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. ...

Frege famously held that each act of utterance expresses a complete thought, and that each thought is true or false absolutely. Until a few years ago, analytical philosophers have sided with their most venerable ancestor: traditionally, relativism about truth has been dismissed as an extravagant and confused piece of semantic nonsense. But in recent times several writers have proposed relativis...

Moral relativism provides a compelling explanation of linguistic data involving ordinary moral expressions like ‘right’ and ‘wrong’. But it is a very radical view. Because relativism relativizes sentence truth to contexts of assessment it forces us to revise standard linguistic theory. If, however, no competing theory explains all of the evidence, perhaps it is time for a paradigm shift. Howeve...

The question of whether or not Southern African countries should adopt a shareholder, a stakeholder, or another approach to corporate governance is relevant both to debates on corporate governance convergence, and the development of the region. Such normative arguments, however, are predicated upon some descriptive understanding. This paper investigates the claims of descriptive moral relativis...

An ethical ideologies model based on relativism and idealism was tested. Subjects judged the morality of an individual who produced a mildly or extremely positive or negative consequence by conforming to or violating a common moral norm. As predicted, an averaging model with differential weights accounted for situationists' (high relativism and idealism) and absolutists' (low relativism and hig...

Moral relativism is an attractive position, but also one that it is difficult to formulate. In this paper, we propose an alternative way of formulating moral relativism that locates the relativity of morality in the property that makes moral claims true. Such an approach, we believe, has significant advantages over other possible ways of formulating moral relativism. We conclude by considering ...

Stephen Brush once asked, “Should the history of science be rated ‘X’?” Well, times have changed. Now controversy reigns over the role of sociology in the science classroom. Here, I profile several dimensions of the sociology of science and survey recent efforts by philosophers to address its most radical claims. In respecting the opposing poles of this contentious debate, I contend that it is ...

Relativism is one of the most tenacious theories about truth, with a pedigree as old as philosophy itself. Nearly as ancient is the chief criticism of relativism, namely the charge that the theory is self-refuting. This paper develops a logic of relativism that (1) illuminates the classic self-refutation charge and shows how to escape it; (2) makes rigorous the ideas of truth as relative and tr...

Epistemic relativism rejects the idea that claims can be assessed from a universally applicable, objective standpoint. It is greatly disdained because it suggests that the real ‘basis’ for our views is something fleeting, such as ‘‘the techniques of mass persuasion’’ (Thomas Kuhn 1970) or the determination of intellectuals to achieve ‘‘solidarity’’ (Rorty 1984) or ‘‘keep the conversation going’...

From Relative Truth to Finean Non-Factualism Alexander Jackson Abstract: This paper compares two ‘relativist’ theories about deliciousness: truth-relativism, and Kit Fine’s non-factualism about a subject-matter. Contemporary truth-relativism is presented as a linguistic thesis; its metaphysical underpinning is often neglected. I distinguish three views about the obtaining of worldly states of a...