Ways of living: the semantics of the relativist stance

Abstract

Relativism seems to be one of the main public enemies in modern democratic societies. From the intellectual sphere, philosophers and theologians alike alert against the rise of relativism as a danger that may put civilization into serious threat (see, for instance, Blackburn 2005; Ratzinger 2005). At the same time, the last fifteen years have seen the development, through lengthy technical discussions, of a family of theories in the philosophy of language that their own authors have happily deemed relativist (see, for instance, Kölbel 2002, 2004a; MacFarlane 2003, 2005a, 2005b, 2007, 2008, 2011b, 2014; Lasersohn 2005, 2009; Recanati 2007). Of course, these authors have strived to deny this accusation, mostly by distancing themselves from what has traditionally been called “relativism”. This dissertation defends relativism in a different way. I sympathize with these authors’ insight that relativism is better understood as a semantic theory, and that it can be rendered by using tools not too far apart from those of standard semantics. The key intuition behind this idea, I think, is that accepting relativism does not necessarily mean having to renounce intellectual rigor. But one does not automatically renounce intellectual rigor when, for instance, one acknowledges that there is more to talk about the objectivity of science than appears to be at first sight.