Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Uncontroversial Forms of Relativism

I am taking a break from Non-Evidentialism to discuss Relativism beginning with it in its most uncontroversial form, knowledge is something relative to person, time, and place. What I know now undoubtedly differs in some way from what a 19 year old in Africa knows just as what I know now differs from what I knew 10 years ago and will know 5 years from now. This same idea can apply to a society as the American experience is different from other cultural experiences and the American experience today is different from what it was in the past. The key to Relativism is the existence of secrets...different people know different things not conflicting things. It is not that I know the Earth moves around the sun while the African teenager knows the sun moves around the Earth, instead he knows what it is like to be an African teenager while I know what it is like to be an American teenager.

1 comment:

  1. OK, a good way to explain it. Secrets is part of it. The other part is just "perspectivalism": perspective matters. I know it's Sunday now; tomorrow I'll know something different. That's not a conflict, though, that undermines a correspondence-type idea of truth or any sort of skepticism.

    [Familiarity shown!]

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