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Against Relativism: A Philosophical Defense of Method

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Although I agree with the author that radical relativism is absurd, I don't agree with his proposal for an acceptable form of realism. He advocates the philosophy of Peirce, along with Peirce's confusion over the difference between truth and justification.

The author takes truth to be those beliefs to which the scientific method leads us in the long run. The question arises, are these beliefs true because the scientific method produces them, or does the scientific method produce them because they are true?

A realist will say that science works because it gets at the truth, while an idealist will say that the truth exists because of science. This leaves the idealist open to charges of relativism, because on his/her view, truth is relative to epistemology.

Harris seems to be an idealist in this regard, and thus he himself is guilty of radical relativism.

Epistemology is a function of truth. It is only because certain things cannot both be true that science is able to function at all. This is not a restriction which science imposes upon itself; it's a restriction which the world imposes on science.

Aside from this crucial problem, Harris also shows his lack of training in the history of philosophy. For example, he accuses Aristotle of sexism for using the word 'man', obviously unaware that the Greek is 'anthropos', which explicitly includes men and women.

On the whole this book is a good idea that suffers from poor execution.