Date: Tue, 7 Jul 1998 20:08:54 NZST
Subject: Re: PKF: Slide time


On the question I posed about nihilism and relativism, I plucked these
responses from the various emails everyone sent in my apologies for
misrepresenting anyones views. If I got it wrong then hit me over the
head with another email.

Responses:

David Geelan
No need to in real rather than philosophical terms we base our
decisions on our own values, what's freeing about relativism is that
it makes these choices explicit.

Drieu Godefridi
There is no third way we must accept all truth claims. But perhaps we
are in a position to make value judgements about our own society.

Chris Holt
No one view is privileged but there is a partial ordering among views
while we can't say a view is wrong we can look at it and find out if
it is arbitrary, capricious and inconsistent. We don't therefore have
to accept all claims as desirable. You can accept that someone has
different values without accepting their value system. "Better" is a
value laden term and while we can't say in truth terms which value
system is better that doesn't necessitate giving up my own or
uncritical acceptance of others. It is misleading to say as Godefridi
does that we can somehow be more objective to our own societies values

Jeffery  Nich
There is some reality though we have no apriori knowledge of it. Some
survival strategies are better than others purely in terms of
survival. Again Godefridi's suggestion is not helpful

Terry Bristol
The question is formally undecidable. In The Paramenides Plato
concludes there is no way that does not lead into contradictions but
perhaps we need these contradictions. Cf Goedals incompleteness
theorum


I like Terry's response, indeed it might just be the case as in
mathematics and language that there are some propositions that are in
principle unanswerable in society such as questions of morality and
value. I also agree with Jeffery that we cannot have apriori knowledge
of reality. However I suspect that in terms of values such as
"good/bad" there is no apriori truth about them it is just as David
says, values, and perhaps all we can do is try to make these explicit
so as to gain a better understanding of them. I would like to believe
as do Chris and Drieu that there is a partial ordering among views and
indeed do in relation to the physical world. But in human terms all we
have are values and what is arbitrary, capricious and inconsistent to
me is more than likely to be logical and consistent to many other
people even from my own society. There just does not seem to me to be
that same reality on which to base questions of value upon when we
turn to things like morality. To me that suggests that perhaps we are
dealing with different things when we talk of morality and physical
reality. Also from Chris yes I agree with you accepting that there are
different values is different from accepting that value system this
comes back to what David said about making difference explicit. I
don't know, what does everyone else think am I on the completely wrong
track?


Mike Eathorne-Gould
(michael-AT-sol.otago.ac.nz)
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