Against Relativism

From: Nils Weinander <nils_w_at_yahoo.com>
Date: Fri, 21 Jan 2000 15:33:02 +0100


Alex:
>
> Hrm... Sounds like I'm being set of as the scapegoat in a Weinandrian
> Against Relativism HQ of some sort. ;-)

I have a book titled Against Relativism at home. Want to borrow it? :-)

Seriously, and for the record, I'm all for relativism on the "inside Glorantha" level, while I don't see it as a necessity on the "looking in from the outside" perspective.

Which leads me away from relativism to:

>- -.. which gets me back to where we came in, namely 'the same in
>what sense?' To say that (for example) 'Orlanth and Shargash
>are the same' is true in one sense, and false in another (if not,
>several others), regardless of the 'objectivity' of the truth-
>judgements involved.

I can see several definitions:

  1. Simply defing that entity A and entity B _are_ the same behind all masks.
  2. "If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck and tastes like a duck it most likely is a duck."
  3. Entiy A shares aspect X and aspect Y with entity B, but not aspect Z. That makes them quite similar. With proper definitions of entity and aspect of course.
  4. In some cases I'm sure you can't conclude anything worthwhile. I'm not prepared to throw out the other cases just because of this though. I assume that such extreme measures wasn't what you intended either.
    Nils Weinander The world is a beautiful place and it's worth fighting for

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