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Three Kinds of Relativism

In Steven D. Hales (ed.), A Companion to Relativism. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 53–69 (2010)

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  1. Relativism and Assertion.Alexander Dinges - 2017 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 95 (4):730-740.
    Relativism entails that sentences like ‘Liquorice is tasty’ are used to assert relativistic propositions—that is, propositions whose truth-value is relative to a taste standard. I will defend this view against two objections. According to the first objection, relativism is incompatible with a Stalnakerian account of assertion. I will show that this objection fails because Stalnakerian assertions are proposals rather than attempts to update the common ground. According to the second objection, relativism problematically predicts that we can correctly assess beliefs as (...)
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  • Relativism, Faultlessness and Parity.Ferrari Filippo - 2016 - Argumenta 3.
    Some philosophers, like Mark Richard and Paul Boghossian, have argued against relativism that it cannot account for the possibility of faultless disagreement. However, I will contend that the objections they moved against relativism do not target its ability to account for the possibility of faultless disagreement per se. Ra- ther, they should be taken to challenge its capacity to account for another element of our folk conception of disagreement in certain areas of discourse—what Cris- pin Wright has dubbed parity. What (...)
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  • (1 other version)Relativism.Maria Baghramian & Adam J. Carter - 2020 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    Relativism has been, in its various guises, both one of the most popular and most reviled philosophical doctrines of our time. Defenders see it as a harbinger of tolerance and the only ethical and epistemic stance worthy of the open-minded and tolerant. Detractors dismiss it for its alleged incoherence and uncritical intellectual permissiveness. Debates about relativism permeate the whole spectrum of philosophical sub-disciplines. From ethics to epistemology, science to religion, political theory to ontology, theories of meaning and even logic, philosophy (...)
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  • Motivations for Relativism as a Solution to Disagreements.Steven D. Hales - 2014 - Philosophy 89 (1):63-82.
    There are five basic ways to resolve disagreements: keep arguing until capitulation, compromise, locate an ambiguity or contextual factors, accept Pyrrhonian skepticism, and adopt relativism. Relativism is perhaps the most radical and least popular solution to a disagreement, and its defenders generally think the best motivator for relativism is to be found in disputes over predicates of personal taste. I argue that taste predicates do not adequately motivate relativism over the other possible solutions, and argue that relativism looks like the (...)
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  • Relativism.Chris Swoyer - 2008 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
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  • Are We Playing a Moral Lottery? Moral Disagreement from a Metasemantic Perspective.Sinan Dogramaci - 2021 - Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 8 (1):523-550.
    If someone disagrees with my moral views, or more generally if I’m in a group of n people who all disagree with each other, but I don’t have any special evidence or basis for my epistemic superiority, then it’s at best a 1-in-n chance that my views are correct. The skeptical threat from disagreement is thus a kind of moral lottery, to adapt a similar metaphor from Sharon Street. Her own genealogical debunking argument, as I discuss, relies on a premise (...)
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  • Realism and relativism about the normative.Paul Boghossian - forthcoming - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy.
    I defend normative realism—the claim that there are mind-independent, absolute normative facts—mostly by arguing against its rivals. Against mind-dependent theories of normativity, I argue that at least one highly influential version of such a view, Lewis's dispositional theory of value, is subject to at least three severe problems: the problem of the implausible contingency of value, the problem of ideal conditions, and the problem of lack of convergence. Against relativistic conceptions of normativity, I argue that either they fail to evade (...)
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  • Alethic Pluralism, Deflationism, and Faultless Disagreement.Crispin Wright - 2021 - Metaphilosophy 52 (3-4):432-448.
    One of the most important “folk” anti-realist thoughts about certain areas of our thought and discourse—basic taste, for instance, or comedy—is that their lack of objectivity crystallises in the possibility of “faultless disagreements”: situations where one party accepts P, another rejects P, and neither is guilty of any kind of mistake of substance or shortcoming of cognitive process. On close inspection, however, it proves challenging to make coherent sense of this idea, and a majority of theorists have come to reject (...)
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  • "Sensible relativism", virtue epistemology and contextual realism.Francois-Igor Pris - 2020 - Philosophy of Science (Novosibirsk) 3 (86):15-48.
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  • How Does Colour Experience Represent the World?Adam Pautz - 2017 - In Derek Brown & Fiona Macpherson (eds.), Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Colour. New York: Routledge.
    Many favor representationalism about color experience. To a first approximation, this view holds that experiencing is like believing. In particular, like believing, experiencing is a matter of representing the world to be a certain way. Once you view color experience along these lines, you face a big question: do our color experiences represent the world as it really is? For instance, suppose you see a tomato. Representationalists claim that having an experience with this sensory character is necessarily connected with representing (...)
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  • Moral relativism.Christopher Gowans - 2015 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    Moral relativism is an important topic in metaethics. It is also widely discussed outside philosophy (for example, by political and religious leaders), and it is controversial among philosophers and nonphilosophers alike. This is perhaps not surprising in view of recent evidence that people's intuitions about moral relativism vary widely. Though many philosophers are quite critical of moral relativism, there are several contemporary philosophers who defend forms of it. These include such prominent figures as Gilbert Harman, Jesse J. Prinz, J. David (...)
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  • Can we make sense of MacFarlane’s relative truth?Gariazzo Matías - 2017 - Manuscrito 40 (2):39-70.
    ABSTRACT John MacFarlane’s truth relativism makes use of two notions of propositional truth: a monadic assessment sensitive one taken to be our ordinary truth notion, and a non-monadic one that is meant to account for the assessment sensitivity of the former notion. Some authors contend that any theory introducing a technical non-monadic truth notion has to make sense of it by defining or characterizing it in terms of ordinary monadic truth. First, I give some reasons why the relativist should not (...)
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  • The Semantic Significance of Faultless Disagreement.Michele Palmira - 2014 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 96 (3):349-371.
    The article investigates the significance of the so-called phenomenon of apparent faultless disagreement for debates about the semantics of taste discourse. Two kinds of description of the phenomenon are proposed. The first ensures that faultless disagreement raises a distinctive philosophical challenge; yet, it is argued that Contextualist, Realist and Relativist semantic theories do not account for this description. The second, by contrast, makes the phenomenon irrelevant for the problem of what the right semantics of taste discourse should be. Lastly, the (...)
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  • El pluralismo moral de David Hume.Agustin Arrieta & Agustin Vicente - 2013 - Critica 45 (134):17-42.
    In this paper, we argue for an objectivist pluralist interpretation of Hume’s moral philosophy. We begin by approaching the pluralist/relativist distinction in aesthetics. Then we move to ethics, and present some reasons which justify considering Hume a normative pluralist, and, in particular, an objectivist pluralist. Our argument will make use of Hume’s idea that there are foru sources of value, and of his notion of artificial lives/moralities.
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  • The Relativistic Car: Applying Metaethics to the Debate about Self-Driving Vehicles.Thomas Pölzler - 2021 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 24 (3):833-850.
    Almost all participants in the debate about the ethics of accidents with self-driving cars have so far assumed moral universalism. However, universalism may be philosophically more controversial than is commonly thought, and may lead to undesirable results in terms of non-moral consequences and feasibility. There thus seems to be a need to also start considering what I refer to as the “relativistic car” — a car that is programmed under the assumption that what is morally right, wrong, good, bad, etc. (...)
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  • Relativism, Faultlessness, and the Epistemology of Disagreement.Micah Dugas - 2018 - Logos and Episteme 9 (2):137-150.
    Abstract: Recent years have witnessed a revival of interest in relativism. Proponents have defended various accounts that seek to model the truth-conditions of certain propositions along the lines of standard possible world semantics. The central challenge for such views has been to explain what advantage they have over contextualist theories with regard to the possibility of disagreement. I will press this worry against Max Kölbel’s account of faultless disagreement. My case will proceed along two distinct but connected lines. First, I (...)
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  • Do Deep Disagreements Motivate Relativism?Victoria Lavorerio - 2018 - Topoi 40 (5):1087-1096.
    In his 2014 article “Motivations for Relativism as a Solution to Disagreements”, Steven Hales argues that relativism is a plausible disagreement resolution strategy for epistemically irresolvable disagreements. I argue that his relativistic strategy is not adequate for disagreements of this kind, because it demands an impossible doxastic state for disputants to resolve the disagreement. Contrarily, Fogelin’s :1–8, 1985) theory of deep disagreement does not run into the same problems. Deep disagreements, according to Fogelin, cannot be resolved through argumentation because the (...)
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  • Some Varieties of Metaethical Relativism.Ragnar Francén Olinder - 2016 - Philosophy Compass 11 (10):529-540.
    This opinionated survey article discusses a relativist view in metaethics that we can call Appraiser-standard Relativism. According to this view, the truth value of moral judgments varies depending on the moral standard of the appraiser – that is, someone who makes or assesses the judgments. On this view, when two persons judge that, say, lying is always morally wrong; one of the judgments might be true and the other false. The paper presents various forms of this view, contrasts it against (...)
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  • Parity, Faultlessness, and Relativism: A Response to Wright and Ferrari.Dan Zeman - forthcoming - Analysis.
    Crispin Wright and Filippo Ferrari have accused relativism of not accounting for “parity” – the idea that, when we argue over matters of taste, we take our opponents’ opinions to be “as good as ours” from our own, committed perspective. In this paper, I show that i) explaining parity has not been taken to be a desideratum by relativists and thus they cannot be accused of failing to fulfil a promise; ii) Wright’s and Ferrari’s reasons for claiming that parity should (...)
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  • The nature of disagreement: matters of taste and environs.Jeremy Wyatt - 2021 - Synthese 199 (3-4):10739-10767.
    Predicates of personal taste have attracted a great deal of attention from philosophers of language and linguists. In the intricate debates over PPT, arguably the most central consideration has been which analysis of PPT can best account for the possibility of faultless disagreement about matters of personal taste. I argue that two models of such disagreement—the relativist and absolutist models—are empirically inadequate. In their stead, I develop a model of faultless taste disagreement which represents it as involving a novel incompatibility (...)
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  • Relativism about Truth and Predicates of Taste.Barry C. Smith - 2012 - Filosofia Unisinos 13 (2 - suppl.).
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  • Absolutely tasty: an examination of predicates of personal taste and faultless disagreement.Jeremy Wyatt - 2018 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 61 (3):252-280.
    Debates about the semantics and pragmatics of predicates of personal taste have largely centered on contextualist and relativist proposals. In this paper, I argue in favor of an alternative, absolutist analysis of PPT. Theorists such as Max Kölbel and Peter Lasersohn have argued that we should dismiss absolutism due to its inability to accommodate the possibility of faultless disagreement involving PPT. My aim in the paper is to show how the absolutist can in fact accommodate this possibility by drawing on (...)
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  • Is Epistemology Tainted?Jason Stanley - 2016 - Disputatio 8 (42):1-35.
    Epistemic relativism comes in many forms, which have been much discussed in the last decade or so in analytic epistemology. My goal is to defend a version of epistemic relativism that sources the relativity in the metaphysics of epistemic properties and relations, most saliently knowledge. I contrast it with other relativist theses. I argue that the sort of metaphysical relativism about knowledge I favor does not threaten the objectivity of the epistemological domain.
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  • Relativity and Degrees of Relationality.Jack Spencer - 2014 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 92 (2):432-459.
    Some well-known metaphysical arguments against relativism rest on the claim that relativity somehow must be accompanied by relationality. I argue otherwise, and trace the consequences for some prominent disputes between relativists and absolutists.
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  • Relativism, Incoherence, and the Strong Programme.Harvey Siegel - 2011 - In Richard Schantz & Markus Seidel (eds.), The Problem of Relativism in the Sociology of (Scientific) Knowledge. Lancaster, LA1: ontos. pp. 41-64.
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  • We are All Rationalists, but it is not Enough: Ways of Explaining the Social Acceptance of a Theory.Pablo A. Pellegrini - forthcoming - Foundations of Science:1-20.
    This article discusses explanations behind theory choice, that is, ultimately, what leads people to accept a certain claim as valid. There has been a recent debate as to how closure was achieved in the continental-drift discussion. The controversy had found its usual explanation under rationalist terms: Wegener’s 1912 continental-drift theory was accepted 50 years later only after the plate tectonic theory had provided more evidence or a more in-depth problem-solving capacity. Nevertheless, a re-examination of the controversy under constructivist terms argued (...)
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  • Disagreement about Taste and Alethic Suberogation.Filippo Ferrari - 2016 - Philosophical Quarterly 66 (264):516-535.
    I present a novel strategy to account for two thoughts concerning disagreements about taste: (i) that they need not involve any substantive fault (faultlessness); (ii) that the faultlessness of a contrary opinion can be coherently appreciated from within a committed perspective (parity). Under the assumption that judgments of taste are truth-apt and governed by the truth-norm, I argue that understanding how exactly truth is normative offers a strategy for accounting for both thoughts. I distinguish between different ways in which truth (...)
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  • (1 other version)Constructed Worlds, Contested Truths.Maria Baghramian - 2011 - In Richard Schantz & Markus Seidel (eds.), The Problem of Relativism in the Sociology of (Scientific) Knowledge. Lancaster, LA1: ontos. pp. 105-130.
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  • Group Agency Meets Metaethics: How to Craft a More Compelling Form of Normative Relativism.Michelle M. Dyke - 2020 - In Russ Shafer-Landau (ed.), Oxford Studies in Metaethics Volume 15. Oxford University Press. pp. 219-240.
    The author argues that well-known forms of relativism are unable to accommodate, at once, a set of three highly intuitive theses about the distinctive character of moral reasons. Yet the author argues it is possible to formulate a novel form of normative relativism that has the power to accommodate these claims. The proposed view combines the relativist idea that the normative facts are attitude-dependent with the insight that there are non-human agents to which it makes sense to attribute the kinds (...)
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  • Conservatism: toward a traditionalist normative epistemology.Ewan John Burns - 2020 - Dissertation, University of Glasgow
    Conservatism’s core claim is that traditions play an important, if not essential, role in the acquisition of normative knowledge. However, that thesis has never been adequately defended. Three things are missing from conservative political thought: a traditionalist account of propositional normative knowledge, an explicit and sustained positive argument for traditions’ role in the acquisition of normative knowledge, and deference to relevant work in other areas of philosophy, especially epistemology. In this thesis, I provide an argument for conservatism which remedies each (...)
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