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Cognitive relativism

Tommy Jeppesen

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T
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Nov 14, 2008
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Cognitive relativism consists of two claims:

(1) The truth-value of any statement is always relative to some particular standpoint;

(2) No standpoint is metaphysically privileged over all others.

http://www.iep.utm.edu/cog-rel/
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Now if you accept this, then you might also understand that the standpoint, that no standpoint is metaphysically privileged over all others, is itself not metaphysically privileged over all others.

In other words, what everything is, is nothing but thoughts about thoughts.

So my question to you is, how do you understand cognitive relativism?
 
It's nonsense.

I have a standard test for these sorts of things: I cut myself with my knife (it's a handy test because if I have pants on, I have a knife). If they can make a "particular standpoint" in which the "truth-value" of the statement "My arm is bleeding" is false, I'll accept it.

Put another way: everyone looks both ways before crossing the street. That is implicite acceptance that truth is not something inside one's head.
 
If it's true, it's unimportant to how we, as subjective individuals, live - just as any other form of relativism, and the question of free will.
 
Dinwar said:
It's nonsense.

I have a standard test for these sorts of things: I cut myself with my knife (it's a handy test because if I have pants on, I have a knife). If they can make a "particular standpoint" in which the "truth-value" of the statement "My arm is bleeding" is false, I'll accept it.

Put another way: everyone looks both ways before crossing the street. That is implicit acceptance that truth is not something inside one's head.
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You confuse everyday/common sense objective with everything. For your version of truth to hold every truth must be outside your head/brain :) So do you love your wife? Is that true? Is that outside your head/brain?

If you want the fun version, then here it is - Is your implicit acceptance inside your head? Is it then true that it is so?!! :)
In other words it is dead give-away that you start with - "I have a standard test...." Is that inside or outside your head, Dinwar?
 
I'll bite. Let's start with this statement:

The door to modern relativism was unlocked by Kant’s claim in the Critique of Pure Reason that the only world we can know or talk about meaningfully is one that has been shaped by the human mind. On Kant’s view, the concept of “objective reality” is employed speculatively and hence illegitimately if it is taken to refer to reality as it is independent of our experience of it. This obviously has implications for the traditional notion of objective truth. The judgments we call true are true for us and of our world; but to claim they are true in the sense of describing an independently existing reality is to go beyond what we can meaningfully or justifiably assert.
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Yes. I think often confusion can arise about what is being stated. If we focus our interpretations on the individual alone, we can easily end up in the solipsist debate. However, from the point of view of society, which includes consensus as a tool for affirming a truth or the repeatability of an observation, then this view is highly compatible with science, and no threat even to the "shut up and calculate" crowd.

Mind-dependent reality sounds exotic, and mind-independent reality sounds like the proper default. When you realize that speaking of things that are not in the mind is impossible, then it all seems more tautological, and easier to take.

This is not a question of limited senses, instrument accuracy, or growing validity/predictive precision in science. It is not a "gap" needing closing. It is a statement that science models our reality in useful ways, and that is what we do with it. Science continues to function as it always has.

As observers, we are wed to our reality, and in this case, divorce is illegal.

...

Aside: Interesting parallel in language (no surprise, its the main tool for describing reality). As a dictionary defines words in other words, you soon realize that all meaning is in the end circular, and elements are differentiated on the basis of relation to other elements in the system, and certainly not to fixed or "truer" meanings outside it.

Similarly, we cannot look outside the mind itself, as it is one of the elements in the physical systems that we examine, intimately related. There isn't a "greater" or "truer" meaning to go searching for.
 
Dinwar said:
Put another way: everyone looks both ways before crossing the street. That is implicite acceptance that truth is not something inside one's head.
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And the fun begins! One observation in this type of conversation I like to make is that we are all naive realists when driving cars.

That does not mean we are not an integral part of the observation process in determining models, to be used in more observing.

Scientific truths, and practical ones, such as facts in a murder trial, are not in play. What is in play in defining what it is one does when doing science.
 
Tommy Jeppesen said:
You confuse everyday/common sense objective with everything.
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Can this mental gymnastics make my arm not bleed? If no, we can dismiss it. It means that at best, cognitive relativism is extremely limited. It may be applicable in its own small sphere of influence (though I do not agree; see below), but at the very least it demands that we accept that cognative relativism is limited in scope.

So do you love your wife? Is that true? Is that outside your head/brain?
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A value is that which one acts to gain or keep. That is a full and proper answer to your statement--but I'll leave it to you to discover how.

Hlafordlaes said:
When you realize that speaking of things that are not in the mind is impossible
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"We are blind because we have eyes, deaf because we have ears, and things as they are are not things as we percieve them, because we percieve them." A rather masterful summary of Kant's philosophy.
 
Hlafordlaes said:
I'll bite. Let's start with this statement:

The door to modern relativism was unlocked by Kant’s claim in the Critique of Pure Reason that the only world we can know or talk about meaningfully is one that has been shaped by the human mind. On Kant’s view, the concept of “objective reality” is employed speculatively and hence illegitimately if it is taken to refer to reality as it is independent of our experience of it. This obviously has implications for the traditional notion of objective truth. The judgments we call true are true for us and of our world; but to claim they are true in the sense of describing an independently existing reality is to go beyond what we can meaningfully or justifiably assert.
Click to expand...

Yes. I think often confusion can arise about what is being stated. If we focus our interpretations on the individual alone, we can easily end up in the solipsist debate. However, from the point of view of society, which includes consensus as a tool for affirming a truth or the repeatability of an observation, then this view is highly compatible with science, and no threat even to the "shut up and calculate" crowd.

Mind-dependent reality sounds exotic, and mind-independent reality sounds like the proper default. When you realize that speaking of things that are not in the mind is impossible, then it all seems more tautological, and easier to take.

This is not a question of limited senses, instrument accuracy, or growing validity/predictive precision in science. It is not a "gap" needing closing. It is a statement that science models our reality in useful ways, and that is what we do with it. Science continues to function as it always has.

As observers, we are wed to our reality, and in this case, divorce is illegal.

...

Aside: Interesting parallel in language (no surprise, its the main tool for describing reality). As a dictionary defines words in other words, you soon realize that all meaning is in the end circular, and elements are differentiated on the basis of relation to other elements in the system, and certainly not to fixed or "truer" meanings outside it.

Similarly, we cannot look outside the mind itself, as it is one of the elements in the physical systems that we examine, intimately related. There isn't a "greater" or "truer" meaning to go searching for.
Click to expand...

Well, you have to look no further than http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/objective "1.1 Not dependent on the mind for existence; actual" to see how embedded the idea is in western culture of mind-independent reality.

More later.
 
Dinwar said:
...

A value is that which one acts to gain or keep. That is a full and proper answer to your statement--but I'll leave it to you to discover how.

...
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If you can act, it means it is something you do based on your cognition, because you can't act without cognition. Your cognition is inside your head, hence it can't be true as per "That is implicit acceptance that truth is not something inside one's head." But your cognition in regards to your acting is inside your head, hence not true.
 
Tommy Jeppesen said:
If you can act, it means it is something you do based on your cognition, because you can't act without cognition.
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The highlighted part is obviously untrue. Ask anyone who's ever had a seizure--or a sneeze.

Your cognition is inside your head, hence it can't be true as per "That is implicit acceptance that truth is not something inside one's head."
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So your logic is "Dinwar believes, based on a quote ripped out of context, that anything involving thought is not true." :boggled:

Please re-read the post in which the statement of mine you quoted was made. You have seriously misunderstood it.

Secondly, you are failing to differetiate between thought and action--a rather serious error. Everything you built on that foundation needs to be re-examined.
 
Hlafordlaes, there is a lot to this, but I will show you my bias. I always link objective truth to objective authority and I resent any idea that someone can hold objective truth and objective authority over me, you or anybody else. This has nothing to do with the usual divide between atheism or not, because if someone can explain everything with objective truth, it follows that they can do so with me and you and thus with objective authority. :)
 
Tommy Jeppesen said:
So your love to your wife is a a seizure--or a sneeze?
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At this point I can only assume you are intentionally ignoring context in an attempt to troll me. No English speaker could possibly come to such a conclusion based on what I said and the context of this discussion. I'm out.
 
Dinwar said:
...
Secondly, you are failing to differetiate between thought and action--a rather serious error. Everything you built on that foundation needs to be re-examined.
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So you are of the school of thought, that thought is not a behavior or action, is that it? Then what is a thought if not the behavior/action in a brain?
 
Hlafordlaes

I like science. But when you come across a statement like this - "A model of reality is not reality itself" - I at least wonder what happened to skepticism and critical thinking?!! I mean, if the model is not a part of reality, then where is it?
In a sense we have gone overboard in the effort to eliminate the idea of God and all the rest of what follows from subjectivism to the point where we get such claims as "I only accept objective evidence." Well, that is subjective, if you only accept objective evidence and there is not objective evidence for that.

So I accept common sense realism; i.e. there is practical usefulness to the word objective, but it doesn't eliminate the word subjective and it doesn't remove cognitive relativism.
 
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