Relativism

Don Quijote expresa la naturaleza conflictiva de un hombre a caballo entre el mundo medieval y el renacentista. A traves de la figura del caballero andante la obra dramatiza las transformaciones sociales ocurridas con el advenimiento de la imprenta. El Quijote es el primer Alonso Quijano (preimprenta) leido por el segundo Alonso Quijano (post-imprenta); es el hombre medieval que ya no es leido por el hombre renacentista que esta por ser; representa al hombre instalado en el umbral de un modo de percepcion inclusivo, sostenido en la naturaleza multidimensional de la palabra oral, y un modo de percepcion exclusivo, cuyo metodo de conocimiento se basa en el analisis y en la desarticulacion rigurosa de las diversas capas que conforman el escenario de lo “real”. Se trata de una personalidad dividida, Quijano/ Quijote, que oscila entre la idealizacion de la percepcion como instancia individual y absoluta de la experiencia y el perspectivismo, conciencia de que lo unico inmutable es la mut...

""The paper provides an analysis of Protagorean philosophy, concentrating on Protagoras' famous homo mensura fragment. The examination is supported by significant philological clarifications, which eventually lead to the conclusion that ethico- political relativism does not follow from homo mensura fragment: only perceptual relativism logically follows. The argument goes on to show that Protagorean perceptual relativism may be understood both objectively and subjectively. The Heraclitean and Parmenidean influences upon Protagoras’ thought are also indicated. It is consequently shown how Plato and Aristotle misunderstood the central thesis of Protagoras, at the same time retrieving the homo mensura fragment from charges of self- refutation. It is also argued that Protagoras should not be called an “atheist”, but only a “subjective agnostic”.
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ABSTRACT. In this paper, we theorize that the anticipation of guilt plays an important role in ethically questionable consumer situations. We propose an ethical decision-making framework incorporating anticipated guilt as partial mediator between consumers' ethical beliefs (anteceded by ...

Susan Haack, “The Whole Truth and Nothing but the Truth.”

Abstract: “Much truth is spoken, that more may be concealed,” wrote Mr. Justice Darling in 1879. Opening with an articulation of the distinction between truth (the concept) and truths (particular true propositions), this paper is largely devoted to: developing an account of the dual meaning of “partially true” – “true-in-part” vs. “part of the truth”; and (ii) understanding the reasons for, and the dangers of, the very common tendency to tell only part of the relevant truth. 


Keywords: truth, truths, partial truth, Ramsey, laconicism, vagueness, deception

Relativism as an epistemological problem Relativism is examined as it manifests itself in two phases. Both regard the contextuality of culture as normative. The second and post-modern phase deconstructs the normative epistemological role of the world and situates normativity completely in the community. This is the crux of the current relativist debate. Rorty's view on dualism is examined. It is concluded that relativism's equation of objectivity with objectivism is untenable and that certainty alone is insufficient to guarantee reliable knowledge. Positive insights of the second relativist phase are the non-algorithmic and unforced agreement of scientists. The total divergence and asymmetry thesis is incompatible with the universality of logic and other theoretical values. Relativism does not sufficiently account for the success and progress of science.

This article makes a contribution to the ongoing debates about universalism and cultural relativism from the perspective of sociology. We argue that bioethics has a universal range because it relates to three shared human characteristics,-human vulnerability, institutional precariousness and scarcity of resources. These three components of our argument provide support for a related notion of 'weak foundationalism' that emphasizes the universality and interrelatedness of human experience, rather than their cultural differences. After presenting a theoretical position on vulnerability and human rights, we draw on recent criticism of this approach in order to paint a more nuanced picture. We conclude that the dichotomy between universalism and cultural relativism has some conceptual merit, but it also has obvious limitations when we consider the political economy of health and its impact on social inequality.

Ethics position theory (EPT) maintains that individuals’ personal moral philosophies influence their judgments, actions, and emotions in ethically intense situations. The theory, when describing these moral viewpoints, stresses two dimensions: idealism (concern for benign outcomes) and relativism (skepticism with regards to inviolate moral principles). Variations in idealism and relativism across countries were examined via a meta-analysis of studies that assessed these two aspects of moral thought using the ethics position questionnaire (EPQ; Forsyth, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 39, 175–184, 1980). This review identified 139 samples drawn from 29 different countries, for a total sample of 30,230 respondents, and concluded that (a) levels of idealism and relativism vary across regions of the world in predictable ways; (b) an exceptionist ethic is more common in Western countries, subjectivism and situationism in Eastern countries, and absolutism and situationism in Middle Eastern countries; and (c) a nation’s ethics position predicted that country’s location on previously documented cultural dimensions, such as individualism and avoidance of uncertainty (Hofstede, Culture’s Consequences: International Differences in Work-Related Values, 1980). Limitations in these methods and concerns about the validity of these cross-cultural conclusions are noted, as are suggestions for further research using the EPQ.

Ontological disputes are typically taken to concern the existence of certain entities. Yet, they may also be read as metalinguistic negotiations -covert normative disputes about what one should mean by certain key words (for example, "exist"). This chapter first explores three claims of varying strengths, which aim at connecting ontological disputes with the phenomenon of metalinguistic negotiation: that these disputes "must be", "are", and "could be" metalinguistic negotiations. It subsequently focusses on three major approaches to the relation between language and reality, "plain realism", "relativistic realism" and "relativistic antirealism", arguing that, no matter one's position along such axis, adoption of some form of equivocalism (rather than univocalism) about the semantics of "exist" renders one's theory hospitable to the idea of ontological disputes as metalinguistic negotiations.

If only Boghossian's eminently reasonable book were required reading for every freshman considering entrance into the humanities-the next generation of lay-people would be saved from the uncomprehending repetition of relativist slogans, and future scholars would be kept from mounting baroque, ineffectual attempts at their defense. Fear of Knowledge is engaging, easy to read, and hard to dispute. It's a satisfying work for those in the choir who will enjoy seeing written on the page precisely what we would say to constructivists were we endowed with Boghossian's rhetorical elegance. And a great many in the po-mo congregation can expect the book sent to them as suggested reading by their more analytically minded colleagues. I've already ordered a few in an attempt to stave off inane conversations I would otherwise certainly face this holiday season. [2] Boghossian begins by addressing a relativistic claim he calls equal validity, 'that there are many radically different yet "equally valid" ways of knowing the world, with science being just one of them' (p. 2). As Boghossian surely realizes, this first gloss on things is not entirely helpful, as on one natural reading 'equal validity' is thoroughly unobjectionable. A player's knowledge of baseball is radically different from a sports statistician's, which is in turn quite different from a physicist's; but each way of knowing has its own kind of value or validity. Nevertheless, as the example Boghossian uses to illustrate his target thesis makes clear, asserting that conflicting theories are equally valid borders on incoherence. The Cheyenne River Sioux may be right that humans descended from 'Buffalo people' (p. 1) or the scientific community may be right that we instead evolved from non-human primates, but if validity is supposed to involve truth, these explanations can't both be valid and they can't both constitute items of knowledge. Because one cannot know something that isn't true those who retain their conviction in the traditional Sioux story just do not know the origins of our species. Happily, though, these conclusions needn't lead us into dogmatism, as they say nothing about how we should engage those Native Americans (along with the overwhelming majority of U.S. citizens) who continue to reject evolutionary theory. We can recognize the conceptual problems with alethic relativism without shouldering a duty to convince everyone of everything we know to be true. [3] Bohossian's second opponent denies epistemic objectivity by arguing c January 18, 2007, Ars Disputandi. If you would like to cite this article, please do so as follows:

Vor genau 100 Jahren wurde der bis dahin weitgehend unbekannte Privatgelehrte Oswald Spengler (1880– 1936) mit seinem Monumentalwerk vom Untergang des Abendlandes auf einen Schlag berühmt und avancierte zu einem der einflussreichsten Denker der Weimarer Republik. Dem durch und durch von der Goetheschen Formenlehre und vom Nietzscheanischen Elitismus Geprägten waren die Nationalsozialisten in ihrer Pöbelhaftigkeit und Gemeinheit zutiefst verhasst.

Während das Buch in der Zwischenkriegszeit in fast jedem bildungsbürgerlichen Haushalt zu finden war und auch ausländische Intellektuelle wie etwa José Ortega y Gasset, André Fauconnet, F. Scott Fitzgerald oder Henry Miller beeinflusste, spielten Werk und Verfasser nach 1945 jahrzehntelang eine immer geringere Rolle.

Indes: Fast siebzig Jahre, nachdem Theodor W. Adorno voreilig das Vergessen Spenglers konstatierte, hält sich der Universalgelehrte immer noch hartnäckig in der Diskussion und feiert in jüngster Zeit geradezu eine Wiederauferstehung. Vom Feuilleton über die Literatur bis zur wissenschaftlichen Debatte in verschiedensten Disziplinen beeinflusst er zunehmend das geistige Leben.

Das hat seinen Grund. Mit seiner grandiosen Gesamtschau der Weltgeschichte überwand Spengler als einer der ersten Denker die eurozentrische Betrachtungsweise. Seine Prognosen erweisen sich bis heute oftmals als hellseherisch visionär. Im vorliegenden Band finden sich die Gedanken von zehn deutschen und internationalen Autoren über Spenglers Bedeutung für das einundzwanzigste Jahrhundert vereint. Ob es um seinen Stellenwert für das Verständnis der Frühgeschichte, der Geschichtsphilosophie, der Rechtsgeschichte, des modernen Finanzkapitalismus, der Rolle der USA als eines »faustischen« Imperiums oder der gegenwärtigen Identitätskrise des Westens geht – in allen Beiträgen zeigt sich: Spengler bleibt weiterhin brandaktuell.

Autor ve svém textu pojednává o univerzalitě lidských práv. Soustředí se zejména na analýzu přístupu amerického teoretika Jacka Donnellyho, který hodnotí jako pluralistický. Specifickou pozornost věnuje otázkám vztahu univerzality a legitimity a vzájemných vazeb mezi universalismem a relativismem. Na závěr autor zkoumá i potenciál pragmatického přístupu k univerzalitě a lidským právům.

Dear organizers, colleagues, and Barbara, it is an honor to be here today. I hope I can do the occasion justice. Barbara and I met approximately eight years ago. The connection was unlikely. I was a PhD student from a department of information and media studies at the University of Aarhus in Denmark, who had drifted into science and technology studies. My area of inquiry related to some new hospital technologies called electronic patient records. I did micro--sociological studies of their development. When I first contacted Barbara, I am convinced she must have been perplexed. That we nevertheless turned out to have -or, perhaps, rather developed --shared interests testifies to the strength of one of Barbara's central propositions: Both humanities and sciences regularly operate contingently, through chance encounters, institutional affiliations, and theoretical dispositions, rather than through rationally and logically planned meetings. It is clear that there are large differences between my ethnographic studies of medical technologies and Barbara's work, which has engaged with wide--ranging topics, such as how poems end, contingencies of value in literature and philosophy, the dynamics of belief and resistance in scientific controversies, and the interrelations between science and religion. Despite this differences, profound similarities link our research trajectories. From her position within the humanities, Barbara has provided elegant analyses of what science is, what it does, and how it operates; science and technology studies speaks to similar issues. Barbara argues for the contingent and often surprising, intertwinement between humanistic research and natural science, and my empirical work

This book bridges a gap between discussions about truth, human understanding, and epistemology in philosophical circles, and debates about objectivity, bias, and truth in journalism. It examines four major philosophical theories in easy to understand terms while maintaining a critical insight which is fundamental to the contemporary study of journalism. The book aims to move forward the discussion of truth in the news media by dissecting commonly used concepts such as bias, objectivity, balance, fairness, in a philosophically-grounded way, drawing on in depth interviews with journalists to explore how journalists talk about truth.

For the Routledge Research in Journalism Series.

Paul Boghossian is Professor of Philosophy at New York University in New York City, in the department long chaired by Sidney Hook. The present slim book complains of a “fear of knowledge” among various relativists and social constructivists. “Why this fear of knowledge?” Boghossian asks in his Epilogue, “Whence the felt need to protect against its deliverances?” (p. 130). Briefly, the answer given to this question is that relativist and constructivist views of knowledge “supply the philosophical resources with which to protect oppressed cultures from the charge of holding false or unjustified views” (ibid.). Or at least, the analysis is that they purport to do so, though the author sees a quite conservative upshot of contemporary conflicts, where, though the powerful cannot criticize the oppressed, still, the oppressed can’t criticize the powerful either—the only alternative to this standoff of silence being a social-epistemic double standard of allowing questionable ideas to be criticized if held by the powerful but not if held by the less powerful. In either case, it seems, the ideal of reasonable discourse settling outstanding conflicts with mutual respect for represented interests will be totally lost from sight: Not an appealing prospect.

Society can be metaphorically compared to an ice hockey game, where culture represents the boards of the rink, marking the space where the movement is allowed, with ethics and justice being the referees of the game. Relativism questions these boards and the referees and hence the very meaning of the game itself. A distinction needs to be made between moral and cultural relativism. Relativism can be considered as a tool to get over the traditionally western ethnocentric thinking or to create pluralistic society, however, it can also violate all morality present. This article considers various approaches to this topic and draws implications on the metaphorical ice hockey game of our life, which cannot lose its meaning and sense.

La poétique de l'espace, publiée en 1957 est encore aujourd'hui, un des textes plus connu de Gaston Bachelard. Traduit en anglais, italien, coréen, portugais, japonais, hollandais, roumain, grec, polonais, espagnol, chinois, bulgare et russe, ce texte représente un intérêt pluridisciplinaire et global. Il est presque sûr qu'au moins une fois dans la vie l'attention d'un architecte, ou d'un

According to an interesting and thought-provoking article by Natalie Ashton and Robin McKenna, Paul Boghossian in Fear of Knowledge would have presented a "classical", "objectivist" view of epistemic justification, which allegedly excludes "that social factors can determine what counts as evidence". On the basis of this interpretation, the two authors find that a feminist history of science, which shows how certain societal advancements in the position of women did, actually, lead to the acceptance of certain (previously available) data as evidence for a given theory, would run counter to that classical view. I argue that Ashton and McKenna overlook the crucial difference between the merely descriptive tenet "social factors determine what data epistemic subjects take, in fact, to be evidence for a given theory" and the normative tenet "social factors determine what data can legitimately be taken to be evidence for a given theory". Under the descriptive interpretation, the history they tell is clearly not incompatible with the "classical view". And under the normative interpretation, a second ambiguity emerges: when social factors are supposed to "determine" what data can legitimately count as evidence, is this a rational or a causal sense of "determine"? Given that the authors themselves admit, relative to the specific story they tell, that we have an independent criterion (explanatory power) which justifies that we take certain data as justification for a given belief, then the only sense of "determine" which remains is the causal one−and in this sense, once again, the story they tell is perfectly compatible with a "classical view" of justification.

Relativism dan relative, dari kata Latin yaitu Relativius (berhubungan dengan). 1 Relativisme berasal dari kata latin, relativius yang berarti nisbi atau relatif. Sejalan dengan arti kata secara umum relativisme berpendapat bahwa perbedaan manusia, budaya, etika, moral, agama bukanlah perbedaan dalam hakikat, melainkan perbedaan karena faktor-faktor di luarnya. 2 Relativisme merupakan teori bahwa pengetahuan, pandangan bahwa keterbatasan akal dan kondisi pengetahuan, pandangan bahwa kebenaran etis bergantung pada individu dan kelompok yang menahannya. 3 Relativisme berasal dari pandangan bahwa pengetahuan itu dibatasi, baik oleh akal budi yang serba terbatas maupun oleh cara mengetahui yang serba terbatas. 4 Seseorang yang berpendapat bahwa pandangan relativis tidak ada yang cukup baik, tetapi hanya bagus untuk sesorang dan dari titik tertentu. Menurut pendapat Protagoras bahwa manusia merupakan suatau hal yang dapat diukur dan sering dianggap sebagai relativis awal. Umumnya relativisme adalah tentang nilai estetika, kebenaran dibidang tertentu seperti kebenaran agama, dan (timbul dari teori antropologi) tentang rasionalitas. Relativisme memiliki banyak varietas beberapa sangat masuk akal dan yang lain mengalami tidak kepercayaan. 5

of an action as morally right and wrong is always relative to the moral framework of the judge, the critic, the appraiser, or, simply, the speaker. 2 What is unique about Harman's definition is that, although we often simply say that it is morally right or wrong of someone to do something without making reference to any such framework, Harman's definition reminds us that the form of our common moral judgment is faultlessly incomplete but has to be understood as elliptical for the complete formulation, which qualifies its truth to a particular moral framework.

THIS PAPER IS THE CO-WINNER OF THE FRED BERGER PRIZE IN PHILOSOPHY OF LAW FOR THE 1999 AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE BEST PUBLISHED PAPER IN THE PREVIOUS TWO YEARS.

The conflict between liberal legal theory and critical legal studies (CLS) is often framed as a matter of whether there is a theory of justice that the law should embody which all rational people could or must accept. In a divided society, the CLS critique of this view is overwhelming: there is no such justice that can command universal assent. But the liberal critique of CLS, that it degenerates into an unpalatable moral relativism on which there is no non-arbitrary basis between a justice that underwrites forms of domination such as slavery and a justice that condemns such forms of domination is equally powerful and compelling. I show that there is a way to harmonize both views that is subject to empirical test.

First I show that the most widely accepted and influential formulation of liberal justice, John Rawls' Justice as Fairness, in. e.g, A Theory of Justice, cannot avoid the relativistic challenge because it would not be accepted, as a matter of sociological fact, by real people in a divided society once the "veil of Ignorance" is removed and real people step out from the Original Position. To put it differently, different reflective equilibria are inevitable in a divided society. Given the weight that Rawls properly puts on the realizability of a conception of justice and its stability in practice, this is a fatal objection. There can be no divided society that is "well ordered" in Rawls' sense, governed by a shared conception of justice and known to be so governed.

I then turn to the most powerful statement of the CLS view, Milton's Fisk's relativistic account in The State and Justice. For Fisk, justice is a compromise between what the dominant groups can compel and what the the subordinate groups will acquiesce to., There is no one such compromise in any given situation, so the account is in that sense relativistic, but more deeply, it is relativistic in that it offers no non-arbitrary, non-question begging way to choose between the official justice of, e.g., a slaveholding society and and the radical justice of the slaves, which has no place for slaveholders as a group or slavery as an institution.All that Fisk can offer is an arbitrary existential choice: I'm with the slaves. (Or the slaveowners.) Most of us would find this disconcerting or even unacceptable.

I show that Fisk's general sort of account can be modified to allow for an non-arbitrary choice. Given general facts about human nature, societies based on domination will produce resistance that over the long run will diminish or eliminate various forms of domination. Through a sort of ratchet effect, rights won will be hard if not impossible to reverse. Societies embodying forms of domination can therefore be compared on dimensions of stability: the more domination, the more resistance, and the less stability. Such societies are inferior on the dimension of justice to more emancipatory society on the terms of both kinds of justice, official and radical.

This is not question begging because regimes of domination incorporate stability no less than more emancipatory social orders. The choice between official justice embodying domination and radical justice that does not is not arbitrary because it is based on a shared commitment to long term stability. This offers an empirical test of which social orders are more justice, and a prediction that over time, domination will tend to decrease.

Auditors' judgment performances are being questioned and the public has become less trusting on profession's ability and willingness in protecting the interests of investor and stakeholders. There are three objectives addressed in this study with the first two objectives is to analyze the relationship between effort and personal ethical orientation on audit judgment performance. The third objective is to examine the differences in the audit judgment performance between audit trainees and auditors. A research instrument was developed and included a set of audit case and Forsyth's (1980) Ethics Position Questionnaire. The results show that there is a significant relationship between the respondent's effort and audit judgment performance.

We have recently witnessed a growing, if still arguably marginal, interest in `Critical Management Studies' (CMS). Our aim in this paper is to reflect upon the popularization of CMS; more specifically, we propose to examine the various factors that have contributed to its emergence, and to review the significance of its project. We start by exploring the conditions of possibility for CMS and point to a combination of political, institutional and epistemological trends. In the second part of the paper, we consider what constitutes `CMS' and suggest that whilst it draws upon a plurality of intellectual traditions, CMS is unified by an anti performative stance, and a commitment to (some form of) denaturalization and reflexivity. Finally, we articulate the polemics around which CMS politics have been contested, in particular we review the debates between neo-Marxism and post-structuralism, and discuss the issue of engagement with management practice.

York City, in the department long chaired by Sidney Hook. The present slim book complains of a "fear of knowledge" among various relativists and social constructivists. "Why this fear of knowledge?" Boghossian asks in his Epilogue, "Whence the felt need to protect against its deliverances?" (p. 130). Briefly, the answer given to this question is that relativist and constructivist views of knowledge "supply the philosophical resources with which to protect oppressed cultures from the charge of holding false or unjustified views" (p. 130). Or at least, the analysis is that they purport to do so, though the author sees a quite conservative upshot of contemporary conflicts, where, though the powerful cannot criticize the oppressed, still, the oppressed can't criticize the powerful either-the only alternative to this standoff of silence being a social-epistemic double standard of allowing questionable ideas to be criticized if held by the powerful but not if held by the less powerful. In either case, it seems, the ideal of reasonable discourse settling outstanding conflicts with mutual respect for represented interests will be totally lost from sight: not an appealing prospect. This concise, well written and often convincing book of 9 short chapters is designed to defend "the intuitive view that there is a way things are that is independent of human opinion, and that we are capable of arriving at belief about how things are that is objectively reasonable" and thus "binding on anyone capable of appreciating the relevant evidence" (pp. 130-131). Boghossian draws upon Gilbert Harman and Thomas Nagel as significant sources of support, and the chief targets of criticism include Richard Rorty and Nelson Goodman. The book avoids overly technical philosophical language and thus deserves attention from a broad range of academic disciplines-including the various strongholds of relativism and constructivism. "At its best", Boghossian remarks, citing writings of Simone de Beauvoir, K. Anthony Appiah and Amy Gutman, social constructivist thought "exposes the contingency of those of our social practices which we had wrongly come to regard as naturally mandated"; but "It goes astray when it aspires to become a general theory of truth or knowledge" (pp. 129-130).

There is a widespread view according to which the denial that the conditions of knowledge are truth-evaluable inevitably leads to a form of epistemic pluralism that is both quietist and internally incoherent. It is quietist because it undermines the possibility of genuine epistemic disagreement. It is internally incoherent because it simultaneously denies the existence of universal knowledge claims and makes the universal claim that there is no such knowledge. The goal of this paper is to show that denying that the conditions of knowledge are truth-evaluable does not necessarily entail a commitment to a form of epistemic relativism that is both quietist and internally incoherent. To undermine the view that the denial that the conditions of knowledge have truth-values leads down the blind alley of epistemic relativism I mobilize a version of “hinge epistemology” which distinguishes between epistemic pluralism and epistemic relativism. This form of hinge epistemology is to be found in Collingwood’s account of absolute presuppositions (Collingwood, 1940). By teasing apart epistemic pluralism from epistemic relativism, the paper exposes the view that the denial that the conditions of knowledge have truth-values inevitably leads to a malignant form of epistemic relativism as a form of philosophical scaremongering.

Relativists about knowledge ascriptions think that whether a particular use of a knowledge-ascribing sentence, e.g., “Keith knows that the bank is open” is true depends on the epistemic standards at play in the assessor’s context—viz., the context in which the knowledge ascription is being assessed for truth or falsity. Given that the very same knowledge-ascription can be assessed for truth or falsity from indefinitely many perspectives, relativism has a striking consequence. When I ascribe knowledge to someone (e.g., when I say that, at a particular time, “Keith knows that the bank is open”), what I’ve said does not get a truth-value absolutely, but only relatively. If this semantic thesis about the word “knows” and its cognates is true, what implications would this have for epistemology, the philosophical theory of knowledge? The present aim will be to engage with this mostly unexplored question, and then to consider how the epistemological conclusions drawn might bear on the plausibility of a relativist semantics for “knows”.

While typically given short shrift by philosophers various versions of what I will refer to as naïve moral relativism such as ethical subjectivism and cultural relativism are quite popular outside philosophical circles with both academics and non-academics. In this paper I will critique common philosophical objections to these positions and then develop a new objection, referred that in effect in some circumstances these positions must affirm that both A & ~A are simultaneously true. The basic form of my argument is that someone who believes that the truth of ethical claims is true only relative to the beliefs of an individual or group is committed to claiming that in some situations both A and ~A are true, since a specific individual or group could believe both A and ~A to be true, either through mistaken reasoning, a lack of knowledge or through an irresolvable attachment to contradictory intuitions. I will then see how this objection fares against more sophisticated versions of moral relativism such as that advanced by Gilbert Harman and conclude that this new objection shows us that versions of moral relativism that relate the truth of ethical claims to beliefs result in logical contradiction.

O primeiro objetivo deste ensaio é compreender a natureza específica das fake news e da pós-verdade enquanto fenômenos com características epistêmicas e sociais. Essa compreensão faz-se sob a hipótese de que um dos fatores que as tornam fenômenos particularmente inéditos e graves é a sua relação com formas corrompidas do ceticismo e relativismo. Descritas essas formas, o segundo objetivo consiste em contrastá-las a versões saudáveis de ceticismo e relativismo, procurando mostrar sua importância ao estabelecimento de acordos morais.
Após uma discussão sobre características definidoras das fake news (seção 1), vale-se de uma descrição do conjunto de crenças de conspiracionistas e negacionistas, em que se pode encontrar uma noção vulgar de ceticismo (seção 2). O relativismo vulgar é apresentado junto a uma descrição do que seria a pós-verdade (seção 3). Em seguida, apresenta-se uma defesa de um tipo específico de relativismo e ceticismo que serve a quem procura lidar adequadamente com o conhecimento em um ambiente não dogmático (seção 4). Ao fim, responde-se a uma possível objeção oferecida por relativistas de que haveria dogmatismo na crítica consensual às fake news e à pós-verdade (seção 5).

What is it to have a reason to do something? is one sort of question; what is it we have reason to do? is another.  These questions are often explored separately.  But our answers to them may not be independent:  what reasons are may have implications for what reasons there are.  So the door is opened to a troubling tension—the account of what reasons are that is most plausible in its own right could entail a view of what we have reason to do that is independently implausible.  In fact, it looks like this is the case.

The first half of this book develops and defends a version of a desire-based, internalist, account of what normative reasons are.  But does that account entail that there are no moral reasons that apply to all of us, regardless of what we happen to desire?  It may look obvious that it does—that a bullet must be bitten somewhere.  If what we have reason to do depends on what we antecedently desire, corrected only for misinformation and procedural irrationalities, and if desires differ from person to person, there seems to be no basis for assuming that everyone has reason to be moral.  But the bullet may yet be avoided.  The second half of this book shows how:  it builds on Kant’s argument for his formula of humanity to provide an internalist defense of universal moral reasons.  In doing so, it provides a more satisfying answer to the age-old question:  why be moral?

Peter Stemmer hat eine elegante und beeindruckend elaborierte Theorie der Normativität und der Moral entwickelt. Ich werde in diesem Aufsatz zu zeigen versuchen, dass Stemmer jedoch zwei selbstgesteckte Ziele nicht erreicht. Erstens kann seine Theorie den kategorischen Verpflichtungscharakter moralischer Forderungen auch in Stemmers eigener Interpretation von Kategorizität nicht einfangen: Sie kann nicht zeigen, dass wir moralischen Forderungen unabhängig davon folgen müssen, was unsere individuellen Ziele und Wünsche sind. Zweitens zeigt Stemmer nicht, dass allein positive Moralen, die im Interesse alle Mitglieder sind (und ein Unterdrückungsverbot enthalten) legitim sind, nur weil sie rationalerweise in einem hypothetischen vormoralischen Zustand etabliert würden. Seine kontraktualistische Theorie wird deswegen letzten Endes zu einer relativistischen Theorie.

Plato argues, at Theaetetus 170e-171c, that Protagoras’ relativism is self-refuting.  This argument, known as the ‘exquisite argument’, and its merits have been the subject of much controversy over the past few decades.  Burnyeat (1976) has argued in defense of Plato’s argument, but his reconstruction of the argument has been criticized as question-begging.  After offering an interpretation of Protagoras’ relativism, I argue that the exquisite argument is successful, for reasons that Burnyeat hints at but fails to develop sufficiently.  I consider Protagorean relativism under both of the two possible readings with respect to its scope:  global relativism, according to which all truths are only relatively true, and qualified relativism, according to which the relativistic thesis itself is excepted.  Taking into consideration some contemporary work on relativism and self-refutation, I show that Plato’s argument succeeds on both of these readings.  Given that Protagoras could avoid self-contradiction simply by denying that an enduring subject exists, I argue that the exquisite argument is best understood as confronting Protagoras with a dilemma between self-contradiction and self-defeat of various sorts, all of which lead to the same result, that Protagoras violates the requirements of rational discourse in such a way that he becomes an absurd figure who has nothing to say to us.

GNSSs’ position determination depends on the stability and accuracy of the measured time. However, since SVs travel at velocities significantly larger than the receivers and, more importantly, the electromagnetic impulses propagate through changing gravitational potentials, enormous errors stemming from relativity-based clock offsets would cause the position mistake of about 11 km accumulated after one day. Basing on the premise of the constancy of light two major relativistic effects are described: time dilation and gravitational frequency shift. Following the individual interests of the author formulas of both are scrupulously derived from general and special relativity theories’ principles; moreover in the last but one section the equations are used to calculate author’s own numerical values of studied parameters for various GNSS and one LNSS.