Epistemic Relativism

The aim of this chapter is to explore the relationship between Kuhn’s views about science and scientific realism. I present an overview of key features of Kuhn’s model of scientific change. The model suggests a relativistic approach to the methods of science. I bring out a conflict between this relativistic approach and a realist approach to the norms of method. I next consider the question of progress and truth. Kuhn’s model is a problem-solving model that proceeds by way of puzzles (...) and anomalies rather than progress toward truth. I explore Kuhn’s views about scientific progress in connection with scientific realist views about truth and progress. This leads to consideration of Kuhn’s views about the incommensurability of paradigms, as well as brief consideration of an anti-realist interpretation of his talk of world-change. I conclude by indicating that the scientific realist may endorse some aspects of Kuhn’s view. (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)

The objective of the paper is to seek clarification on the relationship between epistemic relativism and scepticism. It is not infrequent to come across contemporary discussions of epistemic relativism that rely upon aspects of scepticism and, vice versa, discussions of scepticism drawing upon aspects of relativism. Our goal is to highlight the difference between them by illustrating that some arguments thought to be against relativism are actually against scepticism, that there are different ways of understanding the relationship between relativism and (...) scepticism, and that a commitment to either relativism or scepticism does not entail commitment to the other. The paper focuses upon the works of Peter Unger and Paul Boghossian to show how this terrain can be variously conceived and to illustrate that Boghossian’s conception of the landscape is incorrect. (shrink)

Knowledge and Postmodernism in Historical Perspective offers answers to the questions, what is postmodernism? and what exactly are the characteristics of the modernism that postmodernism supercedes? This comprehensive reader chronicles the western engagement with the nature of knowledge during the past four centuries while providing the historical context for the postmodernist thought of Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Richard Rorty and Hayden White, and the challenges their ideas have posed to our conventional ways of thinking, writing and knowing. From the science (...) of things to the science of human beings to the grand social theorizing associated with Adam Smith, Alexis de Tocqueville, Karl Marx and Max Weber, Knowledge and Postmodernism in Historical Perspective presents readings from the succession of thinkers whose writings helped define modern sensibilities by analyzing the human capacity for generating knowledge. The volume follows the knowledge-generating project of the modern age as it blossoms in the Enlightenment and bears fruit in the nineteenth century. The writings included reveal the linkages between science, the history of science, hermeneutics, anthropology, sociology, linguistics and philosophy from Francis Bacon's call for experimental engagement with nature in the seventeenth century to Jurgen Habermas' recent analysis of the civil society spawned by the Enlightenment. (shrink)

Postmodern thought has focused itself on the critique of modern epistemology that was founded on a clear distinction between the knowing subject and the object of knowledge. For postmodern thought such a distinction is non-existent or dubious at best. Postmodernism has carried to its logical conclusion the postulates of structuralism; therefore, for postmodern thought there is no general intrinsic meaning in a fact of thing, but there are only particular ways for attributing meaning to such facts and things. Hereunder, we (...) attempt to trace the genealogy of postmodern thought on the history and philosophy of science, because science, traditionally regarded as the summit of knowledge and rationality by modern epistemology, has not been immune to the wholesale critique practiced by this new school of philosophical cynicism that we call postmodernism. (shrink)

Beginning with a historical overview of relativism, from Pythagoras in ancient Greece to Derrida and postmodernism, Maria Baghramian explores the resurgence of relativism throughout the history of philosophy. She then turns to the arguments for and against the many subdivisions of relativism, including Kuhn and Feyerabend's ideas of relativism in science, Rorty's relativism about truth, and the conceptual relativism of Quine and Putnam. Baghramian questions whether moral relativism leads to moral indifference or even nihilism, and whether feminist epistemology's concerns about (...) the very notion of objectivity can be considered a form of relativism. She concludes the relativism debate by assessing the recent criticisms such as Quine's argument from translation and Davidson's claim that even the motivations behind relativism are unintelligible. Finding these criticisms lacking, Baghramian proposes a moderate form of pluralism which addresses the legitimate worries that give rise to relativism without incurring charges of nihilism or anarchy. (shrink)

This book provides a defence of epistemological relativism against its most powerful opponents.

This is a study of the relativity of facts in relation to the frameworks of reference in terms of which those facts are established. In this early paper from 1975, intended for a less technical audience, the author proposes an understanding of facts and their associated frameworks in terms of complementarity. This understanding of facts leads to an integrated yet pluralistic concept of reality. In the Addendum, readers will find a partial listing of related publications by the author that extend (...) the research described in this paper. (shrink)

EDITORS NOTE: Typographical corrections of page proofs were accidentally left out of Dr. Beach's article, which appeared in the January issue of this volume. The omission diminishes the value of the article; and the Editor apologizes for the oversight to Dr. Beach and the readers of Metaphilosophy. A typographically correct version is given below.

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)

Relativistic accounts of scientific knowledge have become more popular over the past thirty years than, perhaps, at any time previous to this. Ever since Kuhn offered his account of science in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, the philosophy of science has had to contend with various accounts of scientific truth ranging from Kuhnian type positions to the most radical positions such as that of Feyerabend. Relativism has not simply been limited to the philosophy of science, however. More and more, thinkers (...) sympathetic with relativism in the philosophy science have become interested in knowledge claims in general. The work of Feyerabend and Rorty present the most notorious examples of this line of questioning, but such concerns are not limited to them or even a few people. Indeed, there has been a resurgence of a kind of pragmatism which considers itself, by some of its proponents, to be a variety of relativism. In a sense, accounting for scientific knowledge is viewed as a subset of the larger and more pressing problem of accounting for all knowledge. My discussion of relativism begins here. ;My dissertation is divided up into six chapters. In chapter one I discuss the Platonic objection to relativism which charges epistemological relativism with being self-refuting. As it happens, this objection goes very little distance towards convincing the relativist that their position is untenable. This exchange, and the ultimate failure of the Platonic argument to convince, is discussed so as to justify the development of a new approach. ;Chapters two and three set out to clarify what exactly epistemological relativism is, what varieties of epistemological relativism there are, and how they are related to each other. Such clarification is badly needed as confusion presently abounds concerning which views can properly be construed as relativist and which views qualify as certain types of relativism as opposed to others. The discussion in these two chapters serves as a foundation for the criticism of relativism I develop in the chapters focusing on the work of Joseph Margolis and Paul Feyerabend. ;My concern with Margolis and Feyerabend is only as examples of moderate relativism and radical relativism respectively. In essence I argue that both views are committed to views about the world, ontologies, which are so far from the common-sense view that the proponents' must provide a justification for their ontological commitments. This poses a serious problem because neither view is such that a justification of the ontology is permitted by the views' own commitments. By arguing as I do, I provide a novel objection to relativist epistemologies. (shrink)

"A fascinating and timely treatment of the objectivism versus relativism debates occurring in philosophy of science, literary theory, the social sciences, ...

It would seem that an epistemic framework can be justified only by means of a non-circular argument that establishes its truth-conduciveness. The problem of epistemic circularity suggests that no such argument is possible. Externalists and particularists have addressed the problem of scepticism by claiming that epistemically circular arguments can establish the truth-conduciveness of a framework’s epistemic methods. However, since these arguments are available for a good many frameworks, this response does nothing to answer the threat of epistemic relativism. The purpose (...) of this paper is to offer a non-circular argument in favour of naturalistic epistemic frameworks, and therefore against epistemic relativism. The argument establishes that non-naturalistic frameworks depend on naturalistic methods for their application, and therefore, they cannot be more truth-conducive than naturalistic frameworks. This argument does not establish that naturalistic frameworks are truth-conducive, but it does provide a ra.. (shrink)

This paper has four aims: first, to outline the role of the sceptical problem of the criterion in the principal argument for epistemic relativism; second, to establish that methodist and particularist responses to the problem of the criterion do not, by themselves, constitute successful strategies for resisting epistemic relativism; third, to argue that a more fruitful strategy is to attempt to evaluate epistemic frameworks on the basis of the epistemic resources that they have in common; and finally, to make the (...) case that finding this common ground will necessarily involve determining how it is that a framework’s constituent epistemic methods depend on one another for not only their warrant, but for their application. (shrink)

The paper looks at three big ideas that have been associated with the term “relativism.” The first maintains that some property has a higher-degree than might have been thought. The second that the judgments in a particular domain of discourse are capable only of relative truth and not of absolute truth And the third, which I dub with the oxymoronic label “absolutist relativism,” seeks to locate relativism in our acceptance of certain sorts of spare absolutist principles. -/- The first idea (...) is well illustrated by the famous cases drawn from physics, but is ill suited for providing a model for the sorts of relativism about normative domains that have most interested philosophers. -/- The second idea – according to which it is the truth of certain judgments that is relative – seems subject to a very difficult dilemma. -/- The final idea provides a coherent model of cases like etiquette but is not plausibly applied to the moral or epistemic domains. (shrink)

The main impetus for my book came from the widespread acceptance of relativistic views about truth and knowledge within the Academy, especially within the humanities and the humanistic social sciences. In its introductory sections, though, I noted that there is one discipline within the humanities in which the influence of relativistic views is quite weak—namely, within analytic philosophy itself. Ironically, no sooner had the ink dried on the final version of my manuscript sometime in mid-2005—although, of course it had been (...) in the works for a number of years prior to that—than I began to become aware of a huge interest in certain kinds of relativistic views that was beginning to build within analytic philosophy. That interest—which is ongoing as I write—has been fueled to a considerable extent by the work of a younger generation of philosophers including John MacFarlane, Max Kölbel and Peter Lasersohn. (shrink)

Unlike the relativistic theses drawn from physics, normative relativisms involve relativization not to frames of reference but to something like our standards, standards that we have to be able to think of ourselves as endorsing or accepting. Th us, moral facts are to be relativized to moral standards and epistemic facts to epistemic standards. But a moral standard in this sense would appear to be just a general moral proposition and an epistemic standard just a general epistemic proposition. Pulling off (...) either relativism, then, requires not just relativizing the facts in the domain in question to the relevant standards; it requires taking a non-absolutist view of the standards themselves. Otherwise a commitment to absolute truths in the domain in question will show up in one’s attitude towards the standards themselves. But it is very hard to see how to take a genuinely non-absolutist attitude towards the standards themselves. That, in essence, is the difficulty for a relativistic view of a normative domain that I tried to develop in Chapter 6 of Fear of Knowledge. In their commentaries, Gideon Rosen and Ram Neta come up with ingenious ways of attempting to circumvent that difficulty. In my reply, I try to explain why I don’t believe they succeed. (shrink)

Relativist and constructivist conceptions of truth and knowledge have become orthodoxy in vast stretches of the academic world in recent times. In his long-awaited first book, Paul Boghossian critically examines such views and exposes their fundamental flaws. Boghossian focuses on three different ways of reading the claim that knowledge is socially constructed--one as a thesis about truth and two about justification. And he rejects all three. The intuitive, common-sense view is that there is a way the world is that is (...) independent of human opinion; and that we are capable of arriving at beliefs about how it is that are objectively reasonable, binding on anyone capable of appreciating the relevant evidence regardless of their social or cultural perspective. Difficult as these notions may be, it is a mistake to think that philosophy has uncovered powerful reasons for rejecting them. This short, lucid, witty book shows that philosophy provides rock-solid support for common sense against the relativists. It will prove provocative reading throughout the discipline and beyond. (shrink)

Many philosophers, however, have been tempted to be relativists about specific domains of discourse, especially about those domains that have a normative character. Gilbert Harman, for example, has defended a relativistic view of morality, Richard Rorty a relativistic view of epistemic justification, and Crispin Wright a relativistic view of judgments of taste.¹ But what exactly is it to be a relativist about a given domain of discourse? The term ‘‘relativism’’ has, of course, been used in a bewildering variety of senses (...) and it is not my aim to discuss each and every one of those senses here. Rather, what interests me is the notion that is characterized by the following core idea: the relativist about a given domain, D, purports to have discovered that the truths of D involve an unexpected relation to a parameter. (shrink)

Epistemic relativism has the contemporary academy in its grip. Not merely in the United States, but seemingly everywhere, most scholars working in the humanities and the social sciences seem to subscribe to some form of it. Even where the label is repudiated, the view is embraced. Sometimes the relativism in question concerns truth, sometimes justification. The core impulse appears to be a relativism about knowledge. The suspicion is widespread that what counts as knowledge in one cultural, or broadly ideological, setting (...) need not count as knowledge in another. (shrink)