The Prudence And Pitfalls Of Relativism

[DocWatts]

Hello, fellow actualized.org-ers! 

Having seen a few posts on postmodernism on these boards over the past few weeks (I believe Leo said that he was working on an video to that effect), I thought I'd share an in-depth writeup on Relativism that I put together for a philosophy book that I'm writing.

The focus here is on the epistomology of Relativism; both its partial truths, and its limitations. The type of epistemic alternative that I'm contrasting it with is a viewpoint known as 'Enactivism'; an embodied and phenomenologically oriented epistomology that's the subject of my book.

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-[ The Prudence And Pitfalls Of Relativism ]-

In contrast to Absolutist viewpoints, which pine for unassailable foundations to investigate Reality from, Relativist epistemology is underpinned by an enduring skepticism that knowledge can be grounded in absolute (i.e., fixed and eternal) truths. The guiding intuition here is that knowledge is inherently fluid and perspectival. Because of this, the dynamics of how knowledge is constructed tends to be the primary focus of these viewpoints.

Developing alongside advances within other academic disciplines, such as linguistics and sociology, the guiding observation behind Relativist epistemology is that knowledge is always situated within a context. From this, we can gather that knowledge necessarily involves interpretation. When presented with the assertion that ‘facts don’t care about your feelings’, Relativism counters that ‘there’s no such thing as an uninterpreted fact’. In other words, facts always mean something to someone. By extension, there’s no such thing as a ‘neutral’ perspective from which to evaluate and interpret facts; since we always do so from within an existing worldview and set of circumstances.

By extension, there isn’t a formula that we can turn to that can tell us which facts are relevant for a given situation. Essentially, individuals and groups will choose to emphasize certain facts over others based on their motivations, life experiences, and cultural background. Importantly, this isn’t a ‘flaw’ of human reasoning that can be excised through a strict adherence to ‘objectivity. Rather, it’s a basic epistemological constraint that’s imposed upon us by the fact that Reality is always experienced from within a perspective.

In accordance with this focus on context and interpretation, Relativism also brought to the fore new forms of social critique, which illuminated the impact of coercive power structures on what’s accepted as valid knowledge. Historically, Relativism was often driven by a desire to decouple considerations of knowledge from Grand Narratives. What a Grand Narrative refers to is a story that offers a broad and encompassing explanation for an observed state of affairs, often serving to justify an existing social order (or one of its proposed alternatives).

So those are the partial truths contained within the Relativist epistemology. Having explored the ‘prudence’ of this view, where do its ‘pitfalls’ lie?

To set the stage for our survey for these pitfalls, it’s worth reiterating that our goal is to differentiate and link the Enactivist epistemology that we’re constructing with Relativism. This involves identifying Relativism’s partial truths, while being mindful of its inherent limitations. Phrased differently, we could say that we’re attempting to ‘transcend and include’ the partial truths of Relativism, just as we did for Absolutism (all due to credit to the philosopher Ken Wilber for popularizing this helpful notion).

An attentive reader may have already picked up that there are indeed some shared areas of emphasis between Relativism and Enactivism: namely, a focus on how knowledge is constructed, and a repudiation of absolute knowledge. That said, the overlap between these two epistemological viewpoints shouldn’t be overstated, as there are some major pitfalls to Relativism that limit its usefulness as a comprehensive framework for understanding knowledge.

The most notable of these pitfalls arises from how Relativism is ultimately a self-undermining position. To illustrate why this is necessarily the case, we can take note of what happens when Relativism is turned inwards upon itself. For if we take its suppositions to their endpoints, we arrive at the conclusion that Relativism is merely one valid perspective among others; neither superior or inferior to the Absolutist viewpoints that it critiques. Which leads to the paradoxical observation that if Relativism is correct, then one must also accept the validity of Absolutist viewpoints, undermining its own claims.

While this might seem like a form of epistemic humility, in actuality no one adheres to Relativism without an implicit belief that it’s a more valid perspective than the ideas it’s critiquing (otherwise, why even embrace Relativism over some other viewpoint)? Another term for this is a Performative Contradiction. What it refers to is an inconsistency within a viewpoint that goes unaddressed (or is at the very least heavily downplayed), because it’s fundamentally unanswerable; and thus inconvenient to those who advocate for that viewpoint.

In conjunction with this, the second major pitfall of Relativist epistemology is pragmatic in nature. In essence, Relativism doesn’t provide any real guidance on which types of perspectives should guide our decisions and behavior. Providing actionable guidance on how to discern what’s likely to be true is obviously extremely important for any epistemology. Precisely because any attempt to assess the comparative value of different societal and cultural viewpoints is anathema to Relativism, this severely limits its usefulness for guiding our decisions in the real world. An important aspect of living in the real world means being confronted by decisions that are informed by incommensurable viewpoints. As such, we can’t always reach a compromise that ‘splits the difference’, nor should we work from the assumption that every perspective has something useful to contribute (as anyone who’s dealt with online trolls can likely attest to).

This brings us to the final pitfall of Relativist epistemology, which are its potential negative consequences for social discourse. This stems from the fact that Relativist epistemology is inherently deconstructive. What this means is that its modus operandi is to ‘debunk’ existing attitudes and beliefs. To be clear, it’s incredibly important to be able to challenge harmful ideas. But deconstruction on its own doesn’t facilitate shared understanding, nor does it give us a path forward for reconciling our differences.

At its worst, bad applications of Relativism can devolve into narcissistic echo chambers, where individuals and groups insist upon their own ‘truths’ that are completely detached from Reality. Needless to say, this is an issue that’s been especially prevalent over the past decade, due in large part to the proliferation of social media; with disastrous consequences for the civil society that sustains democratic institutions.

And with that, we wrap up our overview of the Relativist viewpoint. In the conclusion for this chapter, we’ll propose how Enactivism is a reconstructive epistemology, which fulfills a real social need that we have in the West.

[aurum]

@DocWatts You are writing some high quality content.

36 minutes ago, DocWatts said:

Precisely because any attempt to assess the comparative value of different societal and cultural viewpoints is anathema to Relativism, this severely limits its usefulness for guiding our decisions in the real world. An important aspect of living in the real world means being confronted by decisions that are informed by incommensurable viewpoints. As such, we can’t always reach a compromise that ‘splits the difference’, nor should we work from the assumption that every perspective has something useful to contribute (as anyone who’s dealt with online trolls can likely attest to).

I'll add that the egoic mind will weaponize relativism for its own agenda. They can exploit your open-mindedness of different perspectives to get away with their anti-social or otherwise damaging behavior. Who is to say if I really cheated on my girlfriend? That's just like, your opinion, man.

So it isn't just that relativism makes it hard for us to decide what is true or not. It's that self-bias will actively corrupt it.

Of course the egoic mind can weaponize any epistemology, so this is not an inherent flaw to relativism per say. 

[DocWatts]

4 minutes ago, aurum said:

@DocWatts You are writing some high quality content.

I'll add that the egoic mind will weaponize relativism for its own agenda. They can exploit your open-mindedness of different perspectives to get away with their anti-social or otherwise damaging behavior. Who is to say if I really cheated on my girlfriend? That's just like, your opinion, man.

So it isn't just that relativism makes it hard for us to decide what is true or not. It's that self-bias will actively corrupt it.

Of course the egoic mind can weaponize any epistemology, so this is not an inherent flaw to relativism per say. 

Thanks, appreciate the kind words, and the salient points that you bring up.

Was planning on dealing with the concept of devilry in a later chapters on how 'Intellect Serves Intuition' and 'Motivated Reasoning Is The Norm'. 

 

[Ulax]

Nice work dude. Looking forward to the book

[integral]

ChatGPT summary

Pitfalls of Relativist Epistemology:

Self-Undermining Position:

• Relativism's assertion that all perspectives are equally valid undermines its own claim to validity.
• If relativism is true, then absolutist viewpoints must also be considered valid, leading to a paradox.

Lack of Pragmatic Guidance:

• Relativism fails to provide practical guidance for decision-making.
• Difficulty in discerning which perspectives are more likely to be true or beneficial in real-world situations.

Negative Consequences for Social Discourse:

• Relativism's deconstructive nature can lead to nihilism and cynicism.
• Inability to foster shared understanding or reconcile differences, leading to polarization and echo chambers.

[aurum]

On 3/27/2024 at 3:54 PM, DocWatts said:

Was planning on dealing with the concept of devilry in a later chapters on how 'Intellect Serves Intuition' and 'Motivated Reasoning Is The Norm'. 

Looking forward to it.