Stephen Colbert and Philosophy - Aaron Allen Schiller [6]
Maybe that was a bit too philosophical. Let me break it down. If individual relativism is true, then if your friend wants to say that “Abraham Lincoln was not assassinated” is true because that is what his gut says, according to the individual relativist, that is fine—that’s his truth. And he’s just as right as you are when you say that Lincoln was assassinated.8 Since there is no universal truth, no one’s right and no one’s wrong. So it can’t even be universally true that “you are reading this book right now” or that “you exist.” If someone believes that you don’t exist, they are not wrong … that you don’t exist is true for that person.
But the problems don’t stop there. It can’t even be universally true that there are no universal truths. And that means that the individual relativist must admit that his own view is not universally true—it’s just true for him. But isn’t that what he tried to establish—that his view of “no universal truth” is universally true?
Hopefully, the absurdity of these consequences digs into your skull with the same ferocity of Stephen Jr.’s talons ripping into a Canadian salmon. If someone’s gut tells them that you exist, that is not “true for them.” That’s not true for anyone. You exist and no person believing that you don’t can make you not exist. In addition, the relativist contradicts himself when he says there is no universal truth. “Really? There is NO universal truth? Is that universally true?”
Actually, it probably seems like there are more individual relativists than there actually are. People often equate the phrase “X is true for me” with “I believe that X is true.” When they say “X is true for me but not for you” they don’t really mean “the world is a different way for you than it is for me.” They mean “The world seems a different way to me than it does to you—we believe different things.” And that’s fine; very rarely do two people see things exactly the same way. But we don’t think they are both right; perhaps they are both wrong, but at best only one is right.
Moral Relativism
We live in a democracy, which means that we should treat every theory equally.
—Stephen Colbert, I Am America (And So Can You!)
I am being a little unfair. Obviously truths about physical states of affairs—your sitting in a chair, your existence, Lincoln’s assassination—can’t be relative to individuals. So there are some universal truths. But some individual relativists don’t think that all truth is relative, just specific kinds. For instance, aren’t moral and political truths relative to individuals? Can’t “abortion is wrong” be true for one person, but not for another? Can’t “America should return to family values” be true for Hannity but not for Colmes?
These sound more promising, but individual moral relativism is quickly pushed into absurdities too. A person’s action can only be morally condemned if that person was in the moral wrong. But if there is no universal moral truth, one can’t be in the moral wrong. If moral truth is relative to individuals, then Hitler wasn’t wrong for trying to exterminate the Jews. “The Jews should be exterminated” was true for him. We can’t morally condemn female genital mutilation (a.k.a. female circumcision). That it should be practiced is true for those who believe it should be done. We can’t blame Colbert for not springing for a new typewriter—one with a working lowercase “p”—for his executive assistant Thomas Bindlestaff. That Thomas should be forced to reverse his paper and type an upside down lowercase “d” every time he needs the letter “p” is true for Colbert