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RELATIVISM AND RATIONAL TOLERANCE (2011-2014)
Funded by the Leverhulme Trust
The Project Team
Principal Investigator: Crispin Wright
Co-investigator: Paula Sweeney
Independent Auditor: tbc
Post-Doctoral Fellows: Carl Baker & Alexandra Plakias
Project Students: tbc
The Research Problem
A respectful tolerance of contrary opinions is one important traditional liberal value. But another is to work to overcome, rather than tolerate, prejudice, superstition, error and ignorance. These values seem to be in potential conflict. When, if ever, is tolerance straightforwardly virtuous? When, if ever, is it rationally required?
One ancient answer is that we should be tolerant of those who disagree with us in domains of discourse where there are no absolute facts, —where truth should be conceived as relative. Two such domains have often been taken to be basic taste (‘disputes of inclination’) and basic morals (‘disputes of principle’.) Until recently, this traditional answer would have been widely scorned. Many philosophers, from Socrates onwards, have doubted the very coherence of relativism about truth. However, frameworks featuring truth-predicates that behave relativistically have recently been developed for purposes in descriptive semantic theory quite unrelated to the above normative issues. The possible bearing of this 'New Age' relativism on the traditional questions about tolerance of contrary opinion, and more generally about realism and objectivity, is our project’s primary focus.
The project thus involves a re-orientation of the current empirico-linguistic debates about relativism, seeking to determine whether the recently developed concepts and apparatus allow of fruitful application to more traditional philosophical purposes.
The research will be organized into three year-long phases. The following are some of the general questions that will be treated.
Phase 1 Relativism and objectivity – general issues
Can relativistic propositions serve as compete specifications of the contents of propositional attitudes? If so, what is it to believe a relativistic proposition? What are the obligations in a new context of previous commitment to the truth of a relativistic proposition? If the assertion of a relativistic proposition is best interpreted as a commitment to its continuing assertibility under changing circumstances of evaluation, how can such a commitment be shown to be justified or responsible?
What, if any, distinctive advantages are provided by a relativistic conception of truth in the areas where we are suspicious of the claim to objectivity? In what respects does relativism shine, or suffer, in comparison to other non-objectivist approaches such as expressivism, projectivism and response-dependence?
Phase 2 Taste and disputes of inclination
What exactly is the relation between the rationality of tolerance of alternative opinions on matters of (basic) taste and the possibility of "faultless disagreement"? How is each best understood?
If truth in the domain of disputes of inclination is conceived to be relative to standards, how are we to conceive of “standards” if they are to do the work demanded? Do we in matters of basic taste judge by standards? Or are standards in this domain nothing other than dispositions of judgement, and are they therefore non-normative?
How exactly is tolerance of conflicting tastes underwritten by the relativist proposal? Even if stewed tripe is disagreeable by Tom’s standards, Tim, in correctly evaluating it as delicious by his, still seems obliged to regard Tom’s opinion as false, and so presumably as poorly reflecting on the standards that deliver it. Can relativism address this fundamental difficulty? If not, does it yet have other advantages over alternative accounts?
Phase 3 Value and disagreements of principle
If the truth of moral judgements is conceived as "standard-relative", how are “standards” themselves to be conceived in the moral domain? If as formulable general precepts, how are relativist accounts to be applied to disagreements in which these very precepts are the disputed contents?
Are relativistic accounts of fundamental moral disagreements able to accommodate and explain their characteristic 'high temperature'—and the correspondingly characteristic 'low temperature' of disagreements in, say, taste in sauce?
How is the intuitive contrast between disputes of inclination and disputes of principle to be explained? Can an Intuitionistic approach do better than relativism in accounting for it?
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