A Question About Alethic Relativism

Vlastimil V. inquires:

When someone says that (R) truth is relative,

a) ... what's the most clear way to understand R?

I suppose he means something else than that people disagree, also something else than that truth is seldom certain.

b) ... what's the most clear way to criticize R?

BV:  (R) is a substantive and highly controversial thesis about the nature of truth.  So it is not to be confused with the Moorean fact or datum that different people often have different beliefs about one and the same topic.  Nor is it to be confused with any epistemological thesis about the knowledge of truth such as the thesis that nothing is known with certainty.  For this latter thesis is consistent with truth being absolute.  Fallibilism and absolutism are consistent.  And of course, to hold as I do that truth is absolute (nonrelative) is not to hold that every truth is necessary.  If a proposition is true, then it is absolutely true whether it is contingent or necessary.  No matter how paltry the proposition -- I had gyro meat with my eggs this morning -- if true, then absolutely true.

Note that I would not speak, redundantly, of absolute truth were it not for the mischief caused by those who speak, incoherently, of relative truth.  I would simply speak of truth.  Truth is truth.  There is no such animal as relative truth.

VV: Suppose the alethic relativist is fine acknowledging that, given R, (R1) R itself is a relative truth -- as well as R1 (or any further meta-claim R2, R3, etc.). Once you provided an interesting retort: the alethic relativist "cannot say that ... nonrelativism is only relatively true. If he said that, he would be assuming that relativism is nonrelatively true ..." I don't follow this implication, so I would appreciate your further elaboration.

BV:  If (R) is true, then it is either absolutely true or relatively true.  If the former, then self-refererential inconsistency and self-refutation. So the relativist is forced to retreat, on pain of inconsistency, to (RR): It is relatively true that every truth is relative.  But then I object that this cannot have any general or global application or relevance.  "Fine, truth is relative for you and your pals, but this has nothing to do with me, and so I may reasonably ignore your quirky local view."  

The point here is that the relative relativist cannot exclude the nonrelativist view: he must admit that it is possible that nonrelativism (NR) be nonrelatively true.  But then the relative relativist seems to fall into contradiction inasmuch as he must embrace both limbs of the following inconsistent dyad:

It is possible that (NR) be true in every locality
It is impossible that (NR) be true in every locality.

Our relative relativist must embrace the first limb since he cannot logically exclude the possibility of the truth of (NR).  And he must embrace the second limb because (NR) and (RR) cannot both be true in the relative relativist's locality.

The relative relativist confuses truth with local understanding.  The relative relativist is a slippery fellow. It is not clear what he is up to, though one senses that he is up to no good.  Is he simply changing the subject by speaking of local understanding rather than truth? Is he making an eliminativist move by denying that there is truth?  Is he trying to reduce truth to local understanding?  These are all dead ends.

VV:  Also, once you wrote: "The aletheic relativist either asserts his thesis (R) as absolutely true or as relatively true. If the former, his thesis is self-refuting. If the latter, then his thesis avoids self-contradiction only to face a dilemma: either relative-truth is the same as the property of being-believed, or it is not. If the former, then the relativity of truth boils down to an uninteresting triviality. If the latter, then it remains wholly unclear what could be meant by the property of relative-truth, and the thesis (R) perishes of semantic indeterminacy."

What I'm wondering here about is whether the alethic relativist really cannot specify R non-trivially yet consistently.

BV: The following is an uninteresting triviality: one and the same proposition can be believed by one person but not believed by another. Let the proposition be: Hillary lied about Benghazi.  Speaking loosely, once could say that the proposition is true-for Tom but not true-for Chelsea.  This sloppy way of talking suggests that to be true = to be believed by someone.   Now if the property of being true = the property of being believed by someone, then alethic relativism becomes trivially true.  

But the thesis of althetic relativism is not trivially true.  So what is truth for the alethic relativist if it is not the property of being believed by someone?

My challenge to the relativist:  Tell us what you mean by 'truth' such that truth can be coherently conceived to be relative. If you cannot do this then you have no thesis. 

Comments

[Vlastimil]

Thank you, Bill.

"... the relative relativist cannot exclude the nonrelativist view: he must admit that it is possible that nonrelativism (NR) be nonrelatively true."

1. Does the sort of possibility matter? Is it epistemic, or other -- say, broadly logical?

2. Most importantly, suppose the relative relativist qualifies everything with a relativizing operator. So suppose he says,

It is relatively true that it is possible that (NR) be true in every locality.
It is relatively true that it is impossible that (NR) be true in every locality.

Is this really inconsistent?

3. Moreover, what exactly does it mean to say, 'true in a locality'? We still know not. But this may be the relativist's problem, not yours.

[BV]

The possibility appears to be both epistemic and logical.

Your dyad is inconsistent if the relativizing operator is univocal across both of its occurrences. Suppose it is cashed out like this: it is true-for-me-and-mine that p.

Yes, it is the relativist's problem.

What is he up to? Is he telling us that there is no truth only local understandings? (Eliminativism) Is he telling us that truth just is local understanding? (Reductivism) Is he recommending that we drop the word 'truth' altogether? The latter is Rorty's line. Don't ask whether p is true, ask whether one can get away with saying it around here.

Perhaps the relativist should just STFU already and stop making phil. claims incl. claims about relativism. He should just say: this is how we behave around here and this is what we say. And then he shuts up and give you a blank stare if you ask whether his behavior is morally correct and what he says is true.

True? What's that?

[Vlastimil]

Bill,

I can't say if my dyad is inconsistent. For I don't know what 'relatively true', 'true in a location', or 'true-for-me-and-mine' mean. Can you? I guess no, you can't. How can we refute the relativist until we know what he means?

Also, supposing for the moment that we do know it, is this dyad inconsistent?

In some localities it is true that it is possible that (NR) be true in every locality.
In some localities it is true that it is impossible that (NR) be true in every locality.

By the way, the SEP entry on relativism reports that Hales and Shogenji discussed this in Mind, in terms of modal logic.