Truth: In Ethics and Else Where

Abstract

Introduction:  It is popular to make the claim, particularly when it comes to questions of value, that there is no such thing as «truth.» For some, a belief in social or cultural relativism is the source of such scepticism. Such individuals would argue that it is chauvinistic arrogance to believe that just because, from one’s own point of view, practices carried out by other cultures appear to be immoral, e.g., cliterodectomies on unwilling young women, that somehow they are immoral per se. Others would argue for an even more radical form of relativism, no doubt stemming from a misguided view of equality, namely that any individual viewpoint is a good (or bad) as anyone else’s: «from my point of view `x’ is immoral, but I wouldn’t dream of saddling anyone else with my morals.» Still others believe that, despite the drawbacks of a relativistic position, they must nonetheless remain sceptical about the possibility of truth in ethics in order to distance themselves from those who have inflicted enormous harm on others in the name of having a privileged access to truth. The Spanish inquisition, the holocaust, the decimation of indigenous people, were all carried out by individuals most of whom believed that they had truth on their side. On a more academic plane, the new fad is to express allegiance to «post-modernism,» a peculiar title given its striking similarity to old rationalism and later Wittgensteinian philosophy. The two underlying premises of this movement are that: (a) language creates reality, and (b) languageusers create language. The conclusion deduced is that language-users, therefore, create reality, and that, consequently, it makes no sense for language-users to seek a truth that is independent of their own creation.