RE: Dr Sam's clear thinking techniques #2: No, it's not all relative
Lol, gee, this brings back memories. I was probably one of those 1st year students damn it :P
The Statement 'everything is relative' always seemed somewhat incomplete to me. I myself wasn't happy with the idea that it was used to blithely dismiss critical reasoning when comparing different moral codes or ideas. For if you consider the context of two human cultures with different moral values there is shared contextual basis that allows comparison, namely, that we are human.
I used to say that everything is relative was incomplete for if I was the one saying it I 'd have to add that for me, everything was relative to being a human, who grew up in Australia, who came from a working class family, who studied philosophy etc.
And I thought that this extended statement wasn't subject to paradox for I'm only saying that for me, I see things, and understand them, and accept truths as I can from my own perspective, as best that I can.
And some of these contextual parameters are shared with other thinking people around me, some more than others.
Perhaps a better way of saying 'everything is relative' is to say that 'if anything can be considered to be true it is so by virtue of its context.'
Even mathematical theorems are true by virtue of the stated rules and propositions. They are not true without any context. There is no simple one to one matching of a proposition to the truth of how the World absolutely is, the map is not the territory as they say.
But maps can be better or worse even if their merits are relative to the stated assumptions, values, rules, propositions etc.
All this is to say that I think relativity is both hardly as earth shattering as many think it is and it also seems that it is misused or misstated. To appreciate that a proposition is true by virtue of its context, setting, and of how it relates to things is just to say, pay attention to detail. It doesn't allow you to blithely dismiss all attempts at the better use of reason. But paying heed to the relative details, to context that's important right?
Or so says me, from my point of view, as best that I can.
Thinking it through a little more... I do remember thinking that Cultural relativism was sort of about reacting to the idea that there was a singular ultimate truth about the independent world, or rather that there was one True World which we aimed to describe. I recall thinking that perhaps the World was actually multifarious and could be seen from many different perspectives and that these perspectives could generate different truths about the many fold World. This isn't to say that anything goes. The World still exists and it still resists. Reality can still be demonstrated by thumping the solid table and yet things can be seen in different ways. This isn't a call to lazy thinking. You can't just dismiss the importance of rigorous thought and some ideas, thoughts or theories have more utility then others (and sometimes they even show us that our ideas are flawed) for while our understanding of the World is shaped, in part, by our vision of it, yet it still resists, for it doesn't simply bend to our will, it is beyond us, and is also in an important sense beyond our understanding, even while we learn more and more as much as we can.
So I guess not everything is relative... yet its still true that everyone I know who is right mysteriously agrees with me.