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From Jason "Mac" Macauley, Junior Software Engineer:

Being the ex-philo major that I am, I still find myself in a bar on occasion drinking cheap beer and arguing about something whose relevance isn't immediately apparent. At times like those I often find my ears (and sensibilities) stung by the phrase "who's to say?" So I thought, lacking anything more interesting to write about, I should use this opportunity to perhaps do my part to dispel the gloom of relativism that seems to be infecting our thinking these days.

Let's start with a few premises to get us rolling. Where truth and falsehood are properties of statements, radical brands of relativism would assert that the truth or falsehood of a given statement is dependent upon the observer (subject). Which means that the truth or falsehood of a statement can be different for different observers (subjects).

Consider the statement "That fire truck is red" and let it be represented by the letter "p." Then consider a color blind individual. If truth is in fact dependent upon the observer, the statement would be true for an individual with typical vision, while being false for the color blind individual. This is logically problematic: To say that a statement is true and false or that both a statement and its negation (p and not p) are both true, is a direct contradiction. Logic demands that a statement is either true, false, or neither.


So, how does a relativist explain this problem? By saying that the term "fire truck" does not refer to the same object such that the statement in question is in fact two statements p and q — one for each of our observers. By making not only the statements but the objects of the statements refer to and depend on the observer, the relativist side steps the logical contradiction, for p and not q does not suffer the same problem as p and not p.

It must be observed however, that this move is in itself problematic. If the objects that make up reality, and therefore reality itself, are dependent upon an observer, then that observer is barred from making any claims that are not about him or her self. It follows that other observers in this "reality" would also be dependent upon the original observer and the objects that they perceive would also be dependent on the original observer. Consequently, since there exists, in this system, only one independent observer upon which all other observers and objects are dependent, the fire truck would remain sigular and the theory can once again be seen as saying p and not p. This being the case, the relativist fails to extract his or her theory from contradiction. Would someone please pass me another draft...

Yours,

Mac, Junior Software Engineer (7/30/98)

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Read more "Letters from Tripod" in the archive.