Book Symposium
| Abstract | Relativism and scepticism are often taken to be incompatible doctrines. After all, the relativist typically attempts to argue that there are no universal standards of assessment between different conceptual schemes – hence the slogan: everything is relative. The sceptic, in turn, is often portrayed as defending the view according to which knowledge is impossible – and thus we cannot even know that the relativist’s claim is true. Despite their incompatibility, both views are taken to be wrong, and for similar self-refuting reasons: they undermine themselves. In his recent book, Relativism and the Foundations of Philosophy, Steven Hales argues that relativism can be defended – as long as it is suitably formulated and restricted to philosophical propositions (Hales, 2006). These propositions are relatively true: true in some contexts (or perspectives) and false in others. In this paper, I defend two main claims. First, Hales’ proposal is not restricted to philosophical propositions, but applies equally well to mathematical ones. Second, with a proper understanding of scepticism, Hales’ proposal would actually be welcomed by the sceptic. Some may take these two claims to amount to a sort of reductio of Hales’ project. Since mathematical claims are typically not taken to be relatively true, and given that scepticism is typically taken to be false, a proposal that leads to these results would be unacceptable. Rather than drawing this conclusion, I think these results show that we need to rethink deeply held assumptions about the nature of mathematics and of scepticism. Hales’ book is an excellent contribution to that | |||||||||
| Keywords | No keywords specified (fix it) | |||||||||
| Categories | ||||||||||
| Options |
|
|||||||||
Download options| PhilPapers Archive |
Upload a copy of this paper Check publisher's policy on self-archival Papers currently archived: 5,865 |
| External links |
  Try with proxy. Try with proxy. |
| Through your library | Only published papers are available at libraries |
Similar books and articlesMichael Glanzberg (2010). More on Operators and Tense. Analysis 71 (1):112-123.
Steven D. Hales (2009). What to Do About Incommensurable Doxastic Perspectives. Philosophia Christi 11 (1):209-214.
P. J. J. Phillips & J. D. Payton (2010). Book Review: Steven D. Hales Relativism and the Foundations of Philosophy. A Bradford Book. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006. Cloth. 216 Pp. [REVIEW] Philosophy of the Social Sciences 40 (4):623-626.
Jimmy Alfonso Licon (2012). Still No Suicide for Presentists: Why Hales’ Response Fails. Logos and Episteme (1):149-155.
Jeff Malpas (1994). Self-Knowledge and Scepticism. Erkenntnis 40 (2):165-184.
Steven D. Hales (1997). A Consistent Relativism. Mind 106 (421):33-52.
Steven D. Hales (2004). Intuition, Revelation, and Relativism. International Journal of Philosophical Studies 12 (3):271 – 295.
Steven D. Hales (2008). A Relativist's Rejoinder. International Journal of Philosophical Studies 16 (2):271 – 278.
Steven Hales (2004). Intuition, Revelation, and Relativism. International Journal of Philosophical Studies 12 (3):271-295.
Analytics
Monthly downloads |
Added to index2009-03-15Total downloads17 ( #72,013 of 556,772 )Recent downloads (6 months)1 ( #64,754 of 556,772 )How can I increase my downloads? |
My notes
Discussion
