Combining Texts

Ideas for 'Unconscious Cerebral Initiative', 'Goodbye Descartes' and 'On the Genealogy of Morals'

unexpand these ideas     |    start again     |     choose another area for these texts

display all the ideas for this combination of texts


2 ideas

13. Knowledge Criteria / E. Relativism / 1. Relativism
There is only 'perspective' seeing and knowing, and so the best objectivity is multiple points of view [Nietzsche]
     Full Idea: There is only a perspective seeing, only a perspective "knowing", and the more different eyes we can use to observe one thing, the more complete will our "concept" of this thing, our "objectivity", be.
     From: Friedrich Nietzsche (On the Genealogy of Morals [1887], III.§12)
     A reaction: A very perceptive statement of the most plausible and sophisticated version of relativism. It is hard to see how we could distinguish multiple viewpoints from pure objectivity.
13. Knowledge Criteria / E. Relativism / 5. Language Relativism
People still say the Hopi have no time concepts, despite Whorf's later denial [Devlin]
     Full Idea: The Hopi time myth does not appear to have been stopped for a moment by the fact that Whorf himself subsequently wrote that the Hopi language does indeed have words for past, present, and future
     From: Keith Devlin (Goodbye Descartes [1997], Ch. 5)
     A reaction: Arguments for relativism based on the Hopi seem now to be thoroughly discredited. Sensible people never believed them in the first place.