Читать книгу Philosophy For Dummies - Tom Morris - Страница 41

But is there really any such thing as truth? The viewpoint known roughly as relativism claims that all so-called truth is relative to a perspective, that there really is no absolute objective truth, but that different things may be true for different people, or from diverse perspectives, but nothing is absolutely true apart from a perspective. This is sometimes also known as perspectivalism. Perspectives differ, this viewpoint alleges, and one is as good as another.

But notice a problem with the mere statement of relativism. It says: There really is no such thing as absolute truth. It sounds like relativism is actually suggesting to us that it is revealing the ultimate, absolute truth about truth. But it can’t be that the absolute truth about truth is that there is no absolute truth. Taken literally, relativism ends up actually asserting what it denies, and so it’s self-defeating, or logically incoherent as a philosophical position. If it’s true, then it has to be false, which means it can’t be true.

The question then arises as to why so many people seem to be relativists. Why has relativism in one form or another been so attractive to a number of intellectuals in the 20th century? The answers here may be quite simple. The profound French essayist Montaigne anticipated it all when he once remarked, “The mind is a dangerous weapon, even to the possessor, if he knows not discreetly how to use it.”

A little philosophy is a dangerous thing. Too many people seem to confuse relativism (a bad thing) with tolerance and respect (truly good things). And lots of people are first exposed to relativism in a way that they tend to misunderstand. In college classrooms, for example, philosophy professors often raise the intellectual specter of relativism, or perspectivalism, just to jolt their students into a deeper grasp of what is at stake in making truth claims. It is meant to be a rhetorical challenge to the natural childhood feelings most people have that what they believe about anything important is surely the absolute truth. In philosophy, everything can be challenged. But some views can meet the challenge and stand firm. A professor who introduces the claims of relativism in the classroom may actually want her students to see through or refute the relativist challenge, and so understand truth more deeply. Or she may seek to introduce the notion of limited perspectives to urge on her students a little more intellectual humility. But too many of them come away grasping just enough of the challenge, while failing to see its fatal flaws, that they themselves begin espousing relativism in the dorm or back at home with the family. Relativism too often is nothing more than a fancy last gasp of adolescent rebellion. And when the young relativists go on to become politicians, or business people, or novelists, they may bring a glib version of that relativism into what they write or say without fully understanding its inadequacy. As William James, the great 19th century psychology and philosophy professor at Harvard once reminded us, “There is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood by those who hear it.” It’s true that people have different perspectives on many difficult issues, it’s also true that we should examine the adequacy of our own perspectives on issues, plus, it’s true that we ought to respect others even when their views diverge from our own, but that does not mean there is no truth to be had beyond and behind the reality of alternative perspectives.

But some serious mature adults can fall into relativism, too, and a number of very smart people have found it tempting. So it’s useful to grasp what could possibly attract them to a logically inconsistent position. First, it may be surprising, but it’s true that relativism can serve as a very persuasive intellectual excuse for bad behavior. If there is no absolute truth, there is no absolute moral truth and people can get away with anything they want. Some individuals are relativists because it’s a wonderful form of self-deception, licensing anything they may want to do, despite the disapproval of others. And it’s a view they can use speciously to attempt to convince otherwise good and sensible people to join them in their shenanigans.

There is a second path to adult relativism that is certainly more respectable, however wrong it nonetheless also is. Many sensible people in our time have wanted to promote the virtue of tolerance, and even an intellectual broadmindedness, or cognitive inclusivity in our pluralistic world, and have wrongly thought that relativism is the royal road to cultivating a firm and resilient openness to other people’s beliefs. But the sort of tolerance that is indeed a virtue is best grounded in genuine respect, and it’s not showing respect for any point of view to say that no points of view can possibly capture reality the way that it is.

These simple remarks are meant to apply to any utterly general relativism. That’s what is self-defeating and logically incoherent. There are, certainly, small areas regarding issues of personal taste and comfort where a very limited restriction of truth to perspectives seems appropriate. The statement “This ice cream is good!” might be an apt example. It could be true for you — from your perspective, given your tastes — but not for me. But that is very different from the statement, “This ice cream is three years old!” which is a standard truth claim and is not subject to relativistic restriction. Compare the difference between “It’s too hot in here” and “It’s over 90 degrees in this room.” It is the latter statement that is a better example of standard claims about reality. And it is either true or false. No relativity of perspective muddies the water.

Truth is your intellectual and existential tie to the world. Believing a truth, or stating a truth, is like hitting a target. Falsehood misses the mark. Truth anchors you to reality. Falsehood cuts your connection to the way things really are. People need truth like they need air, or food, or water. Falsehood, by contrast, damages, diminishes, and even kills. Something can seem “true for me” but really be false. Nothing can be true for me unless it’s true of me, or about me, or just simply and objectively true. Truth is ultimately an accurate correspondence with reality. And yes, sometimes it’s hard to determine, and the most we can do is to judge it in connection with our best efforts, the preponderance of the evidence available, or in connection with testing the most advanced theories we currently have available. Yet, as good old common sense tells us, truth is ultimately a matter of representing reality about things outside the confines of our own perspectives.