“Death creates an economy that makes life precious. One of the ways of naming that preciousness is friendship.”
Stanley Hauerwas

Relativism Part III: The Limits of Relativism
John Dickson

In Part II (The Scope of Relativism), we examined Professor John Hick’s Duck-Rabbit experiment designed to illustrate Relativism in its various forms – cultural, moral and religious. The image Hick uses is deliberately designed to look either like a Duck, or a Rabbit, depending on how your brain interprets the data in front of it.

It is a clever illustration of relativist thinking. One group of people look out at the world and interpret it one way, another group or culture see the same information and interpret it differently. One group see the stoning of adulterers as just, while others see it as barbaric; in one culture thieves are put through programs of restorative justice, while in another, the thieves have their hands cut off. There is no right or wrong in this, it’s just ‘ducks’ and ‘rabbits’ as each community views life differently. The same of course, can apply to individuals.

The presumption of relativism

The Duck-Rabbit sketch unwittingly reveals a hidden assumption of relativists. In reality, the picture is not a sketch of a rabbit, nor of a duck. It is a sketch deliberately drawn to look like both a duck and a rabbit. The unknowing subjects in the experiment might be justified in seeing either a duck or a rabbit but the person showing the picture, the one conducting the experiment, knows full well this is a clever work of art designed to trick people.
  Whenever relativists say 'Each person has their own truth', they are presuming to know something that is yet to be discovered by the vast majority.
  
 

What does this say about the relativist? Well, for one thing, it reveals that the relativist is claiming implicitly to know something that the others do not: he or she apparently knows that people do not view things absolutely but only partially or relatively. But how does the relativist know this? How does the religious relativist know it is not ultimately true that Jesus was God in the flesh and died on a cross? How does the moral relativist know abortion is not wrong in an absolute sense? How does the cultural relativist know that female circumcision is not a violent, unjustifiable practice? Does the relativist, like the one conducting the duck-rabbit experiment, have special access to the macro-Truth of the situation that the rest of us know nothing about?

Relativism claims to be able to see the whole picture, while the rest of us see ducks and rabbits. Whenever relativists say ‘Each person has their own truth—it’s all relative,’ they are presuming to know something that is yet to be discovered by the vast majority. And they never stop to tell us how they know this.

Does diversity imply relativity?

Philosophers agree that a major reason for the rise of relativism was the sheer diversity of opinion among human beings about cultural, moral and religious matters. This was the point made by the early cultural anthropologists. The insight is a valuable one, and Christians will gladly agree with it. But does this diversity imply there is no Truth external to the opinions of men and women? In other words, does descriptive relativism lead logically to the normative relativism we’ve been discussing. No, say most philosophers.

Take this example. Most people living in the 12th century believed the Earth was larger than the Sun; most people today believe the opposite. Does this diversity of opinion (across the centuries) imply that the truth about the Sun is simply relative? Of course not. Diversity of opinion has nothing to do with Truth. It is not enough to say, as people often say, ‘What is true for one person does not have to be true for another.’ This sentence is grammatically valid: it has a subject, an object and a verb. But it does not correspond to the real world. In what sense was it true for 12th century folk that the Earth was larger than the Sun? In no sense at all. This ‘true for’ phrase is trying to say that this was the opinion of 12th century people. ‘True’ is completely the wrong word. The point here is that diversity of opinion about things cultural, moral and religious does not logically imply the relativity of what is claimed. To repeat my earlier example, it cannot be relatively true (for Christians) that Jesus did die on a cross and relatively true (for Muslims) that he did not. It is either true or false. The issue is: what is the basis for deciding the truth or falsehood of these opinions?

Self-refutation

A major problem with relativism is the one Plato raised almost two and half thousand years ago. Relativism is self-contradictory. You cannot claim that truth is relative and expect people to accept what you say as ‘true’ non-relatively. If the statement is true absolutely, it proves that not everything is true relatively. And, if the statement is only relatively true, we can dismiss it as an opinion. The poem by English journalist Steve Turner puts this well:

 
We believe that each man must find the truth
that is right for him
Reality will adapt accordingly.
The universe will readjust. History will alter.
We believe that there is no absolute truth
Excepting the truth that there is no absolute truth.
 
 
If it is true that truth is relative, there is automatically one truth that is not relative (the truth of relativism). And, if you allow this exception, it is going to be very difficult to disallow other exceptions. And then the whole relativism wave crashes. Philosophers call this the ‘exemption problem’. In order to sustain the thesis that ‘truth is relative’, relativists have to exempt their own truth from the picture. Another form of the exemption problem goes like this. Relativists often insist that because all moralities are relative—no one morality being better than another—we should respect and tolerate them all. However, respect and tolerance are in themselves moral values which the relativist is claiming we should adopt. How can you insist on certain moral values (tolerance and respect) at the same time that you are arguing there are no objective moral values. If there are no objective moral values, then even tolerance and respect are not exempt from this relativity. On what basis, then, can a thoroughgoing relativist ask for tolerance and respect.

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