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Essay / Resisting conversations is not analogous to the notional...
In Schafer's article Rater Relativism and the Problem of Moral Disagreement, Rater Relativism offers two options to someone participating in a disagreement . They can either “converge” with their opponent (agree) on a belief or refuse to converse with their opponent. Williams' article, The Truth in Relativism, defends the idea of theoretical and real confrontations. Williams' idea of theoretical and actual confrontation says that a person participating in a disagreement can only convert to their opponent's beliefs if and only if they are able to recognize this conversion as a real option. If there is no real option, then there is no real disagreement. I will prove that theoretical confrontation is not analogous to refusing to take part in a conversation. I will first summarize the respective views of Schafer and Williams. I will also explain three differences between the views. I will describe two particular cases where it may appear that notional confrontations are ways of refusing to participate in a conversation. I call them the Amish Case and the Alien Case (Williams, page 225). I will show how notional confrontations, which resemble Schafer's relativistic evaluator resisting a conversation, are in some cases not actually notional confrontations. In other cases, I will show that notional confrontations are confused with resistance to a conversation because they appear to be a convergence, when in reality they are conversions. Schafer attempts to determine what distinguishes moral disagreements from empirical disagreements. It offers two options; either moral disagreement is not really disagreement, or they are disagreements but morality is somewhat objective (Schafer, p. 603). Whether we hold that moral disagreements are not real disagreements, like empi...... middle of article ......ms, is an objective question (Williams, p. 223). This is the third and final difference between Schafer's Relativism and Williams. For Williams, it is neither sufficient nor necessary for a peer in moral disagreement to want to convert to their opponent's “system.” For Schafer, a peer in moral disagreement must at least want to converge with his opponent. The truth value of the content of a proposition is based on the technical notion of truth, of truths. Therefore, for two adversaries to converge on a moral belief, they must both have the same conception of truth regarding that belief.References(1) Schafer, Karl. “Evaluator Relativism and the Problem of Moral Disagreement.” The Southern Journal of Philosophy 50.4 (2012): 602-20. Web.(2) Williams, Bernard. “The truth in relativism”. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 75 (1975): 215-28. Internet.