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Stove's Discovery of the Worst Argument in the World

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 October 2002

Abstract

The winning entry in David Stove's Competition to Find the Worst Argument in the World was: “We can know things only as they are related to us/insofar as they fall under our conceptual schemes, etc., so, we cannot know things as they are in themselves.” That argument underpins many recent relativisms, including postmodernism, post-Kuhnian sociological philosophy of science, cultural relativism, sociobiological versions of ethical relativism, and so on. All such arguments have the same form as ‘We have eyes, therefore we cannot see’, and are equally invalid.

Type
Brief Report
Copyright
© The Royal Institute of Philosophy 2002

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