Epistemic Relativism, Misc

Edited by Markus Seidel (University of Münster)
Assistant editor: Charlott Becker (University of Münster)
About this topic
Summary Epistemic relativism is the position that knowledge is valid only relatively to a specific context, society, culture or individual. The discussion about epistemic relativism is one of the most fundamental discussions in epistemology concerning our understanding of notions such as 'justification' and 'good reason'.
Key works In Barnes & Bloor 1982, the sociologists of knowledge Barry Barnes and David Bloor explicitly endorse a relativist position,  In Paul Boghossian's Boghossian 2006 several forms of epistemic relativism are attacked,  Kuhn's classic Kuhn 1962 gave rise to epistemic relativist interpretations, Paul Feyerabend is a prominent proponent of epistemic relativism in the philosophy of science in his Feyerabend 1999, In Nagel 1997, Thomas Nagel defends his Last Word on relativism endorsing an absolutist position, Rorty 1991 defends a position taken by many to be relativistic
Introductions Laudan 1990 provides an introduction about the controversy in dialogue-form, For a general introduction to relativism including a chapter on the epistemic variant, see Swoyer 2008 in the Stanford encyclopedia. For an introduction to the epistemic variant see Carter 2016.
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  1. Azande witchcraft, epistemological relativism and the problem of the criterion.Howard Sankey - 2007
    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 (...)
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  2. Was Heidegger a Relativist?Sacha Golob - forthcoming - In Martin Kusch, Katherina Kinzel, Johannes Steizinger & Niels Wildschut (eds.), The Emergence of Relativism: German Thought from the Enlightenment to National Socialism. pp. 18.
    The structure of this article is very simple. In the first half, I will introduce a sophisticated way of reading Heidegger as a relativist; I draw here on the work of Kusch and Lafont. In the second half, I present the counter-argument. As I see it, Heidegger is not a relativist; but understanding the relations between his approach and a relativistic one is crucial for an evaluation of both his own work and the broader trajectory of post-Kantian thought.
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  3. Review of John MacFarlane. (2014). Assessment Sensitivity: Relative Truth and its Applications. Oxford, Oxford University Press. [REVIEW]Christos Kyriacou - forthcoming - Dialectica.
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  4. Epistemic circularity and epistemic incommensurability.Michael P. Lynch - forthcoming - Social Epistemology:262--77.
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  5. Is Knowledge a Social Phenomenon?Robin McKenna - forthcoming - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy.
    In this paper, I offer some reasons for thinking that knowledge is a social phenomenon. My argument is based on Helen Longino’s work on scientific knowledge, in particular her 2002 book The Fate of Knowledge. Longino’s basic idea is that a scientific hypothesis or theory is justified when it emerges (relatively) unscathed from social interactions between scientists. If we accept – as Longino and many others do – that knowledge requires justification, it follows that scientific knowledge is a social phenomenon. (...)
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  6. Post-Truth und Neofaktualismus. Falsche Gegensätze in der gegenwärtigen Wahrheitspolitik und wie Perspektivenvielfalt heute verteidigt werden kann.Emmanuel Alloa - 2023 - In Inga Römer & Georg Stenger (eds.), Faktum, Faktizität, Wirklichkeit (Phänomenologische Forschungen Beiheft 5). Hamburg: Meiner. pp. 115-131.
  7. Trust Responsibly: Non-Evidential Virtue Epistemology.Jakob Ohlhorst - 2023 - New York City: Routledge.
    This book offers a defence of Wrightean epistemic entitlement, one of the most prominent approaches to hinge epistemology. It also systematically explores the connections between virtue epistemology and hinge epistemology. -/- According to hinge epistemology, any human belief set is built within and upon a framework of pre-evidential propositions – hinges – that cannot be justified. Epistemic entitlement argues that we are entitled to trust our hinges. But there remains a problem. Entitlement is inherently unconstrained and arbitrary: We can be (...)
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  8. Uma resposta nuançada à pergunta acerca das implicações relativistas do perspectivismo nietzschiano.Rogério Lopes - 2022 - Cadernos Nietzsche 43 (2):269-290.
    A detailed discussion of Corbanezi's book, entitled "Perspectivismo e Relativismo na Filosofia de Nietzsc he," published in 2021 by the Collection Sendas & Veredas [Ensaios] in a partnership between the Unifesp Publisher and GEN (Grup de Estudos Nietzsche). The book aims to answer a very specific question: to what extent does Nietzsche's perspectivism incur in relativism? To answer this main question, Corbanezi mobilizes some of the main concepts of Nietzsche's theoretical philosophy, competently displaying their internal articulations (world conception, will to (...)
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  9. On The Persistence of Absolute Metaphysics.Gustavo Picazo - 2022 - Logos and Episteme 13 (4):417-419.
    Greenwood (2019) casts doubts upon whether a certain view about social groups (the view that social groups persist throughout changes in their membership, by virtue of the maintenance of their structure or function) is a fundamental metaphysical truth about social groups, rather than a theoretical truth about some or many social groups. In this note, I introduce a distinction between absolute and relative metaphysics, and argue that there are no 'fundamental metaphysical truths‘ (as Greenwood conceives of them) at all. If (...)
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  10. An Approach to Anti-Foundationalism from Stanley Fish’s Literary Theory.Fernando Eliécer Vásquez Barba - 2021 - Revista Contacto 1 (2):52 - 74.
    This paper is an attempt to approach Stanley Fish’s anti-foundationalist argument whose clear formulation is found in the development of his literary theory. For this reason, we will start by, first, introducing Fish's literary theory, and, second, it is explored some aspects of Fish’s theories and their bonds with anti-foundationalism.
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  11. Absolutism, Relativism and Metaepistemology.J. Adam Carter & Robin McKenna - 2021 - Erkenntnis 86 (5):1139-1159.
    This paper is about two topics: metaepistemological absolutism and the epistemic principles governing perceptual warrant. Our aim is to highlight—by taking the debate between dogmatists and conservativists about perceptual warrant as a case study—a surprising and hitherto unnoticed problem with metaepistemological absolutism, at least as it has been influentially defended by Paul Boghossian as the principal metaepistemological contrast point to relativism. What we find is that the metaepistemological commitments at play on both sides of this dogmatism/conservativism debate do not line (...)
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  12. Can Hinge Epistemology Close the Door on Epistemic Relativism?Oscar A. Piedrahita - 2021 - Synthese (1-2):1-27.
    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 (...)
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  13. Knowledge and normality.Joachim Horvath & Jennifer Nado - 2020 - Synthese 198 (12):11673-11694.
    In this paper, we propose a general constraint on theories of knowledge that we call ‘normalism’. Normalism is a view about the epistemic threshold that separates knowledge from mere true belief; its basic claim is that one knows only if one has at least a normal amount of epistemic support for one’s belief. We argue that something like normalism is required to do full justice to the normative role of knowledge in many key everyday practices, such as assertion, inquiry, and (...)
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  14. Fogelin’s Theory of Deep Disagreements: A Relativistic Reading.Victoria Lavorerio - 2020 - Philosophical Investigations 43 (4):346-362.
    In “The Logic of Deep Disagreements,” Robert Fogelin claims that parties to a deep disagreement lack the common ground needed for arguments to work, making the disagreement impervious to rational resolution. Although Fogelin’s article received numerous responses, there has been no attempt to elucidate the epistemological theory behind Fogelin’s theses. In this article, I examine Fogelin’s theory of deep disagreements in light of his broader philosophy. The picture that emerges is that of relativism of distance, à la Bernard Williams. By (...)
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  15. Pragmatic Encroachment and Feminist Epistemology.Robin McKenna - 2020 - In Natalie Alana Ashton, Martin Kusch, Robin McKenna & Katharina Sodoma (eds.), Social Epistemology and Epistemic Relativism. Routledge.
    Pragmatic encroachers argue that whether you know that p depends on a combination of pragmatic and epistemic factors. Most defenses of pragmatic encroachment focus on a particular pragmatic factor: how much is at stake for an individual. This raises a question: are there reasons for thinking that knowledge depends on other pragmatic factors that parallel the reasons for thinking that knowledge depends on the stakes? In this paper I argue that there are parallel reasons for thinking that knowledge depends on (...)
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  16. Review of 'Viewpoint Relativism' by Antti Hautamäki. [REVIEW]Markus Seidel - 2020 - Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews:N.N..
  17. From Völkerpsychologie to Cultural Anthropology: Erich Rothacker’s Philosophy of Culture.Johannes Steizinger - 2020 - Hopos: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science 10 (1):308-328.
    Erich Rothacker (1888–1965) was a key figure in early-twentieth-century philosophy in Germany. In this paper, I examine the development of Rothacker’s philosophy of culture from 1907 to 1945. Rothacker began his philosophical career with a völkerpsychological dissertation on history, outlining his early biologistic conception of culture (1907–1913). In his mid-career work, he then turned to Wilhelm Dilthey’s (1833–1911) Lebensphilosophie (philosophy of life), advancing a hermeneutic approach to culture (1919–1928). In his later work (1929–1945), Rothacker developed a cultural anthropology. I shall (...)
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  18. Constructivism, intersubjectivity, provability, and triviality.Andrea Guardo - 2019 - International Journal of Philosophical Studies 27 (4):515-527.
    Sharon Street defines her constructivism about practical reasons as the view that whether something is a reason to do a certain thing for a given agent depends on that agent’s normative point of view. However, Street has also maintained that there is a judgment about practical reasons which is true relative to every possible normative point of view, namely constructivism itself. I show that the latter thesis is inconsistent with Street’s own constructivism about epistemic reasons and discuss some consequences of (...)
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  19. Relativism in the Philosophy of Anthropology.Inkeri Koskinen - 2019 - In Martin Kusch (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Relativism. London and New York: pp. 425–434.
    This chapter explores arguments, ideas, and practices related to relativism in social and cultural anthropology. It covers discussions about cultural relativism, methodological relativism, conceptual relativism, relativism about rationality, moral relativism, epistemic relativism, and ontological relativism.
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  20. From Völkerpsychologie to the Sociology of Knowledge.Martin Kusch - 2019 - Hopos: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science 9 (2):250-274.
    This article focuses on two developments in nineteenth-century (philosophy of) social science: Moritz Lazarus’s and Heymann Steinthal’s Völkerpsychologie and Georg Simmel’s early sociology of knowledge. The article defends the following theses. First, Lazarus and Steinthal wavered between a “strong” and a “weak” program for Völkerpsychologie. Ingredients for the strong program included methodological neutrality and symmetry; causal explanation of beliefs based on causal laws; a focus on groups, interests, tradition, culture, or materiality; determinism; and a self-referential model of social institutions. Second, (...)
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  21. Kuhn’s two accounts of rational disagreement in science: an interpretation and critique.Markus Seidel - 2019 - Synthese 198 (Suppl 25):6023-6051.
    Whereas there is much discussion about Thomas Kuhn’s notion of methodological incommensurability and many have seen his ideas as an attempt to allow for rational disagreement in science, so far no serious analysis of how exactly Kuhn aims to account for rational disagreement has been proposed. This paper provides the first in-depth analysis of Kuhn’s account of rational disagreement in science—an account that can be seen as the most prominent attempt to allow for rational disagreement in science. Three things will (...)
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  22. La influencia epistemológica del modelo cartesiano de la mente en arqueología cognitiva.Alfredo Robles Zamora - 2019 - Límite: Revista de Filosofía y Psicología 14 (14).
    The aim of this work is to expose the Cartesian Model of the mind in Cognitive Archaeology and point out how it relates to the questions behind this branch of archaeology. Based on this, some of the premises assumed by the Cartesian Model and how they influence the formulation to the problem of epistemological relativism in the branch are explained. According to this problem, since there is no way to evaluate hypotheses in this research area, the investigations on cognition, based (...)
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  23. Epistemological Implications of Relativism.J. Adam Carter - 2017 - In Jonathan Jenkins Ichikawa (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Epistemic Contextualism. Routledge. pp. 292-301.
    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 (...)
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  24. Epistemic relativism, scepticism, pluralism.Martin Kusch - 2017 - Synthese 194 (12):4687-4703.
    There are a number of debates that are relevant to questions concerning objectivity in science. One of the eldest, and still one of the most intensely fought, is the debate over epistemic relativism. —All forms of epistemic relativism commit themselves to the view that it is impossible to show in a neutral, non-question-begging, way that one “epistemic system”, that is, one interconnected set of epistemic standards, is epistemically superior to others. I shall call this view “No-metajustification”. No-metajustification is commonly taken (...)
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  25. The Future of Epistemic Possibility.Meagan Lowell Phillips - 2017 - Kriterion - Journal of Philosophy 31 (1):45-62.
    I am concerned with epistemic possibility expressions (EPEs) such as “It might be raining.” Much of the discussion of EPEs has concerned the fact that a given EPE can seem true in one context and false in another. Motivated by this data, contextualists have argued that modal expressions are sensitive to information at a context of use. Contextualist analyses encounter problems when it comes to disagreements centered on EPEs. Relativists such as John MacFarlane argue that epistemic modals are sensitive to (...)
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  26. How not to write an introduction to relativism: Bernd Irlenborn: Relativismus. Berlin/boston: Walter de Gruyter GmbH, 2016, 152pp, $35.00 PB. [REVIEW]Markus Seidel - 2017 - Metascience 27 (1):99-105.
  27. Permissivism and the Arbitrariness Objection.Robert Mark Simpson - 2017 - Episteme 14 (4):519-538.
    Permissivism says that for some propositions and bodies of evidence, there is more than one rationally permissible doxastic attitude that can be taken towards that proposition given the evidence. Some critics of this view argue that it condones, as rationally acceptable, sets of attitudes that manifest an untenable kind of arbitrariness. I begin by providing a new and more detailed explication of what this alleged arbitrariness consists in. I then explain why Miriam Schoenfield’s prima facie promising attempt to answer the (...)
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  28. Circularity, Scepticism and Epistemic Relativism.Steven Bland - 2016 - Social Epistemology 30 (2):150-162.
    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 (...)
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  29. Epistemology and Relativism.Adam Carter - 2016
    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 →.
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  30. Metaepistemology and Relativism.Joseph Adam Carter - 2016 - Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
    Is knowledge relative? Many academics across the humanities say that it is. However those who work in mainstream epistemology generally consider that it is not. Metaepistemology and Relativism questions whether the kind of anti-relativistic background that underlies typical projects in mainstream epistemology can on closer inspection be vindicated.
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  31. Relativism Defended.Howard Darmstadter - 2016 - Cogent Arts and Humanities 3:1-11.
    I argue for a type of relativism that allows different people to have conflicting accurate representations of the world. This is contrary to the view of most Anglo-American philosophers, who would, with Paul Boghossian in Fear of Knowledge, deny that “there are many radically different, yet ‘equally valid’ ways of knowing the world.” My argument is not a metaphysical argument about the ultimate nature of the outside world, but a psychological argument about the mental processes of representation. The argument starts (...)
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  32. The Problem of Fake News.M. R. X. Dentith - 2016 - Public Reason 8 (1-2):65-79.
    Looking at the recent spate of claims about “fake news” which appear to be a new feature of political discourse, I argue that fake news presents an interesting problem in epistemology. Te phenomena of fake news trades upon tolerating a certain indiference towards truth, which is sometimes expressed insincerely by political actors. Tis indiference and insincerity, I argue, has been allowed to fourish due to the way in which we have set the terms of the “public” epistemology that maintains what (...)
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  33. How could Vygotsky inform an approach to scientific representations?Dimitris Kilakos - 2016 - Epistemology and Philosophy of Science 47 (1):140-152.
    In the quest for a new social turn in philosophy of science, exploring the prospects of a Vygotskian perspective could be of significant interest, especially due to his emphasis on the role of culture and socialisation in the development of cognitive functions. However, a philosophical reassessment of Vygotsky's ideas in general has yet to be done. As a step towards this direction, I attempt to elaborate an approach on scientific representations by drawing inspirations from Vygotsky. Specifically, I work upon Vygotsky’s (...)
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  34. Response to Elqayam, Nottelmann, Peels and Vahid on my paper 'Perspectivism, deontologism and epistemic poverty'.Robert Lockie - 2016 - Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 5 (3):21-47.
    I here respond to four SERRC commentators on my paper ‘Perspectivism, Deontologism and Epistemic Poverty’: Shira Elqayam, Nikolaj Nottelmann, Rik Peels and Hamid Vahid. I maintain that all accounts of epistemic justification must be constrained by two limit positions which have to be avoided. One is Conceptual Limit Panglossianism (an excessively subjective, ‘emic’, ‘bounded’ and ‘grounded’, relativistic perspectivism, whereby anything the epistemic agent takes to be justified, is). The other is Conceptual Limit meliorism (an excessively objective, ‘etic’, ‘unbounded’, ‘ungrounded’, absolutism, (...)
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  35. A Snowslide of Entities. Does Sosa's Existential Relativism Provide a Barrier Against Being Buried?Markus Seidel & Alexander Thinius - 2016 - In Bahr Amrei & Seidel Markus (eds.), Ernest Sosa. Targeting His Philosophy. Springer. pp. 101-118.
    This paper discusses Sosa’s via media between existential relativism and absolutism. We discuss three implications of Sosa’s account which require some further clarification. First, we distinguish three alternative readings of Sosa’s account – the indexicalist, the homonymist and the (proper) relativist reading – and argue that they differ with respect to two crucial points: (a) they lead to different analyses of the lack of disagreement in existential discourse, and (b) they differ with respect to the question of whether conceptual schemes (...)
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  36. Extended Rationality: A Hinge Epistemology.Annalisa Coliva - 2015 - London, England: Palgrave-Macmillan.
    Extended Rationality: A Hinge Epistemology provides a novel account of the structure of epistemic justification. Its central claim builds upon Wittgenstein's idea in On Certainty that epistemic justifications hinge on some basic assumptions and that epistemic rationality extends to these very hinges. It exploits these ideas to address major problems in epistemology, such as the nature of perceptual justifications, external world skepticism, epistemic relativism, the epistemic status of basic logical laws, of the Principle of the Uniformity of Nature, of our (...)
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  37. A Counterexample to the Uniqueness Thesis.Matthew Kopec - 2015 - Philosophia 43 (2):403-409.
    In this essay, I present a straightforward counterexample to the Uniqueness Thesis, which holds, roughly speaking, that there is a unique rational response to any particular body of evidence.
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  38. Walking the Line: Kuhn Between Realism and Relativism.Michela Massimi - 2015 - In Alisa Bokulich & William J. Devlin (eds.), Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions - 50 Years On. Springer Verlag.
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  39. Kuhn’s Incommensurability Thesis: What’s the Argument?Moti Mizrahi - 2015 - Social Epistemology 29 (4):361-378.
    In this paper, I argue that there is neither valid deductive support nor strong inductive support for Kuhn’s incommensurability thesis. There is no valid deductive support for Kuhn’s incommensurability thesis because, from the fact that the reference of the same kind terms changes or discontinues from one theoretical framework to another, it does not necessarily follow that these two theoretical frameworks are taxonomically incommensurable. There is no strong inductive support for Kuhn’s incommensurability thesis, since there are rebutting defeaters against it (...)
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  40. Epistemic Relativism: A Constructive Critique, by Markus Seidel: Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014, pp. x + 284, £60. [REVIEW]Robert Nola - 2015 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 93 (3):628-629.
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  41. Scepticism, Relativism and a Naturalistic Particularism.Howard Sankey - 2015 - Social Epistemology 29 (4):395-412.
    This paper presents a particularist and naturalist response to epistemic relativism. The response is based on an analysis of the source of epistemic relativism, according to which epistemic relativism is closely related to Pyrrhonian scepticism. The paper starts with a characterization of epistemic relativism. Such relativism is explicitly distinguished from epistemological contextualism. Next the paper presents an argument for epistemic relativism that is based on the Pyrrhonian problem of the criterion. It then considers a response to the problem of the (...)
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  42. Wittgensteins Antirelativismus in Über Gewissheit.Schmidt Sebastian - 2015 - In Christian Kanzian, Josef Mitterer & Katharina Neges (eds.), Realismus – Relativismus – Konstruktivismus. Beiträge des 38. Internationalen Wittgenstein Symposiums. Kirchberg am Lech: Österreichische Ludwig Wittgenstein Gesellschaft. pp. 268-270.
    Mit seinen Unterscheidungen zwischen verschiedenen Spielarten des Relativismus macht Martin Kusch deutlich, dass es eine einfache ja-/nein-Antwort darauf, ob sich Wittgenstein in Über Gewissheit zum Relativismus bekennt, nicht gibt (vgl. Kusch 2013: 38-41). Vielmehr gilt es zu klären, welche Formen des Relativismus durch Wittgensteins Überlegungen dort nahegelegt werden und welche Stellung er ihnen gegenüber einnimmt – falls er überhaupt eine klare Stellung einnimmt. Ich werde im Folgenden dafür argumentieren, dass sich Wittgenstein durch seine Überlegungen bezüglich des Zusammenhangs Moorescher Gewissheiten („Hier (...)
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  43. In Defence of Epistemic Relativism: The Concept of Truth in Georg Simmel’s Philosophy of Money.Johannes Steizinger - 2015 - Proceedings of the 38th International Ludwig Wittgenstein-Symposium:300−302.
    As one of the first modern philosophers, Georg Simmel systematically developed a “relativistic world view” (Simmel 2004, VI). In this paper I attempt to examine Simmel’s relativistic answer to the question of truth. I trace his main arguments regarding the concept of truth and present his justification of epistemic relativism. In doing so, I also want to show that some of Simmel’s claims are surprisingly timely. Simmel’s relativistic concept of truth is supported by an evolutionary argument. The first part of (...)
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  44. Relativism—a Pervasive Feature of the Contemporary Western World?Mikael Stenmark - 2015 - Social Epistemology 29 (1):31-43.
    What is relativism? Why should we adopt a relativistic stance towards what we and others hold to be true about the world? And how did relativism come to be such a pervasive feature of the contemporary Western world? These are questions which I address in this paper. To relativize is to maintain that what is true—and not merely what is taken to be true—is dependent upon group, community, society, culture and the like and is not simply true in a universal (...)
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  45. Incommensurability, relativism, and the epistemic authority of science.Steven Bland - 2014 - Episteme 11 (4):463-473.
  46. A new maneuver against the epistemic relativist.J. Adam Carter & Emma C. Gordon - 2014 - Synthese 191 (8).
    Epistemic relativists often appeal to an epistemic incommensurability thesis. One notable example is the position advanced by Wittgenstein in On certainty (1969). However, Ian Hacking’s radical denial of the possibility of objective epistemic reasons for belief poses, we suggest, an even more forceful challenge to mainstream meta-epistemology. Our central objective will be to develop a novel strategy for defusing Hacking’s line of argument. Specifically, we show that the epistemic incommensurability thesis can be resisted even if we grant the very insights (...)
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  47. Assessment Sensitivity: Relative Truth and its Applications.John MacFarlane - 2014 - Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    John MacFarlane explores how we might make sense of the idea that truth is relative. He provides new, satisfying accounts of parts of our thought and talk that have resisted traditional methods of analysis, including what we mean when we talk about what is tasty, what we know, what will happen, what might be the case, and what we ought to do.
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  48. Problem of the Criterion.Kevin McCain - 2014 - Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    The Problem of the Criterion The Problem of the Criterion is considered by many to be a fundamental problem of epistemology. In fact, Chisholm (1973, 1) claims that the Problem of the Criterion is “one of the most important and one of the most difficult of all the problems of philosophy.” A popular form of […].
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  49. Markus Seidel: Epistemic relativism: A constructive critique[REVIEW]Howard Sankey - 2014 - Metascience 24 (2):265-269.
    Traditional epistemology is haunted by the spectre of scepticism. Yet the more pressing concern in the contemporary intellectual scene must surely be relativism rather than scepticism. This has been the case in the history and philosophy of science since the work of Thomas Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend, to say nothing of the emergence of the sociology of scientific knowledge. In Epistemic Relativism: A Constructive Critique, Markus Seidel comes firmly to grips with this modern spectre. Though Seidel devotes attention to other (...)
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  50. On Relativism and Pluralism: Response to Steven Bland.Howard Sankey - 2014 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 47:98-103.
    This paper responds to criticism presented by Steven Bland of my naturalistic approach to epistemic relativism. In my view, the central argument for epistemic relativism derives from the Pyrrhonian problem of the criterion. This opens relativism to an anti-sceptical response. I combine Roderick Chisholm’s particularist response to the problem of the criterion with a reliabilist conception of epistemic warrant. A distinction is made between epistemic norms which provide genuine warrant and those which do not. On the basis of this distinction, (...)
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