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Epistemic Risk and Relativism

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Abstract

It is generally assumed that there are (at least) two fundamental epistemic goals: believing truths, and avoiding the acceptance of falsehoods. As has been often noted, these goals are in conflict with one another. Moreover, the norms governing rational belief that we should derive from these two goals depend on how we weight them relative to one another. However, it is not obvious that there is one objectively correct weighting for everyone in all circumstances. Indeed, as I shall argue, it looks as though there are circumstances in which a range of possible weightings of the two goals are all equally epistemically rational.

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Notes

  1. This is actually a fairly subtle business. On the one hand, I don’t think our assessment of risks and the subsequent determination of our behavior in situations that involve those risks is always or even very often deliberative. On the other hand, I don’t want to imply that our behavior always accurately reflects our values. It seems to me that this is something we can get wrong. I don’t just mean that we can miscalculate risk. That is obvious. We can over or underestimate the probabilities of various outcomes in a way that causes us to take on risks that we do not mean to. What I mean is that we can be wrong about what our own values are, or about the relative strength with which we hold those values. We humans are notoriously self-ignorant. Obviously, these are issues that an account of how to actually assess people on the basis of their own epistemic values must come to terms with. But I cannot pursue that task here.

References

  • James, W. (1969). The moral philosophy of William James. New York: The Thomas Y. Crowell Co.

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  • Riggs, W. (2003). Balancing our epistemic ends. Noûs, 37.

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  1. University of Oklahoma, 455 W. Lindsey, Room 605, Norman, OK, 73019, USA

    Wayne D. Riggs

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  1. Wayne D. Riggs
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Correspondence to Wayne D. Riggs.

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Riggs, W.D. Epistemic Risk and Relativism. Acta Anal 23, 1–8 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12136-008-0020-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12136-008-0020-6

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