Talk:Factual relativism

Philosophy: Epistemology Stub‑class Mid‑importance

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	Epistemology

This article was previously nominated for deletion. The result of the discussion was no consensus.

anti-realism vs. cognitive relativism

Should this article be redirected to anti-realism? It seems to me that cognitive relativism as it is described is a philosophical layman's take on the realism/anti-realism debate within philosophy and as such should be discussed there?

Anti-realism is an ontological thesis (i.e. a thesis about the existence or non-existence of certain classes of entities or phenomena: there is anti-realism about abstract objects, anti-realism about proposiional attidtudes, anti-realism about numbers, about concrete particualres, etc.) Episetmologocal relativism is the view that "there are no truths only interpreations"; so chiromancy, the hollow earth hypothesis and the theory that my penis controls the universe are equally as valid as the best-confirmed facts that you can look up in your basic chemistry or physics textbooks and test in the lab. Please DO NOT confuse the two. --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 08:30, 20 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Nothing to do with antirealism. I must say, though, it's a pretty poor article all the same. No mention of the "proper" philosophical groundings of cognitive relativism (Hume's "radical scepticism" is a definite precursor) nor the writings of those like Richard Rorty who ground truth and falsehood in language, therefore a contingency of that language and not direct epistemic access to "the world out there" ... Happy to add this in, unless someone thinks it isn't quite on point (I'm hopeless at labels, and i know a lot of folks get worked up about them). Also, the dismissive quote at the end is (a) from someone unnotable (in the sense that they don't have a Wikipedia article about them) and (b) is basically bullshit POV anyway and should be removed. In fact, I think i'll do that now. ElectricRay 23:02, 11 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with the above. It may be the case that epistemic relativism is neutral as regards the realism-anti-realism debate, see Kusch (2002) for a discussion of his own brand's of epistemic relativism (communitarian epistemology) stance on the realism-antirealism debate.

POV

The POV of this article is quite clear, and the mention of Conservapedia under the external links section (which I removed) is the clincher. One suggestion I have is that we find some more "balanced" examples of factual relativism in popular culture. StaticElectric 07:11, 21 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

If the term is used mainly by the left to criticize the right, then that may not be possible. That issue is independent of how encyclopedic the topic is, however. Comesincolors 18:49, 27 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Request for comment

See above talk page comment. I do not feel that this article is NPOV, but unsure of what improvements to make or whether the article could be salvaged, I put a request for NPOV collaboration on the talk page. I also nominated the article to be checked for neutrality, but nobody ever checked it. StaticElectric 16:53, 26 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see NPOV problems as much as VER problems. If the term has been coined by and is used by a particular slice of the political spectrum, so be it. What the article really needs is more sources explaining the term. Comesincolors 18:49, 27 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

There are 4 referenced articles by different writers using the term that I have found. I agree that the existing article violates NPOV. It seems that notability is also marginal. Do people think that the non-POV section of the article should be merged into one of the existing relativism articles, this is only a form of cognitive relativism after all, with a redirect? If not, the POV aspect of the article should be changed. I am happy to do this, and ensure proper referencing if people wish. Anarchia 04:21, 6 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Came here from the RfC page. Anarchia would seem to be right that the notability is marginal. I suggest putting the article up for deletion. Itsmejudith 07:01, 15 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm an outsider with no particular knowledge of the subject. My impressions from reading the article were (1) The description in the intro did not sufficiently convey to me what the topic is about. I'd suggest more detail and a lower-brow explanation. (2) The article conveyed an impression that factual relativism is bad. It seemed to imply that it's a tool of pseudoscientists and that there's something subversive about it without explaining why. I didn't see any material or opinion from supporters of the perspective. For this reason, I was left with the impression that this article is not WP:NPOV in the way it describes the subject. (3) There was only one source that was presented as describing the topic, the other sources were texts containing the term and presumably serving as examples of its use. Although I didn't check the main source, the tone of the article varied sufficiently that I suspect some of the content may not come from the source cited and may be WP:OR. --Shirahadasha 03:15, 17 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Merge Factual and Cognitive relativism

'Factual relativism' is another name for Cognitive relativism. I suggest that the pages be merged and a redirect is put on the existing factual relativism page. Anarchia 01:27, 11 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Support as per the above. Bucklesman (talk) 23:52, 10 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

truth

"claims the truth or falsity of a statement is relative to a social group or individual." i always thought the truth was universal and if someone believes something about the Universe that is untrue, that doesn't change the truth. RELATIVISM IS BULLSHIT! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.245.164.72 (talk) 10:35, 27 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Epistemic relativism

Epistemic relativism isn't the same thing as cognitive relativism. If cognitive relativism is "a philosophy that claims the truth or falsity of a statement is relative to a social group or individual", epistemic relativism is (very roughly) a philosophy that claims the justification of a statement is relative to a social group or individual. See the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy(section 2.4.1) for confirmation. H Remster (talk) 14:00, 21 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with the above, and add that furthermore factual relativism is relativism about facts, hence not the same with a) cognitive relativism (as per above) or epistemic relativism. However, since this is an entry on factual relativism, don't you think there should be a mention of what facts are? it seems to me that a distinction that doesn't get made and that could be found in Barnes and Bloor is the distinction between knowledge as justified true belief (the orthodox view) and knowledge as commonly-held belief. i can produce a reference from Barnes and Bloor if somebody wants to comment on this Majnun o'squirrel (talk) 09:53, 10 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]