So claims Stanley Fish:
Philosophy is fun; it can be a good mental workout; its formulations sometimes display an aesthetically pleasing elegance. I’m just denying to philosophy one of the claims made for it – that its conclusions dictate or generate non-philosophical behavior …
His earlier rant against philosophy here. Paul Boghossian points (Scribd) to David Velleman's dissent in the comments:
Fish's examples of "real life" are not the ones to which relativism would matter. Consider instead how we (Westerners) deal with cultures that practice female genital mutilation. We could say, "Well, what's right for us isn't necessarily right for them, and it's meaningless to ask which of us is 'really' right." Or we could say, "If we're right (as we think), then they must be wrong, and we should try to convince them." Or we can say, "Both of us are right in the context of our own cultures, but some cultures are superior to others." And so on. In the first case, we don't even try to talk to them. In the second case, we try to engage them in moral argument. In the third, we expose them to our way of life and count on them to change. These are real-life alternatives, and in today's world, the choice among them matters a great deal.
The Dish 