CHAPTER
VII
CONCLUSIONS:
RELATIVISM, OBJECTIVISM AND
THE
MEASURE OF TRUTH
“The danger which edifying
discourse tries to avert is that some given vocabulary, some way in which
people might come to think of themselves, will deceive them into thinking
that from now on all discourse could be, or should be, normal discourse.
The resulting freezing-over of culture would be, in the eyes of
edifying philosophers, the dehumanization of human beings (Rorty
19:377).”
Like any metaphor, the belief machine is only an approximation of the
way that human beings create meaning. As metaphor, the belief machine
highlights only certain features in the creation of belief.
It highlights the role of metaphor, the function of ritual, the ways
and extent to which we go to sustain our beliefs, and the role of society,
culture and technology in attaching us to and encouraging us to change our
beliefs. However, as with all
metaphors, the belief machine also creates, as well as solves, some
problems. The major anomaly that is generated by the belief machine itself
has to do with our notions of objectivity and truth.
If meaning can be generated without
reference to external reality, that is, regardless of what is “really out
there,” then that implies, as I mentioned before, that all truth is, in
effect, relative to such things as the metaphors we use to organize out
essentially chaotic experience, the rituals we partake of, and ultimately,
the society, culture and epoch of which we are a part.
Does this then mean, as a “vulgar relativist” might have it, that
anything goes? Does it mean
that you can believe whatever you want because ultimately no single belief
can claim priority over another? Does
it mean that there is no value-free standard against which to measure the
priority of one viewpoint over another? Does it mean that there is no such thing as “objective”
truth that lies beyond our social and cultural prejudices?
The philosophical debate between relativist
and objectivist, as philosopher Richard Bernstein (1983:8) points out, is an
ancient one; relativists have always attacked new attempts by philosophers
to come up with fixed, and eternal standards, while objectivists have always
claimed relativist arguments were self-referentially inconsistent and
paradoxical; how can relativism be true when relativists claim that we can
never know what is true?
The debate between relativism and
objectivism, while, as Bernstein points out, an old one, was given new life
in the early 1960’s with the publication of Thomas Kuhn’s book, The
Structure of Scientific Revolution. Kuhn,
inadvertently or intentionally, extended the argument over relativism into
the realm of science. While
other had attempted to examine the influences of social and cultural setting
on science, (e.g. see Veblen 1908), none raised quite the furor of Kuhn’s
book (see e.g. Lakatos and Musgrave 1970).
Kuhn claimed that the history of science is marked by the development
of different paradigms or theoretical frameworks that are often
incommensurable with each other. For
example, Newtonian physics represents a paradigm or framework that is, in
many ways, incommensurable with the Einsteinian paradigm that succeeded it,
as a Freudian paradigm is incommensurable with a Skinnerian theoretical
framework. There is some debate
over what Kuhn meant by “incommensurability” (see Bernstein 1984:79ff),
but generally when viewpoints or paradigms are incommensurable they ask
different questions, or they define the same term differently; it is
impossible, for example, to try to compare a Newtonian concept of motion
with an Aristotelian concept of motion.
To Aristotle, the concept of motion included not only the sense of
movement that we understand in the Newtonian sense of the term, but also the
sense of “becoming”; the Aristotelian concept of motion applied equally
to the growth of a child or plant as well as to a moving object.
Kuhn says that
In a sense that I am
unable to explicate further, the proponents of competing paradigms
practice their trade in different worlds.
One contains constrained bodies that fall slowly, the other
pendulums repeat their motions again and again.
In one, solutions are compounds, in the other mixtures. One is
embedded in a flat, the other a curved matrix of space.
Practicing in different worlds, the two groups of scientists see
different things when they look from the same point in the same direction.
Again, that is not to say that they see anything they please.
Both are looking at the world, and what they look at has not
changed. But in some areas
they see different things, and they see them in different relations one to
the other (Kuhn 1970: 150).
Kuhn’s book ignited a debate that not
only drew in philosophers, but anthropologists as well (see e.g. Wilson
1970; Skorupski 1976; Hollis and Lukes 1982; Ulin 1984), and resulted in a
concerted attack on relativism that prompted anthropologist Clifford Geertz
(1984) to compare the attack to a witch-hunt.
This debate involves no mere intellectual quibble; objectivists and
relativists argue the merits of their convictions with such a passion that
there must be quite a lot at stake. As
Bernstein says,
It seems to come down to a choice
between relativism and objectivism, a choice between an untenable search for
truth and a helpless skepticism.
The purpose of this book is not specifically to address this problem;
but since the belief machine raises it by questioning the idea that we can
ever attain some objective truth that exists beyond metaphors and language
we use, we cannot ignore the issue. And
the problem is more than a simply academic one. People in today’s world
argue over and cling to competing political ideologies, each claiming theirs
is somehow better or truer, or more in the nature of things.
People argue and murder over questions of religious belief, each
claiming their perspective is better or truer that the others.
Leaders claim political authority based on a divine mandate, and
encourage and order their followers to war and to death as martyrs.
People dispute the applications and dangers of new technologies where
the variety of viewpoints is almost as dazzling as the “truths” people
and groups offer to demonstrate the priority of their viewpoints over
others. Regardless of whether
or not the roots of these debates are economic or ideological, we may
nonetheless destroy ourselves because of the persistent attempt of one group
to establish the priority of their meanings over the meanings of others. The
question is, what way, if any, is there out of this dilemma?
COMMUNITY,
DIALOGUE AND PROBLEM-SOLVING
Philosophers Richard Bernstein (1983), and
Richard Rorty (1979, 1982) trace the dilemma of truth and skepticism to
humankind’s search for some foundation on which to judge the truth and
falsity, rightness and wrongness of their beliefs and actions.
Bernstein claims that it was the attempt of seventeenth century
philosopher Rene Descartes to find some foundation on which to base
philosophical discourse from which the dilemma springs; the fear that there
may be no such foundation results in what Bernstein calls “Cartesian
anxiety.” Richard Rorty, on
the other hand, traces the problem back to Plato’s notion of reason.
Plato saw reason as a human organ that allowed persons to separate
the real from the unreal, the true from the false.
Both Rorty and Bernstein, however, see the history of the debate
between relativists and objectivists as a history of people to find some
form of eternal truth to which we can appeal.
For some the eternal standard is God, for others it is Reason, for
others it is science. In
essence, in any epoch or culture, the objectivists claim they have
discovered the foundation, while relativists respond that they have
not.
While Rorty and Bernstein differ on the
Western origins of our idea of a foundation or eternal standard on which to
judge our beliefs, they both attempt to offer an alternative to relativism
and objectivism by drawing on the work of George Gadamer.
Briefly, the solution that emerges is, I believe, based on three
assumptions. First that the beliefs of any community, culture or epoch
arise from the attempt of that community to solve certain problems or issues
that are presented to it. Second,
that the problems and questions that do arise are, in some sense, unique to
that society. The questions may
seem similar; every society may seem to address themselves to questions such
as what is the nature of man?, or what is the nature of the eternal?, or how
are social relationships to be arranged, or scarce economic resources
allocated? But regardless of
the similarity of the questions, they, are in a sense, incommensurable with
each other. The third
assumption is that, since each question and problem is unique to the
community presented with it, the final arbiter of the “truth” of the
solution must be the community in which the problems or questions arise.
The alternative to truth and skepticism, to a reliance on God, Reason
or science as an eternal standard, is, in effect, a reliance on the judgment
of the community.
Rorty offers as an alternative to “vulgar
relativism” the opinion and the tradition of the community to which one
belongs;
…the fact that a view is
ours—our language’s, our tradition’s, our culture’s is an
excellent prima facie reason for holding it.
It is not, of course, a knock-down argument against competing
views. But it does put the
burden of proof on such views. It says that rationality consists in a
decent respect for the opinions—or in Gadamer’s deliberately shocking
terms, the prejudices—of mankind. …it
sees objectivity in terms of consensus rather that correspondence…Or, to
put it another way, it is the problem of realizing that there is a middle
way between reliance on a God-surrogate and on one’s individual
preferences—namely, reliance on the community to which one belongs. (Rorty
1982: 6)
Communities, societies and cultures develop
their frameworks in response to problems posed to them.
Thus the frameworks, the metaphors used are responses to unique
problems of unique societies. The
judgments about the rightness or wrongness of these solutions must be
pragmatic and consensual. They
are pragmatic in the sense that they work or don’t work.
They are consensual in that they emerge through a special kind of
conversation and dialogue within the community.
But this alternative to relativism and objectivism raises its own
obvious problems, for if we substitute the community for God, Reason, or
science, as the final arbiter of truth and moral goodness, doesn’t that
leave us open to the tyranny of the community?
Gadamer, Rorty and Bernstein recognize this
problem. Its solution must be
the development in each community, or the establishment of communities, in
which people recognize that this process of problem-solving, of
understanding can never achieve finality; they must recognize that they are
always understanding and interpreting in terms of the frameworks they bring
with them, frameworks that change in the course of history.
Each person must recognize that their viewpoint is a product of their
own cultural and historical situation.
Spanish philosopher Jose Ortega Y Gasset makes his point particularly
well in what he calls the “Doctrine of the Point of View.”
Imagine he says, two men who, from different places, look out on the
same landscape. They do not, he says, see the same thing;
Their different
situations make the landscape assume two distinct types of organic
structure in their eyes. The
part which, in the one case, occupies the foreground, and is thrown into
high relief in all its details, is, in the other case, the background, and
remains obscure and vague in its appearance.
Further, inasmuch as things, which are put one behind the other,
are either wholly or partially concealed, each of the two spectators will
perceive portions of the landscape, which elude the attention of the
other. Would there be in any
sense in either declaring the other’s view of the landscape false?
Evidently not; the one is as real as the other.
But it would be just as senseless if, when our spectators found
their views of the landscape did not agree, they concluded that both views
were illusory. Such a
conclusion would involve belief in the existence of a third landscape, an
authentic one, not subject to the same conditions as the other two.
Cosmic reality is such that it can only be seen in a single
definite perspective. Perspective
is one of the component parts of reality.
Far from being a disturbance of its fabric, it is its organizing
element. A reality which
remained the same from whatever point of view it was observed would be a
ridiculous conception (Ortega y Gasset 1961: 89-90)
“All knowledge”, he says, “is
knowledge from a definite point of view.”
Gadamer echoes this same sentiment when he
says that every viewpoint depends on our “situation”:
Every very finite present
has its limitations. We
define that concept of “situation” by saying that it represents a
standpoint that limits the possibility of vision.
Hence an essential part of the concept of situation is the concept
of “horizon.” The horizon
is the range of vision that includes everything that can be seen form a
particular vantage point (quoted in Bernstein 1983: 143).
Thus, if the community is to be the arbiter of truth, special
emphasis must be placed on sustaining an on-going conversation among its
members, a dialogue born of the recognition that any solution to any problem
must, by necessity, be a temporary solution.
The community must avoid closure by maintaining a dialogue that
consists, in Gadamer’s words, of
a process of two people
understanding each other. Thus
it is characteristic of every true conversation that each opens himself to
the other person, truly accepts his point of view as worthy of
consideration and gets inside the other to such an extent that he
understands not a particular individual, but what he says.
The thing that has to be grasped is the objectiveness rightness or
otherwise of his opinion, so that they can agree with each other on the
subject (quoted in Bernstein 1983: 161-162).
We
must, as Gadamer stresses, build communities of dialogue whose purpose is to
sustain the ongoing conversation. As
Richard Rorty puts it:
To keep a conversation
going as a sufficient aim of philosophy, to see wisdom as consisting in
the ability to sustain a conversation, is to see human beings as
generators of new descriptions rather than beings one hopes to be able to
describe accurately (Rorty 1979: 378).
The question that Gadamer does not address, and that Rorty only hints
at, is how do we in fact create communities that encourage dialogue, that
have built into them mechanisms that prevent the closure of conversation and
the setting up of one point of view above all others?
Moreover, given the tendency of people to want certainty in their
lives, we might ask if it is possible to create such a community?
After all, the belief machine we have constructed in this book
attempts to generate certainty, has all sorts of mechanisms to convince
people that a particular point of view is “the right one,” and has
people selecting metaphors and meanings that best serve their economic and
social interest. Thus we may
ask if it is possible to build something into the belief machine that keeps
the creation of meaning fluid?
We certainly try to create such
communities—our universities and colleges are prime examples.
Yet it seems that the communities of dialogue we create must attempt
to inculcate in its members the same comfort and pleasure in an ongoing
dialogue about the problems of our era, as members of other communities have
in finding their version of certainty and eternal truth.
That is, if Rorty’s and Gadamer’s vision of a community of
dialogue is possible, it means that persons in those communities must accept
and even welcome the idea that there is no foundation, no eternal truth, and
that all beliefs are tentative.