Cognitive relativism

[HansMustermann]

What if I look both ways before crossing the street in my dream?

It doesn't matter, actually.

Can you make a car disappear by just concentrating hard / not believing in it / whatever? If I ask you to kick that big rock over there real hard, can you make your foot just pass through it?

No.

And that's why silly mental exercises like "what if it's a dream?" are ultimately irrelevant.

Even if it's all in your imagination (a la solipsism) or a dream or The Matrix or a holographic simulation of the whole universe or whatever, the fact is, you can't control that simulation. Whether it's the matrix or a part of your brain that produces that rock, the important part is: you can't control it. If you get run over by a car, it will still hurt like heck, and you'll still be in a cast. If that's just a dream, then your brain really hates you.

So ultimately, yes, even if reality were a dream, you should look both ways. And all opinions are still not equally valid. Some will match how the simulation actually works, some won't. Those that go "nah, I'll break my foot if I kick that rock real hard" are a bit more likely to be true than pulling stuff out of the behind like, "I could make that rock disappear."

Basically, as I was saying, "but what if it's all a dream" or "but it all goes through a representation in your head" are irrelevant, and relativism is still dumb.

 

[marplots]

It doesn't matter, actually.

Can you make a car disappear by just concentrating hard / not believing in it / whatever? If I ask you to kick that big rock over there real hard, can you make your foot just pass through it?

No.

And that's why silly mental exercises like "what if it's a dream?" are ultimately irrelevant.

Even if it's all in your imagination (a la solipsism) or a dream or The Matrix or a holographic simulation of the whole universe or whatever, the fact is, you can't control that simulation. Whether it's the matrix or a part of your brain that produces that rock, the important part is: you can't control it. If you get run over by a car, it will still hurt like heck, and you'll still be in a cast. If that's just a dream, then your brain really hates you.

So ultimately, yes, even if reality were a dream, you should look both ways. And all opinions are still not equally valid. Some will match how the simulation actually works, some won't. Those that go "nah, I'll break my foot if I kick that rock real hard" are a bit more likely to be true than pulling stuff out of the behind like, "I could make that rock disappear."

Basically, as I was saying, "but what if it's all a dream" or "but it all goes through a representation in your head" are irrelevant, and relativism is still dumb.

I don't understand what all this has to do with relativism. Relativism is still true, whether or not there is a "really" real. All it's asserting is that you have no good way to decide the issue; nothing beyond your own senses to do the evaluating with.

I don't even get why the idea is controversial. It seems self-evident to me. Even empiricism demands an observer to relay the results of the observation. And aren't we all familiar with cognitive illusions and the experience of our own thought processes being mistaken - sometimes in fundamental ways?

The catchphrase, "the plural of anecdote isn't data" reflects our acceptance of cognitive relativism. We accept that a belief may be authentic, even though the experience might have been misinterpreted. In fact, we have a list of funny names for folks who've looked at the same evidence we have and come to markedly different conclusions. We call them truthers, or bigfooters, or God botherers. In fact, isn't the very notion of bias built upon cognitive relativism?

What do you suppose the scientific method and systems of logic do for us, if not to try and overcome our native biologically driven relativism? My brain isn't immune to its current state of nutrition, input from my body, and the way it is 'wired.' Psychologists delight in ferreting out how our brain plays tricks on us, misinforming, making snap judgements, altering perceptions and on and on.

How is any of this the least bit controversial?

 

[HansMustermann]

There is a difference between 'X is true' (or a good idea or whatever) and, basically, 'lots of people apply X'. The latter can be true and even non-controversial, without the former being too.

Basically, yes, there is nothing controversial in the observation that some form of epistemological relativism is how people are wired to work.

But let's put it like this: if truth actually were relative and depending on your viewpoint, then we really wouldn't need to prefer that science thing. In fact, it wouldn't even work, as any truth determined by science wouldn't be any more valid than any other assertion.

That's all I'm saying, really. Knowledge or belief in what's true or false is relative. The actual truth is not.

No set of beliefs or subjective experiences upon which such beliefs may be formed, will make something true, if it's say, that I'm totally impervious to lead or explosions, and totally could suck on a shotgun and live to tell. And no amount of "maybe it's just a dream" or "all is in the head after all" will change the fact that there'll be no more dream, and no more "it's in the head" after that. Unless the "it" that is in my head is some mush.

 

[marplots]

There is a difference between 'X is true' (or a good idea or whatever) and, basically, 'lots of people apply X'. The latter can be true and even non-controversial, without the former being too.

Basically, yes, there is nothing controversial in the observation that some form of epistemological relativism is how people are wired to work.

But let's put it like this: if truth actually were relative and depending on your viewpoint, then we really wouldn't need to prefer that science thing. In fact, it wouldn't even work, as any truth determined by science wouldn't be any more valid than any other assertion.

That's all I'm saying, really. Knowledge or belief in what's true or false is relative. The actual truth is not.

If you accept the sentence before it, how do you get to the highlighted sentence from there?

And, just to be plain, you don't have to set the goal of science as determining truth, all it has to be is a way for us to agree - a system available to all which yields reproducible results. I don't think scientists actually claim they have some ultimate truth in hand or that science will ever arrive at such a thing. Even in science, truth is provisional and relative, although "relative to our universe" might not mean much in the day to day.

I think there is a false dichotomy here. There really isn't a battle between "actual truth" and "anything goes." What's really on offer is a series of accepted things, based on "works pretty well" and "works better." If relativism has anything to recommend it, it might be the notion that "truly true" is a dumb idea. In fact, I think alternatives harken back to the theological notion of God as omniscient observer and an appeal to perfection. Isn't one of the strengths of science to reject that role?

 

[HansMustermann]

"Relative to our universe" is kinda the key part. It puts a hell of a restriction on which viewpoints you can use in determining if something is true.

And that's really how I get from the former to the latter, really. Or in other words, by not believing in magical thinking. What you BELIEVE to be true, is not the same as what IS true.

The model of the universe in your head is not the same as the actual universe. And it helps if you remember that fundamental distinction.

If I believe grandma is alive, maybe even am pretty sure she is, doesn't mean she actually is. If the universe disagrees with what's in my head, the universe wins. Every time.

 

[marplots]

"Relative to our universe" is kinda the key part. It puts a hell of a restriction on which viewpoints you can use in determining if something is true.

And that's really how I get from the former to the latter, really. Or in other words, by not believing in magical thinking. What you BELIEVE to be true, is not the same as what IS true.
If I believe grandma is alive, maybe even am pretty sure she is, doesn't mean she actually is. If the universe disagrees with what's in my head, the universe wins. Every time.

I don't think cognitive relativism asserts this. Rather, it asserts that whatever the situation may be, our only access to it is our own minds, limited in the way minds seem to be.

For me, cognitive relativism merely recognizes that the answer you get depends on the experiment you do - or the instrument you take your measurement with. I think practicing scientists very much understand this bit of philosophy. It's reflected in the way experiments are reported, with great care to list the limits, how the data was gathered, and what part of the larger picture the experiment is trying to illuminate. Confidence intervals are a must, as are error bars.

 

[HansMustermann]

I don't think cognitive relativism asserts this. Rather, it asserts that whatever the situation may be, our only access to it is our own minds, limited in the way minds seem to be.

Depends on the school of thought, and how you define things, given that there is no formal definition of cognitive relativism. But for example the article linked to by the OP literally makes the claims quoted in the OP:

(1) The truth-value of any statement is always relative to some particular standpoint;

(2) No standpoint is metaphysically privileged over all others.​

So yes, obviously there is a version where "grandma is biologically dead (and in fact is now a bunch of ash in that urn)" can be true or false, depending on how you look at it, and no way of looking at it is any better than others.

For me, cognitive relativism merely recognizes that the answer you get depends on the experiment you do - or the instrument you take your measurement with. I think practicing scientists very much understand this bit of philosophy. It's reflected in the way experiments are reported, with great care to list the limits, how the data was gathered, and what part of the larger picture the experiment is trying to illuminate. Confidence intervals are a must, as are error bars.

I won't even disagree with your version of it. But that wasn't what I was criticizing.

 

[marplots]

Depends on the school of thought, and how you define things, given that there is no formal definition of cognitive relativism. But for example the article linked to by the OP literally makes the claims quoted in the OP:

(1) The truth-value of any statement is always relative to some particular standpoint;

(2) No standpoint is metaphysically privileged over all others.​

I agree with these.

So yes, obviously there is a version where "grandma is biologically dead (and in fact is now a bunch of ash in that urn)" can be true or false, depending on how you look at it, and no way of looking at it is any better than others.

But I don't think this follows, at least not in the way you've laid it out. What seems to be missing is the consequence that my own views, while not privileged in some meta-sense, are still mine. I am not compelled to accept other's views as being correct, simply because I hold that my views are centered on me.

If I thought someone else's views were better, I'd adopt them. What's missing in your framing is my judgement imposes the same rank order on how true something is - that is the point, after all of calling it a judgement. Plainly, I do it. I also recognize that others do it. The fact that their results vary is of no more import to me than the fact that I fell in love with and married one particular woman and think her the finest example of her species. I can hold this view without insisting that others recognize the truth of it. And, I can allow they may have married for the same reason I did.

As far as grandma being both dead and alive because different people assert different things, this also fails when you consider cognitive relativism isn't about establishing actual truth, it's denying it in favor of relative truth. Grandma has no true status outside of what we believe is so - as far as we can tell. One person is free to act as if she were alive and another to act as if she isn't.

Facts about the world, in this construct, are merely those things enough of us agree on that we don't argue about them. In some sense we might actually be incapable of arguing about them. But, if I am so constituted that I am incapable of thinking some thing to be true (or false), that really has no force to illuminate what may actually be true or false.

Cognitive realism is making a statement about the limits of human minds, and that's all. As soon as we start introducing the "actual truth," we've strayed from the concept. "Actually true" doesn't matter, only the capacity to perceive it, if it exists. This would be no different than limits inherent in any measuring instrument.

 

[Soapy Sam]

What is the "truth value" of basalt?

 

[marplots]

What is the "truth value" of basalt?

Relative to whom? Things don't come with truth values attached; we impose them or not as we see fit.

Even something defined to be so, like basalt, has changed meaning over time and the current definition is simply the current agreed upon meaning. Setting the amount of quartz in basalt at under 20% by volume is a convention and an aid to discussion, but we couldn't even call someone crazy if they felt basaltic rock existed at 22 or 23 percent quartz. They would be unconventional, but not lying necessarily. It isn't set in stone (Ba-Dump!).

The idea of conformity shaping truth values is illustrated wonderfully in the Asch Experiment: http://www.simplypsychology.org/asch-conformity.html