This chapter contains sections titled: Abstract Introduction Arguments Con Arguments Pro Ambivalence Concerning Relativism? The Case of Richard Rorty A Newer Argument Pro: Hales's Defense of Relativism References.

This paper explores the nature of the relationship between reasonable variations in moral justifications and universal moral principles. It examines Wiredu’s distinction between custom and morality, and its implications for the issue of moral justification in African cultures. It argues that Wiredu’s distinction does not adequately articulate how universal moral principles are employed in different circumstances to justify actions and judgments. Wiredu’s distinction implies that a conceptual account of moral justification does not involve custom regarding relative facts and cultural norms. (...) The paper defends a variant of the relativism about moral justification that does imply relativism of truth and incommensurability between two culturally relative moral perspectives. It argues that the plausibility of such relativism is contingent on the possibility of conceptual, cognitive, and epistemic universals, and the idea that moral reasoning is a kind of practical reasoning that does not necessarily depend on intellectual rationality. (shrink)

Gerald Doppelt's recent ?Kuhn's Epistemological Relativism: An Interpretation and Defense? (Inquiry, Vol. 21 [1978], pp. 33?86) offers a reconstruction of Thomas Kuhn's views concerning theory choice in science in which Kuhn's ?incommensurability thesis?, and his epistemological relativism, are defended. It is argued that Doppelt's reconstruction fails to provide an adequate defense, and that both Kuhn's incommensurability thesis, and his epistemological relativism, as reconstructed by Doppelt, remain philosophically unacceptable.

Since Protagoras' classic “man is the measure of all things,” claims of relativism and counter-claims have been tendered. The nineteenth century saw Durkheim, Levy-Bruhl, Westermarck, Pareto, Marx, and others, suggesting that institutions, customs, moral codes, and the like, are “relative” both to the culture and to the time. At the crest of this wave of “relativism” surged a vicious claim: that truth and knowledge itself were merely functions of particular conditions. The “validity” of knowledge was said to be (...) at the whim of historic, social factors. Not only is no theory really true; no particular statement is ever so. Not only is no theory or statement really true; no theory of knowledge has thus far ever been free from the bias of its genesis. There have been no absolute insights for epistemology. Or so, at least, it was claimed. (shrink)

This paper sets out to assess the internal coherence of Roy Bhaskar's transcendental realist account of science. Whilst fully supporting his transcendental derivation of a stratified ontology of structures and generative mechanisms from the scientific practice of experimentation, I argue that Bhaskar's adoption of the stance of epistemic relativism results in his inability to defend the generalizability of this ontology. My argument against his epistemic stance turns on the fact that it rests on a false dichotomy between epistemic (...) class='Hi'>relativism and epistemic absolutism, and, moreover, that it is quite unnecessary for his efforts to avoid the excesses of epistemological foundationalism. The net result of this stance, in my view, is an inability to sustain the normative force of the concepts of truth and scientific explanation precisely at a time when postmodern authors are denying their privileged status. (shrink)

This article attempts to develop a rational reconstruction of Kuhn's epistemological relativism which effectively defends it against an influential line of criticism in the work of Shapere and Scheffler. Against the latter's reading of Kuhn, it is argued (1) that it is the incommensurability of scientific problems, data, and standards, not that of scientific meanings which primarily grounds the relativism argument; and (2) that Kuhnian incommensurability is compatible with far greater epistemological continuity from one theory to (...) another than is implied by the criticisms in question. The reconstruction of Kuhn is then used to show that while it constitutes a provocative form of relativism, it can also plausibly account for the sense in which scientific development is rational, involves standards external to particular paradigms, and exhibits progress of a sort. Finally, the article attempts to develop an adequate critical perspective on Kuhn's relativism by distinguishing a ?short?run? from a ?long?run? relativism, and a relativism concerning scientific knowledge from one concerning scientific rationality in Kuhn; the challenge each poses to positi?vist philosophy of science is distinguished and separately evaluated. (shrink)

The paper interrogates the status, nature and significance of epistemological relativism as a key element of constructionism and critical realism. It finds that epistemological relativism is espoused by authorities in critical realism and marginalized or displaced in the field of management and organization studies, resulting in forms of analysis that are empirically, but not fully critically, realist. This evaluation prompts reflection on the question of whether, how and with what implications epistemological relativism might be (...) recast at the heart of critical realist studies of management and organization. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss the problem of epistemological relativism, which I take to be the problem of providing epistemic norms with an objective rational justification, rather than the problem of arguing for universality. I illustrate the idea of an alternative epistemic norm by means of Evans-Pritchard's discussion of the Azande poison-oracle. Though I take there to be a sharp distinction between relativism and scepticism, nevertheless I present an argument for relativism at the level of epistemic (...) norms which employs the Pyrrhonian sceptic's problem of the criterion. I then attempt to show how a particularist response to the sceptic along the lines outlined by Roderick Chisholm may be combined with a naturalized view of epistemic warrant to ward off the threat of relativism posed by the problem of the criterion. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Abstract From the Epistemology of Disagreement to Epistemic Relativism The Irrelevance of Epistemic Externalism Wittgensteinian Epistemology and Epistemic Relativism Williams's Wittgensteinian Contextualism Wittgensteinian Epistemology Reconsidered Concluding Remarks References.

Epistemology and Relativism Epistemology is, roughly, the philosophical theory of knowledge, its nature and scope. What is the status of epistemological claims? Relativists regard the status of epistemological claims as, in some way, relative— that is to say, that the truths which epistemological claims aspire to are … Continue reading Epistemology and Relativism →.

Epistemology and Relativism Epistemology is, roughly, the philosophical theory of knowledge, its nature and scope. What is the status of epistemological claims? Relativists regard the status of epistemological claims as, in some way, relative— that is to say, that the truths which epistemological claims aspire to are … Continue reading Epistemology and Relativism →.

Feminist approaches in epistemology and philosophy of science have frequently been labelled as ’relativist’, both by feminist as well as by non-feminist philosophers. Regularly the so labelled distance themselves from even the mere suspicion of relativist tendencies. There is a remarkable discrepancy between an attributed and a self-declared relativism. Taking the self-declared relativism of Lorraine Code as an example, the article argues that it is a case of a rhetorical not epistemological relativism, better termed as anti-anti- (...) class='Hi'>relativism, but that there are nevertheless good reasons for feminists to follow Code along that path. (shrink)

Relativists about knowledge ascriptions think that whether a particular use of a knowledge-ascribing sentence, e.g., “Keith knows that the bank is open” is true depends on the epistemic standards at play in the assessor’s context—viz., the context in which the knowledge ascription is being as- sessed for truth or falsity. Given that the very same knowledge-ascription can be assessed for truth or falsity from indefinitely many perspectives, relativism has a striking consequence. When I ascribe knowledge to someone (e.g., when (...) I say that, at a particular time, “Keith knows that the bank is open”), what I’ve said does not get a truth-value absolutely, but only relatively. If this semantic thesis about the word “knows” and its cognates is true, what implications would this have for epistemology, the philosophical theory of knowledge? e present aim will be to engage with this mostly unexplored question, and then to consider how the epistemological conclusions drawn might bear on the plausibility of a relativist semantics for “knows”. (shrink)

Different views on the connection between relativism and feminist epistemologies are often asserted but rarely are these views clearly argued for. This has resulted in a confusingly polarised debate, with some people convinced that feminist epistemologies are committed to relativism (and that this is a reason so be suspicious of them) whilst others make similar criticisms of anti-feminist views and argue that relativism has no place in feminist epistemologies. This chapter is an attempt to clarify this debate. (...) I begin by asking the question “are feminist projects and goals best served by relativism, or by absolutism?” I then sketch out four broad positions one could take on the answer to this question, and evaluate arguments for each one. In the end I conclude that feminist projects can, at least sometimes, be served by relativism, and that the claim they can be served by anti-relativism is under-supported. (shrink)

Relativism, the position that things are for each as they seem to each, was first formulated in Western philosophy by Protagoras, the 5th century BC Greek orator and teacher. This book focuses on the challenge to the possibility of expert knowledge posed by Protagoras, together with responses by the three most important philosophers of the next generation, Plato, Aristotle, and Democritus. In his book Truth, Protagoras made vivid use of two provocative but imperfectly spelled out ideas. First, that everyone (...) is a ‘measure’ of the truth, and that everyone is already capable of determining how things are, since the senses are the best and most credible guides to the truth. Second, given that things appear differently to different people, there is no basis on which to decide that one appearance is true rather than the other. Plato developed these ideas into a more fully worked-out theory, which he then subjected to refutation in the Theaetetus. Aristotle argued that Protagoras’ ideas lead to skepticism in Metaphysics Book G, a chapter which reflects awareness of Plato’s reaction in the Theaetetus. Finally, Democritus incorporated modified Protagorean ideas and arguments into his theory of knowledge and perception. There have been many important recent studies of these thinkers in isolation. However, there has been no attempt to tell a single, coherent story about how Democritus, Plato, and Aristotle responded to Protagoras’ striking claim, and to its perceived implications about knowledge, perception, and truth. This book offers a new account of this important chapter in the development of Greek epistemology. (shrink)

I argue that a standard formulation of hinge epistemology is host to epistemic relativism and show that two leading hinge approaches (Coliva’s acceptance account and Pritchard’s nondoxastic account) are vulnerable to a form of incommensurability that leads to relativism. Building on both accounts, I introduce a new, minimally epistemic conception of hinges that avoids epistemic relativism and rationally resolves hinge disagreements. According to my proposed account, putative cases of epistemic incommensurability are rationally resolvable: hinges are propositions that (...) are the objects of our belief-like attitudes and are rationally revisable in virtue of our overarching commitment to avoid systematic deception in our epistemic practices. (shrink)

This paper tries to motivate three desiderata for historical epistemologies: (a) that they should be reflective about the pedigree of their conceptual apparatus; (b) that they must face up to the potentially relativistic consequences of their historicism; and (c) that they must not forget the hard-won lessons of microhistory (i.e. historical events must be explained causally; historical events must not be artificially divided into internal/intellectual and external/social “factors” or “levels”; and constructed series of homogenous events must not be treated as (...) quasi-organisms). Ian Hacking’s work on styles of reasoning and Lorraine Daston’s and Peter Galison’s investigation into epistemic virtues are used to identify the costs of neglecting these desiderata. (shrink)

Abstract: Recent years have witnessed a revival of interest in relativism. Proponents have defended various accounts that seek to model the truth-conditions of certain propositions along the lines of standard possible world semantics. The central challenge for such views has been to explain what advantage they have over contextualist theories with regard to the possibility of disagreement. I will press this worry against Max Kölbel’s account of faultless disagreement. My case will proceed along two distinct but connected lines. First, (...) I will argue that the sense of faultlessness made possible by his relativism conflicts with our intuitive understanding of disagreement. And second, that his meta-epistemological commitments are at odds with the socio-epistemic function of disagreement. This latter problem for relativistic accounts of truth has thus far been largely ignored in the literature. (shrink)

I use a reading of Kuhn to sketch a form of relativism which maintains that what is considered reasonable to believe is relative to scientific traditions. This form of relativism is articulated by showing how it can be defended against criticisms from three different kinds of realism: convergent realism, metaphysical realism, and internal realism. This involves an interpretation of the work of H. Putnam and M. Dummett. Finally I consider the ancient charge that relativism is self-refuting. I (...) argue that the charge of self-refutation could be avoided if there were a way of announcing relativism without asserting it. Against the view of B. A. O. Williams and J. Lear that the mature Wittgenstein was a transcendental relativist according to whom what relativists mean to say, but refute themselves trying to say, does not need to be said. What truth there is in relativism makes itself manifest not in the paradoxical truth of some relativistic theory of knowledge, but in the fact of incommensurability. Epistemological relativists should let these facts speak for themselves. (shrink)

According to Paul Boghossian (2006, 73) a core tenet of epistemic relativism is what he calls epistemic pluralism, according to which (i) ‘there are many fundamentally different, genuinely alternative epistemic systems’, but (ii) ‘no facts by virtue of which one of these systems is more correct than any of the others’. Embracing the former claim is more or less uncontroversial–viz., a descriptive fact about epistemic diversity. The latter claim by contrast is very controversial. Interestingly, the Wittgenstenian ‘hinge’ epistemologist, in (...) virtue of maintaining that rational evaluation is essentially local, will (arguably, at least) be committed to the more controversial leg of the epistemic pluralist thesis, simply in virtue of countenancing the descriptive leg. This paper does three central things. First, it is shown that this ‘relativistic’ reading of Wittgenstein’s epistemology is plausible only if the locality of rational evaluation (in conjunction with a reasonable appreciation of epistemic diversity) commits the Wittgenstenian to a further epistemic incommensurability thesis. Next, Duncan Pritchard’s (e.g., 2009; 2015) novel attempt to save the hinge epistemologist from a commitment to epistemic incommensurability is canvassed and critiqued. Finally, it is suggested how, regardless of whether Pritchard’s strategy is successful, there might be another very different way—drawing from recent work by John MacFarlane (2014)—for the hinge epistemologist to embrace epistemic pluralism while steering clear of epistemic relativism, understood in a very specific way. (shrink)

In this paper we investigate the history of relationalism and its present use in some interpretations of quantum mechanics. In the first part of this article we will provide a conceptual analysis of the relation between substantivalism, relationalism and relativism in the history of both physics and philosophy. In the second part, we will address some relational interpretations of quantum mechanics, namely, Bohr’s relational approach, the modal interpretation by Kochen, the perspectival modal version by Bene and Dieks and the (...) relational interpretation by Rovelli. We will argue that all these interpretations ground their understanding of relations in epistemological terms. By taking into account the analysis on the first part of our work, we intend to highlight the fact that there is a different possibility for understanding quantum mechanics in relational terms which has not been yet considered within the foundational literature. This possibility is to consider relations in ontological terms. We will argue that such an understanding might be capable of providing a novel approach to the problem of representing what quantum mechanics is really talking about. (shrink)

Mi-Kyoung Lee has produced an engaging study of the development of skepticism in ancient Greece. Although arguments against the possibility of knowledge — and responses thereto — were common during the Hellenistic period, the great works of the Classical period hardly give skepticism a second thought. Were great minds like Plato and Aristotle blithely unaware of the threat posed by skepticism? Lee’s answer is that the questions and arguments of Hellenistic period skeptics were not unprecedented, for a nascent form of (...) skepticism had already been debated in the Classical period. The relativism of Protagoras’ measure doctrine — “Man is the measure of all things” — was a challenge to Classical epistemologies, for it implied that no one could ever be mistaken about anything. Plato, Aristotle, and Democritus all recognized this challenge, and their responses to it shaped the debate over skepticism in the Hellenistic period. (shrink)

Hinge epistemology is sometimes thought to have controversial relativist and non-evidentialist commitments. This paper develops and motivates an explicitly relativist and radically non-evidentialist version of hinge epistemology, following and combining aspects of Ashton’s (2019) defense of relativist hinge epistemology and Pritchard’s (2016) defense of a non-epistemic reading of hinge commitments. I argue that radical relativist hinge epistemology shares in a main attraction of hinge epistemology in general, namely, offering a dissolution of closure-based radical skeptical problems. I then motivate RR as (...) a social hinge epistemology by showing that it is particularly well-suited for fruitful applications in topics such as deep disagreement, testimonial injustice, and hermeneutic injustice. (shrink)

Postmodern rölativizm için bilimsel bilginin gerçekliği keşfettiği iddiası asılsızdır. Çünkü neyin bilgi olduğu yalnızca belirli bir referans noktası, iktidar ilişkisi ya da dil oyunu gibi bazı çerçeveler altında söylenebilir. Dahası, bu tür çerçevelerin bilginin asli ölçütünü sunduğu veya alternatif çerçevelerle kıyaslanabilir olduğu söylenemez. Buna göre, evrensel birtakım standartlar yoktur. O halde, neyin bilgi olduğu konusu görelidir. Postmodernlerin yaygın olarak benimsediği bu yaklaşım iki bakımdan problemlidir: Birincisi, kendisini baltalayan bir teori sunar. Teorinin doğru varsayılması teorinin kendisini temelsiz bırakmaktadır. Böyle bir bilgi (...) anlayışının ikinci problemi epistemolojinin meseleleri ve bilgi türleri konusunda bir karmaşa içerisinde olmasıdır. Bu makale, postmodern görüşün rölativizmin temel çıkmazından kaçamadığını ve postmodern savların epistemolojik bir karmaşa içerisinde olduğunu göstermeyi hedeflemektedir. (shrink)

In a post-Trump, post-Covid-19 world, it is clear that truth is contested by fake news outlets and misinformation. Less clear is how to navigate the vicissitudes of intersectional discourse without devolving into a Richard Rortyan relativism that denies truth altogether. This paper considers the epistemic commitments of foundationalism and coherentism before turning to pragmatist Susan Haack to explore whether there are convergences between the two. The goal of this paper is three-fold: (1) to clarify how truth and fact feature (...) in foundationalist and coherentist epistemic thinking; (2) to offer a pragmatist “foundherentist” intersection between foundationalism and coherentism; and (3) to use (1) and (2) to highlight the untenable position Rortyan relativism represents, specifically in relation to education formally understood. (shrink)

Thoroughgoing relativists typically dismiss the realist conviction that competing theories describe just one definite and mind-independent world-structure on the grounds that such theories fail to be relatively translatable even though they are equally correct. This line of argument allegedly brings relativism into direct conflict with the metaphysics of realism. I argue that this relativist line of reasoning is shaky by deriving a theorem about relativistic inquiry in formal epistemology—more specifically, in the approach Kevin Kelly has dubbed “logic of reliable (...) inquiry”. According to the theorem, two scientists, who share some background knowledge but follow different appropriately reliable methods, will converge to relatively formally translatable competing theories, even if meaning, truth, logic and evidence are allowed to vary in time depending on each scientist’s conjectures, actions, or conceptual choices. Some final remarks on the relevance of the theorem to the incommensurability thesis that has vexed twentieth century philosophy of science are adduced. (shrink)