Truth is “to say of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not.” –Aristotle, Nicomean Ethics.
My undergraduate years have been plagued by the pernicious influence of relativism in virtually every course I have undertaken: epistemological relativism; cultural relativism and ethical relativism. The law and arts faculties are hotbeds of post-modernism and thinly veiled socialism.
I would have no problem with relativism per se, topics such aesthetics, art or fashion even excuse subjectivism – de gustibus non est disputandum. But relativism that denies logical deduction and empirical facts is a grave evil, and it is high time that it was exposed and purged!
I am of the view that there are certain a priori truths, and where truth is not a matter of logical certainty this does not excuse subjectivism. But of course to ask for a reasoned argument that something is the case is the very thing that the relativists deny – and therein is the nonsense.
It is, surely, obvious that the claim that all truth is relative is nonsense. I cannot count how many times, in a tutorial discussion, I heard someone say, “There is no such thing as absolute truth, all truth is relative.” This is frequently followed by the qualification that some cultures think “x” and others think “not x,” and that we should conclude illogically that both “x” and “not x” are true. (We live in troubled times when popular wisdom requires that once the earth was flat!)
With respect to the first statement that “all truth is relative,” I find it abominable that no one ever points out the absurd implications of this. Firstly, if truth is relative then it follows that it is relatively true that truth is relative, and relatively relatively true that truth is relative, and so on in an infinite regression. Secondly, to say “all truth is relative” is make an absolute statement, and here we have an inherent contradiction!
It is unassailable that statements are true by deduction alone. The statement “All triangles have internal angles which add up to 180” is true deductively irrespective of personal, moral or cultural dictates.
Relative is not Subjective:
The most heinous error is to think that where facts are relative this means subjective. It seems to be a common tendency for post-modern deconstruction to equate ‘relative’ with ‘subjective.’ In a jurisprudence course I recall a journal article in the subject reader “critical legal theory” using “relative” and “subjective” interchangeably.
This is clearly ridiculous. Take for example “warm” and “cold.” These certainly are relative terms rather than absolute terms but that is not to say they are subjective. To say they are subjective is to say there is no range we can call “warm” or ‘cold” – and yet a simple experiment would reveal a consistent cluster of results.
The implications of this post-modern subjectivism for science are dangerous. Take for example a disagreement between two authorities as to the causes of global-warming. Modern empiricism would subject their theories to the principles of verification and falsification. Subjectivism would have it that no theory is better than any other it is a matter of individual valuation – we have no reason to accept sunspot theory over anthropogenic global-warming.
Where all this nonsense leads to is no laughing matter. I have spoken to undergraduates who are undertaking majors in Gender Studies and this entailed a course devoted to the feminist critique of science. After trawling the net I have found to my horror colleges in the USA where Phd’s have been awarded for feminist analysis of Quantum Physics! Courtesy, of popular science writer Richard Dawkins, I stumbled across this excerpt from a feminist academic purporting to explain why male-dominated science has failed to adequately account for turbulence:
“Whereas men have sex organs that protrude and become rigid, women have openings that leak menstrual blood and vaginal fluids….From this perspective it is no wonder science has not been able to arrive at a successful model for turbulence. The problem of turbulent flow cannot be solved because the conceptions of fluids (and women) have been formulated so as necessarily to leave unarticulated remainders.”
Post-modernism leads to the situation where this unadulterated nonsense is not just permitted but rewarded. My student experience leads me to believe that very little can be done to end this nonsense, at least not without the aid of dynamite!
Author: William. R. Church has completed a LLB/BA course in the state of New South Wales. His university experience has been bitter sweet – he laments the insidious grip of post-modernism and socialism over academe!
