1) What are facts? We speak of facts as being hard, cold, objective, and stubborn. We are asked for the plain, observable, unvarnished facts. We are told to face the facts, to collect them, or to check them out. These comments might lead us to think that

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1) What are facts? We speak of facts as being
hard, cold, objective, and stubborn. We are asked
for the plain, observable, unvarnished facts. We
are told to face the facts, to collect them, or
to check them out. These comments might lead us
to think that facts are physical things out there
in the world, independent of us. But are facts
items in the world alongside trees, rocks, and
grass? We can trip over a rock, but can we trip
over a fact? The moon looks round but what does a
fact look like? We can photograph a sunset but
can we photograph facts? We can weigh apples but
can we weigh facts? You can say how many objects
are in your room but how many facts are in your
room? Is there space enough for all of them? If
these questions have convinced you that facts are
not out in the world, then where are they? Could
we say that facts are somehow embedded in our
language or belief systems? If so, then is a fact
a function of who we are, how we see the world,
and how we think or speak about it? What would be
the implications of this fact?
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2. We believe that the material objects of our
everyday lives are incapable of vanishing into
thin air by magic. If we can't find our keys, we
believe that they are somewhere they did not
just cease to exist. But imagine a culture in
which the people do believe that material objects
sometimes disappear into nothingness (without
being crushed, melted, burned up, or destroyed in
other ways according to our laws of physics).
So, when you lose your keys in this culture and
never find them again, these people would assume
that the keys had just dematerialized without a
trace. According to their laws of physics, nature
sometimes behaves this way. Many have had the
experience of pulling a load of laundry out of
the dryer and finding that one sock is missing.
Sometimes, no matter how hard we search, we never
find the missing sock. So there you have it,
the people from this culture say, irrefutable
evidence that occasionally things can simply
vanish. How would you convince these people that
they are wrong and that our laws of physics are
right?
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Skepticism, Rationalism, Empiricism,
Constructivism and....
?
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Socrates, Plato, Descartes, Locke, and Berkeley
disagreed over the nature of knowledge and the
best method for attaining it.
BUT they were all in agreement that if we obtain
knowledge, we will have arrived at objective,
universal truths about the world. They all agreed
that there's one true story about the world. They
have various versions of objectivism.
Objectivism (in epistemology) is the claim that
there is one set of universal truths about the
world and that these truths are independent of us
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Even Immanuel Kant was an objectivist. Why?
Because Kant believed that the way in which our
minds structure experience (ie. the categories)
is the same for everyone. Therefore objective,
absolute knowledge of the phenomenal world was
possible.
Now suppose Kant's revolution in thought was
correct (ie. the mind structures our experience
of reality). But suppose that he was wrong in
maintaining there is only one way in which all
human minds are structured. It would then follow
that different people would experience the world
in different ways. What would the consequences of
this be?
There would be no one set of truths about the
world, and no set of particular opinions would be
more true than another. Everyone's lenses
through which they view reality would give them a
different understanding.
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I may think that my position is more true and a
more accurate account of reality than yours,
but I am always viewing your position and reality
itself through my particular mental lens. We
cannot jump outside our minds to compare our
mental concepts with reality itself.
We can't see anything from outside ourselves. We
can't jump outside ourselves and view the world
objectively
Epistemological relativism is the claim that
there can be no universal, objective knowledge of
reality because all knowledge is relative to the
conceptual system of either the individual or
one's culture. There is no one story, no one
overriding truth.
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That may be true for you, but it's not true for
me.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder
When in Rome, do as the Romans do.
Different strokes for different folks.
It all depends on your point of view.
Can you think of other common ways of expressing
relativism?
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See Handout
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For you, oysters taste delicious, but for me,
they taste awful
Statements like this are always relative because
even if they don't say it directly, they always
imply to me, from my taste standpoint.
Similarly, if I'm standing on the front steps of
the library, then for me, the library ishere.
If you are across the street, then for you, the
library is there. Terms like here and there, as
well as left and right, are always relative to
the location of the speaker (ie. Consider the
focal point of world maps. Who is in the middle?)
That's true for you but it's not true for me.
This statement is ambiguous because it could have
2 different meanings
1) If someone believes X, then for that person X
is thought to be true. (ie. the world is flat).
2) There is no objective truth about the matter,
there are only different opinions, and one
opinion is just as true as another.
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Is there a difference between truth and
falsehood? Or does it just depend on how you look
at it?
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1. Is this picture of a family or a group of
strangers? 2. How many adults are in the
picture? 3. Is this picture an indoor scene or an
outdoor scene? 4. Are the people happy or sad?
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What's the difference between skepticism and
relativism?
The skeptic may accept the possibility that a
philosophical question has one true answer, but
simply claim that it is impossible for us to know
the truth about the matter. -ie. Either God
exists or God doesn't exist...but there's no way
of knowing
The relativist says that there is no one true
answer to any philosophical question. Truth
claims are always relative to the beliefs of the
individual or society. -ie. God's existence
is relative like the tastes of food are relative
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But does the relativist believe that there is no
reality outside our belief systems? Well, yes
and no.
Reality, like fact, rationality, and truth, is a
word and a concept. Reality is always rooted in a
particular conceptual and linguistic scheme.
1)
To ask if our belief system conforms to reality
is like trying to use a pair of pliers to grab
itself. We use our particular idea of reality to
get a grip on our experience, but we can't use it
to get a grip on our conceptual scheme because it
is a part of what makes that scheme.
2)
Or look at it like this I view the world through
my eyeglasses, but I cannot take my glasses off
and examine them without using some other glasses
through which to see them. But how can I tell if
this second pair of glasses is adequate unless I
examine them through some other lenses? In the
end, there is no neutral instrument by means of
which we can examine and evaluate our own or
anyone else's conceptual scheme.
3)
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Stop and Think Imagine that you were to make a
list of all your beliefs. Now imagine that you
made a second list of everything that was true.
Would the lists be any different?
Surely not. If you believe something, you do so
because you think it is true, and if you consider
something to be true, then you believe it.
Is the relativist therefore correct in claiming
that truth is always a function of our web of
beliefs? Can we ever break out of our belief
system to compare it with what lies outside it?
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Varieties of Relativism
1) Subjectivism All knowledge or truth is
relative. But relative to what? Beliefs are
relative to each person's individual
perspective. The Greek Sophist Protagoras is
said to have claimed
Each on of us is a measure of what is and what
is not but there is all the difference in the
world between one man and another just in the
very fact that what is and appears to one is
different from what is and appears to the other.
Gradually it has become clear to me what every
great philosophy so far has been namely, the
personal confession of its author and a kind of
involuntary and unconscious memoir.
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2) Cultural Relativism The view that all beliefs
are relative to a particular culture
Ex. Rather than viewing Western culture as
superior to those of primitive cultures, we
should see it as merely one way people in society
adjust to one another. Is it wrong for women to
wear blue jeans? To cultural relativists, it all
depends.
The facts cannot prove or disprove a conceptual
scheme, Because what we accept or reject as a
fact and how we interpret it will always be
decided in terms of the whole fabric of our web
of belief. --Willard Quine
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3) Historical RelativismThe claim that each
historical age had difference conceptual
frameworks such that there are no universal
truths but only truths that are correct for a
particular age.
As far as philosophy is concerned, each
individual is in any case A child of his time
thus philosophy too, is its own time comprehended
in thoughts it is just as foolish to imagine
that any philosophy can go beyond its
contemporary world as that an individual can
overleap his own time.
Philosophy's traditional Correspondence
Theory (1) reality has a determinable,
objective character...and (2) a belief or
statement is true or false to the degree to
which it corresponds to or represents the
objective features of reality.
I say NO!
Nietzsche
We can never have that sort of relationship with
reality. Like a goldfish who is confined to its
bowl, Looking out at the world from within it,
each of us thinks, speaks, and lives within our
own, subjective perspective
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No, facts is precisely what there is not, only
interpretations. We cannot establish any fact in
itself perhaps it is folly To want to do such a
thing.
Nietzsche calls this approach his theory of
perspectivism.
Suppose that there is an impersonal, objective,
and perspective-free outlook on reality is like
supposing that we could take a picture of the
Eiffel Tower in which the perspective was neither
from the north, east, south, west, or any
direction whatsover.
So, although there is obviously no visual
perspective-free perception, most objectivists
claim that a conceptual perspective-free
standpoint is possiblea view-from-nowhere
assumption
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Read the following triangles
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-In studying ancient texts, such as a Greek play,
we never have the original manuscripts.
-What we have are copies of copies that were
passed down through the centuries and were put
together from multiple, partial, and sometimes
inconsistent versions of the original.
-During this process it was inevitable that
errors and mistakes crept into the copies that
were then passed on as part of the manuscript.
-Because of these errors, it was necessary for
each ancient scribe copying the text or a
present-day scholar reading the text to interpret
and reconstruct it to make the best possible
sense out of it,
-But in reconstructing the text, the copyist's or
the scholar's outlook, their personal judgment,
and the bias in their interpretations became part
of the text itself.
Similarly, Nietzsche thought that each of us
interprets the text Of the world. In
perceiving and thinking about the world, we are
not like mirrors that passively record what is
out there (ie. Locke). Instead, we are
reconstructing and interpreting the data to
create a vision of the world that not only makes
sense to us, but that conforms to our
subjective, personal needs. Nietzsche thinks
that instinct decides on our perspectives
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