[...] the first obstacle facing any ambitious form of relativism, subjectivism, or skepticism is the venerable objection that such theories cannot even get off the ground, let alone succeed, because they are "reflexively" self-undermining.' The point of this objection is that when these doctrines are subjected to the test of self-application, they appear to nullify themselves.
I. EIGHT FORMULATIONS
This point can be explained in several ways, eight of which I will pursue here in connection with one particular (albeit very broad) kind of relativism. My chosen example is the doctrine holding that all "truth" is "socially constructed."
A. Self-Referential Inconsistency
The first point to be made about this form of relativism is that it appears to be self-referentially inconsistent. In other words, when it is judged, as seems only reasonable and fair, in the light of its own explicitly stated content, it seems to contradict itself. For if all truth is indeed to be regarded as socially constructed, rather than as reflecting accurately how things "really are," then surely this claim itself-that is, the theory of social constructionism-must also be viewed merely as a social construct and precisely not as an accurate reflection of how things really are.
B. Incoherence
To put the point another way, social constructionism seems to be an incoherent doctrine: it asserts what it denies and denies what it asserts and thus fails to communicate any clear meaning at all.
C. Performative Contradiction
Even if, for the sake of argument, we were to waive the objection that social constructionism is straightforwardly incoherent, we would still have to consider whether or not such a doctrine can be articulated without contradiction. Let us consider an analogy. There is nothing incoherent or self-contradictory about the idea of a person who never makes remarks about herself. But there is something self-contradictory about the statement "You know, the remarkable thing about me is that I never make remarks about myself." For then the act, or the performance, of making this statement contradicts the content of the statement itself.
In short, social constructionists commit a performative contradiction whenever they treat an opposing position not simply as another construction, which might for all they know attain a certain validity relative to its own social domain, but as really wrong, truly incorrect, and/or simply inconsistent with the relevant evant facts of life.
D. The Epistentologist's Fallacy
Social constructionists commit a similar reflexive fallacy when they claim to know things which, according to the position on knowledge that they themselves are endorsing, neither they nor anyone else can possibly know.
E. The "Bold but Incoherent" / "Coherent but Weak" Dilemma
These considerations strongly suggest that social constructionism is trapped within the following dilemma: either it is to be understood as boldly making an objective truth claim, in which case it is self-undermining and incoherent (not to mention arbitrary, for if somehow it is possible for the "truth" of social constructionism to elude its own strictures and establish itself as an exception to its own rule that all truths are merely relative to a particular culture, then it is unclear why there cannot be other exceptions), or else it is to be construed merely as a social construction (presumably just one among many) expressing a localized cultural consensus, in which case it regains its coherence but only at the cost of losing much of its interest and critical force (in part because it leaves the way fully clear for others operating from different cultural, personal, or paradigmatic standpoints validly to assert everything that it is itself attempting so strenuously to deny).
F. Evidence and Reasoning
The same dilemma applies, moreover, when we shift our attention away from the grand conclusions drawn by social constructionists and instead focus on the evidence and reasoning to which they appeal in support of these conclusions.
How can social constructionists, while consistently maintaining their own doctrine, claim to know the truth of these premises? For such a claim seems to imply that at least one cultural group (e.g., social constructionists and/or the anthropologists on which they rely) is sufficiently competent not only to understand and to describe accurately the beliefs held by people of another culture, but also to assert that these beliefs are different from, indeed often mutually incompatible with, those held by people in still other cultures. Even more impressively, this cultural group claims to be able to understand the beliefs of people in other cultures so well as to be able to understand the specific cific ways in which those beliefs are embedded in, and inextricably connected with, other practices and norms peculiar to the culture being investigated.
Thus, it is in their assertion of evidence, and in their reasoning about it, every hit as much as in their statement of conclusions, that social constructionists convict themselves either of impotence or of incoherence: either they are powerless to criticize others as mistaken (in part because they cannot achieve a standpoint from which to do so soundly), or else they simply contradict themselves.
G. The Inquirers and the Inquired-About
Thus, social constructionism's emphasis on the importance of cultural groups leads to its downfall. For social constructionism must, after all, either make, on behalf of that cultural group which seeks to understand others (anthropologists and other social scientists, for example), an arbitrary and incoherent exception to its own strictures concerning the epistemic limitations of all cultural groups, or else admit that its findings can only aspire to a culturally relative validity.
H. The Incoherence/Infinite Regress Dilemma
The same logic applies on the meta-level. "What is true is determined by cultural consensus" is either intended to be objectively true, or else it means, "It is the consensus of my culture that truth is determined by cultural consensus." This, in turn, is either an attempted statement of objective truth (in which case it is false, in addition to being self-referentially incoherent, the latter disability being one plaguing all of these when construed as covert attempts to state objective truths), or else it means that "it is the consensus of my culture that it is the consensus of my culture that truth is determined mined by cultural consensus."
II. EXAMPLES
Postmodernism
I will begin with a passage from Michael Berube, in which he clearly and confidently summarizes and defends the "postmodern" rejection of objective knowledge and truth:
"[Fjifty years of anti-positivism from people as diverse as Ludwig Wittgenstein, Thomas Kuhn, and Michel Foucault have led the cultural left [which I take Berube to be defending here] to argue that objects of knowledge are locally and historically specific, and that they become available for human understanding only within certain `language games', `paradigms', and `discursive formations' (not that these are three names for the same thing, either)."
Any careful attempt to understand Berube's position will reveal, however, that it is caught within something like the following dilemma. Either there are indeed no objects of knowledge which transcend local and historical specificity, and which escape the constraints straints of certain language games, paradigms, or discursive formations, or else this is not the case and there are some (or at least one) such "transcending and escaping" objects of knowledge. But if the former alternative is correct, then neither Berube nor anyone else is in a position to know it to be correct, since in that case we would not ever be able to get our hands on anything but a locally and historically cally specific and paradigm (or what have you)-relative "human knowledge" as an object of knowledge.
Next let us consider the position held in common by various "feminist standpoint theories," as Mary E. Hawkesworth terms them. This position holds, according to Hawkesworth's summary, that "knowledge is always mediated by a host of factors related to an individual's vidual's particular position in a determinate sociopolitical formation at a specific point in history. Class, race, and gender necessarily structure the individual's understanding of reality and hence inform all knowledge claims."' But once again, if the claim that "class, race, and gender necessarily structure the individual's understanding of reality and hence inform all knowledge claims" is itself a knowledge claim, then surely it too must be understood as issuing from an understanding that has been structured by class, race, and gender.
Unqualified skepticism
[...] skeptical positions, unless they are simply baldly asserted (in which case one need not take them seriously), are usually supported by arguments of some kind. But this raises obvious reflexivity problems with regard to the status of the premises of the arguments. For if the conclusion is that nothing is known, or that nothing is true, then neither can the premises supporting such a conclusion be known or true. Thus, how can the argument even get started, let alone establish its skeptical conclusion? The central fallacy here is the attempt to claim knowledge of some sort (e.g., we should be tolerant, or all cultures are equal, or we are prisoners of language, or what have you) from the premise that no knowledge of that sort is possible.
Subjectivism (Personal Relativism)
Subjectivism, the doctrine that "knowledge" is relative not to cultures but to individuals, faces similar self-referential problems. For if, to take a crude version of the theory, all "knowledge" is said to be reducible to personal opinion, then who can fail to see that the truth of this subjectivist principle must itself be conceded to be reducible to personal opinion?
While Brian Vickers's position is considerably more sophisticated than the one just described, it clearly faces similar difficulties. Vickers writes:
"Our whole act of experiencing reality is subjective.... and anyone in search of objective truths in a world after Nietzsche, Husserl, and Popper, say, is doomed to a dusty answer.... We have now reached a stage in which relativism can be defended-not cynicism, not amorality, not indifference, but an honest admission that, in phenomenological nomenological terms, the acts of perceiving the world, interpreting its signs, evaluating its actions, arc all irremediably personal."
But this means, of course, that none of Vickers's own claims in this passage can qualify as "objective truths." Rather, they must be seen as issuing from his own "irremediably personal" perceptions, interpretations, pretations, and evaluations.
Historicist Relativism
Historicist relativism is the position holding that all "truth" is historically conditioned and historically relative, there being no possibility of an objective, universal, or eternal truth which would transcend all such contingencies. Now, as we have seen, this position cannot itself coherently be asserted as an objective truth which escapes historical contingency, but let us waive that objection for a moment so as instead to examine the reasons that might be put forth in its support. One such reason is simply that all previous attempts to formulate ahistorical truths have (allegedly) failed, as all are revealed upon careful analysis to bear distinct traits which not only mark them as products of their own particular time, but also reveal their inability to apply validly to temporal periods differing significantly from their own in relevant respects.
[...] it would appear that the logic of the historicist argument must suffer the same fate as that confronting its premise and conclusion. For the reasoning here used-that the failure of all previous attempts to formulate transhistorical truths establishes (or at least strongly suggests) the impossibility of any such successful formulation-is itself asserted either as valid in a transhistorical sense or else as valid only in a historically relative sense. If the former, the argument is self-referentially inconsistent; if the latter, its critical force is weak.
Cultural-Belief Relativism
Nor does the relativist argument fare any better when it is cast in an anthropological or sociological form, in which truth is said to be reducible to cultural consensus and thus to vary from one society to another, than it does in its historicist version, in which the vicissitudes tudes of time are stressed. For, once again, either the sociological relativist's claim is asserted as a universal truth, holding equally for all cultures whatsoever, in which case the claim is incoherent and self-undermining, or it is to be understood as holding true only within the relativist's own culture, in which case it fails as an instrument of criticism of claims of absolute or universal truth, when such claims are issued from within cultures other than that of the relativist.
III. REBUTTALS
Friedman
Friedman offers this response to the self-referential inconsistency objection:
"This criticism of skepticism, however, is very limited. If successful, it would undermine only an extreme skepticism that denies that any human assertions are true, including those of the skeptic herself. self. The refutation of extreme skepticism, however, does not establish that there is an objective, impartial truth to he discerned about any and every specific subject matter. That is, the failure of extreme skepticism would not establish that the truth-claims of, say, political or moral theorists were objectively or universally true. Philosophers are very familiar with qualified forms of skepticism; logical positivists, for example, reject the notions of metaphysical and moral truth while still championing scientific truth. A partial and limited skepticism that challenged a particular realm of study ... might succeed where extreme skepticism fails. The important point is that such limited skepticisms would not have to he formulated in self-contradictory or otherwise self-defeating terms."
First, it is not true that the only kind of skepticism that is self-contradictory is "an extreme skepticism that denies that any human assertions are true." Rather, what makes a skepticism self-refuting is entirely captured by the last clause in Friedman's formulation: the denial that the skeptic's own assertions are true. For example, suppose I were to say that "all unqualified generalizations are false." Notice that this statement is self-refuting, since it is itself an unqualified generalization. And yet it certainly does not claim, nor does it in any way imply or entail, that no human assertions are true. So Friedman's major claim about the limitations of the self-referential inconsistency objection is false.
My second comment is that even when limited skepticisms are not directly self-refuting in this way, often the arguments used to support such skepticisms will undo the skepticisms themselves. Thus, to give just one example, if the phenomenon of disagreement within a given intellectual domain is alleged to prove that there is no truth within that domain, then the disagreement over the validity of such a proof should establish that it is itself untrue.
[...]
Fish
That Fish thinks he can defend "anti-foundationalism" in this manner stems, or so it seems to me, from his confusions concerning what it means to defend objectivity. To see this, consider the following lowing passage from his writings:
"Not only is there no one who could spot a transcendent truth if it happened to pass through the neighborhood, but it is difficult even to say what one would be like. Of course we would know what it would not he like; it would not speak to any particular condition, or be identified with any historical production, or he formulated in the terms of any national, ethnic, racial, economic, or class traditions. In short, it would not he clothed in any of the guises that would render it available to the darkened glasses of mortal - that is, temporally limited - man. It is difficult not to conclude either (a) that there are no such truths, or ... (b) that while there are such truths, they could only be known from a god's-eye view. Since none of us occupies that view (because none of us is a god), the truths any of us find compelling will all he partial, which is to say they will all be political."
[...] much of Fish's work falls apart, it seems to me, as soon as one refuses to follow him in committing the fallacy of false dilemma in two specific ways. The first is his strange notion that all norms and standards must either be (a) contingent, historical, potentially revisable, and having only local validity, or (b) objective, established permanently, and having universal validity. He then gives reasons for concluding that all values and standards in fact fall under category (b), (a) being a chimera. The problem is that he ignores the possibility (c) that some norms might be objective, have more than local validity, and yet still be potentially revisable. After all, one can defend objectivity and still be a fallibilist. That is, one can believe that there are truths that transcend the particular and contingent judgments of particular individuals or cultures at particular historical moments, without thinking that all, or even many, or even any, of our beliefs concerning the identity of these truths can be known with certainty to be right. Moreover, one can be a defender of objectivity and still be a contextualist. That is, one can believe that there are objective truths - truths that are in no way dependent for their truth on what anyone happens to think - that are context sensitive.
Fish's other false dilemma is his idea that all norms and standards must either be (a) experienced and produced locally and historically, and therefore-note the genetic fallacy-having only local validity, or (b) experienced in some (unfathomable and inexplicable) nonlocal and nonhistorical way; and not produced at all, but rather having the status of having always existed (perhaps in some Platonic or heavenly realm); and having universal and objective validity. He then has an easy time establishing (a) over (b). The problem, however, is that he ignores the possibility of (c) values and standards that have universal and objective validity in spite of (from his standpoint) the fact that they are instantiated and articulated and made manifest in particular, local, contingent, historical circumstances, contexts, and experiences.
Thus, Fish's claim that all truth-claims must necessarily achieve no more than a local validity must be understood as itself achieving no more than a local validity.
Notes
[...] I pointed out that some postmodernists shrug off the self-refutation objection by suggesting that there is nothing wrong with transgressing the strictures of logic. The irresponsibility of such a position is perhaps brought into an especially clear focus in the ease of performative contradictions, since their structure, that of saying one thing while doing another, is familiar to us in everyday life under the heading of "moral hypocrisy."
