Ethical Naturalism and Forms of Relativism

A defense of ethical relativism.

Relativism is usually a derogatory word in philosophical bioethics in the West. If people make the mistake of trying to understand radically “different” points of view, an accusation of relativism is quickly forthcoming.1 But why should this be an accusation? My aim in this paper is to demonstrate that it should not. My demonstration is simple, and it consists of filling in the empty boxes of T...

[Ethical relativism and the modern concept of tolerance].

History presents many examples of men and women who find themselves in a position of having to disobey civil law. The motives for such disobedience can only be founded on moral conscience, as influenced by other laws - immutable and recognized as true. The author studies the historical context of the appearance, during the Age of the Enlightenment, of a new concept: tolerance. Ceasing to repres...

heidegger.ontological attitude and naturalism

Paradox and Relativism

Since the time of Plato, relativism has been attacked as a self-refuting theory. Today, there are two basic kinds of argument that are used to show that global relativism is logically incoherent: first, a direct descendent of the argument Plato uses against Protagoras, called the peritrope; and, second, a more recent argument that relativism leads to an infinite regress. Although some relativis...

Indexical Relativism versus Genuine Relativism

The main purpose of this paper is to characterize and compare two forms any relativist thesis can take: indexical relativism and genuine relativism. Indexical relativists claim that the implicit indexicality of certain sentences is the only source of relativity. Genuine relativists, by contrast, claim that there is relativity not just at the level of sentences, but also at propositional level. ...