1/ 🚨RELATIVISM!🚨 Relativism says truth claims are not objectively, absolutely, universally true, they're only true relative to the culture they emerge from As John Searle explains, this view has eroded standards of quality with disastrous results So, Relativism: A Thread🧵

2/ As I explain in the QT below, Wokeness is deeply postmodern. For reasons I will briefly explain in the next tweet, postmodern philosophers think it is impossible for us to actually get a grasp on objective, absolute, universal, timeless truths.

3/ The idea is that because: -we only have our own perspective -our thinking is warped by our biases, prejudices, and self-interest -we are socially conditioned to have certain beleifs That claims we say are "true" aren't actually, absolute, universal, timeless, and objective.

4/ The postmoderns also argue that we can only talk about and understand the world using the terms, words, and linguistic categories that our culture gives us, and those categories were developed by people who wanted us to think about the world in the way they wanted us to...

5/ The idea is that we can construct any category we want, and we can organize things however we want. Lets use books as an example. You can organize you books in order of author, genre, length, publisher, fiction/non-fiction, or by the colour of the cover...

6/ We can divide organize the books using whatever categories we want to invent. It's up to us. Now, here is the trick: the woke think that the categories we use depend on what we value and what we want...our INTERESTS. As such, postmodernists think the categories are really...

7/ a reflection of the goals, values, prejudices, and self interests of the people who made them The key is this: the woke don't think our categories help us get a TRUE picture of the world. They think we invent categories ACCORDING TO OUR OWN INTRESTS, not according to truth.

8/ So because we only have our perspective, are socially conditioned to believe certain things, are warped by our biases, prejudices, and self-interest, and can only think using the categories that were created by people with their own agenda... We can't grasp objective truth.

9/ One more thing to learns, and then we're off and running!! What woke activists do is use the neo-marxist method of "critical theory" and blend it with postmodernism to create "critical constructivism." So let's explain critical constructivism, and how the woke use that idea.

10/ Critical constructivism is an "epistemological Stance (epistemology just means theory of knowledge) that such things as, truth, knowledge, morality, linguistic categories, identity, viewpoint, worldview and science are socially constructed by the dominant powers in society.

11/ Thus, woke theorists think all of our beliefs, truth claims, knowledge, and even our identity are the product of social processes...processes created by the dominant powers in society and which are shot through with prejudice, bias, and self-interst.

12/ As Joe Kincheloe says, Critical Constructivists think the worlds socially constructed by powerful interests And *this is key* pedagogy (the process of teaching) is not about teaching the truth, it is PRIMARILY ABOUT MAKING PEOPLE AWARE OF POWER DYNAMICS. however...

13/ When they talk about "power dynamics" they are talking about power dynamics as views through the marxist lens of "oppressed" and "oppressor." There is another point here. The woke are not trying to account for bias so we can find truth! Remember, they are relativists....

14/ So they don't believe in objective truth. Instead, they want to be "epistemological pluralists." What this means is they want all knowledge claims to be seen as equally valid so that no groups has it's knowledge claims elevated above any other groups knowledge claims...

15/ They know that if one grop gets it right, and other groups get is wrong, the group who gets it right will gain clout, prestige, resources, and other forms of social power That means one group gets more power then the others, which the woke see as fundamentally unjust. so...

16/ They want to say that all knowledge claims are equal so that no one group gets more social power then another group. They want political and social power to distributed equally, truth be damned. this is not a niche view, it is dominant in education colleges and universities

17/ Occasional Paper No 7 from the American Council of Learned Societies makes the claim that the most powerful philosophies have shown that such things as objectivity are not to be trusted and are just a reflection of local historical conditions. This is nonsense.

18/ Of course, it is also self refuting. If it is true that ideas, beliefs, truth claims etc, only reflect the local culture and are not objectively true....then wokeness only reflects it's local culture and therefore it we have no reason to believe it over any other view!

19/ As Alvin Plantinga pointed out 20 years ago, relativists don't think relativism is true relative to them...they think relativism is TRUE! This is clearly self refuting

20/ wokeness cynically uses relativism as a way to knock the objective truth claims of enlightenment liberalism in order to take power away from enlightenment ideas and seize that power in the name of woke ideology. This is a cynical game, and you all ought to be wise to it.

21/ The way to defeat this nonsense is to force the relativist to tell you why you ought to accept his conclusions. After all, if relativism is true, then you can tell the relativist that relativism is only true for the relativist, but that it isn't true for anyone else...

22/ The goal here is to force the relativist to justify his beliefs on the ground of truth. If the relativist appeals to notions of social power or politics, or equality, you simply ask the relativist if his claims about equality, justice, and social power are....TRUE.

23/ You must force the woke relativist on to the ground of objective truth. Don't let them advance relativism while acting like their view of wokeness is objectively true. /fin