{"id":1044,"date":"2022-04-08T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-04-08T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/tselosophers\/?p=1044"},"modified":"2022-06-10T14:02:09","modified_gmt":"2022-06-10T12:02:09","slug":"perspective-relativism-thought-provoking-arguments-and-confusions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/tselosophers\/2022\/04\/08\/perspective-relativism-thought-provoking-arguments-and-confusions\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cPerspective relativism\u201d \u2013 thought-provoking arguments and confusions"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

TSElosophers meeting 8.4.2022. Participants: Erkki Lassila, Kari Lukka, Otto Rosendahl and Mia Salo<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Antti Hautam\u00e4ki (2019) N\u00e4k\u00f6kulmarelativismi<\/em> [Perspective relativism](SoPhi).<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Summary<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

In this book, which appears only in Finnish, Antti Hautam\u00e4ki introduces the notion of \u201cperspective relativism\u201d (our translation of the Finnish term \u201cn\u00e4k\u00f6kulmarelativismi\u201d). It is presented as a middle-of-the-road approach to the philosophy of science, positioned by Hautam\u00e4ki between the extreme forms of realism and relativism. The key ideas of his perspective relativism include:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 There is no perspective-independent way to look at the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 It is helpful to distinguish between the subject, the object, and the aspect \u2013 from which the last-mentioned captures the distinctive feature of perspective relativism<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 Perspectives are subjective, but they can be objectified.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 The same objects can be looked at from different perspectives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 There is no absolute, privileged, or universal perspective.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 Perspectives can be further developed, revised, and swapped.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022\u00a0Perspectives can be compared through various criteria.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the book, Hautam\u00e4ki argues for the validity of perspective relativism in numerous ways, using several examples. He goes through the typical themes for this type of treatise like relationships of perspective relativism to rationality, truth claims, justification of knowledge claims, ontology, and philosophy of science at large. In all of these analyses, Hautam\u00e4ki seeks to make a distance, on the one hand, to (scientific) realism and, on the other hand, to (extreme forms of) relativism. Central to his argumentation, allowing him to keep a distance from extreme forms of relativism, is his idea of \u201ccore rationality\u201d: To be taken seriously, any argumentation has to fulfill certain minimum conditions, such as the principle of deduction (the logic of implication) and the principle of consistency (for instance, we cannot accept and deny the same thing looked at from a certain perspective).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our discussion<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

TSElosophers generally supported the contents of the notion that Hautam\u00e4ki was propagating in his book. We not only found it intuitively appealing and helpful, but many of us also perceived it in certain ways familiar. One of the TSElosophers found Hautam\u00e4ki\u2019s position similar to the idea of combining moderate realism with moderate social constructionism, which this member had adopted some 15 years ago as the platform for his scholarly work. We also found the book topical, especially from the viewpoint of the famous \u2018science wars\u2019 between realists and social constructionists. Hautam\u00e4ki\u2019s notion sits well with the general idea of Niiniluoto and Saarinen (1986) that in the heated debates between various \u2019isms\u2019 we tend to overlook how many similarities there are across various approaches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While we liked the general idea, we struggled with some of the distinctions through which Hautam\u00e4ki tried to make room for his notion. In particular, we felt Hautam\u00e4ki was exercising a losing battle in his numerous attempts to make the distance to realism, which he at times calls by that name, while at times calling it \u2018scientific realism\u2019. The problem is that it is, in fact, rather hard to draw the demarcation line between most of the ideas of scientific realism and Hautam\u00e4ki\u2019s perspective relativism. For instance, when we take into consideration the three-level ontology of Popper, the notion of theory-ladenness of observations, Kuhn\u2019s paradigms and, overall, the formulations like those of Niiniluoto (1999) for scientific realism (which he calls \u201ccritical scientific realism\u201d), it is nearly impossible to see any genuine differences any longer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To be blunt, Hautam\u00e4ki\u2019s perspective relativism can be argued to be fundamentally similar to scientific realism, only peppered with certain accentuations nodding towards relativism. It is a pity Hautam\u00e4ki is so confusing regarding these distinctions up to the point that he can be claimed to fabricate a strawman of (scientific) realism to develop his claims of uniqueness. It would have been far easier for the reader to digest had he chosen na\u00efve realism (e.g. logical positivism) as his \u2018enemy\u2019 at the realism end: All of his distinctions would work against that position. However, perhaps he did not opt for that strategy since the schools of thought linked to na\u00efve realism are these days viewed as dead as they go. Hence, making distinctions to them would not have been very effective.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conclusion<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

We found Hautam\u00e4ki\u2019s notion of perspective relativism as a valid notion content-wise, which however is far less innovative than the author claims it to be. It is, after all, a notion under the umbrella of scientific realism, only stressing the constructionist (or relativist) aspects of that stream of thought. The book is worth reading especially if one wishes to go comprehensively through the philosophical position of one’s own in a self-critical manner. Bold, even wild claims are often helpful as \u2018test-balls\u2019 in such exercises.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TSElosophers meeting 8.4.2022. Participants: Erkki Lassila, Kari Lukka, Otto Rosendahl and Mia Salo Antti Hautam\u00e4ki (2019) N\u00e4k\u00f6kulmarelativismi [Perspective relativism](SoPhi). Summary In this book, which appears only in Finnish, Antti Hautam\u00e4ki introduces the notion of \u201cperspective relativism\u201d (our translation of the Finnish term \u201cn\u00e4k\u00f6kulmarelativismi\u201d). It is presented as a middle-of-the-road approach to the philosophy of science, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3160,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[87,105],"class_list":["post-1044","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-book","tag-methodology","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/tselosophers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1044","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/tselosophers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/tselosophers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/tselosophers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3160"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/tselosophers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1044"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/tselosophers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1044\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1050,"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/tselosophers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1044\/revisions\/1050"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/tselosophers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/tselosophers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/tselosophers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}