Pluralism (philosophy)

This article is about the term pluralism in branches of philosophy. For the ancient Greek school of thought, see Pluralist school.

Pluralism is a term used in philosophy, meaning "doctrine of multiplicity", often used in opposition to monism ("doctrine of unity") and dualism ("doctrine of duality"). The term has different meanings in metaphysics and epistemology.

In metaphysics, pluralism is a doctrine that many basic substances make up reality, while monism holds existence to be a single substance, often either matter (materialism) or mind (idealism), and dualism believes two substances, such as matter and mind, to be necessary.

In epistemology, epistemological pluralism is the position that there is not one consistent set of truths about the world, but rather many. Often this is associated with pragmatism and conceptual and cultural relativism. A particular version proposes that a unified approach to all human knowledge based on reductionism is an implausible goal.

Metaphysics

See also: Monism and Dualism

Metaphysical pluralism in philosophy is the multiplicity of metaphysical models of the structure and content of reality, both as it appears and as logic dictates that it might be, as is exhibited by the four related models in Plato's Republic, and as developed in the contrast between phenomenalism and physicalism. Pluralism is in contrast to the concept of monism in metaphysics, while dualism is a limited form, a pluralism of exactly two models, structures, elements, or concepts. A distinction is made between the metaphysical identification of realms of reality and the more restricted sub-field of ontological pluralism that examines what exists in each of these realms.

Ontological pluralism

Ontological pluralism is the view that there are different ways or modes of being. "There are numbers, fictional characters, impossible things, and holes. But, we don’t think these things all exist in the same sense as cars and human beings." In very technical terms, ontological pluralism claims that an accurate description of reality uses multiple quantifiers that do not range over a single domain of discourse.

Classical elements

Main article: Classical elements

Historically, ontological pluralism was directly related to the belief in classical elements, and exists in many ancient world views. The concept of elements in the Western tradition originates from Babylonian mythology. The Enûma Eliš, a text written between the 18th and 16th centuries BC, describes four cosmic elements: the sea, earth, sky, and wind. In Egypt, these elements were fire, water, air, and earth, and in Greece, Empedocles wrote that they were fire, air, water and earth. He called such four elements of physical reality "roots". Actually, Empedocles did not use the word "element" (στοιχεῖον = stoicheion), which seems to appear afterwards in Plato, with different proportions or the root elements indestructible and unchangeable elementary things was born the numerous types of bodies in the world. Empedocles, said that association and disassociation of the elements was creating the reality.

Aristotle incorporated these elements, but his substance pluralism was not material in essence. His hylomorphic theory allowed him to maintain a reduced set of basic material elements as per the Milesians, while answering for the ever-changing flux of Heraclitus and the unchanging unity of Parmenides. In his Physics, due to the continuum of Zeno's paradoxes, as well as both logical and empirical considerations for natural science, he presented numerous arguments against the atomism of Leucippus and Democritus, who posited a basic duality of void and atoms. The atoms were an infinite variety of irreducibles, of all shapes and sizes, which randomly collide and mechanically hook together in the void, thus providing a reductive account of changeable figure, order and position as aggregates of the unchangeable atoms.

Wittgenstein

Another example of ontological pluralism can be found in Ludwig Wittgenstein's notion of language-games; the idea that different mutually agreed rule systems, and in the case of ontological matters, ontological rule systems, are adopted in conversation and communication for a purpose which delineates the rules, constituting the language-game's meaning. For example, it is common to refer to a film, novel or otherwise fictitious or virtual narrative as not being real. Thus a functional ontological distinction is made, despite the fact one really did see the film, and one really did read the novel; that is, despite the fact that one cannot experience something that isn't real, or at least, a real experience. In the context of the language-game however, the characters in the film or novel are not real, where the 'real world' is the everyday world in which we live.

Epistemology

Main article: Epistemological pluralism

Pluralistic conceptual relativism asserts that since there is no right way to carve up the world into concepts (e.g. what counts as an element), there will be several mutually exclusive complete and true descriptions of the world. In the case of cultural relativism, the argument claims that since truth is relative to culture, there will be several descriptions of parts of the world, possibly complete and true on their own sub domains but conflicting when extended to overlap. In the case of pragmatism, the argument claims that since truth is connected to successful action, and success is connected to the goals set by our interests, the correct set of truths will be relative to our interests. Hilary Putnam (a harsh critic of cultural relativism) is fond of the example, "how many objects are there in the world?" Putnam argues that what counts as an object cannot be determined objectively but rather only relative to someone's interests, therefore the true number of objects in the world will change relative to whose interests we have in sight.

In epistemology (how we conceive the structure of "truth"), pluralism is the opposite extreme to pragmatism. Pluralism employs conceptual relativism, while pragmatism employs the radical empiricism's radical translation of the world by way of radical interpretation. Pluralism handles new information by structuring it relationally to other information, while pragmatism handles it by assigning existential meaning to a personal immediacy. Pluralism is metaphysical and meta-ethical, and espouses a cultural relativism with strong social constructivism, while pragmatism is physical, ethical in their opinion and of weak social constructivism. In epistemology Pluralism is relativistic in the way it deals with concepts. For example, taking the concept of human culture, pluralism takes the way of cultural relativism. Here it considers how local natural geography and local history gave rise to cultural truths. Then it considers the set of cultural descriptions of each part of the world, and how they possibly contain mutually exclusive truths. Each can be complete and true in their own yet cause falsities when extended to overlap.

Robert Sapolsky reports, after decades of scientific field work, that his chimps had "27 different variants of regional behavioral differences", unique cultures based largely on tool making. Franz Boas performed his anthropology in a similar way, empirically, while developing his theory of cultural relativism.

See also

• Anekantavada
• Epistemology
• Legal pluralism
• Nelson Goodman
• Panarchism
• Pantheism
• Pluralism in political philosophy
• Pluralism in political theory
• Postmodernism
• Value pluralism

Further reading

• Goodman,Nelson, 1978, Ways of Worldmaking, Hackett, ISBN 0915144522, paperback ISBN 0915144514