Talk:Relativist fallacy

This article at this writing identifies a "fallacy" I have never seen named as such. Indeed, to call any relativism an instance of a "relativist fallacy" is itself fallacious--a failure to engage in the argument that is needed to demonstrate that whatever sort of relativism one is addressing is false. This entry strikes me, as a philosopher, as simply worthless. I will delete it unless someone can explain to me why I shouldn't. (By the way, I personally am just about the furthest you can get from a relativist.)

OK, a Google search actually brings up other results. Please consult for how the present, blatantly biased, Wikipedia article could be improved. --LMS


 * The source you link is poor and cites no sources itself.


 * As it stands, this article has no sources, period. Nothing in this article appears to be solid scholarly thought, especially given the subject domain it falls under. If no reliable academic sources can be found, I will request deletion. dlainhart (talk) 14:46, 23 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I would agree with deletion, this article has no place in an encyclopedia.--Tallard (talk) 02:46, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

I've edited the entry. I hope ya'll can understand my earlier objection. --LMS


 * See also : Logical fallacy

formal fallacy
This is not a formal fallacy. I have removed the error. --Banno (talk) 22:32, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

This entry needs to be purged
Even the title relativist fallacy is a blanket attack without any possibly valid argument against several indefeasible philosophical systems. Imagine, how would the Realist Fallacy or the Aristotle Fallacy sound to most readers? Like yellow journalism (trash), which is what it is. BlueMist (talk) 02:10, 3 August 2011 (UTC)
 * I don't understand your complaint. How something sounds - that is, whether someone finds the name of a particular fallacy offensive - has nothing to do with whether it is a fallacy. A fallacy is simply an argument whose conclusion does not follow logically from its premises, whether the conclusion itself is true or false; see Argument from fallacy. There does seem to be a counter-fallacy to the relativist fallacy, e.g. claiming that something is true for one person because it is true for someone else. That would probably be an instance of faulty generalization i.e. the inductive fallacy. Calling something the "inductive fallacy" is no smear on induction; neither does calling something the "relativist fallacy" smear relativism. At least, not in any way that is obvious to me. Does the If-by-whiskey fallacy denigrate whiskey? In any case, the result of Articles for deletion/Relativist fallacy was "keep". If you want to nominate the article for deletion again, you would need to come up with better arguments for deletion than appeared in the last nomination. --Teratornis (talk) 05:04, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

I think the argument made by "NY Amateur" is, well, just that, amateurish. I do think that perhaps it should be the "Relativism of Definition" fallacy? Not necessary, but yeah, you get the point. One more thing - it seems that perhaps someone's "feelings" were hurt by the uncomfortable definition so they struck back with this cute little tidbit: "namely, begging the question against an earnest, intelligent, logically-competent relativist." While I see the point in noting the "begging of the question" the rest is just drivel and should be removed. I'm on a school network (Temple University) so I do not think it would be wise to edit. I think it's plain that it should be removed. It's obvious WHY it would be begging the question, no need to say that the relativist is all of those flowery words. 155.247.135.150 (talk) 19:46, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

Citation, at least as far back as 1977
I'm working on something else, but found this during my research (I was looking for examples, of this fallacy, and noted that dispute about whether it was "real", so did a quick Google Scholar search). Mind, 1977, Vol.86 (341), p.78, is an article entitled Three ethical fallacies by Brenda Cohen, then of the University of Surrey. Her piece doesn't have significant citation. The Google Scholar search only gets "about 89 results", but some hits appear to use the term in quite sophisticated analysis. How many references are needed to say this is a real thing, or "notable", I don't know. MrRedwood (talk) 02:11, 11 August 2017 (UTC)

Should be Deleted
This article should be deleted. This isn't a "fallacy" in the sense of a common name for a bad form of inference. In the earlier discussion on whether this page should be retained the entire argument boiled down to some editors googling the phrase and declaring that "the phrase exists." The trouble is that this phrase does not refer to any single, coherent, consist thing across the philosophical literature. Just because F-searching this phrase turns up some results does not mean the phrase actually was used in those instances to refer to a notable concept - "fallacy" is sometimes used as a synonym for "mistake" or "wrong idea" and it seems that most instances of "Relativist Fallacy" in philosophy refer to completely different errors related to one of a thousand different kinds of relativism. TL,DR: There is no such thing as the relativist fallacy. Loquacious Folly (talk) 02:53, 15 July 2021 (UTC)