on an absolute which would be transcendent. The relativism relates to all the fields of the Philosophie and there thus exists an epistemological relativism , a moral relativism, a cultural relativism and any reality in general.
The relativism marries a point of view according to which the direction and the value of the Croyance S and the human behaviors do not have absolute references. The relativists profess that the Homme includes/understands and evaluates beliefs and behavior only in terms, for example, of their own history and a cultural context. If one wants to take an absolute point of view, one can claim that the philosophers identify several standard relativism.
One could specify the field (moral, cultural, epistemological…) where applies the relativism. The differences in designs between company S and different systems of thought are not examined in the same way according to whether they relate to the food tastes ( of coloribusque gustibus not is disputandum , of the tastes and the colors one does not discuss), the religious values (you will not kill) or the idea that there exists a Vérité preexistent with all scientific Théorie.
History
“The man is the measurement of any thing”. It is with these words, allotted to the sophist Protagoras, which is formulated the first relativistic philosophy.
Gnostic the Carpocrate and its followers supports for example that Bouddha, Moïse, Mani and Jesus had the same value on the human plan.
Relativistic arguments
One of the arguments of the relativism is that our own cognitive skews prevent us from being objective, our own directions interpose between us and observed. Moreover one skew of notation, through the language used, applies so that we learned. Lastly, there remains to us a cultural Biais divided with the other observers of the same culture but which can differ according to the cultures and we cannot hope to escape to him completely.
The skeptics affirm on the other hand that the subjective certainty and the concrete objects belong to our daily life and that there is not thus great value to want to draw aside from the concepts like the objectivity and the Vérité. The objectivists consider that it is possible no to prove the introduction of skew by our feelings; such a proof would not be valid because knowledge necessary to this proof was acquired via our perceptions and in such a philosophical system perceptions are considered valid axiomatiquement.
Relativisms
Epistemological Relativism
In epistemology, the epistemological relativism, before being asserted was regarded as a charge, formulated in particular against Thomas Kuhn (challenge taken up by Paul Feyerabend).
George Lakoff defines relativisme in its book Metaphors We Live By (the Métaphore S by which we live), like a rejection of the Subjectivisme and Objectivisme to concentrate on the relations between them, i.e. how we connect our current experiment with the preceding one. Does this attitude bring it closer to the anti Réalisme of Pierre Duhem and Henri Poincaré (quoted by Alan Chalmers in What is this thing called Science? ): the value of a scientific theory is comparable with that of the catalog of a library, it is its utility, and not the fact of knowing if it is true or false. Bruno Latour points out as for him, that the opposite of the relativism is not universalism, but the absolutism .
Cultural Relativism
See also: cultural Relativisme
The concept of cultural relativism has importance for the Philosophe S, psychological, sociologists and anthropologists. The philosophers explore how the truth of our beliefs depend or not on, for example, our Langage, our Vision of the world, our Culture…; the ethical Relativisme by providing an example. On their side, the anthropologists try to describe the human behavior. For them the relativism refers to a Méthodologie with which the researcher tries to suspend (or to put between brackets) his own cultural skew to include/understand the beliefs and behaviors in their local contexts.
Moral Relativism
The moral relativism (or ethics) is the position of thought which consists in saying that it is not possible to order the values morals by the use of criteria of classification. The objective of the ethical relativism is to justify that since it is not possible to find criterion satisfactory.
Idealistic thinkers , like Kant, will seek to show the unicity of " Morale" by laicizing the Christian morals which want to be single and universal.
Thinkers materialists, like Spinoza or Nietzsche, will preserve the plurality of human morals while staining to find criteria allowing to evaluate a value (" Which is the value of a moral value? "). The favorisation or the harmful effect of the life is the criterion generally met among thinkers materialists.
Critics of the relativism
A common argument against the relativism uses a simplifying statement of the relativism: “All” This proposal is relative is either relative or absolute, which in the two cases led to a contradiction. One circumvents this problem by stating a weaker version of the relativism, for example “All is relative except for this assertion”, but it would then be advisable to justify this restriction which, fact, reverts affirming an absolute (namely that “this assertion”, it, is not relative). The only possible strategy of the relativism consists in saying: “It seems to me, until new order, that all is relative”.
See too
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