This is philosophy bites with me, Nigel.
Warburton, and me, David Edmonds.
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Fred believes philosophy bites is esoteric and pretentious twaddle.
Fiona believes philosophy Bites is the greatest podcast ever produced.
Could they both be right?
Could the truth about the quality of philosophy bites be relative?
Tim Williamson is the Wickham professor of logic at Oxford University.
Tim Williamson, welcome to philosophy Bytes.
Thank you.
The topic we're going to focus on is the appeal of relativism.
Let's just begin by getting clear what relativism is.
The relativist is someone who doesn't want to say, I'm right and you're wrong, who thinks thinks that everybody has their own point of view.
That point of view is right from its point of view, but not from a different one, and that there's no bottom line below that about who's really right and who's really wrong.
So the relativist is somebody who thinks there's no such thing as absolute truth.
Yes, in lots of contexts that isn't absurd, but in some it is.
If somebody says to me the holocaust didn't happen, you believe that it did.
I believe that it didn't.
It's just like, you like pistachio favored ice cream.