Was sollen wir tun? Was dürfen wir glauben? - bei DuEPublico ...

48 HARTH
(4) Not (A believes that P, and not-P) (2), (3), MTT
(5) Not (B believes that not-P, and not-not-P) (2), (3), MTT
(6) Not-not-P (1), (4), MPT
(7) Not-P (1), (5), MPT, TNE
So in order to be relativist of the shape in question one has to block the Simple Deduction and
so to save the possibility of faultless disagreement. The straightforward road to this shape of
relativism, then, is blocking the Simple Deduction by relativizing the truth predicate. This
solution is much discussed in the recent debate under the labels “genuine relativism”,
“relativism about truth” or “truth-relativism” (Egan 2007, 2009; Kölbel 2002, 2004a, b,
2007, 2009; Lasersohn 2005, 2009; MacFarlane 2003, 2005, 2007, 2011, MS). So to claim
that faultless disagreement, in the sense of our two assumptions Disagreement and
Faultlessness, is possible implies a relativization of the truth predicate for propositions to
some extra parameter over and above the “relativization” to possible worlds. Since it blocks
the Simple Deduction – its new conclusion is, roughly, that P is true for A and not-P is true
for B – it seems to be a coherent relativist position. But there remain doubts: doubts
concerning a truth-relativist account of the role and purpose of assertion, the so-called Evans’
challenge (Evans 1985: 349-50, and Garcia-Carpintero 2008: 141-142), doubts concerning
the conceptual connection between assertion, belief and relative truth (Harth 2013a), doubts
as regards the Equivalence Schema for the meta-language truth-predicate (Harth 2013a),
doubts concerning relative truth conditions and their role in constituting shared contents on
which two thinkers disagree (Capps, Lynch and Massey 2009), and, finally, doubts
concerning the truth-relativist explanation of faultless disagreement (cf. Binderup 2008;
Coliva and Morruzzi 2012; Francén 2010; Harth 2013b; Moruzzi 2008; Rosenkranz 2008 and
Stojanovic 2007). Of course, there have been efforts to dispel (most of) these doubts, notably
by John MacFarlane (2003, 2005, 2007, MS) and Max Kölbel (2002, 2004, 2008). Yet, on
my view, some of them pose serious problems for truth-relativism. Moreover, in addition to
these general problems there is a specific one concerning truth-relativism in ethics: in
contrast to linguistic practices within regions of discourse such as discourse about matters of
taste our linguistic practices within ethical discourse do not provide evidence for a relativist
semantics. So it is not only that the possibility of faultless disagreement is not the prevailing
intuition, or the ordinary pre-theoretical view, that has to be explained in ethics by a semantic
theory, but also that, according to our linguistic practices within ethics, which is characterized
by a sort of objectivity, truth-relativism does not seem to provide the correct semantics for
moral language (see also Coliva and Morruzzi 2012: 52).
In face of the general problems and the specific problem for truth-relativism in ethics, it may
seem to be advisable for philosophers with relativistic inclinations to search for an alternative
approach to relativism in ethics – and as an alternative it nolens volens must deny the
possibility of faultless disagreement. However, the denial of this possibility seems to
contradict the most basic idea of any interesting shape of relativism – by the following
consideration. If faultless disagreement isn’t possible, any disagreement between two
thinkers A and B necessarily involves some mistake. Even if both A and B made a mistake, not
both of their beliefs (contents) can be false since they constitute a contradiction. So just one of
them can be false and the other has to be true – and any question has just one correct answer,
viz. the content of the true belief. 1 So the big challenge is to reconcile the concession that
1
This conclusion is compatible with indexical relativism/contextualism – in short, the view that the
content of an assertion or belief is relative to a moral framework or the like – which is the more
traditional approach to relativism in ethics (cf. Harman 1975, 1978; Harman 1996; and more recently
Dreier 1990, 2006 and Wong 2006). For indexical relativists/contextualists accept that any ethical
question has just one correct answer, since the question itself can only be sensibly asked within a moral
framework – and the question as to which framework is the right one is supposed to be meaningless.