Relativism: Cognitive and Moral ed. by Jack W. Meiland and Michael Krausz (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 309 Cutting loose is never easy, but Bernstein must do so and abandon a formula which has served him well if he is to prove himself a philosopher of the first rank. MICHAEL J. KERLIN La Salle University Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Relativism: Cognitive and Moral. Edited by JACK W. MEILAND and MICHAEL KRAUSZ. Notre Dame and London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1982. Pp. 272. $20.00. Relativism is different from skepticism. Where skepticism holds that it is impossible for us to know the truth, relativism redefines truth. Instead of truth being the same for everyone, there is only truth which varies with each society or each conceptual scheme or even each person. In other words, relativism holds that truth is always and only truth for some person (s) or point of view and never truth which is objective and universal regardless of social, historical, intellectual, or personal circumstance . Relativism does not deny that we can know the truth, but the truth we can know is only relative truth-truth which is not the same for everyone . The two best known forms of relativism are cognitive and ethical relativism. The former applies to all knowledge claims. The latter is confined to claims of moral knowledge. Together they constitute the chief concern of Messrs. Meiland and Krausz, who seek through this collection of essays to illustrate the range, depth, and importance of relativistic doctrim:s. Meiland and Krausz consider the selections chosen as constituting " some of the best and most interesting work done on relativism during the last decade" (p. 9). The central questions that cognitive relativism faces are: (1) What justifies the claim that truth is only relative~ (2) Is the claim that all truth is relative self-refuting~ (3) What exactly does it mean to say that truth is relative or always a truth for'! Each of these questions is addressed by an essay in this volume. Nelson Goodman's essay, "The Fabrication of Facts," attempts to :mswer question (1). He argues that since w.e can have no access to things aside from our knowledge of them the notion of an independently existing reality is empty and hence the attempt to understand truth as a " corTespondence " with such a reality is fruitless. We would do better, Goodman claims, to focus on world-versions instead of the world. If our version of the world offends no unyielding beliefs and is self-consistent, then our version of the world is true. Of course, there are other versions 310 BOOK REVIEWS of the world which against a different set of unyielding beliefs would be true also. There are many truths, for there is no way that we can compare our version of the world with the world as it really is. We only know via some conceptual framework, and the conceptual framework we use depends on our purposes or habits. So truth is ultimately something relative. There is much that needs to be said in reply to Goodman, especially regarding his claim that perception cannot serve to differentiate a correct from an incorrect version of the world. It must suffice for now to note a rather glaring non sequitur in Goodman's argument. From the proposition that we have no access to things aside from our knowledge of them, it does not follow that we cannot know what things really are; and, if this is so, it certainly does not fol1ow that the notion of an independently existirg reality is empty. This argument assumes that our manner of knowing constitutes a barrier to reality. Why7 Simply noting, as Goodman does, that human interests and needs play a role in the development of conceptual schemes does not show that there is some barrier between us and the real. Human knowing does indeed "start somewhere," and we cannot claim to know everything in all its detail all at once. We cannot be said to know sub specie aeternitatis. But this only shows that man is the measurer of all things, not the measure of all things. Though there is certainly more to this issue than can be discussed here, there does seem to be a rather fundamental error in Goodman's argument...