Relativism and Absolutism

Abstract

My view of science involves both relativistic and absolutistic strains. I shall try to sort them out. Scientific theory is supported in part by systematic considerations of coherence, notably simplicity in some sense, and in part by external infor mation in the form of sensory stimulation. This external information finds its way into the formulation of the theory through the medium of certain sentences which are keyed exclusively, for our verdicts, to concurrent stimulation. Examples are 'It's raining', 'It's cold', 'That's a dog'; present stimulation decides them for us irrespective of what else may have been go ing on lately in our minds or environment. I call them observation sentences, but, as these examples show, they are not about observations or sensations. They are not even incorrigible; they may be recorded and subse quently repudiated for systematic reasons. But they command unwavering verdicts at the time. Relativism already intrudes. 'That's an X-ray machine' will qualify as observational, in the present sense, for an initiate and not for a novice. This relativism, however, is readily transcended. The empirical evidence for a theory is reducible ultimately to what can be conveyed in observation sentences at the novice's level. It just takes a little stubbornness, a Missourian insistence on being shown. Relativism of a higher order remains: relativity to one's language. The sentences, observational or otherwise, of one language are the gibberish of another. But this relativism, again, can be transcended. Observationality of a sentence consists in sheer concomitance between verdicts and concurrent external stimulatory situations; so we can teach our observation sentences to a foreigner by simple conditioning. Perhaps we can sum this up by saying that observation, properly so called, is independent of language. There remains, even so, a relativity to man's implicit standards of similarity. A conditioned response is conditioned not to a unique stimula tion but to a class of sufficiently similar stimulations. People have to be in substantial agreement, however unconscious, as to what counts as similar if they are to succeed in learning, one person from another, when next to as sent to a given observation sentence. Here, then, is an irreducible kernel of relativism: all sensory evidence as reflected in observation sentences is relative to the neural organization that determines what different triggerings