I am not the only one to think so either- that seems to be the general criticism of his position.
and then you link the abstract.
Or do you just randomly link abstract in your posts that have nothing to do with what you are saying?
I deleted that post because I am tired of arguing with your ridiculous nastiness. It's not worth it.
But now that you brought it up, look at page 9 of the linked article, section 6.
6 Agreement and Epistemic Relationalism What’s gone wrong? Boghossian has oered us, in his very de fintion of epistemic relativism, not epistemic relationalism, but a fictionalist surrogate for it. I believe that oering a surrogate for epistemic relationalism is not unmotivated. Indeed, it is motivated by a puzzle about what epistemic judgments could be relative to. According to the relativist, epistemic judgments are relative to accepted epistemic systems. But epistemic systems, in Boghossian’s framework, are sets of general normative propositions connecting items of information with the beliefs they justify. But how could the truth of a particular normative proposition be relative to the general normative proposition of which it is an instance? That thought is surely incoherent. It couldn’t. Since epistemic relationalism is an incoherent option in Boghossian’s framework, Boghossian fastens on the denial of absolutist epistemic justi cation as the central relativist claim and reconstrues both relationalism and pluralism in terms of this denial. But perhaps the problem lies, not with making sense of epistemic relationalism, but the framework in terms of which Boghossian attempts to make sense of it. Earlier, I complained about the individualistic character of Boghossian’s formu lation of epistemic relationalism. Epistemic judgments are relativized to epistemic systems that an individual accepts. In the context of a discussion of social construc tivism, wouldn’t the more relevant formulation be in terms of epistemic systems that a community agrees upon? As I observed, this does not directly aetc the antirelativist argument that Boghossian gives, but it does directly aetc Boghossian’s motive for giving that argument. For it provides the basis of an alternative to Boghossian’s framework, an alternative whose passing unnoticed leads Boghossian to oer his reconstruction of epistemic relationalism as an incoherent form of epistemic c tionalism.
Edit: fixed a cut and paste error- the words "fictionalist surrogate", added italics as per original
Last edited by Guest on Tue Jan 17, 2012 5:57 am, edited 1 time in total.
7 Persuasiveness and the Source of Relativistic Conviction Let me now consider, not the cogency of Boghossian’s case, but its rhetorical eec tiveness. Boghossian takes the source of relativistic conviction to lie in the cogency of the arguments that support it. If the source of relativistic conviction lies in the cogency of the arguments advanced in its favor, then undermining these arguments would undermine the source of relativistic conviction. One problem is that Boghossian only considers the arguments of the radical left of analytic metaphysics. Speci cally, he only considers the arguments of Goodman, Putnam, and Rorty. (Foucault is only mentioned brie y and dismissively.) Unfor tunately, the relativistically inclined among our colleagues in the humanities and all they have taught and in uenced are steeped in a dierent intellectual tradition 10 with its own arguments that Boghossian fails to consider. Thus for example, there is a semantic tradition stemming from Saussure that ultimately failed to provide, as we might put it, a determinate denotational semantics. Instead of rejecting this semantic framework, some authors embraced this indeterminacy and drew relativis tic conclusions from it. This intellectual trajectory can be found in diverse writers such as Lacan and Derrida and interestingly parallels Quine’s own intellectual tra jectory. Assessing these arguments would directly engage with that tradition and would be an interesting intellectual exerciseone that Boghossian does not deign to undertake.
Suppose, then, that relativism is a reaction to the thought that the authority of reason, and the attendant rhetoric of objectivity, is a mask for the interests of power. How might such a relativist react to Fear of Knowledge? Even if Boghossian’s argu ments succeeded perfectly on their own terms, the ambitions of Fear of Knowledge could not be met. A relativist motivated by the thought that the authority of reason is a mask for the interests of power will not be moved by the case put forward in Fear of KnowledgeFear of Knowledge simply does not address that fear. Even if Fear of Knowledge did indeed address this relativist’s arguments, since these arguments aren’t the source of relativistic conviction but their expression, demonstrating their failure would fail to persuade. Indeed, in the grips of the hermeneutics of suspicion, rational counterargument could only seem like power’s illicit attempt to resist its subversion by relativistic countermeasures.
Hi, PB- I had to listen to this a few times before figuring out what was going on. I think relativism was made into a straw man here, as it if is incapable of using normative vocabulary, and consisting purely of neutral statements of what the ambient moral code is. http://philosophybites.com/2011/10/paul ... ivism.html
Hi, PB- I had to listen to this a few times before figuring out what was going on. I think relativism was made into a straw man here, as it if is incapable of using normative vocabulary, and consisting purely of neutral statements of what the ambient moral code is. http://philosophybites.com/2011/10/paul ... ivism.html
Ya, but what's *your* opinion? It's easy to regurgitate a whole bunch of quotes, but you haven't demonstrated an ability to synthesize Boghossian into a coherent critical opinion.
Even I can see that, I've only taken two undergrad philosophy classes! I guess my school was just better than yours...
H.
"Others cannot endure their own littleness unless they can translate it into meaningfulness on the largest possible level." ~ Ernest Becker "Whether you think of it as heavenly or as earthly, if you love life immortality is no consolation for death." ~ Simone de Beauvoir
Boghossian has no understanding whatsoever of anti-realism and his arguments are totally irrelevant to that point of view.
The entire book is essentially a straw man argument
I am not the only one to think so either- that seems to be the general criticism of his position.
See the above? Now, take that and sqaure it with this:
But now that you brought it up, look at page 9 of the linked article, section 6.
Explain what you quoted in your own words, demonstrating that Boghossian has no underunderstanding, of anti-realism, and that his points are totally irrelevant, and the entire book is a strawman, from that citation.
I know it can't be done, but I want to see how you actually read a philosophical text.
Hi everybody, I recently discovered this board, and wanted to say that I really appreciate the community of posters here.
As an initial offering of sorts, just a way of saying "howdy," I thought I would try to have my first post be a contribution to this thread. This quote isn't quite as much of a howler as some of the earlier ones, but it did make me stop and go wha?
Brant Gardner wrote:I agree that the association of Palenque with the Nephites goes back to Joseph Smith, [and] yes, there is a very long tradition of associating Palenque with the Book of Mormon...
So, the next question is why the issue of Palenque matters.
I realize that throwing the pronouncements of Joseph Smith under the bus is hardly a new thing for mopologists, but Brant seems to be saying that the entire corpus of contemporary LDS "scholarship" refuses to make the connection between Palenque and the Nephites that a) Joseph Smith himself made and b) millions of TBMs (except the ones writing on FAIR) still make.