The relativist survived Plato’s recoil argument. He also survived the charge that he is pretending to keep the concept of true judgement when all he has really left us is a world with just noise in it, but no judgement at all: the charge represented by the moving bull’s-eye.
He did this by substituting earth-bound human processes for the eternal laws of right reason. But he has to avoid yet another danger, the one we saw dangling in front of Sextus. He must not exempt his own position from the status he accords to others. He cannot shel-ter behind what the Australian philosopher David Stove nicely called the ‘Ishmael effect’. At the end of Melville’s novel Moby Dick the ship is rammed by the whale and sunk in the middle of the Southern Ocean. And telling of this the narrator, Ishmael, says that
‘I alone escaped to tell the tale’ – something that, given the tale he tells, it was impossible for him to have done. Equally, a relativist cannot say that all human beliefs are subjective – except the belief that all human beliefs are subjective. He cannot exempt himself from the fate to which he condemns others. But according to critics, this is what he is trying to do.
The canny Greek sceptics actually foresaw this charge. Sextus knew that his opponents (the dogmatists, usually Stoics) would sneer that he was trying to produce proofs that there are no such things as proofs, and was therefore caught in inconsistency. But rightly he was unperturbed. He could simply admit that the argument represents how things appear to him now; he could record how he is inclined to
come to epoche or suspension of judgement, leaving it for others to work out how it strikes them. He need claim no greater status for his own argument than the diminished status that he offers to any other.
And, dialectically, en route to refuting his opponents, he can say that the dogmatists are the ones who are really in trouble, since they want their certainties, and among them the very principles that are involved in Sextus’s own arguments. However, when they are followed through properly, those principles disprove the dogmatists’ certainties, so this puts the dogmatists themselves in an inconsistent position.
But the idea that there is something self-undermining about the relativist or sceptical tradition dies hard. So here is another major contemporary philosopher, Thomas Nagel, considering the claim that logos is silent. Nagel complains that any claim as radical and uni-versal as that would have to be supported by a powerful argument, but the claim itself seems to leave us without the capacity for such arguments. The judgement he considers is the relativistic claim that our logical, mathematical and empirical reasonings ‘manifest histori-cally contingent and culturally local habits of thought and have no wider validity than that’.
Or is the judgment supposed to apply to itself? I believe that would leave us without the possibility of thinking anything at all. Claims to the effect that a type of judgment expresses a local point of view are inherently objective in intent: They suggest a picture of the true sources of those judgments which places them in an unconditional context. The judgment of relativity or conditionality cannot be applied to the judgment of relativity itself. To put it schematically, the claim ‘Everything is subjective’ must be nonsense, for it would itself have to be either subjective or objective. But it can’t be objective, since in that case it would be false if true. And it can’t be subjec-tive, because then it would not rule out any objective claim, including the claim that it is objectively false. There may be some subjectivists, perhaps styling themselves as pragmatists, who present subjectivism as applying even to itself. But then it does not call for a reply, since it is just a report of what the subjectivist finds it agreeable to say. If he also invites us to join him, we need not offer any reason for declining, since he has offered us no reason to accept.1
This is a puzzling passage in several respects, but let us begin at the end. Nagel says that the subjectivist or relativist has offered us no reason to accept his position. But is that right? Relativists typically do advance reasons for their view: we have already mentioned two central kinds of reason. The first is the variation of subjectivities, and the second is the problem of status, of understanding what Plato’s heaven could be, or in other words what could even be meant by the reign of logos. Why does Nagel think that relativists do not advance reasons for their position?
And, moving back, we should also worry about Nagel’s view that if the claim of subjectivity (here taken as equivalent to relativism) applies to itself, then ‘it would not rule out any objective claim, including the claim that it is objectively false’. The problem with this is seeing how it is supposed to upset the relativist. For, put in these terms, his view is that there aren’t any objective claims (logos is silent). It cannot then be an objection that he fails to ‘rule them out’, any more than it is an objection to the quality of my boundary fenc-ing that it fails to keep out unicorns. Accordfenc-ing to the relativist, when Nagel says that the relativist position is false, that is an expression of Nagel’s subjectivity. If Nagel adds the words ‘objectively false’, then the relativist simply sees theatrical costume, a flimsy disguise for the subjectivity beneath (we get another glimpse here why these issues attract swirls of emotion). It is as if Nagel is saying: I simply won’t lis-ten to anyone unless they have logos on their side. And the relativist replies that in that case Nagel will not be listening to anyone, so it is no skin off his nose that Nagel won’t listen to him, the relativist.
Quite apart from Sextus’s own rebuttal of this kind of argument, a similar relativist response to an argument like Nagel’s was in fact given nearly a century before by the pragmatist William James (we discuss pragmatism later). In James’s setting the pragmatist or rela-tivist is urging an account of truth as no more than truth-as-we-measure-it or truth-for-us. James knows he is going to be opposed by the argument that he is sheltering behind the Ishmael effect, standing where he says there is nowhere to stand. And he meets it with the splendidly spirited reply:
But can there be self-stultification in urging any account whatever of truth?
Can the definition ever contradict the deed? ‘Truth is what I feel like saying’
– suppose that to be the definition. ‘Well, I feel like saying that, and I want you to feel like saying it, and shall continue to say it until I get you to agree.’
Whatever truth may be said to be, that is the kind of truth which the say-ing can be held to carry.2
In fact, he should have gone one further. To preserve consistency, whatever truth may be said to be, that is the kind of truth which the saying must be held to carry. In principle, indeed, it is possible that there should be just one belief forced by logos, and it should be the belief that no other beliefs are forced by logos. But this is surely in-defensible: the Ishmael problem shouts at it. Why should this be the only belief that escapes the fate to which all the others are condem-ned? In fact, it seems a particularly unlikely candidate for an Ishmael-like exemption. If cherished results of reason, such as ‘two plus two equals four’ or ‘if one event precedes another and the second event precedes a third, then the first event precedes the third’, do not qualify for baptism by logos, then delicate and contested claims about the status of judgement and truth themselves are hardly likely to be better candidates. So I think we can safely say that James should go one step further. Whatever truth may be said to be, that is the kind of truth which the saying must be held to carry.
So, as James admits, the relativist must accept for his own doc-trine, the Measure Doctrine or the claim of logos-symmetry, just whatever status he thinks remains once logos has gone silent. But then, as James also asks, where is the problem in that?
Here there surfaces a dangerous opportunity for the two sides to talk past each other. People of an absolutist disposition, such as Nagel expresses in the passage above, see relativism as essentially a wreck-ing position. It is supposed to undermine cherished categories of reason, objectivity and truth. And so they insist that once relativism applies to itself, it goes down with the wreck. It cannot escape the fate to which it condemns everything else.
To the relativist ear, all this is pointless abuse. To the relativist, relativism should not be a wrecking position. By insisting that all
opinion is equal in the sight of logos, it merely strips away false masks and false statuses. So indeed it should stand naked and unashamed, with no more but no fewer dignities than it accords to any other human saying.
For an example of the twists and turns here, consider the position Bernard Williams called anthropological relativism or vulgar rela-tivism in ethics, which is supposed to fall into the same trap.3This position starts from the observation that different societies accept somewhat different ethical standards – the variation of subjectivities.
From this observation, together perhaps with some thoughts about what truth in moral matters could be, it concludes that none of stan-dards is more ‘right’ than any other. It then further infers that because of this we have an absolute duty of toleration and non-interference, and must leave other societies to pursue their own paths, however repugnant we may find them. This overall package is straight-forwardly inconsistent. The interim conclusion, that there is no absolute right or wrong, contradicts the subsequent conclusion, that there is an absolute duty of toleration and non-interference.
But why should anyone buy the overall package? A Jamesian repair is to hand. To restore consistency, the relativist just has to back down, presenting his conclusion without the word ‘absolute’
inserted. He does not want that: he just wants us to admit that we have a duty of toleration and non-interference. Now, to those of an absolutist disposition, it will appear that if we drop that word, then there is no reason, no ‘real’ reason as they might say, for the toleration and non-interference. The rug, they think, has been pulled out from under everything, including the obligation to tol-erate others. But for the relativist this is not at all how it stands.
He now presents the duty of non-interference not as an ‘absolute’
duty (enforced by logos), but just as a consequence that we here, or we in the West, or he himself or his audience, draw from the data about variations of standards. In James’s terms, this is what he feels like saying, and he wants you to feel like saying it too, and perhaps he is prepared to preach and proselytize until you do. And very likely his plea will fall on sympathetic ears, for it probably is part of our current subjectivity that unless we think we can ‘prove’ to
people that they are wrong, we have no business trying to get them to change their ways.
James himself insisted, surely correctly, that ‘the temper which the relativist may show is an extra logical matter’, meaning that there is no inconsistency in going on to campaign, perhaps fiercely, for the relativistic stand, and similarly there is no inconsistency in going on to campaign for the toleration and non-interference, if those appeal to us as consequences of the relativistic stand. Of course, it will indeed not be ‘absolutely’ true that they are consequences, but we may be minded to draw them, all the same.
At this point, the Jamesian relativist, if we can call him that without slandering James himself, is practically or ethically on a slightly different course from his Greek predecessors. For them, it was an admirable consequence of their scepticism that they lost convic-tion, lost enthusiasm as it were for holding one opinion rather than another. With epoche or suspension of judgement came the desired ataraxia or tranquillity. James is more strenuous, less inclined to give up the hurly-burly of ethics and politics. Not for him the country retreat of the sage.
If we now return to Nagel’s passage, we should find that the end-ing is doubly problematic. The relativist has presented reasons as he understands them for his position, namely, he has provided words that, given the structure of our subjectivities, will sway us or might sway us towards saying what he says. To make this clear, we need labels for the different conceptions of reasoning on offer. So we can say that the relativist has provided what he conceives of as R-reasons, meaning reasons as the relativist conceives of them. The absolutist may hold that this is not his conception of reasons, not the real McCoy, not real reasons, which we can call A-reasons. Similarly the absolutist holds out for A-truth and A-belief, where you A-believe something when you hold it to be A-true. The relativist, of course, denies that we should work in those terms. There are only R-reasons, R-truth and R-belief. So now we have two different conceptions of what the relativist is up to when he gives his arguments. But it is pre-mature for the absolutist to complain that he has not been given A-reasons for anything. In the context of this argument it is up to him
to decide that. The relativist indeed presented what he himself took to be R-reasons (the sceptics of the last chapter present how things appear to them). If the absolutist gets struck, as the relativist hopes he will, by considerations such as the variation of subjectivities, or the difficulty of conceiving of Plato’s heaven, then at the beginning he will suppose himself to be thinking of these difficulties as A-reasons for changing his mind about the status of truth and reason. For he thinks of all good reasons as A-reasons, and these reasons strike him as rather good. But then after he has changed his mind, he will then stop thinking in terms of A-reasons and A-truth. He will smoothly put aside the old conceptions, and begin to fit himself to the new ones.
And from then on he will also think of his conversion differently. He will reevaluate it in the same terms as the relativist whom he has now joined. But the process is still the same in any event, and for all he has said thus far, it may result in an improvement.
It is like this: imagine a theistic absolutist, who works in terms of God’s truth and reasoning as God would approve of it: G-truth and G-reasons. Nothing less will do. But he hears someone arguing against these notions, in fact against God altogether. Can he dismiss this point of view without listening to it? Well, he can, of course, but he may not be within his rights to do so. He may find that the heretic offers what seem rather good G-reasons for his position – perhaps as good as any other G-reasoning the theist has ever heard on the sub-ject. He may then find himself getting convinced that there are no G-reasons and no G-truth, and at the end of the process this is how he will think. He will himself see the movements of his mind in the lesser terms, but, by then, he will see that as a gain. He has thrown off an illusion, and that is a gain, not a loss.
It is useful to think of all the varieties of the recoil argument in these terms. The absolutist is trying to show that somehow, in spite of himself, the relativist is bound to be involved with A-reasons and A-truth. This is because he sees everyday processes, such as the giving of reasons or a change of opinion, in these terms. And so he projects them on to his opponent and claims a quick victory, since his oppo-nent is then revealed as inconsistent. The absolutist arguing like this is just like the theist who holds that whatever they say or think they
believe, atheists really believe in God just like he does. He sees acknowledgement of God lying in everyday activities, such as avoid-ing lies or keepavoid-ing promises. And then he can convict the decent atheist, who indeed avoids lies and keeps promises, of being steeped in God, up to his eyeballs, only refusing to acknowledge it. But in each case the victory is entirely hollow, for the atheist, and equally the relativist, simply rejects the interpretation of what he is doing that the theist or the absolutist offers. And he may be perfectly within his rights to do so. At least, if he is not, it will require more than the recoil argument or the need to avoid Ishmael’s predicament to show it. It will require the hard work of showing that A-concepts are indeed unavoidable. It would mean showing that something beyond R-substitutes must form and guide our reasonings.
So when the absolutist complains that something is lost, the rela-tivist can afford to laugh. He hears no criticism. What was lost was only a phantom, or only the masks and props with which the abso-lutist tries to avoid confronting the human reality. And the full-scale, Protagorean relativist thinks this is not only true of heavily contested areas like morals, but everywhere.
To see how plausible this might be, consider a case where there sounds to be something rather obviously right about cultural rela-tivism. We know a good deal about our perceptions of fashion and their harmless variations over time and place – harmless, at least, if we abstract from evils such as the subordination of women or the
To see how plausible this might be, consider a case where there sounds to be something rather obviously right about cultural rela-tivism. We know a good deal about our perceptions of fashion and their harmless variations over time and place – harmless, at least, if we abstract from evils such as the subordination of women or the