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	Relativist fallacy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
		The relativist fallacy, also known as the subjectivist fallacy, is a logical fallacy committed, roughly speaking, when one person claims that something may be true for one person but not true for someone else.
		There are at least two ways to interpret "the relativist fallacy": either as identical to relativism (generally), or as the ad hoc adoption of a relativist stance purely to defend a controversial position.
		On the one hand, those discussions of the relativist fallacy which make the fallacy out to be identical to relativism (e.g., linguistic relativism or cultural relativism) are themselves committing a commonly-identified fallacy of informal logic, namely, begging the question against an earnest, intelligent, logically-competent relativist.
	en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Relativist_fallacy (667 words)

	Relativism
		Relativistic arguments often begin with plausible, even truistic premises--e.g., that we are culturally and historically situated creatures, that justification cannot go on forever, that we cannot talk without using language or think without using concepts--only to end up with implausible, even inconsistent, conclusions.
		On relativistic accounts it typically involves a semantic holism to the effect that the denotations, or at least the meanings in some more general sense, of linguistic expressions are determined by their overall role in a language (theory, form of life, etc.).
		Relativistic themes continue to surface, however, in the so-called "strong programme" in the sociology of science and in the new fields of science studies and related areas like cultural studies.
	plato.stanford.edu /entries/relativism (18149 words)

	Relativists
		Relativist culture emerged during the first interstellar era, when the first relativistic starships left the solar system to explore, colonise or trade with the new colonies.
		Often relativists lavish their gains on their ships, although there are some who have gambled in long-range investments either becoming ultra-rich or losing it in some financial disaster or political reorganisation.
		Some say the Version War was largely supported by the Relativists as it made demand for their services astronomical and led to a whole new generation of crews, but by all accounts the relativists prefer to keep out of politics - it changes faster than they travel.
	www.orionsarm.com /topics/Relativists.html (628 words)

	Why I Am Not a Moral Relativist (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-07)
		Third, even if the relativist were to make the more modest claim that morality is not relative to the individual but to the individual’s culture (i.e., that one is only obligated to follow the dictates of one’s society), other problems follow.
		But the cultural relativist is making an absolute and universal moral claim, namely, that everyone is morally obligated to follow the moral norms of his or her own culture.
		Relativists have made explicit one central value—equal respect and tolerance of other ways of life, which they insist to be absolute and universal.
	www.shakinandshinin.org /WhyIAmNotAMoralRelativist.html (3680 words)

	Moral Relativism
		Metaethical relativists generally suppose that many fundamental moral disagreements cannot be rationally resolved, and on this basis they argue that moral judgments lack the moral authority or normative force that moral objectivists usually contend these judgments may have.
		However, metaethical moral relativist views are sometimes regarded as versions of (or connected with) the positions that say moral judgments lack truth-value, since the relativist views contend that moral judgments lack truth-value in an absolute or universal sense.
		The characteristic relativist contention is that a common moral framework is often lacking, especially in moral disagreements between one society and another, and that differences in moral frameworks usually cannot be explained simply by supposing that one society or the other is making factual or logical mistakes.
	plato.stanford.edu /entries/moral-relativism (10692 words)

	[No title] (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-07)
		Moreover, the relativist claims that these actions cannot be judged according to their ethical correctness because there is no absolute standard by which they could be compared.
		Since the relativist does not allow for any action of a given culture to be objectively right or wrong, he cannot give the name of progress to any change in a given society.
		For instance, the relativist would claim that a society that believed in placing jewelry with the dead so that they may have these possessions in the afterlife is to be accepted by another culture.
	www.textfiles.com /reports/ACE/relative.txt (2124 words)

	Relativism
		Kuhn’s more relativistic passages in the first edition of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions suggest that perception, standards of epistemic appraisal, and meaning are relative to paradigms or scientific frameworks, i.e., [2.3; 2.4; 2.6]-to-[3.6.1] (further passages suggest that truth and even reality are also relativized to paradigms).
		Second, the relativist could opt for a relativistic reconstrual, arguing that the meanings of many of our words and concepts do involve external factors, but that these are in turn shaped by, or relativized to, frameworks.
		So, the relativist might argue, once we adopt a framework in which things can be individuated in terms of chemical structure, there could be facts about chemical structure that we have yet to discover, and these could affect the meanings of our words and concepts.
	www.ou.edu /ouphil/faculty/chris/crittex/Rindex.html.prev (17878 words)

	Relativist Apologetics
		Relativists usually subscribe to a "symmetry principle," demanding "that true and false knowledge claims are to be explained by means of the same set of explanatory notions." In contrast, rationalists take true knowledge to be forced upon us by proper procedures and reality checks, while social explanations are appropriate for irrational beliefs (Raven et.al.
		Relativists can make a case that evolution is permeated by ideology, even that the perspective of a creationist community is no less valid than that of scientists.
		Relativists derive philosophical support from the impasse we reach when we ask for the justification of a claim, the justification of that justification, and so on.
	www2.truman.edu /~edis/writings/articles/relativism.html (4227 words)

	Relativism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
		Relativists claim that humans understand and evaluate beliefs and behaviors only in terms of, for example, their historical and cultural context.
		Philosophers identify many different kinds of relativism depending upon what allegedly depends on something and what something depends on.
		The descriptive relativist reply to this is that while this might be true at a general level, different cultures have different understandings of what "innocent" means, and so are still culturally relative.
	en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Relativism (1365 words)

	CCCRTE: Dilemmas of Evaluation
		Relativists, at the other pole, generally see conflict as an aspect of change.
		For the relativist conflict resolution practitioner, peacebuilding denotes the emergence of new, inclusive relationships.
		For the relativist there is the creation of awareness and understanding, as well as the application of technique in specific circumstances.
	www.c-r.org /ccts/ccts4/lord4.htm (902 words)

	The Destruction of Sacred Space
		The principles of relativist space have defined both the form of the contemporary universe and the modernist style of architecture, which has been adopted by the Church.
		Relativist space is empty of meaning because it’s up to the observer to give significance to what he or she sees.
		It was quite unlike the relativist universe the Church today has to contend with, and would not have inspired inward-looking church buildings where people ‘gather round the altar’.
	www.latin-mass-society.org /ouch.htm (2760 words)

	The Rise of Relativism and the Decline of Virtue and Freedom in America
		Since relativist societies always argue for the extreme, they eventually lose the greater virtues while holding fast to the lesser ones, and increasingly promote troublesome behaviors that result in new forms of governmental regulation and assistance.
		These are relativist attributes, in that they can possess multiple meanings on earth; however, they may not reflect eternal absolutes; only eternal absolutes are everlastingly real and unchanging.
		After all, they reason in a relativist fashion, who are we to impose our view of pyramids on the world- ours is but one view, albeit the true one, they add reassuringly.
	www.meridianmagazine.com /ideas/030305relativism.html (2709 words)

	[No title]
		What the relativist means to assert is, not this platitude, but that the very same kind of action which is right in one country and period may be wrong in another.
		The relativist does not, of course, mean that there actually is an objective moral standard in France and a different objective standard in England, and that French and British opinions respectively give us correct information about these different standards.
		Now the argument of the relativist would be that it is impossible to find any basis for a universally binding moral law; but that it is quite easy to discover a basis for morality if moral codes are admitted to be variable, ephemeral, and relative to time, place, and circumstance.
	www.phil.tcu.edu /readings/Stace.doc (4070 words)

	[No title] (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-07)
		They claim "everything is relative." In order to defend this position, the relativist puts forth two arguments: (1) Since people and cultures disagree about morality, there are no objective moral values; (2) Moral relativism leads to tolerance of practices we may find different or odd.
		In addition, the moral relativist has a difficult time explaining moral progress, moral reformation, and clear-cut cases of moral saints and moral devils.
		That is to say, to remain consistent the ethical relativist cannot criticize intolerable moral practices, believe in real moral progress, or acknowledge the existence of real moral reformers.
	www.equip.org /free/DA241.htm (2989 words)

	Foreign Dispatches: The Relativist's Paradox
		The first principle of a relativist is: "Everything is relative." The worldview of a relativist depends on the integrity of this first principle.
		The unexamined assumption of the relativist is that some special exemption applies to his own assertions which doesn't apply to anyone else's.
		I also want to say that, as a relativist, I engage in argument because, while I do not think it is possible to claim that one normative system is better than another, I can acknowledge the political implication of choosing one normative system over another.
	foreigndispatches.typepad.com /dispatches/2004/10/the_relativists.html (1468 words)

	The Shabby Pedagogue: RELATIVISM (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-07)
		In class, we focused on two arguments aimed at establishing the relativist doctrine that the truth or falsity of a claim, judgment, belief, etc. is determined not simply by how the world is but rather is determined relative to a plurality of frameworks or standards.
		On the relativist view he was considering, such a belief about the existence of such experts would be one that the relativist would be committed to rejecting even though the relativist asserts that such beliefs are correct.
		The relativist, according to Plato, is guilty of a kind of self-referential incoherence of the sort I'd be guilty of if I said on this blog that I'm not a blogger.
	theshabbypedagogue.blogspot.com /2005/06/relativism.html (421 words)

	[No title]
		The relativist must be operating with some account of truth-for-X that does not rest upon, or ineliminably involve any notion of objective truth (to which the robust alethic relativist is not entitled).
		The relativist can make use of the type of notion and say that «P is true relative to W» means something like «P corresponds to the facts from the point of view of W» (where W is a person, a set of leading principles, a world view, or a situation).
		On the relativist conception, the world cannot be conceived as independent of W; if it is so conceived, the relativist conception collapses into an absolutist one, for it is granted that there is a way the world is, independent of statements and W's.
	www.sorites.org /Issue_14/ferraiol.htm (2327 words)

	Free and Responsible Search: Confessions of a Moral Relativist
		Ryan Dobson's relativists would have to shrug and let the guard go on about his business, but in fact the guard and I would have a lot to talk about, because we have so much in common.
		America tops the list of places in the world where those who are serious about the inerrancy of their religion are moral relativists.
		There are some heartbreaking exceptions, such as those Jon Krakauer describes in "Under the Banner of Heaven", but by far the overwhelming majority of people here, whether they see it or not, exercise their God-given right to choose whether to accept which God-given humanly unalterable divinely ordained Word of God.
	freeandresponsible.blogspot.com /2005/08/confessions-of-moral-relativist.html (2789 words)

	W. T. Stace, "Is Ethics Relative?"
		Characterize his summation of the difference between the relativist and the absolutist.
		Ethical relativism is not a platitude because the relativist is committed to the belief that one action that is right in one group is wrong in another group.
		The relativist argues that there is nothing that has always and everywhere been regarded as morally good by all persons.
	philosophy.lander.edu /intro/stace.html (1317 words)

	Risk Frameworks that Disenfranchise the Public
		[10] My account also warns that "most social scientists are not cultural relativists in the Wildavsky sense," and that "Wildavsky and Douglas have quite different views on relativism and on risk, with Wildavsky being more relativistic."[11] I also spend an entire chapter discussing "the probabilistic strategy" of positivist risk assessors like Starr.
		They ought not merely state their own undocumented opinion that Wildavsky and Douglas are not relativists, and expect readers to accept their begging the question.
		Wildavsky and Douglas -- and other relativists -- are dangerous because they deny the epistemic conditions that are necessary for the possibility of proving risk imposers are wrong.
	www.fplc.edu /risk/vol8/winter/KSFreply.htm (1914 words)

	Truth and Moral Absolutes (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-07)
		When the relativist's argument deals with the issue of morality, then their ID changes and they become "moral relativists" to those who stand in the way.
		While the relativist may espouse that morality is subjectively discerned (without any need for a standard), he cannot live out his life without using the adjectives "bad," "good," "better," "worse," "ought to," or "ought not to." All of these terms infer that a standard exists--even though the relativist may claim that they do not.
		To enter into the relativist's line of thinking is to attempt to circumvent the "law of non-contradiction." In other words, what the relativist professes to be false (or non-existent) is, in fact, truly evident.
	www.rchristopherministries.org /P90022.html (2325 words)

	2.2 What is the problem? The view of a relativist (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-07)
		For a relativist, on the other hand, the idea of a fundamental description of gravity in terms of physical excitations over a background metric space sounds physically very wrong.
		This profound conceptual shift has led to the understanding of relativistic gravity, to the discovery of fl holes, to relativistic astrophysics and to modern cosmology.
		Thus, for a relativist, the problem of quantum gravity is the problem of bringing a vast conceptual revolution, begun with quantum mechanics and with general relativity, to a conclusion and to a new synthesis.
	relativity.livingreviews.org /Articles/lrr-1998-1/node4.html (484 words)

	The Satirist - The Breyers-Devere Probe of Human Worth
		Moral Absolutist (A) vs. Moral Relativist (R) Moral absolutists believe in an absolute moral structure, usually based upon a religion or a dubious belief-system such as Freudianism and Marxism.
		Relativists believe that morals are relative to a situation, and can rarely make expedient business decisions, or even decide where to have dinner.
		Egoists (E) vs. Team-Players (T) Egoists perform best in individual endeavors such as the arts, in which it is imperative that one consciousness grasp the whole undertaking.
	www.thesatirist.com /satires/LostGeniuses/breyersdevere.html (1250 words)

	s12
		In actuality, Protagoras was not necessarily a relativist in the way the term is used to attack his ideas.
		Really then, human relativists are what the so-called objectivists, who belittle Protagoras for being a relativist, are.
		Basically, the interpretation of Protagoras as an individual relativist is arbitrary and also quite convenient for his critics.
	www.geocities.com /inescapableennui/s12.html (1140 words)

	Zhuangzi as Relativist-Skeptic (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-07)
		Usually they tie the definition to what they term as a 'strong', 'extreme', or 'radical' version that is either incoherent on its face or that makes their joint use incoherent.
		Zhuangzi's relativistic skepticism emerges in the context of this broad social-political movement toward impartiality and it implicitly supports that trend.
		The target of relativist analysis is the dependency of our dao and our practical interpretation of it on accidental facts of our upbringing and past.
	www.hku.hk /philodep/ch/Skeptic.htm (16673 words)

	Quicny1 (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-07)
		The relativist position defended by "Quincy" is the position that the debate is all about (i.e.
		Furthermore, each one will often agree with parts of what the relativist maintains, even while not agreeing that these parts lead to realtivisit's conclusions, and each one in turn will tend to an extent sympathize with the relativist in his cirticism of their non-relativist brethren.
		In all these cases the relativist concludes the weaknesses of his opponents imply conceding victory to relativism, while the other parties to the dispute see the relativist's attacks as weakening their other non-relativist opponents, but not their own position.
	www.loyno.edu /~folse/Quincy1.html (192 words)

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