Mostafa Malekian, Two Narratives of Pluralism

The concept of pluralism in epistemology, two narratives of pluralism

This view is an epistemological one and is truly neither relativistic nor, a fortiori, nihilistic. According to this view, it is indeed possible that one way of life is better than others and is also true, but, according to one of the two narratives I will recount, we have no choice but to tolerate all ways of life; one narrative holds that the universe is inherently such that it bears multiple interpretations and is compatible with more than one interpretation; if you interpret it one way, everything will turn out in favor of that interpretation, and if you interpret it another way, everything will turn out in favor of this interpretation. The world truly lacks a decisive testability that would reveal itself nakedly; there are always things that allow all tendencies, schools, ideologies, isms, religions, and sects to persist in their claims. In a sense, the world possesses a kind of intrinsic ambiguity. Therefore, according to this narrative, no one's interpretation has precedence over another's such that it would warrant shutting down the interpretations of others. The second narrative of pluralism concludes that there is no intrinsic ambiguity in the world that would be susceptible to multiple interpretations; rather, it admits of only one interpretation, but each part of this interpretation is held by someone, so we have no choice but a kind of collaborative effort. In other words, there is a worldview that may well be the only perspective corresponding to reality, but this worldview is not held by a single person; it is like a shattered mirror, each piece of which is held by someone, and if we allow everyone the opportunity to emerge and manifest, one day we will arrive at the whole of it; one person may have correctly understood one point, a second person another point, and a third person yet another, and if we obstruct other viewpoints, we will be deprived of one of these and will fall into an unjustified preference. This is a kind of mechanistic view of our knowledge of being.

Audio file Watch the video clip on YouTube Source: Session 53 of the Moral Psychology lecture series