ClappingTree’s Web 2.0

Extracts from an interesting article on “Relativism and the Net” by David Weinberger:

Y’all know the relativist argument: Other people have views they hold as strongly as you hold yours. Those views are incompatible with yours. Thus, a sense of certainty is insufficient to guarantee truth. Therefore, we can’t trust certainty. Therefore, we have no way to decide whose views are right.

Good things come from this relativism, including a willingness to listen to others and maybe even a little humility. (That was, at least, until the Bush Doctrine declared humility to be unpatriotic.) But relativism contradicts a tenet of knowledge: To believe something is to believe that it’s true. Relativism wants to keep sneaking in a qualifier — “Of course, I might be dead wrong” — that seems to destroy the possibility of knowledge.

Worse, relativism can sap action: Since all sincerely held beliefs are equally valid, why go to any pains to defend yours?

THERE’S JUST something wrong with relativism…. it literally goes against everything we believe by telling us that we have no right to believe any of it. There’s something wrong with the setup.

I think the Internet is showing us what’s wrong with relativism.

Relativism works by pointing to the most extreme differences… There is an assumption — not a logical part of the argument but part of its appeal — that cultures live apart from one another, developing wildly different ideas and values… Neither has privileged access to the truth, or at least neither can reliably know that they have privileged access. So we’re all stuck in our silos of knowledge.

That picture explains why relativism is not just frustrating but depressing. It’s an isolationist’s view of the world.

But now we have a world that’s snapping itself together through talk and writing and conversation. In this world, relativism is much less important and appealing. You don’t have to sit alone and try to undercut your every belief in the name of a humble relativism. Instead, you can put your knowledge out into the world where it can talk with others who hold contrary views. Rather than being silos, we are conversations that — as conversations do — continuously and eternally negotiate agreement while iterating on difference.

…Relativism simplifies the world. It renders all views equal. The Internet complicates the world. All the world’s beliefs are in play as conversation engages us in the mutual quest of trying to find what’s right and wrong, what’s better and worse, what we can agree about and what we’d better leave alone.

In a connected world, relativism is just a way of giving up.