Abstract

The version of moral relativism that Paul Feyerabend discusses in his 1991 book "Three Dialogues on Knowledge" is evaluated. It is shown to be in conflict with an essential feature of appraisal vocabulary known as supervenience. This is enough to render this version of relativism untenable. But the way in which Feyerabend defends his relativist principle against the Platonic objection that relativist is self-refuting also involves that might be called semantic nihilism', the idea that nothing can be said to logically follow from our beliefs and utterances. The roots of semantic nihilism in Feyerabend's philosophy are traced, and semantic nihilism is shown to be untenable in virtue of being dialectically self-refuting