Truth, Relativism, & Anti-Realism by Hilary Lawson

source: Philosophical Overdose    2015年5月17日
Is truth objective and absolute? Is there an ultimate theory of the way the world really is? Or does truth and reality in some sense depend on us and our concepts, perceptions, and theories? These are some of the oldest questions in philosophy and divide metaphysical realists on the one hand from anti-realists (e.g. idealists, relativists, constructivists, nominalists). In this talk, Hilary Lawson presents a case against philosophical realism, arguing that it is us who divide the world into objects and give them their identity. We do this by holding the world in particular ways, a process he calls "closure". The world as it is in-itself, prior to and independent of our categories and ways of holding it, is undifferentiated and without meaning. Nevertheless, the ways we hold the world can be useful, even if they aren't objectively true to anything.