On Putnam's Argument for the Inconsistency of Relativism (original) (raw)

1990, Southern Journal of Philosophy

Since Plato's Theaetetus, it has been argued that relativism with regard to rationality and truth are inconsistent, incoherent or obviously flawed doctrines. Sometimes it is argued that the doctrines are internally incoherent or unstatable, sometimes that they do not cohere with central intuitions about the nature of reason or the nature of the world. Hilary Putnam's paper, "Why Reason Can't be Naturalized," (Putnam, 1983) offers a new argument for the inconsistency of relativism. In this paper I argue that, while the argument is important, it fails. Putnam argues that relativism is inconsistent in the same way that methodological solipsism is inconsistent. The argument is not straightforward. Putnam himself says that it is "messy" and "intuitive" (236). So I precede my criticisms with an explication of the argument, considering separately the cases of methodological solipsism and relativism. While I claim to have captured Putnam's central argument, doing so requires some reconstruction of his text. Methodological Solipsism The methodological solipsist position under consideration is one that requires all discourse to be reduced to, or logically reconstructed from, one's own experiences.' On this view, advocated by Carnap at the time of the Aufbau, each epistemically responsible person is to construct the world from his or her own experiences. The methodological solipsist differs from the "real" solipsist in requiring of each person, not just of himself or herself, that the world be constructed in this way. It is this distinguishing characteristic of methodological solipsism that, Putnam claims, makes the position inconsistent. It is inconsistent because the "transcendental remark" that everybody should construct a