Jak polemizować z relatywizmem kulturowym. O dwóch strategiach antyrelatywistycznych (How to Argue against Cultural Relativism: On Two Anti-Relativist Strategies). In: A. Brożek, A. Chybińska, M. Gryganiec, M. Tkaczyk (red.), Myśli o języku, nauce i wartościach. Seria druga, Warszawa: Semper 2016, 495-505.

Abstract

The chapter examines how cultural relativism should be criticized by reconstructing its core commitments and comparing two anti-relativist strategies. Cultural relativism is analysed as the conjunction of a thesis about the cultural conditioning of thought and a thesis about the incommensurability of cultures. Against this background, the chapter contrasts a Cartesian strategy, which rejects cultural conditioning through methodological doubt, with a pragmatic strategy, which accepts such conditioning but denies that it entails incommensurability. Drawing on pragmatism and the network model of rationality, the author argues that the pragmatic strategy is theoretically stronger and better suited to explaining rational change within and between cultures, while avoiding both relativism and ethnocentrism.