Abstract
Is relativism about truth ever a coherent doctrine? Some people have argued that an answer to this question depends on whether there can be cases of genuine disagreement where those who disagree hold confl icting beliefs towards the same proposition and yet are each entitled to say that what they believe is true. These have been called cases of faultless disagreement and are often explored by considering the case of disagreements about taste. However, this is not the right way to formulate the relativist’s doctrine, and the discussions of taste are often based on a faulty view about the nature of taste and about the workings of predicates of taste. I examine the taste case in more detail and consider the prospects for a genuine form of truth relativism. Key words: relativism, truth, taste, predicates of taste.
Highlights
Resumo O relativismo sobre a verdade é uma doutrina coerente? Alguns têm argumentado que uma resposta a esta questão depende se pode haver casos de desacordo genuíno, onde, aqueles que discordam, sustentam crenças conflitantes sobre a mesma posição e ainda estão autorizados a dizer que no que eles acreditam é verdade
If the relativist wants to say that two people can arrive at conflicting views about a given moral issue and both be right, the correct thing to say will be that each person’s judgement is right according to his or her own moral code but wrong according to someone else’s moral code
What does it mean for a judgement to be right according to a given moral code? And do the judgements people make according to different moral codes really conflict? If one person is saying what is right according to their code, while the other person is saying what is right according to their code, each speaker may be correct in what they say and there won’t be any real disagreement
Summary
Disagreements about what is morally right or wrong have long been used to motivate certain forms of relativism. If the relativist wants to say that two people can arrive at conflicting views about a given moral issue and both be right, the correct thing to say will be that each person’s judgement is right according to his or her own moral code but wrong according to someone else’s moral code. Some people have argued that an answer to this question depends on whether there can be cases of genuine disagreement where those who disagree hold opposing beliefs about the same subject matter and yet are both entitled to say that they believe something true. These are cases of so-called faultless disagreement (Kolbel, 2004). Is the idea of faultless disagreement coherent, and if not, are there any other viable forms of relativism? In what follows, I shall explore the prospect for relativism in the case of disagreements about matters of taste
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