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Perspectivism: The notion that
every system of human beliefs is some personal or social
perspective.
Since every human belief is some belief of some
person(s) at some time
and place with some relevant information and some relevant
ignorance,
the notion of perspectivism has some validity and truth, but it is easy
to abuse or confuse these in a
relativistic or
politically correct way, in which any human tenet ends up as
"personal point of view", with various qualifications to the effect that
you are "entitled" to it (so the speaker says) and it is "equivalent" to
any person's point of view (idem).
This is a confusion, since it is evident that different points of
view and different perspectives, are more or less well-founded on
evidence, more or less well thought out,
more or less informed, and that these mores and lesses are not -
when fairly established, which is usually possible - a matter of mere
personal perspectivual difference, and
give often good rational evidence for
preferring this or that system of
assumptions.
Another confusion to note and avoid is that the
notion that every system of human beliefs is - "merely" - some personal
or social perspective establishes some
relativity and articulates some human shortcoming as to being able to
get at the real truth.
First, all are similarly afflicted in this respect in the same way
that all have two eyes that enable stereoscopic vision, but not
similarly afflicted in their degrees of knowledge, relevant information,
or intelligence, just as some have better eyes than others, and some
better tools to use their eyes well than others.
Second, the relativity that may be involved does not matter for many
purposes, and the biases or limitations or prejudices it may introduce
may be avoided or minimized by good methodology and
experimental design.
Third, the fact that all belief is personal,
together with the fact that all human minds are limited, finite, and
spatially and temporally local, together with the human gift of
language, in fact makes
it possible to use all these different perspectives to find out,
systematically, by reasoning and experiment, how things really are -
and, human beings being as they are, this may take many human
generations and much discussions and disagreements, to get more or less
resolved.
Fourth, the usual eventual resolution (apart from religious or
political faiths, and
fanatics and flat-earthers of all kinds) is that human
science finds some way to translate a
system of assumptions and established empirical
evidence for it into
some working technology, that works regardless of one's beliefs
and knowledge, and constitutes a real addition to nature in the shape of
human artefacts based on human knowledge.
Consequently, the notion of perspectivism if carefully used may shed
some useful lights, especally as regards
prejudice, evidence, bias, and human
personal limitations, and if not carefully used often ends in
relativistic,
post-modern,
polically correct
pretenses, normally to the effect that "all" systems of beliefs are
somehow "equivalent" - which is a falsehood,
even it is a pleasing falsehood
for those who believe in some system of nonsense, and dislike to be
refuted or found out.
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