In a brief post on combating relativism at the Prospect Blog (£), Simon Blackburn offers us one quick way of drawing its teeth:
Relativism thrives when people do not have to shoulder the burden of actually coming to a conclusion. When it is vital to do so, relativism disappears. Before effecting a turn on my bicycle I need to know whether there is traffic bearing down. If I can see and hear that there is, the thought that for someone else there might be none gains no purchase on me: it means that they are probably deaf or blind. I may be cautious about coming to a judgment, but caution and willingness to listen to countervailing evidence or countervailing voices is not the same thing as relativism. After the bus thunders past, vindicating my judgment that there was traffic coming, I am not likely to entertain the thought that it would have been true for someone else that there was none.
The piece, unfortunately, is too short for what Blackburn tries to do in it, for from ’empirical, perceptual’ and scientific issues, he moves on to ethical and political ones. Here too he mobilizes the burden of judgement as obliging us to arrive at a decision. But when it comes to knowing why things are right or wrong, there is nothing quite like an oncoming bus to stand in for objective values, and Blackburn, accordingly, has no quick and simple story to tell. A rather longer explanation is needed to establish whether there are objective values and what they are. (Thanks: KM.)