NEW AGE RELATIVISM AND EPISTEMIC POSSIBILITY: THE QUESTION OF EVIDENCE1
NEW AGE RELATIVISM AND EPISTEMIC POSSIBILITY: THE QUESTION OF EVIDENCE1
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新时代相对主义和认识可能性：证据问题1
DOI：
10.1111/j.1533-6077.2007.00133.x
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发表时间：
2007
影响因子：
0.7
通讯作者：
C. Wright
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
C. Wright
我初步评论一下，我所说的新时代相对主义通常是作为一种关于话语的真值条件的命题提出的，其中话语是对某一特定类型的句子的实际的历史性发声或铭文。粗略地说，有人认为，对于某些话语而言，话语是否属实不仅取决于话语的背景--何时、何地、对谁、由谁、用什么语言等等--以及“评价的情况”--相关方面的世界状况--而且还取决于另一个参数：评价的背景。改变后者，则话语的真值可能不同，即使其产生的背景和相关的世界状态保持不变。新时代相对主义之所以有趣，至少有三个原因。首先，它是语言哲学中一个冷静的、半技术性的论题，基本上借鉴了在久经考验的刘易斯-卡普兰传统中形成的语义理论，并标志着在一个严谨的理论框架中阐明哲学中最古老、最神秘的倾向之一的尝试。这与当代后现代主义的许多作品的修辞和印象派风格形成了鲜明的对比。其次，它的动机，至少在某些情况下，是经验语言学的。传统上，关于真理的相对主义一直是一种形而上学的观点，受到关于客观世界的局限性的想法的驱动，或者说任何纯粹表象思维的愿望都是虚幻的。相比之下，它作为语义理论的一种形式的重新出现，在很大程度上是由于对语言相关领域实际工作方式的考虑。据称，新时代相对主义允许在当地的语言实践数据中有坚实的动机，而不是先行的形而上学或后现代主义政党学说。
I Preliminary remarks What I am calling New Age Relativism is usually proposed as a thesis about the truth-conditions of utterances, where an utterance is an actual historic voicing or inscription of a sentence of a certain type. Roughly, it is the view that, for certain discourses, whether an utterance is true depends not just on the context of its making—when, where, to whom, by whom, in what language, and so on—and the “circumstances of evaluation”—the state of the world in relevant respects—but also on an additional parameter: a context of assessment. Vary the latter and the truth-value of the utterance can vary, even though the context of its making and the associated state of the world remain fixed. New Age Relativism is interesting for at least three reasons. First, it presents as a sober, semi-technical thesis in the philosophy of language, drawing essentially on an apparatus of semantic theory fashioned in the well-tried Lewis-Kaplan tradition, and marks an attempt to articulate one of the oldest, most enigmatic tendencies in philosophy in a sharply formulated theoretical framework. This is in refreshing contrast to the rhetorical and impressionistic style of much of the writing of contemporary postmodernism. Second, its motivation, at least in some cases, is empirico-linguistic. Traditionally, relativism about truth has been a metaphysical view, driven by ideas about the limits of the objective world, or the illusoriness of any aspiration to purely representational thought. Its re-emergence as a form of semantic theory, by contrast, has been fostered in large part by considerations about the ways in which, supposedly, relevant areas of language actually work. New Age Relativism allows, it is alleged, of a solid motivation in local data of linguistic practice, rather than antecedent metaphysics or postmodernist party doctrine.2