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Sharon Street, New York University

Friday, December 6, 2013 - 3:00pm

Cohen Hall 402

Paul Boghossian has recently argued that it’s surprisingly difficult, perhaps even impossible, to offer a defensible formulation of a global relativism about normativity.  In this paper, I argue, against Boghossian, that the model that is supplied by the case of relativism about mass and time order can successfully be transferred to the normative case.  I argue that contrary to the widespread stereotype of normative relativism as an “anything goes” position that is incompatible with any semblance of an objective subject matter, a global relativism about normativity no more undermines the idea that it’s possible to be mistaken about normative reasons than Einstein’s relativism about time order undermines the idea that it’s possible to be mistaken about which came first, dinosaurs or iPhones.  There are truths about normative reasons and truths about mass and time order: the claim is just that they relativize to an extra parameter in a way one might not have thought.

Paper Title

How to be a Relativist About Normativity