In his paper “A Consistent Relativism” (Mind, 106, pp. 33–52), Steven D. Hales proposes a “logic of relativism” (p. 33) with the help of which he wishes to “illuminate the self-refutation charge” (ibid.) against relativism, and which he hopes will “provide a framework in which relativists can consistently promote their. . . views” (pp. 33– 34). Hales purports to show that relativism is indeed s...

Contextualists and relativists about predicates of personal taste, epistemic modals, etc. (“CR-expressions”) agree that the interpretation of these expressions depends, in some sense, on context. Relativists claim that the sort of context-sensitivity exhibited by CR-expressions is importantly different from that exhibited by paradigm context-sensitive expressions, like de nite descriptions, dem...

Journal of Psychopathology 2016;22:110-117 Summary In spite of its frequent and apparently unproblematic use, the meaning of the term “psychosis” remains largely unclear. Throughout this paper we will analyse some of the reasons underlying psychiatry’s failure to define the notion of psychosis in a clear and unambiguous fashion, highlighting the inadequacy of a natural-scientific framework (inh...

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. ...

Among naturalist philosophers, both defenders and opponents of moral relativism argue that prescriptive moral theories (or normative theories) should be constrained by empirical findings about human psychology. Empiricists have asked if people are or can be moral relativists, and what effect being a moral relativist can have on an individual’s moral functioning. This research is underutilized i...

Epistemic possibilities are relative to bodies of information, or perspectives. To claim that something is epistemically possible is typically to claim that it is possible relative one’s own current perspective. We generally do this by using bare, unqualified epistemic possibility (EP) sentences, ones that don’t mention our perspective. The fact that epistemic possibilities are relative to pers...

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...

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...