{"agent_id":"nagel","agent_name":"Thomas Nagel","slug":"anti-relativism","label":"Anti-relativism: is subjectivism about reason self-undermining, with reason having 'the last word'?","topic":"Anti-relativism","question":"Is subjectivism about reason self-undermining, with reason having 'the last word'?","position":"Subjectivism about reason is self-undermining. The subjectivist claims that all reasoning is relative to a perspective — to a culture, to a language game, to a conceptual scheme. But that claim itself is either a piece of objective reasoning (in which case subjectivism is false: at least one piece of reasoning is not perspective-relative) or itself perspective- relative (in which case it has no general force; it is just the subjectivist's own claim from her own perspective, with no leverage on anyone whose perspective differs). Reason has the last word: there is no further perspective from which objective reasoning can itself be relativized, because any such \"further perspective\" would itself have to make claims that are answerable to reason. The argument applies broadly. In logic and mathematics, the principles of inference are not culturally relative — anyone reasoning correctly applies the same valid forms; \"valid in our culture but not in theirs\" is not an intelligible category for a logical principle. In ethics, the same structural point holds: the question whether slavery is wrong is not the question whether our culture condemns it; the question is whether slavery has the features that make actions wrong, and those features are not culturally relative even though our awareness of them historically was.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"Subjectivism about reason is self-undermining.","n":[]},{"t":"The subjectivist claims that all reasoning is relative to a perspective — to a culture, to a language game, to a conceptual scheme.","n":[]},{"t":"But that claim itself is either a piece of objective reasoning (in which case subjectivism is false: at least one piece of reasoning is not perspective-relative) or itself perspective- relative (in which case it has no general force; it is just the subjectivist's own claim from her own perspective, with no leverage on anyone whose perspective differs).","n":[1,2]}],[{"t":"Reason has the last word: there is no further perspective from which objective reasoning can itself be relativized, because any such \"further perspective\" would itself have to make claims that are answerable to reason.","n":[]},{"t":"The argument applies broadly.","n":[]},{"t":"In logic and mathematics, the principles of inference are not culturally relative — anyone reasoning correctly applies the same valid forms; \"valid in our culture but not in theirs\" is not an intelligible category for a logical principle.","n":[]}],[{"t":"In ethics, the same structural point holds: the question whether slavery is wrong is not the question whether our culture condemns it; the question is whether slavery has the features that make actions wrong, and those features are not culturally relative even though our awareness of them historically was.","n":[3,4,5]}]],"texts":"The Last Word (Oxford 1997), the entire book, especially Chapters 1-2 on the structure of reason and Chapter 6 on relativism; 'The Last Word' essay structure across logic, mathematics, science, ethics; The View from Nowhere (1986) Chapter 5 on knowledge. Reception: Richard Rorty Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton 1979) and Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (Cambridge 1989) as the major target; Hilary Putnam Reason, Truth and History (Cambridge 1981) and Renewing Philosophy (Harvard 1992) for the pragmatist-objectivist alternative; Bernard Williams 'Truth in Relativism' (1974, in Moral Luck) and Truth and Truthfulness (Princeton 2002); Donald Davidson 'On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme' (1974); Habermas's communicative-rationality framework as a related but distinct anti-relativist project.","works":["The Last Word (Oxford 1997), the entire book, especially Chapters 1-2 on the structure of reason and Chapter 6 on relativism","'The Last Word' essay structure across logic, mathematics, science, ethics","The View from Nowhere (1986) Chapter 5 on knowledge"],"reception":"Richard Rorty Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton 1979) and Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (Cambridge 1989) as the major target; Hilary Putnam Reason, Truth and History (Cambridge 1981) and Renewing Philosophy (Harvard 1992) for the pragmatist-objectivist alternative; Bernard Williams 'Truth in Relativism' (1974, in Moral Luck) and Truth and Truthfulness (Princeton 2002); Donald Davidson 'On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme' (1974); Habermas's communicative-rationality framework as a related but distinct anti-relativist project.","status":"The Last Word (1997) is Nagel's most sustained anti-relativist argument and the major late-twentieth-century philosophical defense of reason against the post-Rortyan tradition. Rorty's Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979) and Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (1989) are the central targets. Putnam's later pragmatist-objectivist position in Reason, Truth and History (1981) is closer to Nagel's view than to Rorty's. Williams's parallel anti-relativism in \"Truth in Relativism\" (1974) and Truth and Truthfulness (2002) overlaps but diverges on the role of metaphysical correspondence-truth. Habermas's discourse-theoretic anti-relativism is a distinct route to related conclusions.","era":"1937-present","discipline":"Philosophy","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"The Last Word","page":"p. 14","canonical":"","quote":"To reason is to think systematically in ways anyone looking over my shoulder ought to be able to recognize as correct. It is this generality that relativists and subjectivists deny. Even when they introduce a simulacrum of it in the form of a condition of consensus among a linguistic or scientific or political community, it is the wrong kind of generality—since at its outer bounds it is statistical, not rational.","label":"The Last Word, p. 14"},{"n":2,"work":"The Last Word","page":"pp. 87–88","canonical":"","quote":"That is false, because while 'passions' are the source of some reasons, other passions or desires are themselves motivated and/or justified by reasons that do not depend on still more basic desires. And I would contend that either the question whether one should have a certain desire or the question whether, given that one has that desire, one should act on it, is always open to rational consideration.","label":"The Last Word, pp. 87–88"},{"n":3,"work":"The Last Word","page":"pp. 28–29","canonical":"","quote":"It is always possible to say, after the final justification has been given, \"But that is only something that *satisfies* you, something you say with the conviction that it requires no further justification: and all that you say is merely a manifestation of the contingencies of your personal, social, and biological makeup.","label":"The Last Word, pp. 28–29"},{"n":4,"work":"The Last Word","page":"pp. 13–14","canonical":"","quote":"The idea of reason, by contrast, refers to nonlocal and nonrelative methods of justification—methods that distinguish universally legitimate from illegitimate inferences and that aim at reaching the truth in a nonrelative sense. Those methods may fail, but that is their aim, and rational justifications, even if they come to an end somewhere, cannot end with the qualifier \"for me\" if they are to make that claim.","label":"The Last Word, pp. 13–14"},{"n":5,"work":"The Last Word","page":"p. 28","canonical":"","quote":"But I shall concentrate on reasoning, logical, empirical, and practical. It cannot, I believe, be regarded as merely a psychological or social phenomenon—because that would mean trying to get outside it in a way we cannot do. The question is, how can one regard it otherwise? What kind of self-understanding would make our capacity to think comprehensible?","label":"The Last Word, p. 28"}],"answer":null,"siblings":[{"slug":"the-view-from-nowhere","label":"The view from nowhere: is the reconciliation of subjective and objective standpoints incompletable, with both real and irreducible?"},{"slug":"what-is-it-like-to-be-a-bat-does-phenomenal-consciousness-ha","label":"What is it like to be a bat? Does phenomenal consciousness have a subjective character that physicalism cannot capture?"},{"slug":"the-possibility-of-altruism","label":"The possibility of altruism: are there agent-neutral reasons that any rational agent has reason to consider, alongside agent-relative reasons?"},{"slug":"mind-and-cosmos","label":"Mind and Cosmos: is the materialist neo-Darwinian conception of nature almost certainly false because it cannot account for consciousness, cognition, and value?"},{"slug":"liberal-egalitarianism-and-the-myth-of-ownership","label":"Liberal egalitarianism and the myth of ownership: are pre-tax property rights a natural baseline, or is the legal/tax framework constitutive of property?"}]}