CONCEPT
Anti-Anti-Relativism
Geertz's deliberately awkward double negative: a refusal of both relativism and anti-relativism that holds the productive tension between them — and the ethical stance this volume argues is adequate to the AI transition.
Anti-anti-relativism is Geertz's carefully constructed methodological position, articulated most completely in his 1984 American Anthropological Association presidential address. The double negative is deliberate: it refuses both the relativist claim that all cultural practices are equally valid within their own contexts and the anti-relativist assertion of universal standards applicable from outside. Geertz held that both positions contained truth and that neither contained enough truth to justify its exclusive claim. The present volume applies the stance to AI ethics, where the universalism of acceleration and the universalism of precaution both mistake the nature of the evaluative judgment the transition requires.
In The You On AI Field Guide
Relativism holds that evaluative standards are internal to cultures and cannot legitimately be applied across cultural boundaries. Anti-relativism asserts that universal moral standards exist, are accessible to reason, and can be applied from outside to evaluate practices that violate them. Both positions have their advocates, their arguments, and their characteristic blind spots. The relativist risks endorsing practices that