Tuesday, April 17, 2018

Relativism and the Existence of Others

For Physicists and Astronomers, that an object of perception can be a Frame of Reference has been fruitful for, if not essential to, their developments over the centuries.  Yet for many Philosophers, 'the existence of others' has been a vexing perennial problem.  The source of the difficulty is that evidence that would guarantee that an encountered Object is indeed also a Subject seems to be lacking.  Thus, the problem is conceived as Epistemological, with Certainty its criterion.  But, if the problem is actually Moral, with the Subject of the encounter having the choice of treating its Object as either a Person or a Thing, then the perplexity disappears.  Likewise, Relativism in social contexts incorporates a Moral dimension that is extrinsic to, and, perhaps, antithetical to, alternative theories of Perception, e. g. Subjectivism.  Meanwhile, Physics and Astronomy are experimental endeavors, in which the measure of a heuristic device like Frame of Reference is its fecundity, so Epistemological Uncertainty is irrelevant to Relativism in those contexts.

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