Such an interpretation would be a misrepresentation, it is urged, for the strict relativity of the standpoint limits all conclusions to phenomena, and permits no inference concerning the nature of the "Unknowable.
Such a rational ethics, based on the laws which condition welfare rather than on a direct estimation of happiness, and premising the relativity of all pains and pleasures, escapes fundamental objections to the earlier hedonism (e.
What connection is there between the Connotation and the Relativity of Names?
To illustrate further the relativity of terms, we may mention some of the chief classes of them.
The argument can never carry us beyond the relativity of religious truth.
Berkley explained the relativity of our sight-perceptions with a view to show that the ultimate ground of all ideas is God.
He further agrees with them in teaching the relativity of all categories except Substance and Quality.
Even John Henry Newman was compelled to teach the relativity of truth, and that a doctrine of development must be accepted.
Yet Roger Bacon seems to have apprehended both progress and therelativity of truth.
Perhaps so, but of this next: I am not now speaking of probability; I am speaking of certainty; and unless we deny the doctrine of the relativity of knowledge, we cannot but conclude that there is no absolute certainty in this case.
Now this consideration, which arises immediately from the doctrine of the relativity of knowledge, is alone amply sufficient to destroy the present argument.
Of course it is a self-evident truism that the doctrine of Relativity is destructive of Materialism, if by Materialism we mean a theory which ignores that doctrine.
But after this proposition had been carefully justified, it remained to show that the doctrine of the relativity of knowledge compelled us to carry our discussion into a region of yet higher abstraction.
Then Einstein came along with his relativity theory, and told us we were wrong.
I haven't the remotest idea what relativity means.
This teaching is often found in her pages, and in connection with the assertion of the relativity of morals.
Even more explicit is her assertion, in one of the mottoes of Daniel Deronda, of the relativity of moral power.
I have pointed out that the evolutionist ethics is relative--implying always a relation between organism and environment--but this relativity is qualified by its objective character.
It is not merely that many modern writers assert some general doctrine as to the relativity of right and wrong.
This, however, would be an error--the sort of error that the theory of relativity avoids.
The supposition is due to the confusion of a relativity in the subject-matter of the judgment, with a relativity of the judgment itself to the individual that gives utterance to it.
Side-note: Such relativity is no less true in regard to the ratiocinative combinations of each individual, than in regard to his percipient capacities.
But Plato was here illustrating the larger doctrine which he ascribes to Protagoras in common with Herakleitus: and therefore the more complicated case of relativity might suit his purpose better.
Side-note: The formula of Relativity does not imply that every man believes himself to be infallible.
Such relativity belongs as much to the world of Conception, as to the world of Perception.
Though relativity in both senses is comprehended by the Protagorean affirmation--Homo Mensura--yet relativity in the latter sense is all which that affirmation essentially requires.
But the Sokratic Dialectic embodies the same recognition, and the same essential relativity to the hearer's mind, more forcibly than any rhetoric.
Relations are nothing in the object purely and simply without a comparing subject 127 Relativity twofold--to the comparing Subject--to another object, besides the one directly described ib.
In short, disregard of this relativity is a fallacy to be guarded against.
Caird applies the name Relativity simply to the relation of likeness, i.
Bain calls his law the Law of Relativity simply, having regard to the relation of difference, i.
It has been expressed with many little variations, and there has been a good deal of discussion as to the best way of expressing it, the relativity of the word best being often left out of sight.
The Protagorean Law of Relativity has regard to yet another relation, the relation of knowledge to the knowing mind: these other logical laws are of relations among the various items of knowledge.
Footnote 1: It is significant of the unsuitableness of the vague unqualified word Relativity to express a logical distinction that Dr.
I have said that this law of Homogeneous Counter-relativity has not been recognised by logicians.
And much as to the proper relativity of rates, involved both in matters of freight classification and of enforcement of the long and short haul clause, was left untouched.
In this connection, it seems odd that none of the briefs for the government mentioned an important instance of the undisputed exercise of such power to establish relativity of rates.
Trade jealousies in particular--the rivalry of producing and consuming centres--render relativity of rates of paramount importance to shippers.
But this does not mean mere relativity as between directly competing commodities or places.
The question has forced itself forward constantly as to whether the existence of the alleged discrimination in rates is merely a matter of relativity in cost of operation or whether it inflicts positive injury upon the nearer point.
But the western packers demanded that the relativity in favor of the finished product be still further advanced until cattle rates should equal seventy-five per cent.
At first glance it would appear as if, at last, one had here to do with a direct relativity between cost and volume of business.
Thus the former relativityof charges is re-established on a generally lower scale.
True, the commission may, in some cases, accomplish by indirection its purpose of establishing a proper relativity between rates through the exercise of its newly granted power to fix maximum rates.
A thousand conjectures rushed upon me, not one of them with any relativity to what I would find, for when I tore it open there floated out a printed slip.
It was only by degrees that I perceived that the utter want of relativity of the quality that was known in Evanston as True Womanliness, was due to its being conditioned very much as I thought of myself as happiest to be.
But having so declared, the fact of the sheerrelativity of our knowledge is not disturbed thereby nor controverted.
The same relativity of time is also expressed in the special myth which is quoted in Polier's work, vol.
It left, however, the ground and root of such necessity out of account, overlooked the relativity of all necessity which follows from it, and thereby made the quite unthinkable fiction of an absolute necessity, i.
This deserves notice, because to forget the relativity of a relative word, and to reason upon it as if it were an absolute, is an oversight not unfrequent.
Relativity of the predicates of Quantity and Quality:-- "It seems necessary that I should say something of the word Quantus, from which the word Quantity is derived.
Greek: me/tron] as pervading all the Categories, is analogous to the passage above referred to in the Politicus of Plato, and implies the Relativity involved more or less in all predicates.
And the observation is much more extensively true than he was aware; for he both conceives and defines the Category of Relation or Relativity (Ad Aliquid) in a way much narrower than really belongs to it.
We see therefore that the idea of Relativity attaches to the first of the ten Categories, as well as to the nine others.
Illustration] X The Relativity of Evil As we survey the course of this wonderful evolution, it begins to become manifest that moral evil is simply the characteristic of the lower state of living as looked at from the higher state.
