“It's obvious.” But the argument I am about to lay out, which exposes just how ludicrous Report‐Colbert was, will teach some of the most fundamental and important lessons about how to do philosophy.
My Truth (Individual Relativism)
[My book is] not just some collection of reasoned arguments supported by facts. That is the coward's way out. This book is Truth. My Truth.
– Stephen Colbert
From the introduction to I Am America (And So Can You!) 14
His use of the phrase “My Truth” was the first clue that Colbert was kidding. He was suggesting that, somehow, truth belongs to him and can be solely determined by him. In doing so, Colbert was espousing a naive “individual relativism.” In general, relativism says that there are no truths in a universal sense; truth is relative. More specifically, individual relativism says that truth is relative to individuals. But to understand what this means, and why the real Colbert cannot possibly be an individual relativist, some questions need answering.
If truth is relative, what is truth? Truth is a property of beliefs and propositions. (“Proposition” is a term the wordinistas came up with because “sentence” wasn't good enough.) A belief or proposition is true if it corresponds to the way the world is; it is false if it does not. Philosophers call this “the correspondence theory of truth.” The part of the world that a true belief or proposition corresponds to is called that proposition's “truthmaker” – it is the part of the world that makes that proposition or belief true.
What does it mean for a truth to be relative? This is a question best answered by example. “You should drive on the right side of the road.” This truth is relative to culture; it is true in the United States but false in the United Kingdom. There is no universal truth about what side of the road you should drive on – it's a matter of convention. The truth of “Baconnaise tastes great” is relative to individuals. One person thinks it's true, and another thinks it's false, but neither one is right or wrong because there is no universal fact of the matter about it. Or consider whether Colbert's The Late Show is funny. You think he's hilarious; your mother does not get it: but neither of you is wrong or right (but, between you and me, your mom is wrong).15
The individual relativist thinks all truths are like this, but obviously this cannot be the case. For example, whether or not you exist is not a matter of convention or taste. If someone believes that you do not exist, it is not “true for them.” Your existence is a matter of fact. They might believe you do not exist, sure, but their belief is false. In addition, individual relativism in this form is self‐contradictory. It says there are no universal truths. But is not the individual relativist trying to establish that individual relativism is universally true? How can it be universally true that there are no universal truths? And, since something is true if it corresponds to the way the world is, if there were no universal truths there would be no world. The only way everything can be relative is if nothing exists to make any proposition universally true. And that's crazy!
Some individual relativists do not think everything is relative, just some things. For example, some people think only moral truths are relative to individuals. Is abortion immoral? The individual relativist would say that, for people who believe abortion is wrong, it is wrong – “wrong for them.” But for people who do not think abortion is wrong, it is right – “right for them.” Because moral questions, like the abortion question, are often very hard to answer, this is a very tempting line to take. Whatever each person thinks is the right answer, is the right answer for that person.
But individual relativism has harrowing consequences if true. If individual relativism was true, being racist or white supremist would be the morally acceptable attitude for a neo‐Nazi, Proud Boy, or Oath Keeper to take. Killing people and eating them would be morally acceptable for Jeffery Dahmer. That such things are morally acceptable would be “true for them.” I think it safe to assume, not very many people are going to agree. Disagreements from racists and the cannibals cannot make racism and murderous cannibalism right.
So Report‐Colbert cannot have really believed that his book, I Am America (And So Can You!), was “his Truth.” It might be a collection of opinions he thought were true, but that does not make those opinions “Truth.”
Wikiality (Cultural Relativism)
I love Wikipedia. Any site that's got a longer entry on Truthiness than on Lutherans has its priorities straight … any user can change any entry, and if enough other users agree with him it becomes true … If only the entire body of human knowledge worked this way. And it can, thanks to tonight's word: wikiality … We should apply these principles to all information. All we need to do is convince a majority of people that some factoid is true … what we're doing is bringing democracy to knowledge.
– Stephen Colbert
The Colbert Report, July 31, 2006
Wikipedia no longer operates like it did in 2006. Not everyone can edit it, those who do are vetted, and additions and changes are carefully sourced and fact‐checked. As online encyclopedias go, it’s fairly reliable and useful–especially as a starting point for research. But in 2006, not so much; that’s why Colbert coined the term to describe the “reality” created by majority consensus. Report‐Colbert told us that if someone writes something on Wikipedia and enough people believe it, it “becomes true.” With Wikiality, Colbert espoused a naive “cultural relativism.” The cultural relativist, like the individual relativist, says that truth is relative. However, the cultural relativist says truth is relative to whole cultures, rather than to individuals. In the moral realm, the cultural relativist says that the majority consensus on morality in a culture defines morality for that culture. For example, if the majority of the people in a culture agree that abortion is moral, then abortion is moral for the members of that culture.
Cultural relativism is tempting because it appears to resolve cultural conflicts. In America, most people marry for love. However, for most of human history, marriage was socially motivated and arranged by family. Until recently, for example, nearly all Hindu marriages were arranged by the parents of the couple. As Colbert himself said, “They [don't] fall in love, they [learn] to love. It's a wonderful system.”16 Unlike Colbert, most Americans would think it morally wrong for Indian parents to determine their child's marriage partner. But the cultural moral relativist would say that it is “true for them” that arranged marriage is morally right since it is the custom of the majority in their culture. And this seems to have some intuitive appeal, because there does not seem to be a universal “right answer” to the question, “What is the correct motivation for marriage?”17 It also would seem to promote tolerance between cultures.
Indeed, it seems that the morality of some things is relative to culture. For example, in many places in Europe, men and women share the same public toilet facilities. And (transgender issues aside) it would be morally wrong of a European, who was used to this practice, to use the opposites sex's bathroom in America (as long as s/he was aware of the American custom.) But it cannot be that the answers to all moral questions are relative to culture. Consider female circumcision – where the clitoris of a nine‐year‐old girl is cut off without anesthetic and her vagina is sewn shut. Since this practice is culturally accepted in many parts of Africa, cultural relativism would say it's morally acceptable in those parts of Africa. But clearly most people will disagree and appeal to moral facts that transcend culture to insist that female circumcision is always wrong, regardless of what culture it occurs in.
Contrary to its aims, cultural moral relativism can actually promote intolerance between cultures. For example,