/lit/ - Literature

>>444784
if you relativize truth, than you destroy the difference between truth and belief. also, what about natural law? it's true that to some extent morals, culture and beliefs are relative, but there are absolute truths that guide the universe.

>>444784
you commie.

Nobody takes Relativism seriously. If you can understand anything past Calc 1, you will immediately see why its horseshit.

>>444830

have you thought about how to even believe in calc. 1 you have to aknowlegde the world as objective and yourself as able to sense it like that? that is pure fucking belief, my good man. relativism is not about progress of society or whatever the fuck. it's about tolerance and a healthy respect for the fact that we're really fucking hopeless and don't really know anything for sure.

>>444830
This arrogant fag at my school does. I can't stand it when he pretentiously spouts "It may be true for you, but not for everyone else" when I talk about evolution or any other scientific theory.

It makes me want to rip my face off.

I can't stand the irony....

>>444830
Cal 3 here, sure not everything is relative but some stuff is.

>>444862
Because we don't know everything doesn't mean we don't know anything.

>>444862
no... calc 1 is not a belief... are you on drugs, or do you happen to be a math ignorant liberal art major?

Wow, it's not like anyone has ever noticed this before or anything.

But seriously relativism is an intellectual cop-out. Especially when applied to literary criticism.

every relativistic thought leads to contradicting or implausible results, usually both.

>>444884

So there are things you know completely for sure that can never be disproven? I don't even have to use my previous arguement as this goes against the principles of science in itself. But let's nevermind science. Tell me a 100% absolute truth that doesn't build on empirism. Now try to fucking Descart me or something bitch. I'm prepared.

>>444880

Since you're in Calc 3, I'll assume you at least know what some of the Anthropic Principle and the Incompleteness Theorem are. Relativism is exactly that but taken to an extreme. It's absolutely stupid.

>>444893
relativism if valid only for opinions, what is sucky about it is when someone tries to dismiss fact as opinion:
"God doesn't exist" this is an opinion
"Evolution is true" this is a fact

>>444900

Read Godel's Incompleteness Theorem. There are things in Science and the Universe in general that breaks "Tertium non datur". They're neither true, nor false.

Tautologies are all truths, but not logical truths.
Logical truths are all tautologies, though.

>>444892

It is a belief. How do you even know that you existed a minute ago? How do you even know that there is such a thing as math at all? Think about it, your mind can't grasp the entire concept of mathematics at once. You need time to rationalise it and considering it's absolutely impossible to completely know for sure that everything you sense is real and that you even existed a moment ago -- math is a belief.

>>444915
Fucking thank you.

>>444922

>Sensory reactions
>Belief

What the fuck am I reading.

>>444915

Evolution is an opinion because its reality rests on your belief in science -- your belief in the fact that all your senses are 100% trustable and that the world is in fact objective just like Christian's truths rest on the fact that they believe that their senses are being fooled by Satan and that God is great and bla bla bla.

>>444925

Sensory reactions are not themselves a belief but the fact that you chose to trust them as telling the truth is.

Bold relativism, "all truths are relative", is fucking ridiculous. The less assertive form "some standards of etiquette are relative" is so obvious that the philosophy is trivial.

This is why most academic philosophers won't even try to defend this philosophy.

>>444780
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I love how you're all ignoring the fact that relativistanon has you all in the corner.

>>444934
> your senses are 100% trustable and that the world is in fact objective

Science doesnt hold this belief, sciences uses a wide array of tools to measure and record phenomena that we cannot proccess through our senses.

>>444954

I didn't say science held this belief. Anyway. You need to believe that your senses are to be trusted to be able to use this wide array of tools.

>>444934
Learn the difference between "opinion" and "scientific fact"

Fact and the scientific method

Apart from the fundamental inquiry in to the nature of scientific fact, there remain the practical and social considerations of how fact is investigated, established, and substantiated through the proper application of the scientific method. Scientific facts are generally believed to be independent of the observer: no matter who performs a scientific experiment, all observers will agree on the outcome. In addition to these considerations, there are the social and institutional measures, such as peer review and accreditation, that are intended to promote factual accuracy (among other interests) in scientific study.

Just as in philosophy, the scientific concept of fact is central to fundamental questions regarding the nature, methods, scope and validity of scientific reasoning.

In the most basic sense, a scientific fact is an objective and verifiable observation; in contrast with a hypothesis or theory, which is intended to explain or interpret facts. (For an example see Evolution as theory and fact.)

Various scholars have offered significant refinements to this basic formulation, some of which are detailed below. Also, rigorous scientific use of the term "fact" is careful to distinguish: 1) states of affairs in the external world; from 2) assertions of fact that may be considered relevant in scientific analysis. The term is used in both senses in the philosophy of science.

>>444966

You are contradicting the philosophy of relativism. By attempting to disprove us you are stating an absolute truth. This is why relativism gets reasoned down to nothing.

>>444966

You are contradicting the very foundation upon which you build your argument. By attempting to disprove us you are stating an absolute truth. This is why relativism gets reasoned down to nothing.

>>444972

Learn the difference between "opinion" and religious dogma. You could just as well have been saying that. You say things like peer review but how do you even know that these peer reviewers exist when you can never trust your senses for sure? You might be dreaming, under some kind of strong influence, your memories might be fake. It might be something beyond our understanding: a turtle doesn't know its place in an eco system. So why would you? What I'm trying to establish here, and I say it again, is tolerance and a healthy respect for the fact that you can never know anything for sure.

>>444996
lol, look up pragmatism.

>>444996
I KNOW THAT WE CAN NEVER KNOW ANYTHING FOR SURE.

>>444986
>>444995

I'm just destroying your arguments to show the fraility in them and the fact that they are not absolute. I could just as well be attacking my own. My ultimate point is that we know nothing for sure and that relativism is not about dropping your beliefs but a healthy principle to keep behind your ear the next time you assault a Christian or whatever the fuck.

>>445006

But then again we can because my senses might be telling the truth. See >>445007

>>445007
Who's talking about religion...?

>>445007

>implying Christians can't be just as strong in their absolutism

>>445032

>>Implying him implying that.

>>444784
there is much wrong with this post, that I don't even bother to point out the flaws.

>>445007
There is a world. Obviously, people can interpret this world in different ways, but certain aspects of this world are the same for everyone. Science explores those.

p is true / we know p beyond reasonable doubt if and only if p is empirical;

p is intersubjectively verifiable;

p is falsifiable.

>>445007
>>444996
>>444966
>>444934
Every major relativist philosopher agrees that studies like math or science are "really real" or "privileged"

>>445060

how would you know that there is a world? if no such thing as a world is then the supposed rules of this world don't necessarily exist either. we can thus conclude that what you're feeling now might just as easily be an illusion, a dream or something beyond our comprehension as what "you" feel and taste at this exact moment.

>>445081

well I fucking don't.

>>445091
Have fun being wrong.

>>445094

^^;;

>>445086
If you don't accept that there is such a basic thing as a world, then you have based all basic practicality, thus all thought or life is null; so why be?

>>445099
passed all practical*

>>445099

why not be? its easier to go with the flow than to do something drastic about it when there's ultimately no reason to do so.

>>444900
>So there are things you know completely for sure that can never be disproven?

Godel's Theorem, isn't it? or a lemma, I guess.

Gotta admit, relativism just seems like flavor of the month for those who will not grapple with the question, "What is truth?"

>>444894
My man!

>>445597
I agree, relativism is a superfluous philosophy.

>>445597
You just answered your own question

WHAT = TRUTH

>>447738
You've disappointed me

>>445597

It falls out of Godel's Incompleteness, yeah.

In essence, The Incompleteness Theorem just says there are certain truths we know that are not ever provable. It takes a human mind to come to a conclusion where a formal, mechanical language (computers) whose rigor and completeness is derived from its finite nature would look at a sentence and never conclude anything about the nature of its truth or falsity.

everything is relative to its frame of reference except for the speed of light etcetcetc

>>448500
we're not talking about Einsteins theory of relativity, here. that only talks about spacetime. this thread is about philosophical relativism.

>>448431
In a certain sense he's close. Awareness is fundamental to what we mean by "truth," while "What?" is just the hole awareness fills up, don't you think?

>>448444
It was the provability that caught my eye.

someone explain relativism in a way that an underage B& would understand.

it seems to make sense, yet I can't seem to close up the final link of the philosophy. Everything is dependent on one another, is that it?

>>448869
Phor Philosophy Phags:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/relativism/

I hesitate to wade into the murky waters. OTOH I know this for sure [goak]: what you know and express is influenced by your environment and your nature and in particular by your social conditioning.

So statements like "Let them eat cake," make perfect sense to those who make them and little to those conditioned later by the values of the middle class victors. This is an example of social relativism, I believe. Social class determines understanding.

A second example also involves language. When I say, "pink," a modern English-speaking listener understands me to indicate a color. A pre-Shakespearian listener would think I was referencing a flower. Here the conditioning inherent in learning language determines what occurs in the listener. So meaning is relative to conditioning. It's not really social in that there was little economic pressure to name a color that of a flower (but that's my opinion.)

Relativism can very usefully test whether a statement, action or attitude arises merely from bias.

Some deny any absolute knowledge at all. My experience does not jump with this.

Aviso: I'm an amateur.

Another example occurs to me now.

In antiquity, the Iliad, the Odyssey, the Argonautica were valued as history.

So too was Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae in its time.

Today we have a completely different notion of history because of the development of "rational" and "objective" historical techniques. We think it means pinning down dates, times, actors, actions and motives.

"History" under the Soviets meant something different yet.


To the ancients, history was a moral force impelling men to greatness. To us, history is a dry cabinet of facts ascertained with greater or lesser accuracy. To the Soviets, history was the dynamic impetus of social evolution.

What history is depends on when and where you are born and raised.

>>449319
>In antiquity, the Iliad, the Odyssey, the
>Argonautica were valued as history.

This is, at best, only partly true (especially if you mean the Argonautica of Apollonios Rhodios, a writer who consciously uses and plays with tradition): some ancients were very much aware that there were contradictions between the narratives of Homer and other early epics, and commented explicitly on this; some disbelieved the mythological aspects and produced rationalizing versions; some, especially in the commentary tradition, were well aware of the complexity and multifariousness of genealogies and mythologies.

>>449354
Another interesting example of "relativism": "they" never really means "all of them." I only had one sentence, hence, "valued."

But Virgil and others used the Trojan diaspora to explain the ascendancy of Rome, so for a good number of the ancients, history could be fictional and actual at once. Their notion of history seems to be more elastic than ours.

Although - hmm - the same sort of thing happens now with war books - The Greatest Generation and such. But nowadays many professionals doggedly work out the real details. Then - antiquity - not so many.

I did mean Apollonius. Jason never interested me much. And Medea clearly comes from /b/.

>>448869
everything only exists in your own perception. Each person has a different reality.

What is calc 1 to 3?

>>444784

because word games are related to ontology?

idiot.

>>448869
There are bold forms of relativism and weaker forms. The bold form falls under the statement "there are no absolute truths" (this form is absurd and no real philosopher defends it). The weak form is that cultures, morals, philosophy and politics are relative to the person, place and time. This form is basically a truism and makes the philosophy superfluous.